November Adventures

November wasn't marked by any single major events like the past few months have been, but it was still one of the bigger months of the year.

The biggest news of the month is that I quit my job at the VCM and have started working at UVic. Some kind of career change or positive move has been an idea I've tossed around for a long time, and although there is a lot about my old job that I loved and miss, I really couldn't hope for a better opportunity than this. I'm glad I was able to get an interview at UVic; I knew it would be no trouble to wow them in person with my incredible poise and self-confidence.

Okay, so I distinctly lack poise and self-confidence. But they ended up overlooking that, so it worked out all right.

In the few days between jobs, I went to Vancouver with fellow NIN fan @ectobot for the concert. Taking the ferry seems like a mini-cruise—at least on the initial sailing. I head straight for the buffet, which I guess is what makes it seem most like a cruise. The trip back is always a little excruciating. Fortunately, they added unscheduled sailings both days, so we didn't have to wait around too terribly long. The concert itself was fantastic, as expected. Along with getting to visit a couple stellar Vancouver-based friends, in all it was a super trip.


Not too long after that, we went to the Vinyl Cafe Christmas Show, which I'm insistent upon making an annual tradition. The show was even more fun than last year, if possible.

So now I'm busy with work, learning all the new things that come with a new job, trying to remember a portion of the new people I meet every day, dealing with my own and other people's mixed feelings about the change. When I'm not at work, lately I've been coping with an onslaught of medication side effects, compounded by persistent problems like migraines, sinusitis, and other delights.  The whole ordeal leaves me with little time or energy to do anything other than cower in bed. It's like I'm 22 again.

Updation

My song cycle was indeed performed during Canada Music Week (way back in November) and they did a great job. I finally finished a choral setting of an Anglo-Saxon poem, but am told that although there's much to admire in it, it just doesn't work. Recently I've been thinking more about Tintinnabulation (because Arvo Part is my compositional hero, hands down), but figure that anything I try will probably be a repeat of the Anglo-Saxon thing. It's pretty disheartening, but maybe I'll wise up someday and learn how to write 'properly' or something. In December, we went to see Nine Inch Nails again (non-festival this time), which was superlative. It was neat to see how the show had changed over the months since we saw that very first one. You know it will be awesome when there's a marimba on stage. I still marvel at Year Zero every few months when I remember to give it a listen. Year Zero also makes me feverishly want to continue working on my conference paper. Speaking of which: I can't say I had an overwhelmingly great grad experience last year (despite a couple awesome classes) so I withdrew for the fall term to think things over. Ideally, I'd like to develop the paper I did for the UCLA conference into a Masters-Essay-worthy piece, but that doesn't look too promising. This past spring, though, I took a fantastic zoo-texts (generally multidisciplinary) class and could envision my final paper as my Masters project... if only I wasn't forbidden to elaborate on it when anybody asks ):< At Christmas I flew back home, and I had fully intended to recount the horrors of the trip. I ended up stuck in Calgary airport for some 13 hours with nothing but Charles Dickens' Dombey and Son and a blank notebook. Charles Dickens. For thirteen hours. I halfheartedly started doing some Drawings from the Airport, but have let drawings slip as well. I have the best intentions of doing the Aphex Twin transcriptions that people keep asking about, maybe over the summer. Who can say.

The Slip

It's May 5, and you know what that means: follow those mp3 tags to nin.com. In a shocking display of punctuality, the mystery was actually revealed at midnight. To quote:

as a thank you to our fans for your continued support, we are giving away the new nine inch nails album one hundred percent free, exclusively via nin.com.

the music is available in a variety of formats including high-quality MP3, FLAC or M4A lossless at CD quality and even higher-than-CD quality 24/96 WAVE. your link will include all options - all free. all downloads include a PDF with artwork and credits.

So get over to nin.com and get The Slip. CDs and vinyls will be available in July, too. Can ya Digg it?

Thank you, Mr. Reznor.

Spend the day with NIN: watch this video 2500 times



After you've done that, listen to the brand new NIN single called Discipline, which hit radiowaves across the U.S. on Tuesday (to everybody's surprise). Later that evening, it was available for free download on nin.com, and the multitrack is on the remix site as well.

More of the same

Radiohead recently set up radioheadremix.com for listeners to remix their latest single, Nude. Not an April Fool's joke, as some readers believed. The thing about radioheadremix.com is that you have to buy each of the five multitrack components through iTunes if you want to remix it. This is a far cry from remix.nin.com, where Reznor not only lets you post anything NIN-related (so long as it doesn't infringe on the copyright of other artists), but he has provided (or will provide) multitracks for all of his recent music (in a variety of formats) and moreover has used the remix site to provide instrumental versions of all the NIN catalogue of vocal music. You don't have to pay a dime to use remix.nin.com, where you can get a good choice of Year Zero, Ghosts, and even a few Niggy Tardust multitracks. So you can vote for your favourite Nude remixes—so what? Like this article says:

What's sort of unclear is what actually happens to remixers who get the most votes. According to iTunes' New Music Tuesday e-mail, "Select mixes will be made available on iTunes later this year." Uh, OK. Then what? Do the creators get a portion of the sales revenue? A "thank you" e-mail from Thom Yorke and Co.? The glory of saying, "You love me! You really love me!"? Or perhaps some American Apparel back-warmer emblazoned with "I Won a Radiohead Remix Contest and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt."

People have been rating and commenting remixes on remix.nin.com since its inception; it at least has a community feel. Why does Radiohead take every good NIN idea and turn it into some commercialized contest? Reznor is revolutionizing music in making it an artist-community conversation; while Radiohead has the appearance of doing the same thing, it doesn't seem to me that they have that same intent.

What's the matter? Low marker intake?

• Two new transcriptions: The Fragile (Bridge School version) and 12 Ghosts II. The latter would be best if I waited for the multitracks, but (uncharacteristically) I actually got a request for it. So, the best I can do is post it with a caveat.


• Low marker intake? The picture (without my added words, that is) makes me laugh every time. I'm tittering right now, just thinking about it.


• In other NIN news, Trent Reznor recently announced the Ghosts Film Festival. Never lacking in innovation, that one. Incidentally, Radiohead announced a similar deal soon afterward, except theirs is quite clearly a competition with a big prize. It's not that I find it amusing, how the striking similarities in the way NIN and Radiohead are going about things lately highlight their striking differences in values (Radiohead seems to be going to great lengths to maintain their dependence on the "old" model while NIN is very outspoken against that model). I just don't know a better word for it than "amusing."


• NIN is also playing at the Pemberton Festival this summer. So far it's their only 2008 show listed on nin.com. And it's in Pemberton. How random is that? You can bet I'm going.


• The Passively Multiplayer Online Game. Not really fun, or game-y. But it's fascinating that once you download the plugin this previously invisible world is revealed, and it's everywhere on the entire web. You find things—crates that other players have stashed, portals to other websites, "lightposts" that other players have put up from which you can take dumb "missions" that are rarely interesting—on many webpages you normally visit. (p.s. if you're interested, drop me a comment and I'll drop you an invitation. You don't need one to join, but this way I can earn a badge... or even three badges, if I invite enough people. And after all, it is a game, and I've got to keep one step ahead of *certain* opponents.)
  


• What a crappy week.

1 Ghosts I 7 hours 10 attempts 0 downloads = mobius album

Well, it only took an hour and a half for the Ghosts order page to load, and it's been five hours since then, during which time I've tried to download the album roughly 10 times using the download link I received (which was a "one-time-only" link, and which maxed out once during that time, but the NIN camp had to reactivate everybody's links so that everybody will be able to get the music once the site is stabilized after the addition of more servers). But who's counting, really? I'm sure it will all work out "soon."

In the meantime, I've transcribed 1 Ghosts I. (Ghosts tracks don't actually have names, they're just called "5 Ghosts I" or "15 Ghosts II" or "36 Ghosts IV." It really helps you remember all the songs, I suppose. I wouldn't know. I can't hear them, can I?)

Edit: there's now a 9 Ghosts I transcription up as well.

Edit #2: How I imagine it's going, about now

Ghosts I-IV

Nine Inch Nails self-released a new album today, Ghosts I-IV. 36 instrumental tracks, obtainable in a variety of ways. The site seems to be tragically overworked, and I've been unable to get a download yet.