Breakage

Musical notes, mostly

[ryansholin]

2025 JAMZ OF THE YEAR

Presented with no further context or explanation...

2025 JAMZ ARE HERE OMFG!!!

JAM OF THE YEAR 2025 IS ACTUALLY A JAM AND ALSO VERY 2025 JAM:Never Enough - Turnstile: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nfk1Su1Q8SI

SOPHOMORE SUPERB JAM:CPR - Wet Leg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeL2M8jBEI4

ALBUM OF THE YEAR JAM:Reliquia - Rosalía: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPaSuWrBAQI

STUCK IN YOUR HEAD JAM BUT COULD EASILY HAVE BEEN JAM OF THE YEAR:Golden - Huntrix: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yebNIHKAC4A

ON REPEAT ACOUSTIC HARMONIES JAM:Wake - Madison Cunningham featuring Fleet Foxes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lRod0M_9vs

IS THIS ADULT-ORIENTED ROCK JAM:Time Waited - My Morning Jacket: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYrwG3-wlfk

TYLER THE CREATOR MAKES ACTUAL JAMZ JAM:Sugar on My Tongue - Tyler the Creator: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljHdccyQbT4

MY FAVORITE BAND PUT OUT A NEW ALBUM INSTRUMENTAL JAM THAT SOUNDS LIKE A SONG I MADE TRYING TO SOUND LIKE THEM JAM: Electrified Teenybop - Stereolab: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zy6vKUJFLb0

BAD BUNNY DESERVES A SPOT ON THIS LIST BUT I HONESTLY LISTENED TO J. BALVIN MORE FOR NO GOOD REASON JAM:Bruz Wein - J Balvin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNONEFFP7O8

LAST JAM AT THE PARTY JAM:Last Girls At The Party - The Beaches: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wU-wN1t1Eg

HONORARY CHAPPELL ROAN JAMEE FOR PUTTING OUT AN ALBUM IN 2024 THAT DIDN'T FULLY BLOW UP UNTIL 2025 JAM: Denial Is A River - Doechii: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0cdbR5ognY

[ryansholin]

A little jam on a Saturday as a treat.

[ryansholin]

[ryansholin]

The Motorelektrik EP

The new Motorelektrik EP is now live on Bandcamp! Listen to three new songs and two remixes, all in a motorik flavor with a limited palette of instruments.

The new songs were written and produced during a 12-ish week project using a methodology that was supposed to help keep creative work on track but, lol, methodologies, am I right?

I love using dogma as an excuse for building good habits (my vegan years were great for this) but the truth is that a lot of my creative work (not to mention the rest of it) happens in bursts of energy at the beginning and ending of projects.

Speaking of endings, I'm particularly proud of the endings of these songs, so even if you fast-forward through some parts, try to listen to the endings. They're fun.

Here's the rather specific list of inspirations and influences I made at the beginning of the project:

Stereolab (the song “Emperor Tomato Ketchup” for drum buildup, fills leading to the chorus, rhythm guitar)

Moon Duo “Eye 2 Eye” vocals, drones, lead guitar tone, vocal harmonies

Jeff Rosenstock (whole Hellmode album production, especially vocals and overall mix, so clean)

Minami Deutsch “Tunnel” (pace and bass)

Follakzoid (whole album II, but especially baselines and cymbals/hats)

White Hills “Run-A-Round” fuzz guitar

Can “Vitamin C” snare drums

Neu “Hallogallo” of course, pace, rhythm guitars, drone line on top

I'm not sure how many of these I internalized enough to think about while I chose sounds and played, except for Stereolab, which is always what I imagine sounding like in my head, until I remember I literally don't have the (vocal) range to sound the way they sound, aside from other minor differences in our musical capabilities and experience. (I obviously recommend listening to all these bands if you like any part of what I did here. They are professionals.)

[ryansholin]

I’ve been working on another (smaller) music project!

There were (at least) two things I learned making an album of 10 original songs last year:

1) I had the most fun with songs that used a Motorik rhythm (driving 4/4 Krautrock-adjacent thing with the snare on the 3 and the kick everywhere else).

2) I more or less ruined a few of the songs when I mastered them.

When I released the album, I decided, to interpolate someone quotable but frequently unspeakable, I wasn’t going to “fix Wolves” because it was what it was, and I made it how I made it in the time I had.

But, I took some time this winter to start writing a few new songs with a Motorik beat (fast, medium, and slow) and to re-mix/record/master some parts of two songs from the album: Road and Anesthesia.

It went from daydream to project thanks to a timely “Creators Club” project at work that I’ll say more about later this month, but goodness gracious do I love an externally imposed deadline.

The video here is a teaser for the title track of the EP I’ll release on Bandcamp April 19:

Motorelektrik

I’ll write more soon about the healthy constraints I put on myself to focus on the songs and the writing instead of choosing from 7,854 keyboard sounds.

[dustedmagazine]

Earth Room—S-T (Related States)

Earth Room by Earth Room

The Earth Room, in Soho, is a conceptual art installation by Walter De Maria, consisting of a large pile of fragrant, loamy dirt. Not much is allowed to grow in it; the occasional weed or fungus gets pulled out immediately. The point is the earth itself, there in the middle of Manhattan. And also, not secondarily, the point is how you react to the earth there, what thoughts and feelings and ideas are prompted by its incongruence. The exhibitors originally intended to leave the installation up for three weeks. That was in 1977. 

Earth Room, the musical ensemble, got its name from this piece of art (or provocation or dumpster load of soil, however you look at it), but it’s not entirely clear how it relates conceptually. The group is a trio, made up of one-time Citay guitarist Ezra Feinberg, the synth and percussion player John Thayer and reedist/sound experimentalist Robbie Lee. Together they make a serene but mobile sort of music, which has elements of free jazz, ambient music and krautrock.

Keep reading

[ryansholin]

I really, really, really like this.

[ryansholin]

Breakage, the Album

It’s release day for the album I’ve been working on for most of the last three months, Breakage. You can listen or download at Bandcamp now.

It’s pay-what-you-want, and I’m donating any/all proceeds to Clean Air Task Force to fight climate change.

Looking back, it’s been maybe a year I’ve been talking about this project? It was well worth it. I’ve been trying to talk about this like a “launch” as if it’s a website, but “release” indeed feels more appropriately for ten songs that I would keep improving and tweaking and editing if I had more time. I guess some people do that, but it feels right to let these ten go now.

[itscolossal]

Photographic Composites Document the Mesmerizing Flight Trails of Vultures, Crows, and Bats

[ryansholin]

Vultures gonna vulch.

[unofficial-sean]

Hi hello, you all need to see Ray Troll’s kitsch masterpieces:

It’s just too good. this is the pinnacle of cool dad art. I’m getting a t-shirt. Oh yes, i’m getting one. You bet your ass. you bet your bass! Ha! It’s spreading!

[ryansholin]

True story: I had a “SPAWN TILL YOU DIE” skull-and-cross-salmon t-shirt as a teenager and it was glorious and often required explanation in various settings?

Ah, yes, this was it:

I… I wore this to school?

[ryansholin]

Me: Gosh, I wonder which New Wave band sang that ‘80s song that just popped into my head?

Literally The Monkees:

[ryansholin]

Made it Insta official today: The album, also called Breakage, drops on May 26.

Still deep into mostly mastering and some mixing, but didn’t pick up an instrument today to play any new notes. I do have a couple vocals to finish up, but they’re all written, and even live in scratch tracks as placeholders for arrangements.

The first 80 seconds of Sisyphus (minus vocals) is what’s backing this little promo video. Although it’s an allusion that comes up often in my life (😅) the day I wrote the first draft of the first verse was the day Sisyphus was the main character on the Internet, in the latter days of microblogging, I guess, a couple months ago. IIRC the gist of it was “Sisyphus be workin” and there was a lot wrong with it.

Meanwhile, my initial take on the song was half this tempo, and every time I came back to it, it felt too ploddy and lumbery, and there’s already a plodder and a lumberer on the album, so instead, it’s another fast one, with some 143bpm motorik in the busiest bits, and the most ear candy I’ve added to anything yet.

(Yes, that is a “drop” about two thirds into the video. Honest.)

After I posted this today, I spent a few hours (post-great-time-to-catch-a-cold-nap) trying to master the instrumental, and it passed the car test on the way to the boy’s soccer practice, though I think it needs more low end.

May 26th!

[ryansholin]

And in the closing weeks of my sabbatical project, when I should be focusing on finishing and mastering songs and idk like releasing an album in some manner, I bought a used Korg Volca FM to fiddle with, and it was good.

It’s making the twangy/clangy sound here. The drums are from the Volca Beats, and chaining them together made me instantly see the appeal of buying more little physical boxes to hook up and tweak knobs.

There’s a Prophet V-based Analog Lab preset doing a wah-wah thing with a longer attack, and a “Dilla Marimba” Ableton instrument from some free sound pack I downloaded a while back. (RIP JD.)

And now, back to mild stress about finishing the missing verses of things and shoring up the mixing, mastering, and sequencing of the “real” project.

[psychedelic-sixties]

Mira-X-Collection Decor By Verner Panton

[ryansholin]

A still from Sesame Street?

A carpet from my kindergarten classroom?

The colors of smelly markers?

A Paul Klee gone all curvy?

Whatever it is, I can’t look away.

[ryansholin]

Video workflow in 2023 is easy! Just do these 19 things…

Make vertical video a priority because phones exist.

Spend your budget on headphones instead of speakers, so pointing the phone camera at the monitor makes for terrible tinny sounding videos.

Don’t feel like editing a video, really.

Look up how to capture computer audio, screencast style.

Realize QuickTime is the answer.

Realize QuickTime and a third-party plugin is the answer.

In parallel, get frustrated and suspicious about using various “free” video conversion sites, since you know you’re going to end up with an .mov that needs to be an .mp4.

Vaguely remember teaching people how to do that step in the year 2007, and be sad about it still being a challenge, yet impressed that some of the same video conversion sites and services still exist.

Start installing ffmpeg

Realize you haven’t done much development on this computer yet, and watch it “brew update” all the things. Like, everything. Like, do I need Python and Ruby for this?

Meanwhile, the answer to your video conversion challenge is actually (still/again) Handbrake.

Get the audio plumbing right in Ableton; tomorrow you will forget you did this and be very confused as to why you can’t hear anything.

Record your screencast video for the eleventh time.

Convert the video.

Airdrop it to your phone. Airdrop is working today, so you don’t need to email yourself the file.

Walk away from the computer as the last error message appears in Terminal.

Post the video to Instagram. (This part isn’t that hard.)

Refresh obsessively until you fall asleep.

Think about how to make this into content for Tumblr.

[formlab]

Robert Irwin

[ryansholin]

Previous post inspired by this post, which led me to learn Robert Irwin has work in Marfa, too, though this isn’t it, but it does play with light, as well.

[ryansholin]

Dan Flavin – The Chinati Foundation

One of the songs I’m working on is (currently) about a formational road trip I took from a small town in New Mexico, back home to New York in 2001.

A friend (with a car) and I had been somewhat irrationally working on a student film that was never completed but is directly responsible for at least two marriages, one divorce, and several children, at last count.

Our stop in Marfa, and the related drives across the West Texas desert to Big Bend — these still feel like the highlights of the trip as I look back, whether or not they make it into the final verses of the song.

Marfa seems almost “popular” now, but maybe it already was a thing among the NYC art set if we knew about it. I was more interest in picking up a kitschy “Marfa Lights” t-shirt (they’re probably a train) than seeing Contemporary Art which at that age I still generally sniffed at, despite a summer class trip to the Whitney Biennial.

But Judd’s concrete boxes left an impression, as did Dan Flavin’s fluorescent lights. I still love an unexpected juxtaposition.

[ryansholin]

Continuing to find making ambient-ish jam things to be lowkey therapeutic compared to actual full-fledged songwriting, which is much more personal. Needed to get out of my head and get inspired late last night, and ran the Volca Beats through a bunch of silly DAW effects after finding I didn't really have the right cables to run it through a physical delay pedal yet.

And then layered on a little more, but tried to keep it sparse. The lead synth line is from some new Analog Lab V Buchla preset pack, although it doesn't really sound like what I'd expect from a Buchla. Which I think was the intent of the preset pack.

There's also some Spitfire Labs BBC Orchestra in there, I really like that set of instruments. But whatever I did to the poor cellos turned it into a panning, filtered, wheezing thing, and I love it.