Making The Album 03-04-08

Finishing up the final mix of “Berlin Floor Show”. It’s much more minimal than the rest of the album — just two guitar lines, a distorted drumbeat and maybe a slide guitar line or a synth, I’m not sure which yet, on the choruses. It sounds really low-fi and dirty, the way it was always supposed to — pounding and cruel and strung out. It’s sitting somewhere between PJ Harvey’s “To Bring You My Love”, Nine Inch Nails’ “Closer” and the UNKLE track “Restless” off their last album (the one Josh Homme sings lead vocals on).

I really like the rhythm guitar (which just plays a syncopated E-minor chord with a walking bassline) in particular. It sounds like it’s being played on a slashed amplifier that’s located in the next room over.

And it ends with the delay on the high rhythm part just shitting itself and going into broken slow cycles, Radiohead style. Sounds nice and dissonant.

Tonight's Episode of Terminator

…was the best one yet, and the last twenty minutes were some of the best TV I’ve seen in years. The scene where Cromartie kills an entire SWAT team is brilliant — an underwater shot from the pool in Cromartie’s apartment complex where you just hear screaming and see body after body splashing into the water, while Johnny Cash sings “The Man Comes Around” on the soundtrack.

And the scene where John sees his five year old father playing ball in the park….

They better not cancel this motherfucker. This show’s getting good.

Quote Of The Day

Heather Havrilesky talks to George Carlin | Salon Arts & Entertainment

The meaning of life is life itself. It has its own rationale. I think it [began] spontaneously from a number of chemical and electrical processes, coming together — it seems that that’s a fair theory that I’ve read, the other ones are harder to believe. It’s just, here we are. And then, the age of the reptiles was in full swing when an asteroid — that’s another good theory — an asteroid came along 65 million years ago, and wiped out the reptiles by blocking out the sun and killing the growing season and they ate greens so they couldn’t get any meat and they disappeared, and the ferrets grew up into little mammals and the primate line developed and here we are. I don’t think we’re here on the divine order. I think we’re here because a big rock hit the Earth, and I don’t know what’s next, maybe it’ll be the cockroaches. It’d be nice if the insects had a chance. But I think this is all happenstance, and the fact that we have consciousness and this thing we call a soul, this is also all part of the chemical and electrical process. I don’t know that it has any real deeper meaning, but it sure feels different from ordinary physical life; I know that. There’s something ineffable here. I don’t know what it is or how to describe it or what to think about it.

Yeah, that pretty much sums it up.