Archives: 2007 September

Archives: 2007 September

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September 30th, 2007

Here’s a new BW track snipped out of a jam we recorded last week as a duo. After a summer of exile in Omaha, Pat has returned like a biblical reference, rising like Joaquin Phoenix from a brimful of asha, or something. I don’t even know what I’m typing, it doesn’t matter. love is the message.

BLOOD WATERFALL - Low Battery

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Pork Chop Robinson #1

September 26th, 2007

Pork Chop Robinson #1

summer 2007
16 pages of comics and doodles: a b c
featuring Summer of the Shark minizine

if you want one, let me know
stopmakingsteve@gmail.com

http://brokenpants.com/comics/

there’s no new content in this post since the last one, and I haven’t yet stapled them all together or anything, but I updated the comics page so now consider PCR officially declared

oh and I just noticed I wrote ‘zines‘ on the comics page so I guess I am committed make more

stopmakingsteve Posted incomics and books, diy, saying swears | 1 Comment »
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

September 21st, 2007

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

it took like four hours of photoshopping today

then more than three hours of trying to get a stupid printer to print my stupid printings

but it’s all printed

also I bought a $28 stapler because it was the only one with more than a 3-4 inch reach L@@K behold its sublime majesty

I’m so happy

I’ll post more when they’re all assembled

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Curses! My walling has boomeranged!

September 20th, 2007

I found this little keyboard at a thrift store for like three dollars, so I figured I’d make an attempt at circuit bending something other tape players. So far I’ve just found a couple of connections that distort the notes in cool, rhythmic ways and some that stop / start / glitch the demo. The best sounding thing my housemate found is just mashing your finger on the bottom of the circuit board near the op amp chip, huge squealing sounds come out that you can alter depending on how hard and on which contacts you touch. There are like five or six points that I think all need to be connected for it to work, so I’m not sure how I’d make it a more functional effect, maybe just cut a window in the bottom of the case…

reset switch, audio jack, starve pot (doesn’t really do anything that interesting, except during the squealing sound I mentioned), two momentary distorting buttons that sound cool separately and really cool together

Speaking of dirty keyboards, I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this thing but it was sitting nearby and looking very photogenic posing with a gun for some reason:

Also, if you were wondering what the best thing ever is, it’s this book, this book is the best thing ever: click

Goddamn Sex Blimp!

stopmakingsteve Posted incomics and books, diy, music, saying swears | 2 Comments »
Will Michael Come Back?

September 18th, 2007

If you’ve been paying close attention this summer, you may have noticed I’ve alluded several times to a zine I’m working on. Well, after a few months of not working very hard at it, sliding between love and hate for my artwork and ideas and self, and just generally having no idea what I’d actually do with a stupid little paper comic book if I did manage to put one together, I think I’m finally closer than ever before to completing my zine.

Here’s a sneak peek at the Summer of the Shark mini-zine that will appear inside of the big zine:

That’s right, my debut book will feature a bonus tiny book of content that’s not even interesting enough to make it into the regular-size book! Self-effacement aside, the test prints were a rousing success, they actually came together into a silly little booklet, and I think I found a good way/place to print them. Tomorrow I think I’m planning on buying some paper and sitting around while a couple hundred copies are made, then I just have to put everything together! It’s all very exciting. If you haven’t tuned, you could start tuning now, and if you have begun to tune, keep doing that and don’t stop, because believe me you will want to remain in your current state: tuned.

In other exciting news, me and Mike made some sweet experiments tonight on Expansion Experiment on Chicago’s Sound Experiment. Basically, Mike figured out how to patch the signal that’s being broadcast back into the sound board, and since the broadcast is on a seven second delay, that’s basically everything you need for a huge seven second delay feedback loop. Ah! I was very pleasantly impressed with the results from our first try, a clattery percussion improvisation that built up cacophanously in the loop. Next was a short organ drone which we looped for a while before adding in some vocals and letting the whole mess break down. Both eventually degraded into cool noisy loops with very distinct high static-y parts and wicked throbbing basslines, like not just pulsing bass but actual complex, melodic, pounding rhythms. The fidelity of the repeats impressed me since I’ve mostly worked with more lo-fi devices, and Mike was surprised by the whole thing, I think, that it wasn’t just screaming feedback or noise. All in all, a great night of experimentation, I just wish we had recorded it…

Also, when I had my camera out I took a picture of the collection of cassettes I’ve accumulated over the past few months, mostly just to show off my tapes and the fact that I buy tapes and listen to them sometimes, and also to show off the badass red stripes on my bedroom wall.

ps that Sewer Election record I played is fucking awesome

stopmakingsteve Posted incomics and books, diy, music, radio, saying swears | 1 Comment »
Happy Tooth fever is sweeping the nation

September 18th, 2007

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take a look at me, see I couldn’t look no better

September 12th, 2007

Nude Ants - America “We’re On Holiday”

Since I’ve been ripping my tapes at the station lately, I realized it’s not too much more complicated to rip vinyl. This track was an immediate choice, partly because there’s basically nothing about the Nude Ants’ record Access on google and partly because well listen to it, it’s an amazing rollicking pop tune. Thanks to Ned for turning me on to it and thanks to you, my beautiful audience.

This mp3 thing might become a regular brokenpants.com feature and it might not, WE WILL WAIT AND SEE.

stopmakingsteve Posted inmusic, pictures of animals, radio, saying swears | 5 Comments »
look

September 6th, 2007

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nÃ¼kommiken

September 6th, 2007

I finally got around to scanning my recent comics and doodles at the library, so there’s a few new comics online. Also, I don’t want to make any promises, but think I might have my zine ready in the next week or two???? maybe. Stay tuned…

Secondly, I added a flash mp3 player to the Blood Waterfall page so you don’t have to worry about downloading huge files if you don’t want to. The player was supposed to be debuted here tonight with a new track I recorded yesterday with that new fuzz and some stuff but for some reason my normal tape deck to mixer to pc rig was not cutting it, so I’m going to have to rip it at wnur, maybe tomorrow. It’s a hell of a track, that fuzz is hilarious, it just tosses out random octaves all over the place.

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had to shoot my way up out of Bennigan’s

September 2nd, 2007

Today I breadboarded a new effect thingy:

It’s a ‘random number generator,’ designed by some kind gentleman named Doug Deeper. I’m pretty sure I saved the schematic just because it’s called the random number generator without having any idea what it actually does… turns out it’s a sputtery fuzz-type pedal, and unlike the last fuzz I made, this one comes with a whopping four transistors, oooOOOOooooh.

So far I haven’t had much time to do anything other than verify it works, I just ran a $5 karaoke mic into the rng into a practice amp, and even that sounded amazing. Just babbling in the mic and getting feedback and twisting the knob made all sorts of silly sounds, I probably could have sat and spat into the mic for longer than my friends would have put up with but I decided not to press my luck.

Here’s the schematic:

My resistor selection was much more sparse than I had assumed it was, so I missed the mark by about a power of five on a couple of those, but like I said it sounded cool anyway. Maybe I’ll switch constant resistors for variable resistors? or something else? I suppose that’s the beauty of using a breadboard, you can futz around with it. The bad news is of course that I haven’t actually soldered anything yet, when I want to put it in an enclosure I have to put it together for real. Alas….

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