You guys, we have to talk about Saltillo.

This dude is nuts. He emits high-octane nightmare fuel as a byproduct from an inexplicable process of self-discovery the likes of which I've never seen. His art is disturbing as fuck. But the music–oh man, this is good stuff.

This is trip-hop, and true to form you'll find heavy use of samples, distortion and spatializers mixed with traditional instrumentation, a 4/4 swung beat and minor key signatures. Notably absent–at least to my ears–is any hint of trip-hop's origins in jazz or soul. What really excites me about these pieces is the interplay of rough and smooth textures: scratchy percussion mixed with rarified, almost tenuous violin; aggressive drum loops molded to an expressive analog performance; high-pitched melodies backed by a muted, baseline. Saltillo's timbre is delicious. I can't get over it.

At least to my untrained ears, the editing is carefully balanced between these extremes, sometimes between, sometimes within the same instrument. His wife, Sarah, sings this track. Listen closely for the phase change in her voice, sliding from pure to granulated, from echoing to present. There are moments of subtle doubling, airy reverb, before the first instrumental break. But then, in the crescendo, he rips out out formants for raw, degraded power. Her performance is the vocal thread of continuity in the song, but plays a varied role–if you listen closely at 3:18–3:28 you can feel the track pulling her voice from one space to the next.

I say 'pulling" because the instruments take a spatial prominence as well, from the establishing shot of the piano to distant, then closer voice, to drums and violin duet, voice, and finally to violin again. The cello and drum loops take intermediate and backing roles to fill out the space; foreground, middle distance, and cloudscape. I love listening to points of transition, where instruments exchange places in pitch, space, or melodic role–and Saltillo rewards careful attention.

I'm supposed to be working on some distributed feed stuff tonight, but dammit, this song is incredible and I want to think about it.

Imogen Heap is a musical genius. Whatever you think of her particular style, voice, lyrics; one has to admit that anybody who can sit down and invent an eight track song to any suggested melody, in any key, beat, and meter, on the fly, understands music.

My favorite track of hers is "The Walk", from Speak for Yourself. When I visited my best friend Ryan and we were catching up on each other's last eight years of music, we stated this in unison. In fact, everyone I've asked seems to agree: it's a fantastic piece of music. Why?

In high level terms, it's easy to understand. She's combined a furiously interesting lyrical thread with multilayered instrumentation, and dropped it into E♭ minor, of all things. The key alone sets it apart, but she goes on to introduce some really interesting textures and a fascinating vocal contrast. The meter is relatively stock 4/4 and the tempo is sensibly driven; no surprises there. The instrumentation itself is worth a note, though.

On repeated listening, you can draw out some beautiful little sounds: that haunting sirenlike keyboard, a second piano, the harsh buzz for the baseline, synth harps used as percussion, and little whooshes, snits and zips punctuating the mix. There's a harshly distorted electric guitar pushing its way through the climactic midpoint, and it comes back as a rising wave of noise to break into the final chorus. We've also got a zither, the usual electronic drum beats, and... a xylophone? Muffled wind chime? What is that first instrument?

It's also got a fascinating structure to it; something I enjoy about almost all of Imogen's works. Notice that the first piano melody encountered, and used as a theme throughout the song, is a rising couplet. Actually, four of them: aAaAaAaA. Similarly, there are four major blocks to the song, each divided into a low and high intensity half; with the exception of #3, which is further subdivided into an aAbB sequence.

The first two major blocks are verse and chorus. Then a brief silence at 60 seconds, and a second verse-chorus pair. The instrumentation is pretty much the same through these. Then things get really interesting: there's the breathless climactic lines at 2:20, (again, in a low/high pair), and a haunting fall appearing four times from 2:50 on. It only shows twice in this spectrogram since this is only one channel, and it's mixed as a right/left pair.

Notice the guitar distortion appearing as high-bandwidth noise throughout the whole frequency range at 2:35. The spare instrumentation around "freeze—awaken forever" is especially neat as well; you can see the lower harmonics of Heap's voice sliding down through the spectrogram at this point.

These lines are some of my favorites as well,

Big trouble losing control
Primary resistance at a critical low
On the double got to get ahold
Point of no return one second to go
No response on any level
Red alert this vessel's
Under siege total overload
All systems down they've got control

It reads like the chatter of a starship A.I. engaged in battle. In this context "You're as close as it gets without touching me" and "I feel a weakness coming on" evoke the unplugging of HAL9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey. I still interpret this as the surrender under fire of a noncorporeal system, a theme interwoven with the fundamental wrongness of having control over one's own state subverted. "I don't want to feel like this". It's a perfect fit for the darkened key signature.

Yeah, I know, it's probably about falling in love with someone you don't want to, but this mapping of the story is just so much more interesting.

There are some songs which are incredibly close to me. I resonate so closely with them that they are not so much something I enjoy--but a defining element of my emotional core. Like the books you read growing up which you not only remember fondly but strive to fulfill. I'd like to write a little bit about these songs, and try to understand why.

Nik Olendzki, a good friend and fellow Aikidoist at Carleton, introduced me to Carbon Leaf. It was a regular part of the soundtrack at The Quad of Flying Daggers--I remember it echoing from beer-encrusted laminate flooring as you rounded the top flight of stairs, still bundled up in winter coats. The first time I heard it everyone in the room stopped and listened, for a minute, just to reflect.

I feel like a kite high in a tree
Is this where I'm suppose to be?
I wish I was a little boy
When love was taken care of

I took a copy home that winter and lay on the bed, watching the wind sweep the Douglas Firs in waves past the window. It's a rainy-day story: one about being a kid, obviously, but also a poem of loss and recovery.

The recovery is mirrored in the structure of the song. Over ten minutes, it develops from restrained blue guitar into a brassy, free-form exploration full of distortion, fluttering effects, and carefree high notes. The progression of instrumental layers is so carefully controlled that when the final chorus breaks free, the relief is palpable. It's like leaving the confines of the room after hours of rain and running triumphantly down the street. The sun is out and shining on every wet leaf.

The rest of Echo Echo is well worth the price, though its character tends to be brighter and uptempo than the introduction of Maybe Today would suggest.

Back in 2004 I played this mod for UT2004 called Neotokyo, which, in addition to being a really fun futuristic shooter with a good community, had an excellent soundtrack. Over the last five years they've been busy porting the game over to the Source engine, and are almost (fingers crossed) to a first release. One of the coolest things to come out of their efforts so far has been the just-released soundtrack put together by the talented Ed Harrison: a two-disc album which I now have the pleasure of owning.

First impressions: astounding. There is not a single track among the 26 that is not worth listening to carefully. The album has a characteristic "Neotokyo" design: ominous scale and atonal drones, punctuated by sampled vocals and driven by electronic baselines. Soaring orchestral movements empower tracks like "Scrap I/O" and "Tachi", while spacious drums and harsh cello drive the centerpiece "Pravhaba" to inexorable conclusion. "Footprint" evokes a more contemplative mood, with light percussion and querulous synth piano taking time to explore the landscape, building to discontinuous crescendo. The bass sometimes feels lacking, and at some points the layered sound can become so complex it's hard to tell what's happening, but these are minor flaws in an all-around solid release, full of high-quality material. For $11, it's a bargain. Go get it while it's still around.

I guess I'm back. Woke up Tuesday at 7:30. 11 hours of cars, airports, airplanes, half-hearted goodbyes, J.D. Salinger, The Samples, Neil Gaiman, and Something Corporate later, I arrived (somewhat displaced) at the doorstep of my old house. A lot's changed since I left. The walls, once a gallery of landscape and family photographs, are home to spare collections of hooks where frames once hung. The plan is to re-paint most of the interior walls, hence the spare decoration. The back door, the one that never closed properly, is replaced as well. All the doorknobs feel small here.

Writing the title of this post makes me wonder really where home is. I don't have a permanent address, really, just a probabilistic chance of successfully being reached. I live a quantum life, shifted by finite yet predictable uncertainties.

Stopped by my old school today to say hello to friends and teachers. Meetings were brief but enjoyable--the security personnel ordered me (contrary to official policy) to come inside, which I gladly obeyed. Mark and I went out to Sushi afterwards, which was amazingly delicious. ^_^

Went to my favorite local music store as a result of my evil habits of digital media piracy, and bought Kaki King's album "Legs to Make us Longer". It's a different kind of music than I've been listening to lately: no real melody, or strong emotion, but it grabs your attention with skill, complexity, and character. I don't know how to describe her style, but there's a guitar, and it's impossible not to listen to.

One thing I've really enjoyed about the last two days has been the ability to read--not a technical manual, not a news article, not an essay or thesis or comic strip, but real books with plot and characters and description. I didn't like most of Salinger's short stories, but "Catcher in the Rye" was very moving, in a strange, poignant sort of way. Right now I'm reading "American Gods", which is good for entirely different reasons.

I'm waiting to hear back from my employer, but it's entirely likely that I won't be working until Monday. Feel free to stop by and say hello. :-D