The Null Device Blog

I was smacked in the head once again with my own ignorance of Indian classical music theory (in this case, Carnatic and not Hindustani, but the big gaps in my understanding are wide enough that it makes no odds).

But not in a bad way.

Um, I’ll explain.

Sunday was the arangetram of Ramya Kapadia, who graciously donated her vocals to what I still consider the danciest ND track ever written. An arangetram is a solo debut recital for a bharatanatyam dancer. It’s kind of a big deal. Anyway, Wendy and I attended, as did a whole bunch of other people. And they had some serious musical horsepower on hand for the orchestra. Two singers – one was the dance company guru and she mainly did the rhythmic syllabic singing, and another one who sang the more melodic parts and, I realized halfway through the show, had a nonfunctional microphone but a startlingly powerful voice. They had a bansuri player who was excellent, an electronic percussionist who was doing some really intruiging things with a seemingly limitless bank of ghatam samples, and a mridangam player who was just so good it was sick.

The soundguy, if there was one, seemed to be having difficulty, though. Between the occasional burst of feedback, the loud 60-cycle hum, and the over-miced metallic percussion, the mix was a little off. Still, you could figure out what was going on and the raw talent of the players was evident. And Ramya could clearly hear them well because she was doing some moves that required dead-on timing sync with the musicians.

The program was detailed enough to print, in addition to the piece and eprformance notes, the various rAgam used. I think I recognized exactly one of them, and that was only the name, not the actual rAgam itself. I think I need to study up before I start trying to ask guest musicians to sit in…

Makes me want to learn more of this stuff, though.

Styrofoam – A Thousand Words
It’s even Postal Servicier than Nothing’s Lost. I wasn’t sure what direction he’d go in after the Fat Jon collaboration, which was impressive but somewhat less than catchy. He’s back in the “cut-up synthpop with indie-rock guest vocalists.” The downside is that some of the vocalists work better than others. An engaging listen, though, especially in a landscape of copycats.

Tarkan – Metamorfoz
Finally available domestically! He’s back, he’s turkish, and he got a haircut. He’s not trying to be an American R&B star anymore, and he’s better for it. A heavy dose of the ever-so-current clubland hip-hop production doesn’t overshadow his trademark emotive vocals (“emotive” puts it mildly). I don’t think it’s quite as strong as the material on the “Dudu” EP but it’s a damn sight better than “Come Closer.”

The upside of having no internet access at home for a while is that I actually managed to get a fair chunk of things done.

Well, until the flooding. Then I had to stop for a bit. But everything’s back up and running again.

And the lack of internet has kept me from authorizing my upgrade to NI Battery 3.

And I finished a new track, finally. It’s a fairly catchy piece of ethno-dance-pop and it’ll probably be my submission for the next Halo compilation. Dr. Goedken was recently in town, he listened to it, and gave it the stamp of approval. He also gave me some ideas to cut through a bit of a block I was having. Then we went mini-golfing.

Aaaaaand we have an upcoming kinda bitchin gig! Friday, July 24th at the Memorial Union Terrace on the sunny shores of Lake Mendota. More details as I get them.

Before the internet failure I worked with Alex the Oud Player and hopefully soon can do stuff with the 8 minutes or so of riffs he laid down. And hopefully in a few weeks I’ll have once again enlisted the services of Ramya, who did some guest vocals on our last album.

I’m concurrently working on bludgeoning some of the remixes I did of older tracks for live use – London, Footfalls, Travelogue, Hourglass – into standalone form. I don’t want to be That Guy who releases the same six songs every few years but it’d be nice to bring a few of the “standout” tracks from the older albums into the age of “hey, Eric knows what the heck he’s doing now.”

The new Pendulum album, “In Silico” is pretty dope.  It’s like a rock album done by a drum-n-bass guy.

Holy crap, I’m a colonial pilot!

As you may know, I’m sort of a rather devoted fan of Battlestar Galactica.

I’m also a bit of a comics fan.

Naturally I thought it was pretty cool when they started publishing a Galactica prequel comic, written by comics-writer and SD6-frontman Brandon Jerwa.

I hadn’t expected to actually be in said comic, though.  But there I am, Lt. Eric Oehler, viper pilot, callsign “Null.”  He actually has a significant role, too.

And damn if he doesn’t look like me, too.  Except in better shape.  And without the sideburns.  But he’s got the glasses and the eyebrows.

IIRC, in the GI Joe series he wrote, Mr. Jerwa inserted Scott from Converter, and Matt Fanale made it into the Zarek series.  I join prestigious company.

I’ve always wanted to be a viper pilot.