Back Online At Last

Hello! for those of you who had been avid Media Sashimi followers, you'll be pleased to know I'm finally back online after spending well over a year without internet at home. I had to go to the internet cafe down the street and pay for it five dollars at a time like an animal. But now I'm back, and about to become creatively vital again. At this moment, I haven't got anything new to show you, but soonily enough, I shall. for now, this is just a post to declare that I'm still alive and well and living in SF.

More art/music/whatever to follow!

President Blair Live Shots

Over the spring and summer I was doing more PB gigs, and trying out a lot of new material. I don't at the moment have video or audio of these to share with you. I might. Let me check. But first I do have photos to share showing some of the most recent monkeying around with tapes and noise.

These shots were taken at Summerfest Sound Explosions at the Hovel in Glenwood, and were taken by Heather Chessman of Juice Machine. I lie. I think the ones with me in the Robin Hood hat were taken by Heather, and the ones in the bear hat were taken by William Haldane.

Making Art in San Francisco

Primarily my time spent here in SF has been devoted to job-searching, which has to some degree diminished my art and music time. But not entirely. After having a really wonderful conversation with Cara Vida, a collage artist/former commercial artist, and showing her a series of collages I did in 2009, I got inspried to start picking up the art stuff again. When moving down from Eugene, I couldn't bring my art stuff, just a small pile of raw materials. But the room I'm renting came with a bunch of art stuff already in it, and I've been given permission to use some of it.

So, as a relaxing activity, I've been queuing up a lot of the music I've gathered but never quite listened to and starting getting back into the collage again. here are some photos of things I've been doing.

Frames made from card stock and painted paper. The art to go in these will been happening sooner or later.

People in San Francisco are somewhat unfriendly at first, and often seem annoyed and irritated. This is a portrait of no specific person, but a sort of composite of people I encountered.

SF may be a big destination of gays, but that doesn't mean that they are free from gay stereotypes. I don't fit into those set models, so i used collage to express my feelings abut the worth of my individuality.

I use hell money a lot in my PB stuff, many times encouraging people to buy my merch with it when they are strapped for cash but want a new piece. The hell money you can get down here is really fabulous.

President Blair "Dyslexicon" Process Photos

I've been working on a new concept for PB material, that is combining the sound with a print element, a zine to be specific. The zine is an experiment in reused paper. the pages are made by stapling together sheets of Chinese newspaper between sheets of cardstock, essentially creating an instant 'scrapbook', if you want to use such gauche terminology. The CD will be included in among the pages of the zine, and various pieces of art have been glued in onto the pages. The experiment combines painting, found photography, taken photography, altered photography, collage and noise.

The audio component uses field recordings, text-to-effect processing, and other source material that references current events in the world. I don't suppose my work had ever had much of a political bent, but it seems to be going that way.

Anyway, here are the process shots from the making of this release.

Amharic Fusion Experimentation

As a big fan of Ethiopian music, I wanted to try my hand at cutting up some Ethiopian music myself and seeing what sort of edits I could make of it. In this piece, I used some contemporary Amharic music, sourced from Youtube. I'd certainly rather have worked from aproper made in Ethiopia recording,but if you don't live in that area, your best bet is Youtube, with the assurance that the quality of the audio in the video, usually considered too low to sample from by most, is about as good as you'd get from any other proper source.

What i wanted to do is to see if other 3/4 timed rhythms would work with the roundy, triplet-based Ethiopian rhythms, so i chose a particular favorite ingredient, zapateado drums from Mexico, and used these two elements in combination with one another, with an added touch of bass drum to give it some thump. The video below showcases the results. It's a nice mixture of things, I think.

President Blair "Scornfield"

Fellow DJ and electronics enthusiast Avitar Virgonian brought me by a couple of pieces of spare equipment he had lying around, a drum machine and an echo unit. I didn't get around to using them as extensively as I would have liked, due to the pressures of an upcoming move and some general laziness before said move was learned of. Using the equipment, along with some live audio mulch improv, I created the piece embedded here. Once you listen to it, you'll understand why I gave it the name. Pictured below are the pieces of hardware used.

 

Where I've Been and What I've Been Doing (instead of posting it here)

Though there hasn't been a proper MS blog entry since June, creative activities have continued at Media Sashimi HQ. In fact the change in location of said HQ is probably one of the biggest pieces of MS news; I have relocated from Eugene, Oregon to San Francisco. Creative activities have started up here, even though it's only been a week since I arrived. however with such a back log of creative activity to catch you all up on, I won't even be able to get to the SF creative acts for a few more entries yet. First, there's lots of President Blair related work that needs to be posted about. While i've continued the DJ activities pretty regularly, the noise stuff I've been doing has been more the forefront, and much more representative of the whole aesthetic I've been going for. So, now that you have my assurance that Media Sashimi won't be one of those blogs that flares to life, shines bright and flickers into nothing. I'll be here for a while. facebook can be a lousy place to try and keep proper documentation of one's activities. Thanks to all the Media Sashimi fans and supporters who come here to see what i've been up to.