The Anatomy of Melancholia

• What fires, torments, cares, jealousies, suspicions, fears, griefs, anxieties, accompany such as are in love, I have sufficiently said : the next question is, what will be the event of such miseries, what they foretel. Some are of opinion that this love cannot be cured, Nullis amor est medicabilis herbis, it accompanies them to the last, Idem amor exilio est pecori pecorisque viagistro.

Burton's tome on human sadness can be downloaded here. http://ia600406.us.archive.org/34/items/anatomyofmelanch00burt/anatomyofmelanch00burt.pdf

http://martinhekker.tumblr.com/

Samuel Butler's Erewhon can be read here. Have finally started reading it today and am finding it amazing, startling, and still very familiar. http://www.zainbooks.com/display.php?id=jh6fc127mt7gj8s176k5ha22in4nl3

Aint It Cool News Blogs on Man-Machine Thanks Aint it Cool News for the brief on Man-machine. . . "a pretty sweet sci fi epic with tons of robots and some pretty fantastic art". We'll take it! http://www.aintitcool.com/

Inventory of robot body parts on www.robots.net. Very interesting website by Roger Arrick (of synthesizers.com fame) where makers of robots can upload descriptions of their robot creations. I find the descriptions of the robots to be very interesting from an anthropological view. Many of the robot descriptions emphasize emotional states of their creators, or their desires. Here is a link to a nice series of robot prototypes: http://www.robots.net/robomenu/989518184.html

A SHORT INTERVIEW WITH MYSTIFIED Mystified has released a new CD of material on Magnatune, A Pale but Lasting Hope. It is pretty amazing; the CD can previewed and purchased here. Thomas Park is no stranger to the Man-Machine comic. So it is a pleasure to be able share a short email interview with the prolific ambient composer below. Thomas is one of the most laconic people I've ever known, which i think comes through in his music. His approach to music can be quite minimalistic. Sometimes the sounds seem to reflect just the right number of gestures and yet have a lot of craft to them. Mystified never goes for low hanging fruit. Although the music is ambient, it is not lounge music and is too jarring at times to qualify as space music.

• WHAT ARE YOUR FAVORITE THINGS TO LISTEN TO THESE DAYS?

I have been enjoying some Fosel, C. Reider, some select tracks from Eno's new one, a little PBK, and a nice radiostream called "Leftob".

• IN YOUR COLLEGE DAYS, YOU WERE A LATE NIGHT DJ ON WNUR'S FREEFORM SHOW. CAN YOU SAY SOMETHING ABOUT YOUR RADIO SHOW ON WNUR? DID YOU EVER INTERACT WITH YOUR LISTENERS?

The show was a lot of fun. I believe I went on 4-6 am. I came on after this total DJ guru-type and played lots of freeform madness. Best results seemed to be blending spoken word and other sounds with music. Yes, I did interact a bit, sometimes taking calls. But the 8 Swedish schoolgirls who called one morning I believe were just my college buddies. (THOMAS IS BEING TYPICALLY MODEST HERE. . . HIS SHOW WAS PRETTY WIERD AND WONDERFUL AND HE WOULD GET SOME PRETTY ODD CALLERS IN WEE HOURS OF THE MORNING).

• HOW DO YOU KNOW WHEN SOMETHING IS DONE?

That's a tough one, especially given how minimal I can be. I suppose the answer would be-- when I run out of ideas for it?

• DO YOU EVER GO BACK TO A TRACK AND REVISE IT?

I have before, yes. Just recently I touched-up and re-rendered one of my 2010 releases, for example. I generally tend to move ahead, but if something seems to need work, and it is still possible, I will do it, yes.

• YOU HAVE A GOOD TRACK RECORD OF COLLABORATION WITH OTHER MUSICIANS. CAN YOU SAY SOMETHING ABOUT HOW YOU ARE ABLE TO WORK WITH SO MANY DIFFERENT PEOPLE?

Well, it has a lot to do with my philosophy about art. I believe art is a creative activity. Therefore, pretty much all art is good. Almost all of it. So if you work with me, you are already doing something I like. I also think a skill of mine is to integrate different styles and sounds easily-- or maybe it's just that my software makes that so simple.

• WHAT WERE YOUR FAVORITE RECORDS GROWING UP. DO ANY OF THEM STILL INFLUENCE YOU TODAY?

Joy Division, New Order, Meat Beat Manifesto, 808 State, KMFDM, the KLF, stuff like that. All of that early industrial music definitely is a powerful influence. If you don't like industrial music, much of my catalog becomes inaccessible.

• IS THERE ANY KIND OF SOUND THAT YOU REALLY DON'T LIKE?

Well, I like little kids, but the sound of a baby crying really gets to me. But I think it's supposed to-- yes? Nature made it that way?

• HAVE YOU EVER SEEN A UFO?

Dozens.

Nice interview with David Moufang (Move D) From the archives of Generator magazine (http://www.generatormagazine.com/) I found this nice interview with David Moufang from the 90's. Some of David Moufang's more recent work is part of the streaming soundtrack for Book 2. The interview covers analog gear, being totally broke while making interesting records, and the value of not fitting into narrow genre conventions. http://www.plexusinstruments.com/movedinterview.pdf

Soundtrack Music for Comics?

• Well not really. But maybe to extend the comic experience in other contexts, like driving in rush-hour traffic? To make this work well, the comic would need activate the soundtrack quickly.
• Another purpose of the soundtrack work is to discover a new territory of associations.
• Music was an important part of Man-machine's beginnings. The comic was conceived of in Evanston, Illinois, in a two-flat apartment building, known as the Zoom house. The first Man-machine drawings occured while listening to Front 242 remixes of fairly brutal, simplistic music. In my head, Front 242's early exploration of tribal rhythms and automatic bass lines combined with the politics of the times: Desert Storm was on the news constantly. I was reading translations of Homer and Virgil and seeing the reflection of our world in antiquity. The recognition had an uncanny quality.
• Fast forward a half decade. In the mid 90s I was struck by the work of the electronic group RAC. When I first heard them in small record store in Montreal I simply did not know what to think. It wasn't mood music, because it was too jagged to be mesmerizing. But it seemed portentious and had incredible album art.
• Flashforward to 2010, and it seems that some of the themes played around with by Front 242 and RAC remain relevant aesthetically.
• The Man-machine aesthetic seems slightly different. A bit grittier, prone to wierdness and mind-out-of-control.
• For the soundtrack to Praepositio:
• Mystified has provided a very persuasive form of soundtrack music in the form of vast, evolving, breathing soundscapes. These has matched some of the spiritual themes quite closely.
• Plexus Instruments has been mostly focused on creating a set of tone poems evoking the desert in the future: a place of long light and bleak hope.
• Voyager One's Tokyoidaho does not stream online, but really fits and enhances the mood of much of the first book. I am glad to see that the new version of the band takes its name from the wonderfully mystical song.
• National Wrecking Company, Frank Hillis, has provided leftfield sample manipulations from a fellow Chicagoan.
• Deer has provided a rambling digital dub that once awoke me from a nap like a ghost.
• Mircronaut provided a moody tone poem.
• Utofbu provided a remarkable, fractured vision of an ancient code.
• Soundhacker contributed a really interesting kind of beat/movement.
• The soundtrack for Book 2 has mostly been compiled, and shifts focus to the texture of a future Mexico City that is both the inlet and outlet for the vast garage/technology machinery of the Cartel. Very nice tracks by mystified, Move D, Ed Matus, Micronaut and others.
• The soundtrack for Book 3 is still being assembled. So far with tracks by mystified, Toner Low, and others.

Digital/Analogue Hybrid Synthesizer Plexus tactical update regarding a polyphonic digital sampler/fm/vco into analogue filter and vca approach to making new sounds. Although a modular approach is possible, the cost and size become significant. A less costly approach uses an existing semi-modular polyphonic analogue synthesizer from Studio Electronics, the Omega Code. This four voice synthesizer has channel inputs and outputs for each voice. FM oscillators can be used from a Yamaha TX802, which has a round-robin system to send four voices out separate outputs. Likewise, the Yamaha Tx16w can be set up to do the same. This is sufficient to trigger the envelopes on the Omega. The range of sounds is at once quite large but then with a consistent color that can become overbearing. Activation of per channel overdrive allows for the creation of electric guitar style feedback synthesis. Some opportunities for modular like interaction exist. One of the more interesting is allowing for a muted analogue oscillator to provide frequency modulation of the filter cutoff in the musical frequency range. This allows for surprising but fuzzy feeling special effects. The TX16w uses the mighty Typhoon alternative operating system, which is downloadable on the web. It is still a bit painful to click through menus. A vp9000 feeds into a peavey spectrum filter. . . this allows for an alternate form of digital-analogue cooperation. Here the "time" knob allows for the musician to alter the flow of time in the sample arbitrarily. It all comes with a heavy dose of digital hash that needs dealing with, but can still be interesting. I'd say that these explorations have been somewhat more rewarding than my modular explorations, mostly because of the musical relevance of polyphony. But allowing for the interaction of the two signal paths produces a certain color (to me like a Fender Bassman). Here is a short soundtrack bit layering this with processed voice and Jupiter 8, named after the street in Chicago. http://soundcloud.com/plexus-instruments/waveland

Bodie Chewning is really good. More pictures from his portfolio here.

Cursed Pirate Girl by Jeremy Bastian Yesterday my wife and I went to Challengers Comics in Chicago for a Jeremy Bastian signing session, and picked up a copy of the Challengers Collected Edition. It was nice to get a signed copy and to view the original ink panels. For those who haven't yet had the chance, rush out, purchase, and read Cursed Pirate Girl. It is really quite astounding. The art resembles etching, but is hand drawn with a razor sharp pen. Viewing the original art makes one realize that the artist can not only draw. . . he doesn't make mistakes. The writing and mise en scene is also outstanding. He innovates with time, space and scale. With time, he seems to avoid clumsy play by play panels and instead go for images that contain many different bits of time. The end result is that the action remains in the head of the reader. With space, he uses the pirate and oceans metaphor to surprising effect. Rather than describe voyages across the sea, many scenes do something that I can only call "going inward". Spaces that one did not know could exist in our world open up in surprising detail. Examples of this include the voyage to the bottom of the sea, the secret shack of the cursed pirate girl, and the innards of a shark. The effect is usually not surreal but causes a sense of recognition, as in a dream. With scale, one never knows if the world is small or huge. Everything is always off kilter: faces can be huge and float like a Mardi Gras giant head mask. And while of course I don't know what Mr. Bastian was thinking of while writing, my thoughts must go to the Lacanian Mirror. In this case the tension between aristocrats and pirates makes for a funhouse mirror in which the child struggles to recognize herself. In this way, although the tale is about pirates, the themes as they relate to what it is to be child in the 21st century remain relevant. It is a good feeling to be amazed! Olympian Publishing link to the comic here. https://www.olympianpublishing.com/store/product_info.php?cPath=15_2&products_id=409 Challengers Comic book store is also impressive. I saw so many titles that pulled my heartstrings I knew I had to run out of there so as not to spend too much money. http://www.challengerscomics.com/

Logo for Epic Dawn

Sniper at the Gates of Dawn Is actually a song by the Black Angels that I enjoy listening too while working on Book 3. Alas I will not catch them in NYC this fall, despite the fact they will be playing by the shopping mall by my parents. Book 3 brought some new challenges in terms of storyboarding and art approach.

Death-Day by Sam Hiti Death-Day is a free online comic by the prolific artist Sam Hiti. It is as big a dose of amazing as it comes with online, digital comics. I've been meaning to blog about the hypnotic rhythm of its solid ink brushstrokes for awhile now. http://www.samhiti.com/wordpress/?page_id=103

War, an online comic. What if you woke up into a dream of Jean Baudrillard drawn by a cyborg mashup of Geoff Darrow and a vector printer? War imagines a scenario where two online communities fight to the death in an urban mental-scape. It is pure comedy that induces light headedness as it discusses social media: that way of jacking the web straight into the reptile core of our now networked brains. Fantastic, farcical, anonymous, vectorific, digitized. http://ncomment.com/blog/

Cover art for Book 3 of Manmachine. Photograph by Rand Hendriksen. There is no doubt an interesting story behind this photograph of the total eclipse. Magical processes continue in the lab. The penciller was shot at yesterday while picking up a pizza, causing him to take the week off.

Hurricane Wilma, by Omar Angulo. This is a surreal but all-too-real comic book account of a hurricane. Sort of like Katrina, The Road, and Long Day's Journey into Night combined. And he's just giving it to the web. http://www.omarangulo.net/wilma1.html

"Outer Gates" is a metaphysical journey using elements of sound collage. Mystified's approach transforms over the years. It is fitting that "Outer Gates" is concerned with life after death and transformation. Slowly oscillating, granular drones have given way to chunks of music that seem to float by. It is a really fun experience to have it playing. Mystfied manages to remove primitive robotics and focus on pure music. Jump to Mystified's blog entry on "Outer Gates" http://mystifiedmusic.com/2010/07/28/mystified-cd-outer-gates/

Echo Descends to Mother: Color Panel from Book 3 of Manmachine, The Wages of Sin.