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…dropped off the face of the earth. I’m still alive, just very busy and not much in a place for writing. I won’t go into detail here, but suffice to say that things are moving, spring is coming!

More soon (he said hopefully)….

Phase one of acoustic treatments for the studio is officially underway. It’s officially DIY, because a)it’s all we can afford, and b)it appeals to my punk aesthetic. I’d love to build a gorgeous studio, but I have neither the time nor the budget. But I do need to make the room our studio is in sound good before trying to record an album makes sense.

I was for some reason hesitant to write about it, but truly I have been hyperfocused on studio design and acoustic treatments as of late. So here’s the plan. We are ordering enough material to build 6 bass traps and 6 moveable gobos. We’re going to use acoustical cotton (as opposed to rigid fiberglass or rockwool panels) as the sound absorber in both designs. The cotton comes in thick, dense sheets of 2’x8’x5.5″. We will also need some lumber, and some fabric.

The bass trap design is simple (though technically these will be “broadband absorbers” since they will absorb high frequencies also). Take one of the cotton sheets, put it inside a wooden frame made by 1x3s, and wrap the whole thing in cotton. Add small legs with scrap 1×3 so that it will stand upright, and put one straddling each corner of the room, making a 45-45-90 triangle. This design is simple and should be very effective at helping to smooth the bass. I will also hang 2 of them in the wall/ceiling corners of the studio.

The gobo design is a bit more complex. For this, I will need to build a 4-sided frame out of 1x8s, that is 2′ wide and 6′ tall. A 2’x6′ piece of MDF board will be attached to one side, creating a reflective surface. The other side of the frame will be cloth, covering up another of the above cotton pieces, leaving room for about a 2-3″ airgap (and some reinforcing braces, along with possibly a layer or two of sheetrock for further mass and acoustic isolation) between the cotton and the MDF.

The gobos have 2 functions. During times when I need to listen carefully to the speakers, such as a mix, the gobos will be arranged to create a Reflection Free Zone (RFZ) at the listening position. And, when recording, we’ll be able to move them around to get the area where the person is performing to sound good.

Eventually, I think we will have a total of 10 bass traps and 14 gobos. This allows one bass trap in each wall/wall corner, one bass trap in the wall/ceiling corner of the short walls, and two bass traps in the wall/ceiling corner of the longer walls. The gobos will be placed against the walls unless needed for recording; 4 each on the front/rear walls, and 3 each on the side walls.

In addition, some room construction needs to happen. We need to install 2 doors in a way that makes sense acoustically, finish sheetrocking the room (adding a 2nd layer of sheetrock to the framed walls, and take care of the ceiling.

The plan for the ceiling is to stuff fluffy fiberglass between the ceiling joists, paper side down in the room except for just over the mixing position (part of making an RFZ) and over where the drumkit sits (to help the overhead mics sound better), with a blanket stapled to the bottom of the floor joists, covering the fluffy stuff to keep the fiberglass fibers from falling down. All other areas of the ceiling will have the fiberglass paper side down. Then, the entire ceiling will be covered in fabric.

Once all these steps are finished, we will have a much larger amount of sonic flexibility while recording, better isolation, better sounding recordings, and most importantly, we’ll have a mixing environment whose sound isn’t distorted by sonic energy bouncing endlessly around the room. We’ll be able to trust what we’re hearing, and mix without overcompensating for bad acoustics.

Furthermore, 2/3 of our efforts will result in modular items that can be (relatively) easily moved to other locations.

Real Soon Now, we will have taken our first bite out of this, and we’ll be about 1/3 of the way there.

Tonight was fruitful. I got the new headphone mixer wired in a way that will work for us. 3 new sets of isolating headphones are on their way to us. And we’ll begin acoustic treatments in the studio within a week or two.

Things are moving forward with Freakwitch. This is a good thing.

When I feel this, I can’t help visualize a big cauldron, stirring (deosil) a big thick sludgy liquid….

Bubble, bubble….

My mind has been on acoustics lately. Not acoustic guitars, but on ways in which one can improve the sound of a room. In particular, I’m trying to improve the sound of our studio. I have A Cunning Plan(tm) that I actually think we might be able to afford.

But in coming up with this cunning plan, I’ve discovered many people writing about the same problem, ie, how to get a small room to sound good. And in reading about on the net, I came across this behemoth of a studio build diary by a guy in the UK. His work and craftsmanship is stunning. He started in his garage, ripping out the floor so that there was literally a dirt floor, and built up from there — 2 concrete floors (one floated on top of the other for isolation), and 7 layers of sheetrock for sound isolation. This thread is 123 pages long as of now and is highly detailed with lots of, as he says, “piccies.” Fascinating stuff to see what is possible for the truly obsessed. I literally got lost in that thread for 2 or 3 days.

Our modest space and budget won’t allow for anything like that, at least not now. However, I’m confident that my plan will make our studio room much more listenable, to the point where I could probably actually mix songs in it. And that’s A Good Thing.

Interesting how sound affects my reality. Last Christmas, I got a pair of car door speakers to install into my car. Given that I don’t have a garage, and that it’s winter in Maine (albeit an incredibly mild one, we haven’t had much snow yet), I haven’t had a chance to install them until today. But, they’re in, and they definitely sound better.

Also, we (Freakwitch) ordered a headphone mixer several months back, but it has been backordered. A serious case of vaporware by the freaks at Mackie. But, the place I ordered them from just got them in, and our order will be shipping out soon.

This means that we can start album production sooner than not, and that’s A Good Thing.

I’ve finished part one of Empire, and my biggest task thus far has been to figure out what Hardt and Negri mean by “Empire” itself. Right from the preface, they spend plenty of time addressing this question. The preface contains all of the following passages, describing Empire.

Empire is:

• “irresistible and irreversible globalization of economic and cultural exchanges”
• “The [singular] sovereign power that governs the world”
• characterized by an equilibrium of sovereignty: although there has been a decline in the sovereignty of nation-states, total sovereignty has not decreased
• “a new global form of sovereignty” with a “single logic of rule” ie, Empire is being articulated systematically
• NOT Imperialism, but a “decentered and deterritorializing apparatus of rule that progressively incorporates the entire global realm within its open, expanding frontiers” — “Imperialism is over.”
• NOT a metaphor, but a concept, “which calls primarily for a theoretical approach,” and is characterized by:
  1. Lack of Boundaries: “rules over the entire ‘civilized’ world
  2. Suspends History: “fixes the existing state of affairs for eternity”
  3. Full Spectrum: “operates on all registers of the social order extending down to the depths of the social world.” “Creates the very world it inhabits.”
  4. Blood/Peace Conflict: “although the practice of Empire is continually bathed in blood, the concept of Empire is always dedicated to peace—a perpetual and universal peace outside history”
• To resist Empire requires an understanding of Magic and Manipulation of Energy: “Our political task” is “not to resist … the passage to Empire and its processes of globalization … but to reorganize them and direct them to new ends.” From a pagan perspective, this is magic, it is becoming adept at manipulating energy.
• Despite its problematic, Empire is actually an improvement over the old form of imperialism of nation-states: “we insist on asserting that the construction of Empire is a step forward in order to do away with any nostalgia for the power structures that preceded it and refuse any political strategy that involves returning to that old arrangement, such as trying to resurrect the nation-state to protect against global capital. We claim that Empire is better in the same way that Marx insists that capitalism is better than the forms of society and modes of production that came before it” (p 43).

So wrapping one’s head around Empire the concept requires that one think systematically, and hugely, on the macro, zoomed-out level. Empire is a unified, monolithic structure that has assimilated most forms of power, and is adept at assimilating any new forms of power that arise. And interestingly, Hardt and Negri seem to be arguing that to resist Empire, direct assault on perceived weak spots will be ineffective, since that is precisely the type of assault that Empire is structured to resist. Empire is adept at responding to crises, but their response strategies are littered with terms like “shock and awe” or “overwhelming force” or “full spectrum dominance” or “a new Pearl Harbor.” So threats against these perceived “weak spots” or vulnerabilities are responded to with what is perceived as “strength,” which is usually a militaristic, horribly violent assertion of power-over, whether one characterizes such outbursts as “war” or “terrorism” or “conflict.” Rather,

In the constitution of Empire there is no longer an “outside” to power and thus no longer weak links — if by weak link we mean an external point where the articulations of global power are vulnerable. To achieve significance, every struggle must attack at the heart of Empire, at its strength…. The construction of Empire, and the globalization of economic and cultural relationships, means that the virtual center of Empire can be attacked from any point. The tactical preoccupations of the old revolutionary school are thus completely irretrievable; the only strategy available to the struggles is that of a constituent counterpower that emerges from within Empire” (58-59).

So border skirmishes within Empire are no longer effective. That plays right into Empire’s conception of low-intensity warfare, its power is consolidated to resist such attacks. Rather, one’s opposition to Empire must be first of all to redirect its energies, and secondly must attack the idealogical core of Empire. One must refuse to participate (to the extent possible) in the manifestations of Empire that are objectionable, and rather must assert autonomous power, rising up from within the global community, that resist the ever more abstract (and thus less ontologically based) modes of control wielded by Empire.

The Intermezzo of the book is a 15-page section on “Counter-Empire.” I’m looking forward to reading that, as I imagine it will dramatically clarify where Hardt and Negri are going with all of this. Not to mention Multitude, the sequel to Empire….

Now I’m all out of breath…. sorry for the academic bookishness of this post, but sadly it’s necessary to make sense of Empire; the book is written very much in the academic/bookish idiom. Part of my task, if I am to move forward with the writing project in my head I will need to internalize theory such as this, so that I can express it in a more accessible manner.

I’ve been checking out the vast resource that is the Internet Archive: Moving Image Archive. These are tons of old films that are now in the public domain, archived at one place.

My daughter and I just watched several of the films, including one about Japanese-American prisoners detained in concentration camps during WWII.

This is all public-domain stuff; a veritable treasure trove for mashup artists.

Well, we had fun playing the gig last night. It was a small crowd, but most of the people were into it and dancing around. I thought we played pretty well. I’ve been experimenting more with playing without a pick, slapping the strings with the fingernails on my right hand, not unlike how a funk bassist plays. But last night, I suppose I hit the strings a bit too vigorously as it ripped off the top layer of skin on 2 fingers. Nietzsche once said about writing “I love most what was written in blood.” I wonder if he’d like the music I played last night….

I’ve also been rethinking the notion of paganism, magic, and activism. More specifically, a companion of mine has started blogging, and she was writing implicitly about this subject, and I left a comment. (As an aside, Starcat is a fabulous writer, and I’m thrilled to see her in the blogosphere. I look forward to reading more of her thoughts as time goes on).

I’ve always been drawn toward political theory and activism, and as such I have been known to rant, mostly in this very space. But there is also an argument that such activity only breeds depression, frustration, anger, and feeds right in to what the Powers That Be want, ie, a divided and fractured multitude. It tends to breed paranoia, which is unacceptable for one who appreciates pronoia.

I think both sides of this argument have merit. But in the end, balance is the best way; in order to craft reality, one needs to know where one is, and be clear about alternatives so that one can choose among them intelligently.

I think a longer paper on this very topic is due. I haven’t written a longer piece in a while, and this is the first time I’ve been inspired to write in a couple of years, pretty much since my virtual enclosures piece. But then, I’ve been reading political theory more actively lately, and for me reading and writing have always gone hand-in-hand.

The organizers of our gig on Friday have put up a blurb about it that says:

Hurricane Relief Benefit Concert, Friday, Jan 20, 7pm, 10 Mayo St, The Company of Girls Space, $5-15 suggested donation.

Join local Portland musicians Weatherbeaten, Ra, Freakwitch, and others for a night of great music and story telling as we raise money for the Hurricane Autonomous Workers Collective and their relief caravan to the Gulf Coast. HAWC is heading a hurricane relief caravan, destined to leave Portland Jan. 28th, and the money raised will be used for safety equipment, tools, food, and medical supplies for hurricane survivors and travel expenses for the group of volunteers. The Gulf Coast is still devastated four months after hurricanes Katrina and Rita—we need volunteers and we need your support!

So come out for good music, for a good cause!

No, not that kind of bottoming.

I’m referring to my notion of “bottom” from two posts ago. That is, adding a 2nd dimension, top/bottom, to the traditional left/right political spectrum because after all, politics does not come in one dimension.

I’ve begun reading Empire, and in doing some preliminary study (read: google-o-matic) I’m finding lots of objections to it, many of which focus on the “fact” that Toni Negri “is” the mastermind behind the Red Brigades kidnapping of Aldo Moro in Italy in the 1970s. Funnily enough, I have very vague memories of the Red Brigades from 6th grade; I am just old enough to remember that I was supposed to have believed that the Red Brigades should have had black hats on.

Anyway, most of these reviews don’t bother to point out that Negri was acquitted on these charges, and instead was “convicted” of “crimes of association and insurrection against the state” and for being “morally responsible for acts of violence between activists and the police during the 1960s and 1970s largely due to his writing and association with revolutionary causes and groups.”

Il fratello maggiore sta guardandoli. Or something.

Anyway, I noticed in these critiques — which are available from all across the political spectra — that the “right” reviews tend to be the ones who most insist upon the Left/Right political spectrum. I’m not sure why, or even if this is completely accurate. But it seems as if that as long as there are only 2 possibilities, Right or Left, that the Right will probably win most or all of the time, in part because those on the “Left” aren’t even sure that’s what they want to be called. Look at the fragmentation of the “Left” in the US alone; the past couple of elections in the US have seen “Leftists” confused about who to vote for. Many people were idealogically aligned with Nader, but wanted to vote for Gore for strategic purposes, etc etc etc. My own struggle about whether I am a progressive, a Marxist, an anarchist, a radical, or just a freak falls within this category.

But I think the idea of a Top/Bottom parameter to the Left/Right spectrum is a good one. Though to extend the dimensional metaphor, we should also add an In/Out parameter, as well as allow for the 4th dimension of time. I can see it now: “in 1986 I was a kid, and a definite Bottom Right In person. But now in 2006 I am clearly Bottom Left Out.”

If this extended metaphor only opens up political debate a little bit, I will be happy.