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bsd.network/@cev/108054741090551342

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Oops, missed a space after the slash there. Ah well, my mistake, doesn't hurt anything I suppose. edit: corrected this when I imported these old toots.




bsd.network/@cev/108049409592305876

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Loaded Renoise onto my raspberry pi 400 last night, then spent a bit of time today digging out, connecting, and testing an old USB MIDI adapter.

For the second time in my life I have a tracker hooked up to a real audio interface and my MIDI gear.


bsd.network/@cev/108037687468584992

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CW: Horror Movie Talk, Battle Girl (1991)

Full title is "Battle Girl: The Living Dead In Tokyo Bay". Low budget direct to video sci-fi zombie movie starring pro wrestler Cutie Suzuki. Nightmare logic & slow, hazy vibes. Cosmo Amphetamine. Punk weapons dealers. A dirigible (stock footage ?).

Watched on youtube a couple days ago and enjoyed it. It'd be a good movie to fall asleep to I think. Could have easily been on MST3k (maybe minus some of the bloodier / gorier SFX).

Good Luck Battle Girl.


Battle Girl: The Living Dead In Tokyo Bay

Battle Girl: The Living Dead In Tokyo Bay, 1991, directed by Kazuo 'Gaira' Komizu. Low budget direct-to-video sci-fi zombie movie starring pro wrestler Cutie Suzuki. Nightmare logic and slow, hazy vibes. Cosmo Amphetamine. Punk arms dealers in their tricked out bus. A dirigible broadcasts a message.

I watched what I assume is an unauthorized upload on youtube (with ENG subs) on a warm afternoon. Was a good (and sleepy) time. Would love to find a DVD copy some day.

Good Luck Battle Girl.

Edit: Synapse Films released the movie on DVD in North America; it appears there are still copies for sale, so this goes on my list of things to buy.


bsd.network/@cev/108031780075852685

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Got out some old equipment and built a small LAN yesterday so I could network my rpi 400 and my main computer. Now I can access my music library with xwax (and mixxx) on the pi.

For years now I've had to copy music onto a flash drive in order to play it with my DJ gear. Not having to do that is a pretty big deal.




MTT 265 / Head In The Sky

MTT265 Spectrogram

A weird mish-mash of styles this week - ambient, dub techno, electro, IDM, etc. This mix features two tracks from the Heavy Dub compilations on Cold Tear Records and three tracks from Recycled Plastics. Also featured at the end of the mix is a new track by Vertical67 on Brokntoys (though unfortunately I talked over most of it).

This mix is no longer available for download from this website. It is however available at mixcloud.


Music File Management 2: Intake Process and Shell Scripts

I've written a number of shell scripts, mostly frontends or shims to other programs, to help manage the tags & content of my music library. In this article I will briefly go over some of those scripts and then give a simple demonstration of how I process & prepare new music files.

The scripts discussed in this article are all available in my read-only dotfiles git repo. (I'll hook up a way to directly download them eventually).

This is part 2 of a series on how I handle my digital music collection. Part 1 covered Formats, Names, and Tags, part 3 will cover playback (and tag editing) with cmus.


bsd.network/@cev/107988031080775995

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Oh nice there's a new Renoise release, version 3.4. There are Linux ARM builds now, both 32 & 64 bit. I'll have to try it on the Pi 400.

The recent (last few years) Renoise updates have really improved the program. I guess I'm going to have to start tracking again.


bsd.network/@cev/107983123858629174

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CW: Horror Movie Talk, Tomie (1998? 99?)

Watched the first Tomie movie tonight. (First time I've seen it). Such an unexpected atmosphere! Warm diffuse visuals & an odd indie electronica type soundtrack. Slow & kind of hypnotic; dreamlike.

Some unconvincing gore & special FX, looks like there wasn't much of a budget for that. Which is fine by me, that didn't feel like the point of the movie.

Was genuinely surprised (and scared) to see Yoriko Douguchi play a doctor again (looking similar to how she did in Cure).

The ending lifted my spirits in a kind of weird way. I am once again not sure it's a good thing I enjoyed this as much as I did.


bsd.network/@cev/107976625598980280

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CW: Portland (OR), Restaraunt Closing, Sad

The Roxy is closing.

The Roxy was the only 24-hour spot in downtown Portland (that I'm aware of, anyway). I ate at The Roxy late-night about once a month for the better part of 10 years. Used to hang out there after shows, usually on Wednesday, to wait for Trimet (public transit) to start running again.

They reopened in 2021 without the graveyard shift and weren't bringing in enough money, I guess. They close on the 20th, in a couple of days. I'll miss it, I'm really sad to see it go.





bsd.network/@cev/107947458852228765

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I wrote a few words about the old Underworld music videos collection "Footwear Repairs By Craftsmen At Competitive Prices": djcev.com/2022/03/footwear-rep

Some links in the article will take you to the music videos on youtube; please be aware that those videos contain rapidly flashing images and lights. A frankly over-the-top amount of flashing & strobing.


Footwear Repairs By Craftsmen At Competitive Prices

Footwear Repairs By Craftsmen At Competitive Prices, the collected music videos of Underworld 1993-1997. Released 1998 on Wax Trax! & TVT Records. Music by Underworld, videos credited to various directors (see table below), art by tomato, packaged by biobox. VHS, NTSC standard, ~90 minutes long. x264 NTSC SD video + flac 16bit/44.1khz audio, 1.8G, archived on DVD+R media.

Youtube videos linked in this article feature rapidly flashing images and strobing lights. Please avoid the links if that bothers you.


bsd.network/@cev/107942298145093675

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CW: Horror movie (?) talk, Personal Shopper

Watched "Personal Shopper" tonight, the 2016 Olivier Assayas movie. Loved it. Love thinking about it now, too. Not really a horror, more a story about grief. Though some bad and scary and spooky things do happen in it.

Another one I heard about through the podcast Live At The Death Factory. One of the hosts of LatDF, Astrid if I remember correctly, compared it to William Gibson's Blue Ant trilogy, and I think that's apt.


bsd.network/@cev/107936491632031587

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I came up against my limited selection of techno & dub techno pretty hard this week. The first 40 minutes of this mix suffer a bit for it, I think. If I had more time (or more tracks, more pieces to work with) I would've come up with something different.

The last 23 minutes though, everything Ataraxia and after, that's the business.




bsd.network/@cev/107931790551161918

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Spent about six hours today dancing & mixing & figuring out tomorrow's set. I'm wiped out. Still need to cut one track from the list I think.


Eko Eko Azarak III: Misa The Dark Angel

Title card image from Eko Eko Azarak III Misa and Aya sitting on beds at summer camp, image from Eko Eko Azarak III

Eko Eko Azarak III: Misa The Dark Angel, 1998, directed by Katsuhito Ueno. A body in the morgue with a strange message leads Kuroi Misa (played by Hinako Saeki) to a school drama club where the students are rehearsing Wizard In Phantom World, a suspicious play.

Of the four of these that I've seen this one is the most fun, probably because Misa gets to use her powers for most of the movie. I imagine this must be closer to the comic. It's pretty uneven, it shifts gears between slow plot & character business, witch magic, and The Evil Dead, but I kinda liked that.

This is a follow-up to the 1997 TV series (and I've read it was possibly meant as the third season). English subtitles are available for only the first few episodes of that series, from what I can tell; I might watch it anyway (unsubbed) because I really enjoyed this movie.


bsd.network/@cev/107918892244375140

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CW: Horror movie talk, Richard Laymon's In The Dark (2000)

Finally got around to watching "In The Dark" AKA "Richard Laymon's In The Dark" after hearing about it on the excellent Live At The Death Factory podcast.

Seriously great and creepy shot-on-video horror. Good script and an excellent central performance. Does a lot with what looks like very little money.

Trigger warning for sexual assault in the film. It's not shown on-screen that I remember but it's still pretty nasty.

The movie was never officially released; you can find it on youtube.


bsd.network/@cev/107907301728807174

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CW: Horror movie talk, Eko Eko Azarak IV

Watched the fourth Eko Eko Azarak and I'm not sure what to make of it.

It doesn't feel like the other movies until maybe the last 20 minutes. This isn't Misa Kuroi the witch faking a transfer to a new school to solve problems. It's more a drama and commentary on the media. On mass hysteria. On belief changing reality. It's also an origin story in the sense that it's about somebody becoming the Misa Kuroi character.

I wonder if I'm missing something here, some context.

I enjoy thinking about this movie more than I enjoyed watching it.

The version of Misa from the third movie wouldn't have put up with the foolishness in this one.



bsd.network/@cev/107899794447581413

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CW: Annoying Tech Stuff, Google

Woke up to an email from Google saying that they're removing "less secure sign-in" on May 30th. Which I think means I finally have to set up some kind of 2FA.

I don't have a phone. (Of any kind). Or any Android or iOS devices. That makes this all very difficult as Google really, really wants a phone number. I'm still not sure if it's even possible, if Google will allow you to continue now without a phone. I guess I'll find out.


bsd.network/@cev/107896756243380393

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CW: Bad Photos, Dusty DJ Gear

Photos taken after recording today's mix, number 262. Looks like it's about time to disassemble and clean my DJ mixer again.

I'll try harder next time to get a top-down picture without my socks in it.

Photograph of DJ equipment on a wire rack. Pictured are one Technics 1200 turntable, one Stanton SCS.4DJ, one Ecler Nuo 4 mixer, one old Denon CDJ (covered by a shirt), and a Raspberry Pi 400.
Top-down photograph of some DJ equipment on a wire rack. Pictured are one Technics 1200, one Stanton SCS.4 DJ, one Ecler Nuo 4 mixer, one old Denon CDJ (covered by a shirt), and a Raspberry Pi 400.



bsd.network/@cev/107888544490869037

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CW: Bandcamp & Epic Games, Negative

I worry that this is the beginning of the end for Bandcamp. I'm worried because of who they're "joining" and also because this feels to me like a shift in priorities.

I've been buying music through Bandcamp for 10 years; we'll see how much longer it lasts, I guess. See what Epic Games does to it.

I suppose the fundamental question is: did Bandcamp sell out?

If you haven't seen it: blog.bandcamp.com/2022/03/02/b