// / 108363556167521600
Tags:
meta,
website.
Spent yesterday playing with the CSS for my website, updating its look a little bit. I find design stuff fun when there's existing content ("content") to work with. The site is still readable in links & lynx too, which makes me happy.
// / 108353337089492332
Tags:
2020s,
horror,
movies,
review.
"The Perilous Internet Ring", 2020, a Chinese horror film directed by Japanese horror director Norio Tsuruta. Fanmade subs for it appeared on reddit recently, so I watched the movie today and got something I didn't expect.
From afar the movie looks like a ghost story in the style of say "The Ring", and for the first 20 minutes it plays out that way. Swap the student film on VHS for a "web novel" and you get the idea.
What I didn't know is that the movie is a kind of message film or social problem film about, as it says at the end, the dangers of "net addiction". The movie also references the "Blue Whale Challenge" (which I had to look up): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Whale_Challenge
There's a mystery / investigation plot that unfortunately falls apart (in a convoluted and kind of funny way) in order to reach the internet-is-dangerous conclusion.
There were some nice spooky ghosts though which I always like. But I definitely had more fun thinking about this movie than I did watching it.
// / 108345702999361926
Tags:
2020s,
collection,
downtempo,
electro,
idm,
music.
The new XY0815 seems really good. Some nice BoC-esque pieces on it. (Also a surprising sample that seems to make a political statement, though without more context I'm not sure what it's saying).
Not new exactly, but newly available digitally.
Moving through a few styles today from electro & IDM/electronica to a couple of synthwave-y pieces to some more restrained synth-y material. A few long tracks (by John Selway and Mikron among others) and recent purchases (John Selway again and Scape One).
This mix is no longer available for download from this website. It is however available at mixcloud.
// / 108305945469254958
Tags:
2000s,
horror,
movies,
review.
The movie Takashi Shimizu made between the US versions of "The Grudge" and "The Grudge 2". Watched it tonight (found a copy on archive.org).
Felt to me like a fine ghost story that mixes up a bunch of pretty standard elements (a creepy doll, a hotel, past lives, spooky kids). It's a bit meta - it's about actors in a horror film - but doesn't pursue that angle very far. Very well executed (aside from some dated looking CG). I liked how eerie and reality-bending it was. Kenji Kawai's soundtrack is good. Will have to watch it again & think on it some more.
![The player flying high above an abstract landscape, image from the hangtime3-df[mdf.cpm] video](/gfx/2022/05/hangtime3-1-640w.jpg)
![Image of the ending portal from the hangtime3-df[mdf.cpm] video](/gfx/2022/05/hangtime3-2-640w.jpg)
hangtime3-df[mdf.cpm] at youtube.com. Quake 3 Defrag map hangtime3-df completed with CPM physics in 08:18:296 by aNnh. Video by power_of_heavy_metal. Map by, of course, NaturalSpringWater. Music featured in the video is the track Archetype by Sciama.
The video includes flashing lights and first-person gameplay that might cause motion sickness. (The hangtime maps are particularly disorienting I find).
Saw this last night & had to link it. A new video from power_of_heavy_metal is reason enough to celebrate, but hangtime3? Done flawlessly by aNnh? Incredible.
Electro and a little techno in the high 120s today, featuring a couple tracks from the old Elektrolux label and one new one by MetaComplex from the Fifth Quarter compilation on Brokntoys.
This mix is no longer available for download from this website. It is however available at mixcloud.
// / 108287036062860644
Tags:
meta,
movement through thought.
Practicing tonight, most of the mixes & transitions I'm trying aren't working, bleh.
Practice practice practice.
So back in the late '90s there used to be a site called mp3.com, a place where musicians released low-bitrate mp3s of original tracks. There was a drum & bass producer I liked a lot there by the name of Red Orc. I got to wondering yesterday: where'd Red Orc go, what'd they end up doing?
Discogs.com tells me that Red Orc is Andrew Smith AKA Professor Smith AKA Jackie's Army. This appears to be the same Andrew Smith that founded XLR8R magazine. Discogs lists three releases by Red Orc in 1998 after which Smith released a series of very interesting minimalist dubby electro EPs on the San Francisco label Voltage Music (all of which are now available on bandcamp).
The one Red Orc track I can remember clearly is Plus Two, a dark sketchy 170 BPM amen workout. I wasn't able to find any Red Orc for download on the web; digging through old burned CDs I found Plus Two and four other tracks, all in 128kbps mp3 format. Plus Two's metadata says it's from a 1999 album called "Red Orc in the Palace of Funk"; I'd very much like to hear that album someday.
// / 108268413697632308
Tags:
1990s,
music,
tracker music.
Digging through the old Tokyo Dawn tracker netlabel catalog today. (The 1997-2000 releases, tokyo-01.zip thru tokyo180.zip).
Preliminary unzipping & renaming work is done, next step is to render the tracks I want then encode then tag.
// / 108256012910993200
Tags:
2020s,
ambient,
collection,
idm,
music.
Woke up to dozens of new release & new message emails from Bandcamp, it must be the first Friday.
This seems wildly good:
// / 108253493303866317
Tags:
meta,
movement through thought.
Tired. Wiped out. Today's mix was much more difficult to execute than I expected. First 40 minutes are good, a little uneven, last 20 minutes I'm very happy with.
I really want a cup of tea 
even though it's 11 PM, even though I know it'll shift my sleep schedule forward.
Electro in the 130s this week (plus some old British electronic listening music magic to close). This mix features new tracks by Alva Recek (from the recent Soma EP), Shawescape Renegade (from the (forthcoming?) Reconstruct Your Mind EP), and Versalife (from the Shape Shifter 2 EP).
This mix is no longer available for download from this website. It is however available at mixcloud.
// / 108247775647055936
Tags:
1990s,
ambient,
idm,
music.
An excellent, thorough, and ultimately sad article about the prolific British DJ, composer, and producer Beaumont Hannant:
// / 108245648994066066
Tags:
news,
podcast.
and now the 5-4 Podcast have their episode up on Dobbs v. Jackson and the leaked decision:
There's an appropriate amount of swearing in the discussion.
I generally trust the hosts of 5-4 and so I've been waiting to hear their comments on this matter.
// / 108239982511054609
Tags:
news,
podcast.
the Opening Arguments podcast put out an episode today discussing the contents of the draft opinion that leaked last night:
I found it (the podcast) educational and alarming.
In case you want to hear a (justifiably) upset lawyer go over the document itself.
