Welcome To Stopgap City.

Been jamming around with the Octatrack, TR-808, Model: Cycles, Guitar, and Moog. Sounds pretty rad. Still really digging the idea of doing something that sounds like the cold/ weird side of techno meets tribal drumming and the distant/ ambient parts of metal. Other than that, not much to report, I keep almost pulling the plug on this site because hardly anyone is reading, but like most things I keep on keeping on because it beats just sitting around watching TV. - Lewd - Every time I bring up Lewd it seems like people think I mean the old punk band, but no... This is the monstrous early 90's mechano-dirge Lewd from The Netherlands. Fans of SWANS, Pain Teens, and Zeni Geva definitely take note if you’re not already familiar. Side note: One of these guys (I think it was the singer?) did a couple pretty cool harsh noise/ power electronic type albums under the name DMDN back in the day. There was one called “Sling Trip” on RRR Records that I might actually still have on one of my shel...

Had a dream that DD and I were in a band that sounded like gloomy black metal/ industrial doom wrapped in tons of Autechre/ Gas/ Aes Dana/ Burial/ Echospace/ Aphex Twin style atmospherics and now I kinda wanna try to make that happen. I also had a dream that we had a friend named Vanessa who took us to get apple cider donuts at a farmers market out in the country somewhere then wound up getting eaten by donkeys so who the fuck knows what is going on with my brain anymore. - Dodheimsgard - 666 International and Supervillain Outcast are probably my #1 and #2 favorite black metal albums of all time. Pulled both out recently and they still absolutely rule. I thought that the cold "futuristic" vibe that those early 00's Moonfog bands tapped into was so fucking cool back when I was 18. - Thorns - If DHG occupies the top two spots on my theoretical list of favorite black metal albums, then Thorns probably occupy #3. I listened to the absolute shit out of this CD back in the ea...

Short post today cos my ADHD is making it really hard to sit still and I kind of woke up with a headache. Might go take a walk, blow off some steam, and see if it helps. - Lungfish - There are days when I wake up and I'm just completely fucking over it in terms of noise or metal... Hate the people. Hate the gatekeeping. Hate the OCD collector mentality. Hate the thinly veiled nazi shit. Hate the cooler than thou posturing. Just wanna walk away from the whole thing and get a cabin out in the fucking woods somewhere.  On days like that I tend to pull the plug, listen to a bunch of punk and garage type stuff, and Lungfish usually winds up heavily factored into that rotation.  - Dead Moon - Portland garage/ punk legends. I never cared for these guys when I was younger, but now I really dig them. Especially some of their gloomier tunes like "Dead in the Saddle" and "I Tried." - Nash the Slash - I've written about this guy in the past cos he's a huge favori...

Don't have much of a preamble today, but man, the Elektron Model: Cycles sounds fucking rad... Need to read the manual and dig a bit deeper into the sequencer but already feeling like we can definitely use this thing. sounds killer against pitched down scrap metal hits and clickity-clackity Big Black style drum patterns off the 707. - Galvanizer - Hey! Do you like that 90's German band Blood? Cool, you'll fucking love this... Covers pretty similar ground to Christbait/ O Agios Pethane/ Mental Conflicts, with the main difference being the slightly raspier vocals here, and the fact these guys are from Finland not Germany. - Fatum Elisum - Woozy funeral doom with just a touch of "suicidal" black metal, music reminds me of Bethlehem, My Dying Bride, and maybe a bit of Reverend Bizarre thrown in a blender... Singer has a weird range slipping from growls into snarls and more often than not into off-key clean singing that sorta sounds like a cross between Lee Dorrian ...

Insomnia, anxiety, loneliness and depression have been kicking my ass RELENTLESSLY for the past month and a half. Seems like all I can do is keep on keeping on and hopefully eventually stagger my way to the other side of whatever brain-chemical coolatta is causing my current distress. Seriously though, it sucks when you wake up one morning and realize you’re middle aged, 9/10 of your friends are gone, and the rest are people you email once every four to six months. Oh well, on the upside we picked up one of those Elektron Model: Cycles things and it sounds fucking rad. - Keukhot - Truly bizarre electronic whatthefuck from Finland. This may or may not wind up being "your thing" but I guarantee you've never heard anything quite like it. - Kriminaaliset Metsanhaltijat - Ferocious scrap metal scraping anarcho power-electronics from Finland. - Goatpsalm - Spaced-out tribal/ ambient/ black/ doom that I picked up at random because the CD was two bucks and it's on a label ...

Blahblahblah: Well, I finally gave facebook the 'ol pressure-bolt. Feels weird, but man... Seeing all the crazy antivaxx, anti-science, and he-man patriotic/ religious/ anti-abortion "fuck your feelings" bullshit that was popping off on my feed non-stop made it pretty clear it was long past time to grab my coat and head out. There's nothing to "promote" anymore (as if that's even possible on that fucking platform), there's no one to keep up with, and the whole thing had just kind of devolved into watching people I only kind of knew in high school line up for their chance to compete in the Herman Cain olympics. So now what? I guess I'm gonna keep going with this site. Probably gonna do some renovations, try to make things a little more presentable over the next little while, maybe even attempt a couple interviews, but generally just keep on doing what I've been doing. And seriously, I hate that this needs to be said but I feel like it does bec...

Band stuff: Been really digging in and trying to get better at writing coherent drum parts… still very much a work in progress, but the improvement is starting to show both in the actual beats and in getting them to sit in a mix. Gonna spend the next week or two focusing on fills and transitions. Plan is that our next album is gonna be full-on black metal/ doom with elements of industrial/ harsh noise/ ambient/ and tribal drumming. Kind of a nod to what we were doing waaaaaay back in the day when DD and I first met and we were playing in a band called DOTS. Oh yeah, I also just started working on the first set of lyrics I’ve written in a bunch of years. Which I guess means the new album is probably gonna have vocals. - Muzak: Old Man’s Child - Mid-tier black metal from a guy who I guess is also in Dimmu Borgir. This is one of those albums where I tend to throw it on less for the music and more for the memories of people and places that the music is wrapped up with. I dunno... The area...