And back to the muzick...

Grip of records from Time Captain and the Yard Sale.

Came up on a Jack McDuff album on Sugar Hill that I'm real happy with. We've been taking long walks on the beach, running through meadows and shit like that. Made some rough-draft beats on the gemini, made some habichuelas, might have to go back and listen and thicken them both with the SP. I want to fuck with acapellas and making full tracks.

Also had a session with Re:Buffed that was pretty fun. His style is almost entirely instrumental. Spun a lot of 80's funk-disco-hiphop and 2000's southern rap. Hard to make out some of the mixes, a little crunchyness, but I think it's getting a lot better in the selections, the mixes, and timing. Of course the best stuff probably didn't make it to tape. But the tapes are decent, listenable, yet still out of it. I'm ready to tape over some old shit. Got some record storage going that, while clearing up my floor, has confused the fuck out of me as to where certain records are. No help there. Mellowed out pretty early and watched some broadcast TV drama and grubbed some CFC. Does that to you.

We talked about the future of music. Basically coming from two schools- Rock school and Hiphop/Electronic school. Basically the latter has/is/will become hybridized into one genre, and what does that mean, stuff like that. We talked about playing shitty parties in the context of how Screw music (and other styles that are more based on how you play and listen and compose the records than the instrumentation or aesthetic of it) probably started playing shitty parties, being ahead of the times, etc. and sticking it out until it caught on, eventually to mainstream.

Music from the Rock school is more aesthetic. It's if you have distortion on your guitars or a flute and shit like that. Really nothing to do with the song structures, even content. There aren't many different ways of spinning that stuff, or hearing it. It's just there and you nod your head or you don't. It's good or bad on that basis. Hiphop/electronic school is totally about how you hear it and within it the different schools of what is essentially DJ'ing. Only a part of hiphop school is interested in what different snares sound like or the nuances of old synths, taking it to that level of detail, aesthetic, and history. Rock and hip hop both started as crossovers of different musics but hip hop is the one that seems to be the rollercoaster going up and down and in loops and shit, running circles and wrapping different tentacles around rock. For good or bad, the better part of pop music has more to do with hiphop than rock.

So all of that said, it's a decision to keep making tapes, from mostly old records, playing only records you like, staying away from Serrato and laptop mixing and I guess making pop music as it exists today. Basically just hanging out doing your thing until you start playing parties to people that dig your style or catch up with some of your backlogged tapes. I feel like the more I play, the more I revisit the question of where I play, and the more I figure out what that looks like. We talked about playing some shitty parties in the past, and about getting better friends in the present, and therefore playing better parties in the future.

"I could do without ever going past that block again."