2017, 2017

Yo fellow humans, how you doin'. 

It's been a year since I updated this blog last... I guess I haven't really accomplished much in this time besides:

• finish my master's degree
• write a paper to publish
• learn to cook not so gol rotis 
• let my coriander and lemongrass plants die
• started a new diary
• made a  twitter account
• made some new music, but it doesn't matter, really

...that's it, yep. I'm a failure. 

Currently I am working on an EP, which I've named '100 fathoms' (pretentious, but it's a sort of homage to Tomb Raider 2). I'm posting tracks as they finish on soundcloud, because I like the instant gratification and I like the image of bouncing songs into an empty glass box, where they rattle sonorously as they land. 

So, what is 100 fathoms about?

I don't know, but I have a picture in my head. Those who played the classic Tomb Raider games may remember the atrocious graphics. One of the creepiest things thanks to this characteristic was having to move Lara forward to get a better look at the surroundings, which would vanish in the dark depending upon her proximity to them. Doesn't make sense, but imagine this: you guide Lara down a rocky cliff, slick with green moss, listening to the howling of the wind in the cavern. The game is so dark, even turning up the monitor's brightness isn't very helpful. You make Lara walk forward and come across a skeleton. Not very promising. There's a bunch of small crevices in the wall to your right. You keep moving, yes, the scenery unfolds as you go along. Then.... THUMP. THUMP. THUMP. Oh no. Something big is coming your way, and you don't even have much ammo for your shotgun at this point. You flip back as a T-Rex looms out of the gloom and get ready. It's a dance between you two - Lara flips and jumps and dodges, her pistols lighting up the screen with each shot at the monster. Then yay, you're done! You move on, collecting a reward from the other end of the long cavern as you go.... and before you know it, you are killed by Mrs. T-Rex, who came home to find out you killed her husband and is now baying for your blood. Oh well. You saved the game, right?

I think I got a bit off-topic at this point, but you see, you cross that bridge when you get to it. You can't see much in the dark, but a lack of light doesn't necessarily mean you are scared. It can be relaxing even, to sit in the dark and wait for the stars to wink into existence. You can't see constellations in the day time anyway. 

(I swear I haven't lost my mind. It's just that staying at home for the past year with very few excursions into the outside world and fretting about getting into PhD is not very good for me.)

To wrap this post up, I'm going to leave you all with some muuuusssic. A little haphazard mix of everything I've been listening to since last year. Because I listen to one batch of songs nearly twenty times before moving on, there's not really a lot of diversity and everything from game OSTs, old cartoons et al. is dumped here.

February updates

Dear fellow humans, I hope you are having a splendid 2016 so far.

It's been a while since I wrote any decent posts, and haven't written any about zoological chronicles for a while either. Sadly, my animal encounters are limited to interacting with stray cats at uni and birdwatching. If I was less lazy, I would put up the photos of my favourite cats here, or talk about some issue concerning animals. That aside, I've recently spotted two fluffy spotted owlets in my uni. I'm still waiting to catch a glimpse of my favourite bird: the Indian Hornbill. In the meantime, there are plenty of oriental magpie-robins and rose-ringed parakeets to watch out for here. The magpie-robins have this sweet, high-pitched whistling vocalization I really love and I always stop by to listen. That is, until it transforms into the harsh grssssh noise. 

Speaking of noises, I did make a couple of tracks for this new thing I'm making called 'Human Core', and I posted one of them on Soundcloud some time ago. 

(the two downloads on this track, where did they come from?! Reveal thyselves, downloaders!)

Track 2 is almost ready, but I feel it lacks something, and I have plans to make it even better, but I lack the energy and motivation to add something more to it. I'm a little scared of ruining it, to be honest. But it needs another layer of something. 

Anyway, before I wrap up this post a few songs I'm currently listening to these days:

1) Lana Del Rey - West Coast (Ultraviolence)

2) MØ - Fire Rides (No Mythologies to Follow)

3) Gorillaz - Empire Ants (Plastic Beach)

4) Emilie Autumn - Juliet (Enchant)

5) First Aid Kit - Emmylou (The Lion's Roar) 

6) be steadwell - Hold me (Jaded)
7) Nadine Shah - Nothing else to do (Fast food)

Till next time then!

2016

A very happy New Year, folks.

I usually don’t set any resolutions for myself, but this year, I hope to spend a little more time outside the house. I can’t remember the last time I saw a sunrise or sunset. I’ve been busy not with projects of my own, but with random shit like cleaning and doing the dishes and working on my masters research. To be fair though, compared to 2014, I wrote more poems and stuff on my tumblr, I listened to more music –full albums as compared to random tracks here and there- whether old or new and surprisingly, actually took some photographs of myself. I tended to avoid cameras…but when I’m old and I probably won’t remember what I looked like when I was 23, I will be so grateful. I mean, this is what cameras are for, right? Recording moments? I’ll want to remember more than the cats I met, yeah.

Anyway, here's some good stuff to start the new year with.

Where is my mind?

So, I’ve been trying to make some music lately, but I’m having trouble even starting banging on the keys. I wanted to make something light and warm, full of sunshine, before the year ends but doesn’t feel like I have it in me. Blah blah blah blah. I’ve been having weird old dreams (with newer scenerios) I thought I had figured out and wouldn’t see again. I hate weird dreams. There’s an annoying one in which I am trying to fight off some invisible demon or whatever (I can’t describe it; it is invisible after all) and even though I recite the words and fend it off, it never feels like it is over. It usually tugs at my clothes, pushes me, drags me off the ground and lifts me in the air, and my armpits get all ticklish and I just want to get it away from me, dammit. The dream I had last night, I was even crossing myself as some sort of exorcism – am not Christian, so it was surprising. I woke up feelng so annoyed and strange, ugh. Too much coffee, or too much Tomb Raider: Underworld? You pick.

I might not be making lots of music –or any music- right now, but I’ve uncovered the Gorillaz recently despite having seen various Demon Days videos on tv back in 2005 and am pretty much in love; Plastic Beach has to be one of my favourite albums ever now. There’s the song Empire Ants which I’ve been listening to over and over again. It reminds me so much of Boney M.’s Oceans of Fantasy, which in turn reminds me of my childhood. The old car, the last cassette, the stereo, my dad driving, squished between my older sisters in the backseat (shout out to the other youngest siblings that had to sit in the middle too). Just being young and carefree? Na, it goes deeper than that I think, but I can’t quite put my finger on it.

Anyway, will leave you all with Empire Ants

It's there

Aphelion is up on bandcamp! Was a bit of trouble uploading it.

Done, and done!

APHELION IS COMPLEEEEEEEEEEEETEEE!!!!!

*cue fireworks and confetti*

Uh, so, let me think of what I tried to do differently this time:

-Made longer tracks!

-Less 'instruments', more..uhhh... spacey pads and effects. Obscura had hammered dulcimer, tinny-ish piano, violins/cello/viola, guitar, bass, a chinese flute and a music box sound (I guess it doesn't really count). Just a teensy bit of piano in Aphelion.

-Darker in tone. I think.

-I hummed a bit for the first time on a track, 'Equinox'.

-The first few tracks are named after astronomical phenomena. Every track represents the stage of a journey, or state of mind.Or something.

-The little soundclip in the beginning of the track equinox was basically me walking to the microwave, switching it on and shutting its door.... Which got shortened to the switching on + background noises and looped. It repeats in the track Disintegrate.
-To me, disintegrate is one of the creepiest tracks I've ever made. 

.... That's all I can think of right now. I'll upload it on bandcamp soon.

Where minds breathe and stars die...

This is beautiful.

Taylor Swift can help one make sense of their feelings...

But she likes Times New Roman, I like Calibri

She's my supervisor but I think we can all agree

I'm dreaming about the day when I can wake up and find

that my research has been over with the whole time

*headdesk*

This is what happens whenever I try to concentrate on working.

a peek into my playlist: Taking the long way around

So, I'm halfway through my degree now, just beginning my research (Hint: it appears to involve me, pesticides, mosquitoes and rats. Only one of us will make it out alive! *energetic fist pump*). Today, as I was walking out of the building, I pondered on the direction my feet took unconsciously. It reminded me that I used to take the longest route ever around campus during the first semester just to delay getting to my awful dreadful classes. So glad those days are over. Anyway, so there's the following (self-made) choice of paths I had to get to classes back then: 

• The straight-to-hell path. As the name implies, it involved going straight to class through the side entrance of the building, no detours whatsoever.

• The "I don't want to go to class but I don't wanna waste my dad's money so I guess I'll take a little longer to get there" route. Self explanatory. I took the path through either the botany department or the long corridor  that ended between my zoology department and chemistry department.

• The "I think I'll die from the crushing disappointment and sadness so let's walk around a little while and do some sightseeing and maybe put my brain into a semblance of order before I go to class" path. It was a long, long walk from the front entrance of the building (which was actually the furthermost from the main gate), through the physics department, down the stairs to the basement, then through the realm of wonder that was the architecture department. Ah, the glorious art that covers its walls! The lovely sketches and paintings! I always stopped there to look at the art for a few minutes. This little side adventure usually meant getting to class late, but it breathed a little life in me every time. 

Surprisingly, it never occurred to me to bunk class. But unsurprisingly, (we get to the point of this blog entry, woohoo!) I ended up listening to a lot of music to a) pass the time b) to block out the noisy chatter of my classmates c) to make myself feel better. And here we gooooo, a playlist to help you 'take the long way around' because sometimes we need to walk around our challenges before we can face them. Clicky for the link if the embedded playlist doesn't show up. 

Taking the long way around from spirare on 8tracks Radio.

a peek at my playlist: to sleep

Ever since I got a cellphone (2008, IIRC, at the start of pre-medical yo!), I've stuffed it with as much music as I possibly could. I progressed from a 50MB memory card to a 1GB, then 2GB, and finally 4GB. Why stop here you may ask? It's enough for me and it doesn't feel like I'm swimming in music that I will not focus on ever. I managed my music library, painstakingly filling in metadata. And then, learned the fine art of making playlists. I've got a playlist for depression, aggression, Fiona Apple's brilliance, epic movie scores, studying, one named 'shutup', another named 'vacancy signs' and so on.... and then there's one called 'come sleep'.

It's just as the title suggests, it's something for me to fall asleep to. I don't always need a little musical nudge to fall asleep, but it's for those days when I can't empty my over-active mind. Clicky here if the embedded playlist is not working.

Does it work? For me, yeah. I usually nod off around Watch you sleeping or Prologue: Across the Sky.

So, what do you guys fall asleep to?

So, there's this article...

....which was published at the end of last month by Akshatha Shetty on  Border Movement, and I would've posted about it here earlier, but I was so excited -pretty much floating in clouds ever since I read it- when it came out, and just needed sometime to absorb it first. I get all tingly and smiley whenever I think about it. Here ya go guys. Thank you so much, Akshatha, for the kind words. 

(Oh, and it took me a while to remember that the accompanying lines of poetry mentioned with the description of the track Dreaming were in the .pdf booklet I made when I was putting the evening/dreaming tracks together in a single package. You can download the whole thing here!)