From An Interview with Keith McMillen.

I've barely begun reading this article (which is about string performance devices) and the first sentence immediately resonated with me.

I woke up one day and, how all great projects start, was like, 'how hard could that be?' Of course, if you knew how hard it was, you'd never start in the first place. And then you reach a point where you can't stop.

Lately, instead of working on music, I've been working on a set of tools for a friend's open-source cross-platform 2d game engine called Brick. This is a perfect example of a great project as described above.

I began working with the main developer (Steve Havelka) around the start of the year after seeing some demo games he had written. The potential of the project was so clear, I couldn't let myself pass up the opportunity to contribute. My focus has been content creation tools, a cross-platform sprite/graphic editor and a map editor, and it has been very challenging and time-consuming.

Like the quote, this past week I reached the point where I can no longer stop. The engine and my tools are finally usable. We're really doing it, and at some point this year, developers are going to start using Steve's engine and my tools to build games.

It's a great - and somewhat frightening - feeling.

Merck @ Warszawa @ Tokyo

DSCN1087
Originally uploaded by kochs.org

This is old, but here is a cool example of Merck's presence in Japan (right before Merck shut down).

20090307b - Palmheart

This is for Coffeetable, my collaboration with Aaron from Ilkae. I'm not usually going to share these because they're for another project which will be released all at once, but I'm really happy with this beginning.

I did this in Renoise w/ samples made with Max/MSP and my Nord Modular G2 (finally hooked this back up after neglecting it for many months).

20090307b - Palmheart

20090228 - A Fine Item

I've been keeping a terrible sleep schedule, so it was unsurprising when I woke up at 8pm today. After getting groceries and cooking spaghetti I realized I had only 15 minutes left to make a 10spd (this is short for "10 second project D") tune for February 28th! I mentioned this on IRC and my wife and friend suggested I build a tune using only a snare drum and hand clap. I'm not sure how that was supposed to solve the time crunch issue, but that's just what I did.

20090228 - A Fine Item

20090227 - Loathe Acid

Started a new 10 second project, despite not really feeling inspired tonight. Here's what not being inspired sounds like.

20090227 - Loathe Acid

brain zaps

I am now on Twitter, my username is proswell.

notes on the designer's republic

This is "late news", but The Designer's Republic has closed its doors. I wasn't going to post anything about it, but I started to write a huge comment on Steve Loya's blog and realized I should just be a blogger.

My main appreciation of TDR is that their work defined Autechre's music for me when I first began listening to them, and I am an Autechre NUT. As such, I prize the CDs for the artwork just as much as the music.

My favorites stick out in my mind clearly actually and I will tell you why.

Tri Repetae++ (the US one with Anvil Vapre and Garbage)
This is first Autechre recording I heard. The outside artwork is very plain, but the artwork on the CDs struck me (I can't seem to find a picture of it). The line that shoots through the text (helvetica bold of course) is so silly and simple, but I had never seen something quite like it. Oddly, I've never owned my own CD of this... The photographs inside the insert are from Anvil Vapre I believe. The CD artwork is also very similar to the limited 12" We are R Why.

Envane, Cichlisuite, Chiastic Slide.
I consider these to be a suite of sorts and I absolutely love the artwork for all three. You almost need vinyl copies of these just to have the full artwork: Envane's artwork is cropped on the CDs, Cichlisuite comes on 2x12" which are different from the CD. Chiastic Slide has unique artwork on the CD versus the 12"s (I guess that's not a compelling reason, but the artwork is BIGGER right?)

EP7 (the UK version with frosty textured jewelcase)
I almost missed out on this one, I wasn't a huge fan of this release when it came out (and I'm still not really that into it, aside from the closer, Pir, which I love) so I was bad and stuck with mp3 until I had the opportunity to order the UK version at a discount. In short, the artwork for this is beautiful! For some reason I had the impression it was done by Autechre in Max/MSP, but a cursory google search turns up TDR references.

LP5 (the UK version that came in the grey jewelcase and had a texture to it)
I originally hated this album because it sounded so synthetic compared to Chiastic Slide and Envane. It has since become one of my favorites. Unfortunately, I missed the opportunity to get this nice UK version and I have some bizzare version that has a little sticker claiming it has "unreleased tracks" on it. Unfortunately I think all of the versions without the nice textured case really miss the mark, they're too damn simple.

Autechre - Quaristice limited edition w/ metal case
My wife was lucky enough to get an order in for this before it sold out. It's classy and really fits the music in my opinion. The metal version is very similar to the normal CD cover - basically has the letters punched out of the metal. As opposed to the other releases, I've mainly listened to this in digital form (we keep the CD on a safe shelf because collectors pay a lot for it now). So, I haven't grown as attached to the artwork as the other releases I've mentioned.

I have most of these on vinyl too, always nice to see the artwork blown up. That's mainly why I'm not posting images along with this, all of the thumbnails I dug up look like garbage :).