Restraint

Goth·ver·sary

October 21, 2009 – 5:40 am

Gothtronic reviews A Bright Cut Across Velvet Sky:

Ad·ver·sary is the powernoise/IDM project of Jairus Khan. In 2008 he made quite a name for himself with his album ‘Bone Music’, which was available as regular cd edition on Tympanik Audio, but could also be downloaded for free in high quality. [...] A very good remix album. Although some songs get remixed three times, all the tracks have a reasonable different sound, so it doesn’t get repetitive. Together with the addition of a couple of new tracks this is really an album you should have in you collection!

I agree with this man! You should download the album (it’s free!), or pick up a CD (on sale now!) from Tympanik.

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Easy as ABC

April 30, 2009 – 10:08 am

It has been too long since I’ve posted anything worthwhile. Mostly because I’ve been working on this:

A Bright Cut Across Velvet Sky

It’s done now. Will write soon.

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A Bright Cut Across Velvet Sky

April 10, 2009 – 4:16 pm

The new Ad·ver·sary disc is finished. I’m listening to the final master now to make sure there’s no glitches, and then off it goes.

Tracklist:

  1. Ancients (Cyanotic Remix)
  2. Waiting for Gira (Patience is a Virtue Perceived Remix by ESA)
  3. Creatura (and the sea)
  4. Just (Spookier Remix by Iszoloscope)
  5. Bone Music (Disparition Remix)
  6. No Exit (Sartre Wasn’t Kidding Remix by Candle Nine)
  7. Friends of Father (Oil Sands Remix by Monoculture)
  8. Dresden
  9. Waiting for Gira (Still Waiting Remix by Stendeck)
  10. Darker
  11. Just (Boo! Remix by Synkro)
  12. Waiting For Gira (Phylr Remix)
  13. Number Nine (Square Prime Remix by Autoclav1.1)
  14. Just (Passed Away Remix by Salt)
  15. Cyanotic – Deface (Ad·ver·sary + Dirtybunny = Industrial Strength Mix)

Fuck yes.

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a bright cut across velvet sky

March 3, 2009 – 5:52 pm

The Ad·ver·sary remix disc is coming together excellently, and it’ll even be finished in time for my live set at the Kinetik Festival.

I’ve uploaded a preview track of one of the mixes: Ad·ver·sary – Waiting for Gira (Patience is a Virtue Perceived Remix by ESA)

This is going to be a great album.

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Who can tell us how?

February 13, 2009 – 7:26 pm

+ I (finally) have an easy-to-access turntable set up in my house.
+ I (finally) am listening to Jesu on vinyl.
- I bought a Behringer preamp and now I pick up Chinese radio stations.
- I don’t speak Chinese.
+ My work will be sending me to several months of paid full-time French school.
± English has been failing me quite a bit recently.
- I haven’t been writing very much at all.
- I’m realizing that while working hard to keep calm and still over the past year or three, I’ve also been quieting a lot of anxiety and negativity that has been waiting for an exit.
- I do not sleep enough.
- I do not tidy enough.
- I am stressed about money.
+ I’m slowly correcting a year-long drift in my job responsibilities, moving it out of web development and back into web communications.
- However, transitioning between the two means I have the responsibilities of both but with the same amount of hours in a day.
+ I am giving a presentation at PodCamp in Toronto next weekend.
+ It will be awesome.
+ I make great websites.
+ Also flyers.
+ I think I’ve figured out the packaging for the Ad·ver·sary remix album.
- I haven’t figured out the name of it yet. Or the tracklist. Or who’s mastering it.
+ The remixes are fucking great.
+ I am still listening to Jesu on vinyl.

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trying to break into an electric lightbulb

February 5, 2009 – 10:25 am

It has been a long winter, and I’m finding myself in places that I never thought I would be.

I don’t know exactly how I got here, and I don’t know exactly what comes next, but I’m happier and more optimistic about where things are going than I have been in years.

The next few months are going to be busy: finishing production on a friend’s album, releasing an Ad·ver·sary remix album, going to SXSW Interactive, preparing for Kinetik, and a half-dozen other Big Things — but I’m looking forward to seeing what happens next.

Good riddance to 2008.

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First time anyone’s caught the sample in No Exit, too.

December 4, 2008 – 6:07 pm

A new review of Bone Music, this time from the Grave Concerns e-zine:

What really sets apart Khan’s work from most of his contemporaries in the dark electronic scene is a fondness for more traditional sound sources. While there’s no shortage of electronic ambience and computer-generated percussive sounds, there’s also plenty of mostly unadorned rock and classical instrumentation. “Waiting for Gira” backs its rumbling percussion with the heavy throb of low-end bass guitar, for example, and “Friends of Father” sees what sounds like old-school guitar distortion and clattering snare drum emerging from a fuzzy wash of static. This more organic sound translates especially well to Khan’s use of rhythm. Often, his beats sound less like programmed sequences than tribal percussive ensembles, especially on the ominous “International Dark Skies,” which evokes imagery of some midnight voodoo conjuration, and title track “Bone Music,” which despite the morbid imagery of its title is actually possessed of a sense of fun not unlike Einsturzende Neubauten’s mellower instrumental experiments.

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on the road to delphi

October 22, 2008 – 10:52 am

I can feel autumn wrapping around the city like a blanket, whispering about the winter to come.

I’m hoping to use this time now to get things done before the snow settles on the city. I know that once winter is here, I’m going to have a much harder time with everything, and I’m trying to turn that awareness into motivation: Finish building restraint. Finish producing Mike’s album. Gut and rebuild my bedroom. Get the Ad·ver·sary remix boxset done. Make more personal space.

I used to have limitless drive for these things, but I can’t sustain it anymore. I don’t think it’s age that’s weighing me down (although in frankness, I am terrified of turning 30 next spring), nevertheless it feels like something has crawled into my skin and hidden that energy from me.

Or, more likely, something about the way that I’m thinking and the things that I’m doing is feeding back.

…

By speaking this aloud I may very well be invoking it (or so Thelema would caution me), but I’m privately and extraordinarily concerned about attendance to next Tuesday’s show. The last month has been the quietest month at Zaphods that I can recall (on par with the doomed Mono No Aware show years ago), and if what is traditionally the biggest night of the year ends up being a dead show, not only will it be financially crippling but also a tremendous kick in the balls.

Next year would be the 15th annual Industrial Strength Halloween (would’ve been this year if Eugene hadn’t preempted last year’s party), and the idea was to go balls-to-the-wall all out for it, but if Tuesday has a weak showing then we may have to reexamine our expectations.

…with that said, if next Tuesday doesn’t have the attendance we’re looking for, it’s not the end of the world. We have a ton of new promo material on the way, we (finally) have management that supports us and has a free hand to help, we’re trying to rent a bus to ferry people to industrial night from Kanata after the NIN show in three weeks, and there’s more in the pipe. So even if, hypothetically, everyone who had ever been out on a Tuesday vanished tomorrow, we’re not dead in the water or anything along those lines

But it would be really fucking disappointing.

…

Maybe I need a pilgrimage.

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yes i realize it is 6 months away

October 18, 2008 – 6:14 pm

kinetik flyer

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My new favourite translated review

September 25, 2008 – 9:10 am

From the Belarusian site Machinist, and translated by the helpful robots at Google:

Jairus Khan about ten years led an active life in the Canadian di-dzheyskuyu/promouterskuyu underground techno-industrial stage, but three years ago, decided to form their own musical project AD VER SARY. The most meticulous and informed of you probably have heard his remixes of the tracks on the CONVERTER and ISZOLOSCOPE.

In May 2008, a musician in the court ruled his public debut album “Bone Music”, which contains a powerful, energetic and melodic cocktail of power rhythmic noise, Industrial, an organic landscape ambience, idm-electronics and tribalnyh ancient rhythms. As you can see, nameshano lot, but the result sounds very harmonious and fresh. What’s immediately striking when listening to the album is a very good balance between the rigid, harsh, aggressive and beautiful, including imagination, causing emotion sounds.

Many of AD VER SARY based on attacking rhythms perfectly adapted to the club environment and able to strike and disperse the noise-industrial human biomass on tancpole to very high speeds and orgazmicheskih sensations. For example, a turbojet accelerators can choose to drive such downhole, technique execution and not deprived of intelligent charm of tracks like “Ancients”, “Bone Music” or “Number Nine”.

It is a pleasure to listen to music groups and dance outside the site. Because it such a multi-layered, deep and diverse. Moderate eksperimentalizm it is also not alien. Rapid and robust, well unwind devastating tribalno techno-industrial songs, alternate militants on the album with a calm, measured and atmospheric rooms, which tend to be powerful, painted mrachnovatye mysterious tone of the industrial trip-Hopu ( “Friends Of Father”), gratsioznym Forms of hard-techno ( “Just [Spooks]“) or pleasure to shake tribalnyh rhythmic waves of steel dark ambient ( “International Dark Skies”). The album also includes remixes good ANTIGEN SHIFT, TONIKOM and SYNAPSCAPE, as well as a remix AD VER SARY on track URUSAI.

Finally, add that you can download a free peer-album, including the complete design, the official site AD VER SARY on the Internet. And, believe me, it is worth it! Album: “Bone Music” really good and I suspect must come to taste fans of groups such as THIS MORN’OMINA, EXOCET, REMAIN SILENT and ISZOLOSCOPE. [8 points]

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