Restraint

My life still sucks

February 13, 2008 – 12:40 pm

Dear Diary,

So one of my favourite artists (that I met at Maschinenfest and gave my demo to) just released a new album. This album is on one of my favourite labels (one of the labels that was supposed to release my album, in fact), and is a fairly high-profile release.

This would usually be a good thing. Unfortunately, the first 45 seconds or so of one of the tracks on this album are exactly the same as the first 45 seconds of one of my songs (my best song, in fact).

I emailed the act and the label, and according to the people who wrote the album, we just happened to sample the same sounds from the same place and arrange them in the same order. An “unhappy coincidence”, as one of them put it.

I dug up the extremely-early-and-rough version of my song to see exactly where each of the sounds came from (this song in particular is a collage built almost entirely out of samples), and it would seem that it’s theoretically possible that they went through the same creative process as I did in selecting/assembling the sounds.

Honestly, at this point I don’t even care if they ripped it off on purpose, if it was cosmic synchronicity at work, or if they heard the track and then subconsciously rebuilt it. The most frustrating thing about this is that there’s no way I can release it now. Everyone knows I’m a fan of the artists involved, and everyone knows I listen to everything the label releases. If I put out the track on an album tomorrow, everyone who buys it will think that I’m ripping them off.

I’m so tired of music bullshit already, and I don’t even have a fucking album out.

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AVS

December 20, 2007 – 7:36 am

Thank you, everyone who came out on Tuesday. I always manage to work myself into a big freaky stressball before playing Zaphods, but I was totally blown away by how many people came out to support the show. Even though there were technical problems, everyone was still on the dancefloor and cheering 10 minutes later after we got everything working again. And 15 minutes after that when we got it working again, again.

A megathanks to Nick, for asking Synkro and I to join him on stage for his final performance in a very long, long time. I don’t remember the last time I had that much fun.

…

I think I’ve managed to come down with a throat infection since the show. I’ve taken today and yesterday away from work, and I’m cancelling my tattoo appointment for today. If this keeps getting worse before it gets better, I’ll have to postpone Deck[ard] The Halls. Right now I’m in that cough/sinus medication limbo where you’re not sure if you’re exhausted or not, and you’re not sure how much pain you’re in, and anything more complex than making toast is an absurd impossibility.

…

Time for some toast.

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crazy? don’t mind if i do!

December 16, 2007 – 1:45 pm

I don’t know why I keep agreeing to play Ad·ver·sary shows at Zaphods. They don’t do anything but stress me out. I spend a week sleeping too much and at the wrong times, biting my nails bloody, and going over and over every note or loop or sample I might possibly play until I’ve overexamined it so much that it doesn’t sound like anything at all.

It’s not fun. It’s not something I secretly enjoy as part of the suffering of art, or anything. I just hate it. I don’t get this way when I play anywhere else, either. Not Montreal, not Europe, not The Batcave, nowhere. Just Zaphods.

Fuck.

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LE SIGH

November 18, 2007 – 3:23 pm

Have I ever mentioned how much I hate this time of the year? Every year, you say?

Well, I still do.

…

I don’t know what’s happening with this Cyanotic/Chemlab tour. Which is bad, considering that I should be booking my time off now, if it’s happening. The problem with being involved in Cyanotic is that you can never really count on anything; the ground is always shifting whenever you look the other way.

…which is fine, given that I’ve been neglecting Ad·ver·sary as of late, due to post-cyanotic-fatigue and pre-label-frustration. I’ve got a handful of releases in various states of completion that I need to deal with:

International Dark Skies: My 2005 demo that labels keep saying they want to release and then not releasing. Current label: Fich-Art, run by the Ars Moriendi crew (Asche, etc). This thing is years old, and I’m tired of it just sitting here.

Bone Music: Full-length album containing some tracks from IDS, some newer reworkings of IDS tracks, plus remixes of IDS from other artists. International Dark Skies 2.0, really. Mostly done — just need to collect remixes and finish one or two tracks.

Channel Zero: This is what I’m working on now. All new material, concept album. Maybe 1/3 done. I’m probably biting off more than I can chew with how I’ve planned it, but we’ll see how it turns out.

The Raven Prince: This won’t be an AVS release — it’ll either come out as a self-titled (if there’s not already a band called The Raven Prince), or I’ll release it under Jairus Khan. 3-track EP soundtrack to a children’s origin-myth-slash-fairy-tale I’m writing.

It would be nice if any of these ended up the way I see them in my head.

…

Ryan’s a good friend, and I hope his new night is a smash success (and selfishly it would be awesome to have a place where Leslie or I could play an all-goth industrial-free guest DJ set), but I really wish that someone would do a weekly that wasn’t marketed as a statement about Industrial Strength Tuesdays (or “the scene” or whatever). It’s always “re-vamp” and “making the scene a threat” and “the REAL underground” and etcetera. It would be nice if someone did an event that was just marketed as “You like good music? Come to our night! We play good music!”

(Here’s the part where I sound like an arrogant jackass) Aside from Victor (RIP Le Bistro), I’m the only person in town who’s run a successful goth-oriented night in the last ten years (if I’m missing someone, let me know), and I did it twice. The reason they were successful is because they weren’t a reaction to Leslie’s night; if we picked them up and dropped them in a club in Montreal or Boston, we wouldn’t change anything about them. All of the nights/events that have started as an ‘alternative’ to Tuesdays have crashed and burned, because a) the music they play will always be defined by the music played on Tuesdays, and b) there just aren’t enough people who wear black to support two competing events — and let’s be frank — Industrial Strength Tuesday has over ten years of inertia, and any of the events that have openly and directly positioned themselves as competition are punching far above their weight.

The only events that have done well here in the last fifteen years (and this includes Zaphods, Le Bistro, Thunderdome, Dark Crystal, Absinthe, or any other) are the ones that worked to compliment the nightlife, rather than compete with it.

You can run an event that’s founded on aesthetics, or the community, or what-that-guy-across-the-street-is-doing, but they’re not sustainable. The only events that have any staying power are the ones founded on the music.

…

I’m done now.

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About

November 9, 2007 – 10:24 am

Jairus the Red.restraint.org is a loose collection of writing, links, ravings, photos, news, fiction, and bad poetry by Jairus Khan. This website has been here (off and on) for ten years or so, and was around in various other forms for three or four years before that.

I spend most of my off-hours working (in Ottawa, Canada) to promote underground arts and media, and trying to keep independent music from being smothered by an anachronism popularly known as ‘the industry’. I DJ weekly, promote concerts/festivals regularly, make beep-beep noises in an industrial-metal band, and release CC-licensed albums for my industrial-slash-experimental-electronic project Ad·ver·sary, which sounds something like robots fucking to My Bloody Valentine.

When I’m not working with, promoting, listening to, or writing music, I design very angry websites, flyers, book jackets, and the sort for various arts projects. I supplement my music/design income (roughly enough to buy a pocketful of buttons a month) by developing counter-hacking courses and moonlighting as a web coordinator for the man.

I also bake very tasty cookies.

Read More »

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Bad·ver·sary

September 21, 2007 – 9:30 am

For reasons I have no interest in discussing, I will not be releasing the Ad·ver·sary album on Ant-Zen.

Now the question is: What the hell do I do with it?

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Maybe I just need to get really high, fuck and play Tetris Attack until dawn.

August 2, 2007 – 12:43 am

I haven’t been writing much lately, life has been too chaotic. Home is crazy, work is crazy, all is crazy. Crazy and frustrating. Not all frustrating, but frustrating enough. My computer isn’t working right, I’m not done moving yet, I owe more money today than I ever have, I’m not doing the things I enjoy nearly as much as I want or need to be, blah blah blah.

(Also, there’s cat hair everywhere, and it’s making me lose my fucking mind.)

I’m waiting on tour news from Cyanotic, looks like I might be joining them for November thing supporting one of the coldwave greats. With that said, I’ve planned on at least three tours this year that didn’t happen, so I’m not holding my breath. I was hoping there would be some European dates that would let me work around Maschinenfest, but all the overseas dates seem to be exceptionally flakey.

I’m finishing up the Ad·ver·sary album now, so we’ll see what happens after I send it off to Stefan. If he still wants to publish it on Ant-Zen, that would be fantastic. Otherwise, I’ll send it off to Ad Noiseam (even though I doubt they’d be interested) and Hands, and/or just publish it myself. I should also start calling in the remixes promised to me relatively soon.

There’s so much tension under my skin, and I don’t know where it’s from, or where to channel it.

…

I’ve been realizing this week just how much I miss being involved in the front lines of computer security, in the way only a disaffected teenager with no social life can be. I’m still involved in security, but I’m not discovering exploits, I’m not participating in anything global, or working with anything dangerous. I’m not doing anything that hasn’t been done and documented a thousand times before by a thousand other people.

What I miss, I think, is being involved in something that matters.

…

Housewarming soon.

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Station!

July 21, 2007 – 12:39 am

Station!
where work happens

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Techno event showcases original music

July 4, 2007 – 11:57 am

By ALLAN WIGNEY — Sun Media

“This,” Techno Ontario’s organizers T.C.P. and Nonstop Promotions helpfully declare in capital letters in their description of tomorrow’s ambitious electronic-music presentation, is “NOT A RAVE.”

Given the event’s Club SAW setting and scheduled 7 p.m. ’til midnight running time, that might go without saying. Yet, there is a more significant element to Techno Ontario that promises to set the night apart from a typical evening of dancing to DJs.

“The idea,” says one of the evening’s performers, Nikolaus Sands, “is that rather than going to a club to hear someone spinning other people’s music, you can go to something that showcases people creating their own music.”

Sands, aka Comrad, will be one of seven local electronic artists presenting original music under a particularly broad ‘electronic’ banner. From trance to metal, there will be an impressive array of sounds on offer.

In addition to Sands, the evening will feature DJ Lushys — both solo and with his band I Awake — as well as Indian-born percussionist Zarnoosh, producer Twiin, dark-trance specialist Blake Sutherland (making his public-performance debut) and producer Chris Girard. Each will bring a different style to the table, and will introduce original music often built upon organic instrumental roots.

“It’s all built from scratch,” Sands says of his productions. “It might start with a guitar line or a bass line, or something on sitar. I develop it from there, using a sampler, drum machines and an analogue synth. And at the show there will be visuals, though I’m no visual artist.”

Fortunately, visuals will be provided tomorrow by Patrick “Brainwerx” Brown, and by old-school video games to be projected onto the big screen. Cool.

And cozy, given the intimate confines of Club SAW. Only 100 tickets are being sold for the event, in fact, with proceeds going to the World Wildlife Fund.

“It’s not very often that we get to do this kind of stuff,” Sands enthuses of the original-music showcase. “The only chance someone would normally get to do it is if they put on their own event.

“This is a chance for us to not only get some exposure, but also to hear what each of us is doing. It’s not like people doing live electronic music get invited to play clubs very often.”

Sands did have a semi-regular gig performing his music live at the University of Ottawa’s Cafe Nostalgica. And, in the interest of maximizing his musical pursuits while he prepares for his final year in Carleton University’s environmental studies program, Sands has hedged his performing bets by playing bass with a local “pop-punk band … that hasn’t played any gigs yet.”

Not that one should jump to categorized conclusions, as the breadth of styles slated for Techno Ontario strives to remind us.

“I’m just into music in general,” Sands notes. “It doesn’t matter if it’s punk, hardcore or electronic. I just want to make music.”

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Visit Sunny Ontario

July 2, 2007 – 11:53 pm

I’m playing a benefit show (as Ad·ver·sary) for the World Wildlife Fund, Thursday at SAW.

The show is being put together by some of the XVI crowd, and the idea behind it is to bring together local producers of different styles of electronic music in a sit-down event:

This July 5th, Neil_nonstop and Phil Beta of T.C.P. will host a truly original electronic music show at none other than Club Saw. For one night, you will see and hear 7 of Ontario’s best new original musicians spanning different realms of the electronica spectrum.

This is a NOT A RAVE, this a night of 100% original music. So grab a seat with some friends, sit back, and prepare for a journey through sound.

The Styles will range from trance, to retro, to hard techno, to metal and beyond. The purpose of this show is to bring together different genres of electronica that seldom are played at the same event. This unique mix-up of amazing original music is just what you would expect from this beautiful province of ours. Not only will you hear some of the best new artists around, you’ll also be transported to another astral plane with visualizations by Brainwerx; the master behind the visuals at Illuminatrix.

Most importantly, we’re not doing this event any money. All profits from ticket sales and internal sales will be Donated directly to the World Wildlife Fund to assist their efforts Worldwide.

So if you want a night of amazing new music, the finest visuals, and support wildlife and the local music scene at the same time, you’ll want to be at Techno Ontario this July 5th at Club Saw.

It’s $10, and it’s an early show (I’m on at 8:20, and it ends at midnight). One of the projects is fronted by S4, who was a guest DJ at one of the Dark Carnivals, and also performed as Lou Cypher Project.

( Full lineup inside the cut… )

The fine print:

+ The Video Game Hermit will be bringing his games to play free on the big screen.
7pm-9:30pm – The Best of Dos Games (email philbeta.tcp@gmail.com for game suggestions)
9:30pm-11:30pm – Nintendo Wii!

+ HUGE visual effects budget. Entertain your eyes as well as your ears with nonstop Visualizations by BRAINWERX!!

Techno Ontario
July 5, 2007
7pm-Midnight
CLUB SAW
67 Nicholas St.
Ottawa, Ontario

Club Saw is not a large venue, to ensure optimal comfort and seating, this event will be limited to 100 tickets.

Tickets are 10$ and are on sale now at:
- Norml Clothing, in the Byward Market.

** Limited Tickets available at door, msg Phil Beta on XVI to reserve (15$)**

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