He probably said something like “what’s the word, man?”.  “Uhh…fuck”.  Silence.  Then my scumbag brain woke up.  “Oh yeah.  Chuck Schuldiner fucking died, and you’re the only person on this floor who cares about music, so you’re going to drink this beer with me.”

He didn’t know who Chuck was, but he still indulged me on my ass-backwards memorial.  Death was an amazing band and at the time I was deep in my defense of their final album The Sound of Perseverance against a group of friends who…for some crazy reason, didn’t appreciate it the same way they appreciated every other Death album.  My friend Ben only liked the Steve Digiorio records (they were 100 percent the reason he picked up his own fretless bass), my friend Drew fucking SOLD his copy, leaving me all alone and blown away by the absolute shredded, end-of-the-line quality that Chuck’s voice had taken on at the end of his career/life.  Here’s proof.  The track is called “Spirit Crusher”.

Human at sight, Monster at heart.  Don’t let it inside, it could tear you right apart.

Also, the clarity on his vocals.  Possibly some of the most “audible” brutal singing ever recorded.

He died of brain cancer in 2001.  He was the mastermind of Death, the sole songwriter.  He hired new guns for almost every album, and his taste in talent was impeccable.  Gene Hoglan, Steve Digiorio, James Murphy, Andy LaRocque.  The list goes on.

8 years down the road and very little had changed.  I was on my couch with Anthony, who after that day became one of my best friends.  We were smoking weed and talking about metal.  I was very animatedly shoving all kinds of metal that I had discovered down his throat because again, this is a man who appreciates music.  He doesn’t know all the metal bands or reference points but he has fucking taste, and just like that day in the dorms, I have to take what I can get.  My passion for it has exploded lately, after many many years of indifference towards metal music, it came back on rails.  I can’t stop now, and the band that brought me back to it was Death.

What happened between those two points?  I can’t really tell you.  I fell in love a few times, I left college and went straight to New York where I partied, paid attention, gained friends, lost friends, made mistakes, etc.  There has been nothing special about my journey up until this point, no matter how I want to frame it.  I “came to” one day on a walk into my office.  I was talking to a co-worker who has an amazing metal band called Sannhet.  We were talking about Death, and I noted how The Sound of Perseverance represented everything great about Death and everything problematic about them.  It’s just…parts…slammed up against each other.  Each one is better than the last, but there is little care given to transitions.  It’s urgent.  It doesn’t rest.  It’s like watching the T-1000 die in that lava.  It’s riveting, and brilliant.  And what ensued was a conversation about metal.  This was a novelty for me.  I hadn’t done it in years.  I went straight to my office and put on all the Death I could find.

Suddenly my shitty job was tolerable.  I cranked that shit and let it drown out the weird mix of drama and drudgery that you can only find in the music business.  At the end of that day, I was a full-blown metal fan again.

Which is why I’m writing this.  I want to talk about metal with you guys.  Going forward, I’ll be writing about metal from time to time.  I’m not trying to be an authority on all things “new” in the metal world (because there is a lot of crap), I just want to single out and curate some stuff that I think needs a little more love.  Stuff that I hope can break out of the typical “metal” conversation into the general “music” conversation.

So if you guys are down, let’s do this.  I’m beating on your doors with a frosty light beer and I’m not leaving until we listen to something fucking LOUD.

This spotify playlist, entitled “Popular Indie Rock and Jazz Fusion” will consistently be updated with metal I dig.  I’m pretty discriminating with what gets added, unless its that one Ma$e song with DMX.

New shit that is noteworthy:

Nachtmystium has a new track called “As Made”.  You can stream it over at Invisible Oranges, whatever that is.  The track is incredible.  It takes the blueprint of Ministry’s two headed Land of Rape and Honey/ Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Taste era (rigid, pummeling repetition + squeals and digital destruction) and applies it to Black Metal.  Seriously brilliant.

Gojira just released a new track from this album they’ve been working on forever.  I’m not breaking any new ground at all by thinking that these guys are the cat’s ass.  Listen and you’ll understand.

Also, that initial post was not supposed to go up when it did, but whatever. One thing a day, from here on out.

More on that later.  More importantly, I’m doing the speed creating thing again.  One thing, every day.  Forever.  Not for a month, but for as long as I can possibly do it.  Here goes.

This first one is cheating because I made it in January but who cares, I need to get the ball rolling and there are a few old items to clear out.  I made this to promote my friend Ben’s music.  I’ve talked about him here before, and it will happen a LOT more.

He makes music as Oceans In Space.  He makes a LOT of music (like a proper “album” every week), yet no one is hearing it.  Seriously, I think I’m one of the three people who has heard the bulk of his creations.  SO, I started a “label” called SCUMCOM to get his music out there. He gives me hard drives full of music, I go through it, make some random covers for his “albums” and I put up the music on this site for (mostly) free download.

This video was created to promote the first release we ever charged for. Ben made this album called Zofrindia, and it is insane and great if you like strange electronic music.

The concept (as explained to me) was a traditional Indian Swami stumbles into a discarded and dusty (yet fully functional) lab full of electronic instruments.  This Swami, upon discovering the lab, gets to work making music with the instruments at his disposal.  In the beginning, he ignores the electronics and sticks with what he knows – tabla, drones, and a Chapman Stick (as a stand-in for a sitar, which makes sense because Ben is an absolute virtuoso on this instrument).  That’s how the album starts, as a fairly traditional interpretation of “Indian” music.  As time goes on, our hero starts to plug things in, turns on a few electronics and re-works his first few songs with new electronic accents.

He likes what he hears, he goes further and further until the whole thing devolves into a glitched out, electronically mutated version of his original ideas.  There is a hidden track on the album that I think demonstrates this the most successfully.  If you are interested in bizarre new music, definitely get Zofrindia.  It costs a dollar for god’s sake.

To promote it to his youtube audience, I made this insane video.  It was mostly directed by Ben.  He sent footage and a few directions and I took it from there.  Did I mention It’s totally crazy?  Cool.

Check it out, and stream the album below.

Speed Creating.  Let’s do this.

And if you liked the video, then ho-lee buckets you need to check out the comments.  Just grade A internet flame-warrin right there folks.  Textbook.

Sheesh, what a title, right? Corny as it may sound its pretty spot on. Yesterday while at the beach (I’m not saying which beach because its the best beach ever and I don’t want you riff raff to spoil it) with my buddy Cliff, we found our goal for the rest of the summer: Pools.

Muhfuckin POOLS.

We gave ourselves a modest goal.  Hang out at 5 public pools by the end of summer.  Sounds doable.  I can’t think of a better way to kill the rest of a brutal half-summer in New York.  The first half of my summer was spent big.  Big plans, big ideas funded by a strange set of circumstances that left me flush with cash for June and the first part of July. That’s all gone now.  Spent on a pretty epic trip to Europe that ended with me running with the bulls in Pamplona, and almost getting clipped by one.  Another story for another time.

Now I’m broke.  I paid for that experience, in more ways than one.  As Cliff says, life is an amazing contract.  You have experiences, and you pay for them. Brilliantly stated. So, after sweating out a summer trip to Spain and running for my life from a pissed off 2 ton castrated murderer, its now about simplicity.  I have a longboard, enough food to get by, a little bit of herb, a buddy with a car, the greatest swim trunks ever (seriously, flee in terror) and a pretty loose goal – to hang out at pools. And on beaches. But mostly pools.

Today I scouted our first location. Kosciusko Pool in Bed-Stuy. My neighborhood. A five minute walk, a 3 minute skate. The pool is clean, huge enough to accommodate ten times the humans it does now, relatively clean, well patrolled, and wet. Its a pool for cripes sake.  It has so much going for it already that the rest is just window dressing.

So that one will be the first of many. We’ll be starting the weekend after next. We’re bringing a tape player to every one, with the following tapes – Talking Heads Naked; Talking Heads Stop Making Sense; Ministry With Sympathy; Ministry Psalm 69; Tom Waits Rain Dogs and Brain Tumors Brain Tumors.  Those are seriously all the tapes I own.  We’re going to be fine.

I’ll be documenting this whole trip because why the hell not, and I need something to write about.  I’m inspired.  I’ll be taking photos too, but mostly I’ll just be underwater.  See you there.

I’ll get back to updating more when I can. I love you guys.

I suppose I should be honest about how this whole “Speed Creating” thing started.  Around November, my girlfriend of roughly 4 years and I broke up.  I’m not trying to turn this into one of the closing scenes of My So Called Life, I just want to be honest about my motivations as opposed to my usual  practice of remaining willfully ignorant of the things that make me do the things I do.

One of the chief concerns I was having as the relationship kind of fell apart was “what makes me happy?”.  A heavy set of circumstances had me feeling pretty terrible about myself and “Who I Am”.  I didn’t really have a good sense of how to make myself happy or how to express myself…I was lost and not only was it a weight on my relationship, it was obviously a huge weight on me.  When I racked my brain to find a way out of the bouts of deep depression I often found myself in, I didn’t have any answers, save for this weird hint that “What Makes Me Happy” is “Creating”.  My whole life I’ve been drawn to making things…doesn’t matter what, just making stuff.  In the moments where my head is down and ideas are flowing, I’m not thinking of anything else and I feel great.

So that is what I set myself up to do.  Chase down my tiny thread of creative DNA, wrestle it to the ground and stare at it to see if it really held what I needed.

Around the time of the breakup I saw what Dominic Wilcox had done, and it immediately clicked with me.  There was no doubt that I was going to follow the same regimented path, to turn my potential happiness into a homework assignment.  I picked January, because the winter out here kind of sucks the soul anyway, and it could double as kind of a New Years Resolution deal.

I’m happy to report that this thing has been extremely eye-opening.  You’ll have to forgive the cheesiness here, but I made a pretty big realization during this thing – that I am on this earth to create.  Apologies for the hyperbole, but as a weapon I’m only pulling it out here because I plan on using it.

Up until this point I struggled to find a box for what I love to do…am I a “writer”?  Am I a “photographer”?  I’m not very good at design, but I love doing it, so could I call myself a “designer”?  I’ve had a Flip Cam duct-taped to my hand for the last 3 years…does that make me a “videographer”?  What the hell AM I?  I always considered myself a writer, but only because I do that more than anything, and it gives me the most crisis-laden stressful high of anything I do.  But I’m not all that great at making a career out of it.

I’m straying.  My point is, I learned (in one of many moments of forehead-slappery) that I am not any of those things.  I’m just a guy who likes to “create”. “Creator”, I suppose, but that is too specific and a little weird.  So I’m more comfortable with “Guy Who Lives To Create”…funny…I just tried to type “Guy Who LIKES To Create” just now, but I slipped on the “k” and put a “v” instead….giving me “lives” instead of “likes”…ha…the K and the V are nowhere near each other on the keyboard.  Even I don’t know what I’m thinking.  Wow.

So, that being said, I LIVE to create I guess.  All of those things I listed above – writing, photography, video, music, design – flick the exact same switch.  The same light goes on and off no matter what triggers it – writing about zombies, making music with Ben, taking light painting photos, shooting in the snowy streets with my Holga, cutting and pasting like a madman in Photoshop, sketching, ironing on letters – all of that provides the same simple impulse that I’ve been chasing my whole life.

I’m not saying I found my life’s purpose.  That would be a little much.  I did find though, that I had been neglecting a massive part of what made Me “Me”, and I’m glad to be reconnected to it.

I also learned more about where my skills are.  I learned that I am pretty good at writing zombie stories, that I am able to edit videos that make me laugh, that I am not a very good musician but I love to make noise and record it, that I can almost execute an idea with a photograph, that I have a basic understanding of design and how to make something look halfway decent, and that when pressed (especially when pressed) I can create at the drop of a hat.

Like I’ve always said, none of the stuff I make has any illusions about being “good”, but that’s not the point.  It is all still an expression.  Good or bad, the switch gets flicked.

With the motivation behind this thing out in the open, I hope I can continue to do this stuff.  I want to just keep doing something every day because it really does make me happy.  Don’t worry though, I wont meticulously blog about it.  I’ll just do it because I love doing it.  I highly recommend it to everyone…whatever your talents are, use them every day, and then do some stuff you are less than talented at.

Day 1 – Optronics 4-1 with Oceans in Space  [VIDEO]

Day 2 – The Lightpainting Mini Booth

Day 3 – Allegedly Hilarious T-Shirt

Day 4 – Disposable Camera Photos

Day 5 – Photoshop Vs. Jandek

Day 6 – Photos From the MiniBooth

Day 7 – Desert Lightpaintings

Day 8 – Noise Tape Layout 1

Day 9 – Noise Tape Layout 2 + Download

Day 10 – Noise Tape Layout 3 (Black Metal?)

Day 11 – Optronics 4-2 With Oceans In Space  [VIDEO]

Day 12 – Fuckin “Art”, Brah

Day 13 – Movies That Bugged Me Out as a Kid – Body Parts

Day 14 – Brian Tumors Download

Day 15 – Zombie Fiction – “Cakewalk” Part 1

Day 16 – Recaptured:  L5D – “Advanced Ants Dance”

Day 17 – Lil B @ Highline Ballroom  [VIDEO]

Day 18 – Mirror Lightpainting

Day 19 – The Battle of the Red Dragon  [VIDEO]

Day 20 – Ke$ha Slowed by 800%

Day 21 – Anthony:  A Life (In Three Parts)  [VIDEO]

Day 22 – The Scum Noise Tape Full Download

Day 23 – Cocktail Napkin Zombie Story

Day 24 – Zombie Fiction – “Cakewalk” Part 2

Day 25 – Zombie Fiction – “Untitled” Part 5

Day 26 – Blizzard/Apocalypse Music

Day 27 – Canvas Drawing

Day 28 – Ghostbusters Firehouse Holga Photos

Day 29 – Allegedly Hilarious Lil B T-Shirt

Day 30 – More Holga Photos

Day 31 – Drew is an Art Dealer Now  [VIDEO]

Like I said, my shit is completely lost over here.  I’ll recap all the madness tomorrow OR WHENEVER THE HELL I WANT because January is over!  Suck it, speed creating!