Hey, let me drunkenly animate your photos in about 25 to 60 days!

ztbd died on a monday morning. he was painting a horse on a horse and it kicked him

I love you cassette cover horse!

i will answer from the perspective of the horse, using the same cheerful voice i use for all god's beautiful creatures:

"TANX!"

this weekend I'm working on the other side of the j-card (4 song titles, a small amount of text)

I don't want to spoil it, but there are going to be...EVEN MORE HORSES!!

HORSES: *cheerful neighing*

That's a good painting!

mo horses mo better

just a pencil drawing with some pastel chalk over the top, actually, but thanks! I put some fixative on there so it shouldn't smear in the long-term.

mo horses mo better

the amount of horse puns on the track list is just ridiculous. four horse puns. i only contributed to half of one of them. C. Vadi is just a horse pun fanatic.

Oh yeah looking at it now I can see it is obv a drawing not a painting. So I take it back!

how might a curious listener find samples/examples of this horse pun synth improv?

that's a very good question, cat! it'll be up on bandcamp in a couple weeks! i'm pretty sure we'll just make them all free to listen to (about 32 minutes in total), or digitally "own" for $5 up to $5B, (pay what you can model that is billionaire-inclusive), and then of course the EXCLUSIVE cassette version, which probably be $8.

me and c. vadi have a pretty similar setup and approach. this was all recorded in that brief window earlier this year where i had an amazing studio in chicago (i'm still paying rent on it through december, but now i'm in st louis). an art studio, i mean, not a music one. but it had plenty of space, so i set up this big table in the middle for me and c. v. to set up our gear and do headphone improvisations. on her side of the table she had a synth running through some pedals (gain, equalizer, etc). She also has a Lyra-8 Organismic synth that she used on a release earlier this year (https://cvadi.bandcamp.com/album/the-lyre). On my side of the table i had a Bass Station 2 and a 404A sampler running through gain, a carbon copy delay, and reverb.

i thought we immediately had very good musical chemistry. c.v. is a trained, excellent keyboard and piano player, among many other skills, and she's adept to the point of being able to quickly adjust to anything i might do, even if i go off on a new direction without warning. i've never had so many good improvs with someone else, so naturally.

we recorded about 8 hours of playing over 3 different sessions at the studio, this summer, and then she edited it down to what it is now. it was really nice to completely let her handle that process - not only the recording (all captured directly to Logic), but the mixing and editing, the deciding which parts of all that sound best together. i love doing that kind of music work as well, but it was very nice to just be able to do the music thing for a few hours and then return back to the painting and drawing and all that stuff. rather than sitting a computer, listening to many hours of recordings, selecting, deleting, listening to things on a loop a million times, getting lost in the DAW, etc

c vadi's gear:

Ibanez ts7Tubescreamer
TC electronics hall of fame
Digitech JamMan
Jhs lucky cat delay
Korg poly 61 synthesizer
Roland sh-2 synthesizer

she also has this awesome, mobile "synth in the woods" setup where she can play and record off the grid, on battery, all in a setup that fits in a backpack. i believe that this could be a million dollar idea

we're also going to do a couple of "album release" shows, in late december/new years time - hopefully in 2 of KC/STL/CHI/MIL. those will be interesting and potentially terrifying for me because i haven't played music on stage in...15 years? 2006/7. and also they'll be improvisations, and our first performances in front of people. *gulp* but i'm very, very excited about it as well. we both have personal missions to release this thing in the year 2021, purposefully, like as a fuck you to this year. that year happened, but also this happened, that kind of thing.

safe travels friend

MY EARS ARE STOKED

that is all so, so cool. congratz and kick ass!

thanks!

how might a curious listener find samples/examples of this horse pun synth improv?

i have a better answer on this now. the release date will be Dec 3 but the bandcamp will go up sometime next week, with pre-order options for digital or cassette, and the first track streaming.

also we are now called softer drive, because there was already a softdrive.bandcamp and on spotify and it's not worth it
lol

lol @ showing up those soft drive chumps by being even softer \m/ “oh, you think you’re soft, huh? that’s cute. check this out”

for a minute, medium drive was also in the mix, and i was preparing to check softest drive if necessary!!

:D

https://i.imgur.com/7U3AEAD.png

https://i.imgur.com/9DfymZV.png

https://media2.giphy.com/media/GHc1i70ZAUBcA/giphy.gif

J-card

https://i.imgur.com/fQRWU2j.jpg

🐎🐎🐎🐎!

ok, we finally have our bandcamp set up and ready to go! there is a preview track up on there now

https://softerdrive.bandcamp.com/

bro!!!

that is some dreamy horsecore, i like it

lol thank you! i just told my musical partner that you said it was "dream horsecore", and she replied

HORSESCORE and seven dreams ago

she is the one that came up with 3 1/2 of our 4 horse puns, obviously

horse pun savant & musical badass, the makings of a superhero right there

can the next release be the soundtrack to the movie based on her exploits please

well i’m getting ahead of myself, shld probably let this one get released first. congratulations!!!!!!

but for the follow up tho, i’m picturing a blade runner 2049 with cyborg horses

wait no, CENTAURS

cyborg centaurs, in case it wasn’t clear

oh IT WAS CLEAR

all i can say is we will have to see where the ____ puns lead us. but to me a centaur is an obvious next step from ____

it's pronounced "Centorgs"

i think before we go any further with this, we need to think about the origin story of the centaurs. and i'm talking about a human having sex with a horse, the real deal, and how their relationship affected other humans and horses that knew them at the time

zoophile mad scientist and her cybernetically augmented offspring, their dynasty controlling the grim near future with iron hooves. literal iron hooves!

just checked, preview track still slaps

thanks cat! you are very encouraging :)

i calls ‘em like i sees ‘em, bub 🕶

i am hoping that we can sell 33 tapes. that's my breakeven point with cassette tape costs, and plus i want a good excuse to put out another release and do more recording with carrie.

carrie is a funny person, and would be amazing on ilx. i'm in a low-key long-term campaign to get her to join

https://twitter.com/TheGnarrator/status/1466511663151079424

alright, the horse puns are out for real today! no more bullshit!

https://softerdrive.bandcamp.com/album/four-of-horses

i saw your message cat, thank you so much! i hope you are ZONIN now

https://c.tenor.com/kuSoD0BPiMIAAAAC/meow-trance.gif

i'm starting the first of 2 small sales on my instagram (@Zach_TBD, in a few minutes. the first will be 10 drawings, all pencil on paper, most on 9"x12", each $50

first positive music review of my life i think?

I really hoped to have time to write about this album before the end of the year, but ran out of time (maybe in January!), but this Softer Drive (@TheGnarrator & @weinventyou) is excellent. I've been listening to it quite a bit the last couple weeks. https://t.co/7tfsJ0GWWa

— Foxy Digitalis (@foxydigitalis) December 17, 2021

Sometimes I try to put myself in a state,
call it Loose Control, for now,
where expressive results are bent into javelined roads,
thin and slivering lines which get all covered up
and forgotten under relentless waves of new stuff.

Imagine automatic writing but more visual,
thin and slivering lines instead of language,
the brush’s residuals replacing the text.

When I Loosely Control my hand starts to move
on its own, independently,
thickened water sloshingly flying
up and around the edges of a bucket
which is swirling in elliptical orbits,
the inverse of my motions,
the effects of my causes becoming
untethered from their origins,
and yet I know that I am part of it all.
It is from me and yet it doesn’t see me.

A forgotten mark gets scattered up,
reforms as a ladder and tips
in new directions,
one of many landing strips,
loud movement then stillness,
a flood and then a covenant.

I make my bed and then I sleep on top of it.
My heart beats uninterrupted.
It makes me live so I listen,
five liters of blood in a circuit,
all sustained without a rhythm.
I don’t understand but I trust that I will wake up safe.

safe at the end, whoops

or actually, i'll replace the last line with

I don’t understand but I still wake up.

https://i.imgur.com/edNHfhP.jpg