massive thanks to all poland crew for two wicked gigs. hospitality & enthusiastic people, poland never disappoints. people seem genuinely good natured, you get the sense that they just want to live simple lives, love, food, friends, basic comforts. years of harsh travel restrictions have been lifted recently and as a result there’s been a massive polish outflux in the past year… fanning out throughout the world in a huge diaspora, in search of the good life… but by now many have traveled to the usa and the uk and become disillusioned. they discover an isolated emotional void and a system that won’t accept them. feeling used and disappointed, many return to poland, and i always meet them at gigs. being both a native of one of those soul-sucking countries, and now a foreigner in an extremely xenophobic one, i empathize on many levels. the gigs themselves don’t drip with avarice dirtiness like you often get in many hyper-capitalist countries, or a place where hype drives taste. people know how to be hosts and you get a feeling of being treated like a real human being! not a machine that’s just there to bring a crowd, play a set, and then can go fuck off. the poles have good hosting skills and good manners. wow. amazing. they paid attention to the tech rider, getting absolutely every item perfectly. they are poor in money but not in emotions, the opposite of many affluent but spiritually poor places i’ve been. i can take being poor and having few resourecs, that makes sense to me. what doesn’t make sense is when you’ve got a warehouse full of spoiled american kids with macbooks and HD video cameras, & growrooms, yet they won’t provide um. a mic. or some human interaction perhaps. maybe a glass of water? ah it’s just that americans have never learned to be good hosts, i tell myself, because everyone has their own playstation, their own computer, skills like sharing are discouraged. anyway… i also see the reasons why a lot of western eu people still never play in pl – big distances with few good flight connections, & inevitably you have to take the train between gigs if you do more than one… but hell, i like the train and you always get a story. last time i got a lesson in the filthiest polish swear words. this time it was an overeager business student who wanted to get a free english lesson from captive teachers, yar. the place is experiencing a mini economic boom at the moment, and their currency is getting stronger. the mood on the street reminds me of ireland a few years ago, just after the euro. big biz brings more money, and a newfound optimism takes hold. lots of new digital SLRs at the shows…. fun new money time, and all is well. for now. i hope that the polish people don’t lose their character with all this influx of cash, but i’m not too worried. they seem resilient and adaptable.
01.28.08
emerging from a 3 day work binge w/sleepy eyes, studio tan, a new remix and a few new techniques. genghis tron remix is rockin, almost done. a few tweaks and it’ll be good. a brilliant performance + good recording makes for excellent remixing. gt and animosity were way easier than other remixes i’ve done in the past, with better results. (nerd realization #1 – difficult does not necessarily equal valid) the source recordings shimmer with that extra 10%, from quality gear which costs you an extra 700%. attrition in the asymptotic quest for perfection. along those lines, kids… save your pennies and sell your frivolous things. get the best monitor speakers you can. i just did, and i can’t believe i worked for so long in such darkness. struggling to paint rembrandts while wearing an eyepatch and a telescope on backwards. yarrrrr. then just as i was feeling smug, i listened to nin non-entity, new radiohead, converge, some other favorites. oh man. i got some work to do. get some groceries and hit it…
01.18.08
starting on: Genghis Tron remix. finished: Animosity remixes. Soon: Jason Forrest, Enduser.
01.15.08
you’re going to see a shift towards two (seeming) extremes from me this year – drumcorps, and ambient tunes a la lost tracks. overall there will be less dance music / ragga jungle / dubstep etc. i might produce a few of those tunes here and there – but what i’m feeling lately brings me back to my roots – hardcore and melodic music with something to say – and i’ve got to keep true to inspiration. as i grow more okay with myself, i’m looking outward… traveling the world the past few years i see a lot of division / enforced alienation / many different sides of all stories – & i get just as angry as i was at age 15 – but this time with the sharpness of experience. there’s also a sense of pervading calm & well-being curiously mixed in there. all of this is going to be expressed in the new tunes. accordingly, i’m accepting fewer ragga jungle & breakcore sets, and more drumcorps and aaron lost tracks type sets. a limited number of dancey sets will happen – like bangface’s weekender party in april, and some selected shows in europe & asia, but the focus is shifting. could all change tomorrow, but that’s where i’m at now. the changes aren’t going to be thaaaat radical in their core, as it’s always come from the heart, but different flavors ebb & flow as always. stay warm out there.
01.08.08
after a while of slogging through static html, i’ve updated the aaron spectre site to be a little more fluid database driven kinda thing. i’m stoked…. it looks good on many platforms, loads quick, and lets me get back to writing music rather than noodling in dreamweaver. here’s a guide to the new sections.
HOMEPAGE - constant news bulletin with info on new releases, events & anything relevant.
MUSIC - mp3s and store links for all current releases.
PHOTO - an ongoing photo stream from the road, with an emphasis on quality. not for the low of bandwidth.
VIDEO – embedded youtube and other links. looking into hosting my own videos in a higher quality format, once i get a few more great vids this will happen.
PRESS – a rundown of any linkable press, and some compiled photo/press ZIPs for writers.
BLOG – thoughts from me. this isn’t going to be a tangle of web 2.666 slick-but-fooling-no-one self-promotional nonsense speak, just musings from the road, tributes to the excellent people i meet along the way, thoughts that matter, bits i like. trying to keep this part pure…
UPCOMING SHOWS – a little app that keeps track of them all, no more static html cut and paste for me. a big archive of all the shows from 2003 onward is up there also.
RSS feeds for everything. there are a few little bugs that i’m still working out, but the whole thing looks pretty good to me over here. more news coming soon, there are lots of new projects afoot which i’ll write more about shortly.
01.01.08
vitalweekly.net // could have been created for Brian Eno’s ambient opus Apollo … an album of shining beauty
igloo mag // Top 10 album of 2007
ruckusruckusruckus.blogspot.com // the cover artwork is photos taken by Kevin Martin, they’re all haunting shots of the Lebanese state railway that’s fallen into disuse, to the extent that entire trees grow between the tracks. The first impression of the pictures are of charming light, only a second glance reveals the turmoil… there’s loads going on in the interior, unlike some of his contemporaries. They bear repeated listening exceptionally well – the music doesn’t give up its secrets, or become transparent or formulaic with familiarity. I read some reviews which drew comparisons between ‘Lost Tracks’ and Ulrich Schnauss’s shoegazing styles… They both take warm, melancholy tinged motifs and wrap themselves up in sustained sounds that embrace and decay. But while Schnauss is into an MBV ‘Loveless’ wall/sound, Spectre works out at a purer, clearer pitch.
tokafi.com // Some will not be able to fathom how Aaron Spectre could come up with an album like “Lost Tracks”. Didn’t this man just unleash “Grist”, a brutal Metal onslaught under his alter ego Drumcorps? … Only two months later, he is back with a work of sweetness, optimism and hundreds of melodies from a place where there is always music in the air. This contradiction, however, is easy to dispel…. There is always a sense of longing and unfulfillment lingering in the spacey robotic electronica, which keeps one’s attention focused – you never know whether all of the happiness was just an illusion. Which only goes to strenghten the impression of Spectre as a man with a romantic inclination. If you think about it, there were similar moments with Drumcorps as well, when the guitar madness and the percussion frenzy stopped and made way for short atmospheric interludes, which took listeners out of time and away from a one-sided perspective. It is not such a long way from “Grist” to “Lost Tracks” as some may think.
igloo mag // one of today’s new breed of hybridizing electronic sound practitioners… a proficiently wrought album of slightly doleful downtempo and faintly shadowy atmospheres
01.01.08
