Interviews!

Interviews of Zan Hoffman
by Mitya of Trunheim zine [by] 2006
by Monopolka [ru] 2006
by Tape Crusaders [au] 2003
by Chris Phinney [tn] 2001(?)
by JTY Tapes [hi] 1999
by John Wiggins [ny] 1989(?)
Interviews by Zan Hoffman 1990
of Yoshiaki Kinno [jp]
of Robert Ommundsen [no]
of Don Campau [ca]
of Frustapes' Amy Love [nl]

Life within Limits

Just thinking about self-proscribed and externally-conditioned limits as they are part of my creative processes. Especially with the Zanoisect project I've concerned myself with setting up proscribed experiments - limits explicitly set - to blow open new possibilities. Blinded by the vast potential of options to explore in any given creative situation I prefer drawing up boundaries to work within. I set up walls to bounce off of instead of exhausting myself running wild in every direction. In consequence the results are part of a learning process and stepping stones for future experiments. Exactly how and why I have so many releases, boys and girls, it tied up in this process. Some releases are documents of passing conditions and interests and others are this long story of experimentation in an ongoing desire to bring forth from ZH27 things you can't and won't hear anywhere else. I take blows from people who can't imagine having the need or energy necessary pull off this lifework of mine. Inevitably it's people who've put very little time into listening to the range of what I've been releasing, so these attacks tend to strengthen my reserve to keep busy, not diminish it. When people reach this level of ability in their professional lives as sportsmen, investment bankers, doctors, etc. nobody suggest they should play less games, make fewer great investments or cure less people as they've already done enough. Seems my setting up of limits has done me quite some good as a tool for doing a wide range of works within a field that's easy to get lost in. I think in-between two extremes of 'uncontrolled wank' and 'uptight proficiency' lay much exciting area to explore audio possibilities. As things approach those extremes I personally lose interest and wonder why I've bothered to listen to this instead of something else. I'll trust you understand already that I have short patience for people who need to ride someone else's horse into town - anyone in search of that perfect sound to impress the executives at Warner Bros. Those are limitations that deliver inconsequential results. The gain there could be measured in millimeters where I'm looking to go kilometers away from what's obvious. So the limits in my creative world are not about how much I do just on how I go about what I do. Go forth and conquer!

February 9, 2004

2003 ZH27 Annual Report

This last year was a banner year for the ZH27 label and it's online presence at zh27.net. Never before has the label and website been so scrutinized and improved. The covers received the royal treatment of updates and full redesigns with hundreds upon hundreds of colorful and exciting designs completed in 2003. This sounds like a late time to say this but I'm still thrilled to be able to have high resolution color covers and designs available to anyone whose online worldwide. How long I suffered with print catalogs instantly out of date and forever out of print before the boon of the internet arrived. So I for one don't take it for granted that I can e-mail new people in Croatia, Singapore, England and Australia, as I did last year, and they can instantly visit my website to see what I've been up to for the last 20 years in the world of free audio. And they can camp out and explore my extensive lifework there. 2003=1985 In my first full year of label activity, 1985, I completed 44 new releases: quite a few compilations, the beginning of many collaborations with Minóy and Ken Clinger, works by still active projects like Zanstones, Zanoisect, Masters of the Ungentlemanly Art, the Prostitution of ..., the Twists and Turns of the Loved and Hated ..., and so forth. 2003 in turn has seen more Masters, Prostitution, Zanoisect, Zanstones, Twists and Turns, along with new installments of other popular ongoing projects such as Bodycocktail, Here Be Monsters, You, Me, Us & Them, Zantrip, Creamy Porn Stars, Asa Nisi Masa, Zanguts and even Jake Hobo's return. All told 44 new releases in 2003. As with the past few years much of my productivity has been fueled by the collaborative recordings that I get when I bug the devil out of all my e-mail contacts for 15 one minute pieces. Many new contacts begin with me this way and older contacts who I've not worked with in a while will submit new works for me to play with. Each time I take care to approach projects with new mindset and angles. I'm not putting out a lot of releases so that they all run into each other for sameness. I want to surprise myself and do the widest range of experimentation that is viable and this year on that count was awesome. The pure range of works of unprecedented uniqueness in 2003 is wicked - from Asa Nisi Masa > Gas Cake for Jay Walking Asteroid Belt Makers at the end of the year to the ultradense You, Me, Us & Them experiments of the winter and spring. The ground covered with Your Life Has Been ... For You or The Prostitution of ... this year alone in eight releases few artists would be able to do in years of effort. Lots of new recordings from my experiments and from new contacts keep things fresh and interesting so if you only heard this years works and nothing else from me you'd be mighty impressed I hope. 8.6 days or 8.3 days One of the infuriating charts on my website deals with the average number of days it takes to put out a release. It seems there would be two ways to measure this information that's meaningful, and I've chosen the more difficult one to compute for my chart. Thus it may only be infuriating for me to keep it updated. One measure would be averaged over the life of my label how many days it's taken for me to make a release. This is the one I've chosen as it shows an interesting trend. Another way to measure is within the year how many days on average it took to finish a new release. By the former measure since 1984 it's taken me 8.6 days to put out a new work, by the later measure I took me 8.3 days to put out a release in 2003. I've updated the chart page in question as well as added monthly productivity charts to the years where meaningful data is available on the releases by year listing on my website. These changes are often driven by my own curiosity of how this information looks over time. I can't demand that I sit down every 9 days and finish off a release, but over time I've developed systems that makes it easy for me to put out releases so that the system itself doesn't hamper productivity. And I look at my own creativity on a yearly basis and I do feel that if I don't do 36 releases a year I'm slacking and aside from this there are no targets for productivity. Need I mention this for the millionth time that it feels great to have an excellent new release finished and that's enough motivation to bother alone. Then there is the positive feedback I get from my trading network which motivates me to continue. And finally once this juggernaut is set rolling along I get the feeling that the people who know I'm a productive madman would feel let down if I didn't turn in a good performance each year, so no stopping it! Lots of effort was made in conjunction with Jeff Surak in 2003 to take my story to a higher level and I owe him massive thanks for his support, enthusiasm and general arse kicking. Thus thanks to him I'm on my way to my next solo Zanstones Eurotour, this time to Belgium and Holland with Peter Zincken as my host and tourguide. And that's the fine note that I ended 2003 on.

January 1, 2004

Bill, the Marklab and Me

It started with a picture I took with my Sony digital camera of Bill's TV & Radio Repair building. I was documenting some of the beloved quirky aspects of my neighborhood and his building stood out as there were three huge red, green and blue panels where large picture window would be on this interesting 1950's structure. An old man was walking in and ended up in the picture because he kept standing there as I was lining up the shot. Seems Bill himself was a curious of what I was doing as I was interested in his building. So we talked and as I mentioned I admired the colored panels thinking them to be rather old, he informed me that they were a fairly recent addition to avoid having the picture windows broken. His face was asmile and practically beaming as he announced the colors were tv picture tube colors which I knew, but I couldn't help but be charmed by his pride. He even made a convincing suggestion to see him if I ever had a tv in need of repair. He mentioned that the building was for sale and he might have found a buyer. Not a few weeks later I saw a hand-painted GOING OUT OF BUSINESS SALE sign appear in the second floor window. Naturally I stopped in to see what was to be found at Bill's. It took some time to warm Bill up to the wide range of things that I may be interested in. The place turned out to be an island of discarded technologies with not much more recent that 1980's technologies! Laser disc players, dbx noise encoders, receivers I remember from the 1970's all cluttered and unlabelled. Bill used to be a Sony repair shop so there was a fair amount of old Sony equipment among odd brands. Finally Bill said "you might be interested in this EQ" as he pulls out a something I'd never seen nor heard of - a Sony Walkman EQ unit. A little wider than a pack of cards and taking two AA batteries it was in it's original early 1980's packaging. How much Bill?, I had to ask. "I'll take $10 for it". Sold! At last I descended onto a display case packed with Sony battery packs, wall mounting kits etc. but most of the nicer things Bill was not asking reasonable prices for. But one item piqued my fancy - a stereo Sony recording walkman. It was originally $200 in the early 1980's and BIll was asking $90 today for it. I couldn't bite at that price immediately. So I walked with the EQ and maybe something else small I can't remember. But I kept returning, occasionally with a friend to see if Bill would turn up something interesting or come to nicer terms with me as I was killing him with kindness and interest in giving him money and taking things off his hands. One day I walked in and implored : "Bill I've got some money burning in my pocket! Talk to me, tell me what you have for me." So he looks around and says "well I have these four display cabinets here" and proceeded to sell me on how nice they are. Glass shelves, top and sliding doors, mirrored backs, each one 4' x 3 1/2' x 18" and in nice condition. "How much?" "Well..." he hesitated "I'll take $20 apiece for them." "$80 for all four?" "Yes." "OK, I don't know what I'll do with them, but yes I'll take them all. Don't sell them to anybody else." I said closing that sale. "What else do you have?" I would ask again and again when I visited. At last for $10 here I got a small Sony condenser microphone, $15 an 1970's top of the line Wollensak home tape recorder with needle meters, $10 another rectangular Sony condenser microphone and eventually the Sony cassette-corder for $80. Here it occurred to me that before I bought my Sony digital camera this year I'd never owned a piece of Sony equipment before. Not because I didn't want it, I just knew I'd never be able to afford it before and here it was, all on sale from the island of discarded technologies. My cassette-corder came in it's original 1982 packaging with swell carrying case and in seventh heaven I was! When it came time to claim the glass for the display cases at last there was the opportunity I was waiting for. Bill said that there were extra pieces of glass in the basement. Did I want to go down and help him get them? Ah the basement was sure to have a wealth of obscure things in it and this was the opening I was looking for. Looking around I asked him, like a kid at a candy store about anything odd that I saw laying about. A massive oscilloscope here, a working defibrillator prototype there, two giant built-in home speaker systems, ham radio, dot matrix printers, dozens if not scores of unrelated things that perhaps only shared that you ran current through all of them. So I helped move the glass and pointing here and there asked "what about this suitcase here, Bill?" "Oh that's a Sony case for a video..." this and that. "Really? Can I see in it?" So we look in it and it's nifty - square and slightly puffy on the outside between the size of briefcase and a suitcase with wood on the inside for structure. "This is kinda cool. I like this. What about this Bill?" "Oh? You can have that." "Really? Thanks." As we arrive upstairs again I ask him about this A/V cart I saw him put in the sun a few days earlier. "What about this Bill? How much do you want for this? $5? !0? 15? 20? 40? 70? 90? 120?..." "Oh this is a nice cart. Metal construction. Good caster wheels, (etc.). How about $15?" "OK I'll take that too, but I can't fit that in my car so I'll have to come back for it." For weeks we went back and forth on this wireless transmission device that had a 200 foot range and was intended to send the signal to a video recorder with and 1/8" output. Bill wanted $50 for them. He had a few of them and I wanted to see about getting more than one at a reasonable price but he wasn't interested. At last one day he says "why don't you try one for $35 and see how it works for you". So I landed a Sima brand wireless unit that's powered by a pair of AAA and a 9V to add to my battery powered tour setup. One day I show up and Bill's not there and I'm talking with his wife. Bill has a really genial, smiling nature and looks healthy for an old codger. I've been noticing a picture besides the cash register reprinted from the internet of a few WWII ships, cruisers with a larger ship toward the center. It had crossed my mind that Bill might have been in WWII but I did some math in my head and thought you'd have to be at least 80 or so to have been in the war and I doubted seriously Bill was that old. So I asked his wife if he was in the navy in the war and when she confirmed it I said "But how? Bill would have to be at least 80!?!" and she readily admitted "oh he was 15 when he joined the navy! They would take you if you were warm blooded in the day!" So later I ask Bill and he served on the Marklab, the center ship in the picture. Then he served on land working with telegraphs in Seattle. He said the most impressive and majestic sight in his life was on the Marklab with six ships to the left and seven to the right in the crisp North Pacific air. "If you're interested in cassettes" he tells me afterwards "you might want these" as he lead me to one of the shelves in the back. "I hate to see these things go to the dumpster and it's nice to know someone can do something with them". He then hands me a pile of strange test tapes for wow, flutter, tension, speed and the like. "These were very expensive in the day" he said handing the odd diagnostic tapes. "What about those mini cassette ones over there?" I asked about on a nearby shelf. "Oh? You can have these too." Bill's is just down the street five or six block from my new apartment. So before he closes I walk over there one day to fetch my A/V cart: stylish black number with chrome crossbars and raised angled and smaller shelf resting high above the lower two shelves. I talk Bill into looking around in the basement again and he asks for the second time in a few days "Do you want a defibrillator?" So I said, as I was scavenging for this and that piece of junk he'd give me for free, "Why don't I bring the cart down here and load some things on it?" So onto the cart went a mad pile including the defibulater that Bill and his friend made and shopped around at a convention hoping to get interest in manufacture, a falling to pieces Motorola film to video conversion unit that supported only obscure standards and was quickly dropped by Motorola, the ham radios, a 50 pound 1970's receiver, a broken turntable, rolls of cash register tape, and other detritus. Up the short incline I pushed the loaded cart as Bill steered and soon, off like some mad technohobo I went pushing the cart down the street to my house. I had to push it a block against traffic until I could navigate it to an off-street. There I was in a sportscoat and tie sweating the fall heat as the ham radios repeatedly jump of the cart onto the pavement from vibration. All the time I'm on a tight time limit as I'm to pick up my girl Mariana at her mom's in under a half hour. At last as I make it to the curb by my house and I'm desperately trying to naiveté this without unloading the whole thing my neighbor at last comes to the rescue. Together we heft it up and take it down the sidewalk, through the gate and wooden fence gate toward the back where I can abandon it sight unseen to the world as I rush off to pick up Mariana. Now I've dragged all but one display case up to my apartment and there is one in each room: kitchen, living room and bathroom. I sold the fourth case to my boss for a modest profit. The Sony suitcase, (6" x 21" x "17" ) is my new kit tour case. The A/V cart has my studio on it. The receiver and Wollensak were useless. The Sony gear is part of my awesome new mobile studio, the deck and mics delivering super quality recordings and open capabilities. Both the EQ and Walkman have two headphone outs for instance allowing effect sends or feedback loops. So that is the story of Bill, the Marklab, me and my new equipment! It's already been used for ZH27#'s 802, 803 and 804 and will surely be part of my live tour kit. Glee.

November 8, 2003

800 & Counting!

Ruthlessly putting to rest all zidsic references was the only way forward and, as extensive an activity as it was, at least it gave me incentive to improve the site again. Approaching my 800th release I was focused on audio concerns but soon after I turned to fixing the website. Two motivations to have a definitive '800-era' site were (a) enlarged webserver space in November finally allows my design some breathing room and (b) ZH27.net on cd rom [released first as ZH27 Story] needed updating.

My yearlong obsession with new and updated covers produced hundreds of fine replacements for outdated and ugly designs. 804 pages now exist with high resolution covers (usually under 400k) for every release with background information, reviews, contributor listings and details wherever possible.

Audio sections listing scores of releases have be redesigned using frames to make them friendlier to browse. You can click instead of scroll your way through the alphabetical and chronological listing of all 804 releases whose links have all been checked for accuracy. And at last the importance of the collaborators page is matched by improvements in design.

Some of these changes were made in the middle of writing this missive in fact as I was mulling over ways to improve perennially difficult but highly useful pages. Repeatedly going through the pages of my site has allowed me to apply consistency and uniformity to parts that were developed ad hoc. It's funny how I will intrinsically know for some time that I have problem pages or sections of my site and I'll do anything but fix them. Either I feel it will take of time and work or I cannot see for the life of me a way to solve the design problem.

I was left wondering recently what I might feel like if I have no work to do on my site. I'm not sure I can be uncritical enough to allow myself the luxury of finding out! At least having the feeling that I have my site in order will give me the frame of mind that I can open myself to other insane projects that are massive time sinks.

Recently I've been letting my friends and coworkers know of my productivity, the 800 and all, and after the shock wears off inevitably people will say "well you'll be at 1000 soon". Sure, I'll just go home and bake a quick 200 releases... be right back! I just remember how long it took to hit this landmark and think how much harder I work on my new stuff than before. It's some legitimate effort to get 50 releases out a year, so I'm clearly 4-5 years away from 1000 if I raced for it!

And I'm not convinced that there's any rush. I'm concerned about what I need to do and how I can learn new things in the process of doing new work. Productivity numbers are just signposts along the way - the journey is 27 years, not a specific number of releases. But the work not only includes audio and networking but just keeping up and doing work of some sort and keeping myself open to new options through networking and physical sound experimentation.

A world of thanks to everyone who has been sending me one minute collaborative wonders the last few years and keeping me busy! I'd like to do my next Zanstones solo Eurotour in January 2004 and hope to meet some excellent people I've only written then. Until then, I'm back to work in the ZH27 mines with a big 'ol smirk on my face.

November 2003

tweeking and quantisizing again

Happy again I make this report about this world I love so much which involves creation, networking, collaboration and the stretching. mystery hearsay and I decided that the true intense spirit of audio networking multitasking was coined in the word QUANTISIZE. Most important thing is to have multiple machines doing some work while you are doing the art directing, creative and organization activities. It's important to have a wealth of things that need to be done and some systems to make molehills out of mountains of work. So today I have been making covers, digitizing classic Zanstones tapes, dubbing cdrs, distributing new cds into packages in my second round of mail-out, and uploading zh27 001-350 covers to my old zids.net site. Doing as many of these concurrently as possible is the spirit of quantisizing I'm invoking. Oh, I forgot to mention how excellent this feels! Crank up the tunes and change my world piece by piece. Improve the zh27 story until it's irresistible. One thing that took quite some time is hiving off 350 of my cover graphics to a secondary site to be able to get zh27.net live cost effectively. And endless parade of search and replace routines with bbedit until I achieved a workable solution. In the long run I was able to put 600 covers up at the place that used to host zids.net. The next whirlwind of excitement was the CLAN harsh noise contact list updates. I posted to various yahoo lists about CLAN coming alive. Then I surfed the Contact List of All Noise online checking weblinks and some e-mail links. I'm not sure we should be shocked that a number of puerile named acts' aol and geoshitties accounts had gone tits up and came for a culling. Concurrently with the contact list update I've been working on my You, Me, Us and Them revival. This project from 1987-88 came alive this year with five new releases. So I'm digitizing the remaining 10 masters that were still analog. After these next two are processed this will become the first ZH27 project with all releases available on cd! The last few weeks I concentrated on converting Bodycocktail, Zanoisect and Zanstones, but each project is so big there are a few masters on DAT that I've not taken to cd. I'm approaching the halfway mark in master tape conversions and I should be excited that I've come this far as quickly as I have. But I can't help but be anxious for it to be much closer to finished. If I remain focused and thing go well it's possible by the end of this year I'll be done. The process is kinda funny so I can describe it here quickly. I covert a wealth of cassette masters onto the Quantize computer and when the hard drive fills up I start duplicating. After a handful of each are duplicated I make master cds and erase most of the files from the hard drive, only to start over again. And while the duplicating is going on with one computer I'm printing covers with my iBook. The duplicated cds sit in plastic 50-cdr plastic tubs until they are picked to go in an envelope to their new owner. Appropriately enough the composing of this narrative has been interrupted repeatedly by that which it describes. With that loop closed I bid you good day.

July 2003

How I Saved $10,000 in a Day

Ah I was SO excited to have my new domain name Z27.net I jumped right into updating everything in sight. My website - hundreds of pages, covers -over 420 revised and many seriously improved, contacting my network -absolutely!! I set up a new short contact e-mail Z27@india.com to put on all printed and online material. When I registered Z27.net with GoDaddy.com I supplied a South African e-mail account I use. The false info I put in that account when I set it up years ago didn't jive with the real information I used to registered my new domain and I lost Z27.net in the process! It took me a week or so to figure out what had happened and in the meantime Z27.net was bought by some Argentineans. I contacted them (translating using babelfish.altavista.com, thank heavens!) to find out what they were doing with this domain. They were very nice when I asked them what it might take to get it back. They had spent quite a bit of money working on this including promotions and they said $10,000 US would be all they would consider. Anticipating this I went online to internic.com to find another inexpensive domain register. I'm sparing you the painful story of my experience with GoDaddy and suggesting that you use this nice nerdy inexpensive site I found instead. I registered ZH27.net and plan to keep that domain through 2011, the remainder of my 27 year mission. I was thinking how much more painful and drawn-out I could have made this missive. Yet I'm just waiting to spring on you the wicked news that I've fixed the 420+ covers within a day of getting my new domain and saved $10.000. How about that.

January 2003

Remake/Re-model looking back all I did was look away

Remaking and re-modeling old covers is a fascinating project I'm hard at work on lately. Currently I'm using my friend Greta's scanner to finally scan negatives from photos I took during my Zan Francisco 1993 tour in Spain. It's long been an obsession of mine to get these digitized. I have some low resolution versions I scanned a few years ago that I've been using extensively for ZH27 cover graphics. I take some of these pictures and work with them long enough until I feel I have achieved the visual essence of the audio intention of the recording. Fortunately for me I don't have to explain the nature of the link between the visual and the graphic because it is often quite personal and abstract. I've long held great store in protecting what I call the "not know" about my releases so that people could have the most uncontaminated initial listening experience. My mother has long said "You only have one chance to create a first impression." It's been my belief that when you know beforehand what makes up and abstract creation you lose the discovery and unique conclusions you draw when you know nothing of the origins of the work. It is what you do "not know" about the work that add the mystery and curiosity to your initial encounter with it. After you familiarize yourself with the work, then it is great to find out more about how the piece came to be. At this point, after you have come to like the work on your own terms, you get more out of any auxiliary information you find about it. Initially there are three levels of meaning to ponder in relation to a ZH27 release: the audio, the title and the cover graphic. Here at ZH27.net I sometimes offer a fourth clue when I write about the release and this is inspired by the Hal Book. Hal McGee once told me he was in the process of writing a book where he divulged everything he could remember in relationship to his tape releases. Years ago I started my own Hal Book- style documentation of my releases. I knew if I didn't start doing this with releases right after I put them out I'd lose valuable insight into my own working and theoretical processes. I then go back to older releases and fill in information as my memory serves both with and without listening back to the work in question. In this process I am as candid and open as possible for if there is a joke or a trick I'm up to I want to divulge it before I forget what it was. That's because my 27 year mission to explore new audio realms is not undertaken dispassionately. Much of what is recorded is ironic, jocular, contrarian, obscure jabs at the status quo. Initially the listener is to figure out for themselves where I am heading, what I'm getting at, and the like. But I don't care to leave interested listeners in the dark forever and that's why I'm at work on my Hal Book variation. I'm hoping that if you already have releases of mine you'll use ZH27.net to find out more about them, download new covers and perhaps gain new understanding of these works. And be assured I have much more in store for you as new digital tools extend my creative reach.

January 2003

27 Changes

I was nothing in 2002 if not a person willing to change old ways of existing. It became an approach in itself after a while: looking at screwed-up situations and opening up my mind to different ways to win, instead of choosing the same known loosing solutions. The best example is my vocation through the year. I spent half the year in doing medical data entry, took a month throwing myself into my first sales job and finished the year serving food at a fancy restaurant in my neighborhood. I acknowledged the reality that until one year after the economy recovers there will be no work in advertising and graphic design in this town. And when the jobs finally return I can count on making $5000 less than I made when i last worked in the industry. If my finances were not a significant factor at ZH27 I would not even bring up the subject here. But as always my fiscal situation directly relates to networking and audio activities... the more spare cash I have the more those factors thrive. Additionally my state of mind is influenced by my relative poverty or wealth and that mindset is reflected in my audio work and my interest in doing ZH27 activities. 2002 had just the right amount of releases: 36. Nine years I've done more releases and nine years I've completed less. Networking was extensively achieved online as I only afforded two postal mailings. My web presence was in disorder much of the year, yet in the last few weeks pulled off a massive effort to more than make up for the slack. With the new identity of Z27 I surged into action renovating and updating everything previously known as zidsic and zids.net. All covers needed new contact information and while revising this I often re-typeset and added color to older covers. I set up a new short e-mail account Z27@india.com to put on all releases. Indeed after all this effort over 525 pages with 425+ updated covers will be online. I am in my second month of trial separation from 95% of my possessions as I hunt for an apartment while my stuff is in storage. I have my computer, my mobile audio gear, some clothes and a modest number of personal effects. At first it seemed to be transitional and I didn't get a lot of things done. Then I decided to start obsessing on things that I could do while I don't have all my stuff to distract me. Thus in the last six weeks or so I have been pouring a huge effort into the digital aspects of my networking and label activities that I can use my iBook and an internet connection to improve. So on the floor of various apartments, online at the library in Skid City Mall and sometimes as I hang out at friends houses, I'm busy updating webpages, databases, covers and keeping in touch with my online network. I'm really excited about all the progress I've been making and that's why you get this disjointed missive - bouncing around as I am from one thing to the next to get them done as it occurs to me - because I'm bursting at the seams to tell somebody what I've been doing. Very few of my friends here in Louisville understand or appreciate the magnitude of my undertaking here at ZH27. I've been more open about telling people about it the last few years, but it is a rare soul that groks what's going down here. The audio I've been doing since last fall has been a nice departure for me too as I'm concentrating on what I can do with portable tape recorders and my dr. sample exclusively. Just as the world is giving up tape decks and taking studios into computers I'm making sure I've not lost touch with my analog roots. I plan to release ZH27 works on CD instead of tapes, but the exploration continues in my analog world to explore new sonic realms. Finally, I'm searching on the digital horizon for new realms to take ZH27 into and there are some promising technologies I plan to embrace to extend my expressive reach.

January 2003

A bold identity change

Zan's 27 year mission - most importantly including audio exploration and networking - is now known as ZH27, with online presence at ZH27.net. The name shift comes from an enlightened view of my activities. Most importantly from a theoretical standpoint zidsick, zidslick, elevation of anxiety, fragrant complications, delegated obscurities and zidsic have all been aspects of the ZH27 work in progress. At ZH27.net the remaining references to zidsic will be in the catalogs and apb's. When zids.net passed on I was slow to recognize the significance and for over six months limped on oblivious to the opportunity it presented. Five years ago when I chose zids.net as my online identity I was transitioning from the zidsic label name while maintaining a link to the past. I was interested in moving away from the "sic" aspect of the name which I have been concerned about for some time. But even in this transition I kept the label known as zidsic. Thus I only took a hesitant half step the first time. I lost the zids.net domain in spring 2002 and didn't ask the actual new owner about getting it back until mid-December. He said it was not for sale and even then it took a few minutes to recognize this as an opportunity and not a disaster that I had been thinking it was for the last six months or more. I ran through a range of unacceptable alternatives until it occurred to me to start from scratch and develop a name that was brief and to the point. This time I was only concerned with holding onto the "Z" so I had lots of room to work in. Next I felt I prefer the .net suffix to the .com, since the former just seems to imply commerce and the ".bomb" aspect of the internet. Net implies network which is exactly what my activities are all about, using the same logic that kept me from choosing zids.com to begin with. The number 27 has been my mom's favorite number for such a long time that it morphed into becoming mine over the years as I noticed this number to the exclusion of most others as I walked through life. Most importantly as it relates to networking, my audio world and my online presence, it is the number of years that my mission "to explore new audio realms" extends. Thus it seemed most natural to choose ZH27 at an abbreviation for my activities. So first I chose ZH27.net to replace zids.net at my online domain name. Then a day or two later I codified my feelings while talking on the phone to Zurich. ZH27 was to replace zidsic as well as zids.net. Then the process I jokingly think of as "Stalinization" begins, where I wipe out all official references to zids.net and zidsic and replace them with ZH27. (Just like how Stalin would make people "unpersons" by wiping out all official references to them after they were purged.) Truth be told I felt a pang of sacrilege or destruction during the process. A pang of nostalgia for the name that has served me for 18 years and represented my activities was only to be expected. I felt the same way when I was changing over from an old way of keeping tape covers to a new, improved way.

December 2002 - January 2003

Obtuse Drift >> November 2002

Clocking in from mid-November, your host Zan Hoffman. My obtuse drift over the year nets some curious activities and achievements here at zids.net and zidsic.

Seems like I could create long painful list of this year's trials and tribulations but I neither want to dwell on these things, nor make an issue out of them in what should be an upbeat missive to my friends. It's these interesting and trying times that help me realize who and what really matters in my life. I'm grateful to have such a wide range of excellent friends who believe in me and offer support when things get tough. It would be a shame if I didn't mention some women Greta, Bette, Judith, my sister and mom for standing by me when my outlook appeared poor. This tally of events below makes worthwhile the anxiety of dealing with the freaky stuff going down in my life.

Doing as many recordings as I do seems an important exercise in doing original and new works that each time locate new ways to express my present condition. Getting out of the studio and improvising live using the lessons I've learned is a very exciting thing to be doing, keeping things fresh and unexpected which I thrive on. 10 Zanoisect, 8 Zanstones, 3 Your Life Has Been..., 3 Prostitution of..., and 10 other varied releases are this years zidsic work to date.

In the first six months of the year I played seven solo shows, the six of them constituting my first solo Zanstones experimental tour of my own town. I played non-music venues (galleries and stores) and only the first one at Artswatch had an audience/performers dynamic. For each Louisville show I gathered sounds within 4 blocks of the venue and composed the whole thing the same day of the show. The deadline for the Artswatch show was grueling and I barely made it under the wire. It was a very interesting and distinct show as I did it with my buddy Charlie Newman who read his dramatic poems in between concrete pieces.

At long last the live experimental music scene is budding in Louisville and there are few problems finding places to play out as galleries, warehouses and the like are finally sprouting up. Louisville is ten years behind the rest of the world it seems, and we are finally getting the large warehouses to host multimedia art and music events that every other city was opening throughout the 1990s.

Since these venues have been opening there have been people in town who I've written for quite some from D.C., Puerto Rico, France, and Slovakia. So I got to hang out with and hear live performances by my networking buddies in V., Cornucopia, UltraMilkmaids and Black Orchid this year. That's new and exciting for me.

Sapat is the name of the first improvisation group that I've joined following an invitation of a new young friend Kris Abplanalp who lives nearby. The membership is fluid and ranges from three or four to ten or twelve. I'm not alone in playing a number of different instruments that various members bring.

We practice every Thursday at Kris' apartment and for a while I brought a different instrument to each practice, the drawer, accordion, snow shovel, newman's zither, dr. sample, etc. "Carnival of Equivalencies and Inconsistencies" is the first composition I've done using my recordings of various practices and live shows.

This summer I traveled to Seattle to see my buddy Chilly Chill before he graduated from University of Washington with an architecture degree. It was my first visit, crammed into a short weekend and it was delightful until then end when I realized I lost my return frequent flyer voucher and had to find $400 for a return flight ticket. I did an informal show in an architecture lab there after gathering sounds throughout our tour of an appropriately rainy Seattle.

My first flight to Chicago this year I brought audio gear and was recording some abstract works in the hallway at my local airport before departure. Amusingly, enough people found this low key activity disturbing to get someone to officially tell me to quit, all of which I have on tape. In case you're not hip to the gameplan, the holy grail of making strange field recordings is to get some square fool to shut you down because they are confused and intimidated by things they don't understand... and naturally to get it all on tape. I'll be taking this and some other mobile audio I recorded during trips this year and create another Zantrip 2002 release.

So I've been to Chicago three times this year each time getting a distinct cultural fix. First time with Greta and her Chicago friend we went to Albert Baba's new digs for unparalleled live Assyrian music, belly dancing and superlative middle-eastern food. Second time I hooked up with a girl I met at a rave in Seattle who shared the same plane with me from Seattle to Chicago months earlier. We did a walking tour of downtown loop at night checking out classic historic architecture and eating ice cream in the rain. Third time the Viper, Charlie Newman and I went to a great show at the MCA about Archigram. We also ran through the Art Institute breezing by their phenomenal collection.

My 15 x 1 minute project continues to return great submissions from my networking friends, including in many instances new contacts from the internet. I worked also with some poet friends Charlie Newman, Ron Whitehead and Michael Pollock, the latter from Iceland. At least ten excellent new releases have come out of the submissions I've received postally in 2002.

I've been starting yahoogroups as a convenient way to manage mass e-mail to specific groups to people I write and I just recently developed zidsnet@yahoogroups.com St. post my APB's to. This is the first APB to go out this modern way. Naturally I'll put these up on my site for archival purposes. Surely there is much more I could say but this covers many of the varied things I've been up to in 2002. I figure I may have been in and out of contact with people this year and this is a groovy way to catch everyone up on my latest exploits.

Stay Beautiful Y'all

your friend Zan.

800 - a peek into the mysterious zidsic numbering system

In an obscure corner of the zidsic empire a crisis was brewing. In my mind I was dreading the upcoming 800th zidsic release. Allowing as I have been of eccentricities of old in numbering releases, something had to change or there would be a disaster in my zidsic numbering system. The dilemma has it's roots in the mid-1980's when zidsick was nearing 100 releases. After 100 an illogical numbering system began where the zidsic number no longer reflected how many releases existed to date*. In an artificial attempt to keep the number of zidsic tapes at 100 I started creating sub-labels for compilations, Minóy collaborations, etc. These releases used zidsic numbers completely out of range of the number of zidsic releases to date. So from the point where I had around 100 tapes until I had over 450 releases there was no concordance between the release number and chronology of release date. There was a 'house cleaning' of sorts at zidsic as I approached 500 releases and a major effort was made to have the zidsic number reflect the actual number of zidsic releases to date. This was surprisingly difficult, but the change was effected, with a minor loophole**, in the 470's. But there was still trouble stored up as many existing releases had zidsic numbers higher than 500. This number doubles as a unique identifier in my FileMaker database which I use to keep track of recordings and who I send things to. Changing a zidsic number after it has already been assigned is a somewhat elaborate task. The '800 Crisis' I've been dreading involves lots of releases with zidsic numbers in the 800 series which needed to shift before they crashed with upcoming release numbers in 800's. So at last in late July 2002 I started tackling the 800 drama. First there needed to be numbers earlier than 440 to use as new zidsic numbers for those releases with 800 numbers currently. The first and most crucial data change occurs in my "zids master" FileMaker database. This took hours as I carefully noted in each case what the old number was in case I needed to know that in the future. Crucially I decided that I could avoid a lengthy second step involving re-keying the new numbers into my database of who I've sent releases to. This step is what was keeping me from tackling the project to begin with as this is over 600 records! I mistakenly thought these two steps would be all that was necessary to do until I remembered covers with 800 numbers needed changing too. I have digitized many of my old xerox covers and updated them with contact addresses, web and e-mail contact information and the zidsic numbers. Fortunately I used a standard typefont and type size for this so the task was much easier for that convenience. As this task approached completion I was further lulled into thinking my work was done until I realized my website has many of these covers and there is quite a bit of editing to do up there. Yikes! It took a few more hours to subdue that problem. And now, to the best of my knowledge, I have officially reclaimed the 800 series, so I'm free to create the next 140 releases in peace. I'm a few years away from sweating the 900's, but I know that will be even more hassle than the 800's! * I was worried about having so many releases that it would confuse people. So I thought I would replace old releases I wasn't as proud of with newer works. I would number the new work with a one in the hundred place (i.e. zidsic 17 when replaced would be zidsic 117 under the new system). This way I could build up a label with 100 excellent releases. But once I was close to that I needed more room and I can't remember which came first, the decision to go to 127 (27 being a lucky number of mine) or to start mini/sub labels to house specific types of releases. The later idea allowed three extra labels to sprout: Elevation of Anxiety [Minóy collaborations], Fragrant Complications [compilations] and Delegated Obscurities [releases purged from the 127 made available again]. It was at this point my numbering system started using 900's for the EoA release, 800's for various other works, 300's for compilations, etc. ** I've never mentioned online this loophole before now. A virulent mixture of convoluted and obscure purposes, rather difficult to explain, has kept this detail of the inner-workings of my label hush-hush. But now I have the context and the excuse to shed light on this loophole as it relates to this discussion of the zidsic numbering system. The origin of the loophole is the time mentioned above (before zidsic 500) when I was trying to get the numbering system on track again so when I put out zidsic 500, it would be my 500th release. Somewhere in the 470's I believe I got on track again, and then I worked backwards as best I could until around 450 renumbering works from the recent past into the new chronological system. But I was aware that on occasion old recordings show up that I want to officialize, unarchive, and release. I didn't want these to get new zidsic numbers. So, being the master of all zidsic rules and regulations, I created a loophole. I left some numbers in the 400's*** free to accommodate unachieved recordings**** that predate the point in fall 1996 when zidsic numbers became chronological again*****. *** Since 1996 was a massive year for Bodycocktail (with 26 new releases) I had most of their releases in the 400's. When I shifted backward chronologically all other 1996 releases I went ahead and gave all the early Bodycocktail new zidsic numbers, sequentially in the 400's. **** I believe the "loophole" releases in question are: 458 - Reconstituted Grandbrother 442 - Zanstones 45 - Alive in the era of TRuth 441 - Bodycocktail - Enlivened Circumstances 440 - Larb - Eye Sows ***** 455 is the point where zidsic #'s are chronological again, but 475 was where I actually started using the system. i.e. 455-474 were works renumbered into chronological order months after they were created.

7-30-2002

multi-track weekend extravaganza

Yesterday, the seventh of July, was not the traditional lazy Sunday at zidsic. I was up fairly early and started to work on an 8-track master tape I had been dreaming up the previous evening. A wealth of recordings enter the realm of zidsic, both from my episodes of sound gathering and creation and via my postal network. I have been putting unused, or under-used, recordings into a small portable tape rack beside my couch where I can mull over their potential use. Once such mulling episode Saturday night inspired Sunday's recording session. What was intended to be one project turned into two, amusingly enough. I had a work with some completed remixed noise filling nearly half a tape and I wanted to pull together some neglected 8-track masters and finish that tape up. Plus I wanted to use a variety of material I'd been unearthing the last few weeks in a new multi-track work. This turned into two project instead of one when the latter became a 26 minute work and the former required only 15 minutes or so. In the process of doing this I had been debating shifting some multi-track masters from one rack to another to improve access and accountability. So as a useful diversion I decided to shift 8-track masters out of the pink rack which is less accessible, into the massive new rack which has much better egress. I would put 4-track masters from the new rack into the pink rack since I no longer have a 4-track machine and these are much less important to have accessible now. For 17 years I've built tape racks that hold between 200-300 tapes out of standard wood elements from my garage or a lumber store. In two new racks I built I accidentally used wooden slats that were too deep so I've taken to putting an invisible row of tapes behind the visible one (laying flat). This still made the visible tapes not easily accessible since they are flush with the wood slats, so yesterday I contributed a second invisible row. In the process I made more room for new tapes, as about 70 tapes make up an invisible layer, and made getting tapes out of the rack simple now. The zidsic release number, marked with a sharpie marker on the spine of the tape shell, has been added to all the 8-track masters recently. This was a massive undertaking since I've been using this machine for three or more years and generated hundreds of master tapes. But now if I wanted to remix a certain release I could find the master tape with ease. When the 8-track tapes were moved to the new rack I returned to making my new work, having unearthed some obscure unfinished 8-tracks in the before-mentined process. Back and forth I went between filling up the noise tape, working on the new 8-track and organising my multi-track masters. For hours this went on until the noise work was completed: Zanoisect 69 - Frisky Edge Core, the new 8-track work was finished: Zanstones Ode to Contentious Fussy Lovelies and I had made further headway with my tape organising. I made remarkable headway putting zidsic numbers on to 4-track masters, able to determine the origin of nearly half of them. It's this kind of busy zidsic housekeeping that goes unseen but without which the label would be much more chaotic and unaccountable. These kind of tasks that I have to invent for myself to do since only I see the need for the work to transpire, and once I do it the system itself benefits from this increased proffesionalism. This translates into making life easier for myself in the future. Managing 750+ releases requires setting up systems to make it enjoyable to create new works. I've been fussing extensively with this concept since 1997 when I was approaching 500 releases. If I don't have systems in place that make it easy for me to put out a new release then I'll be less likely to want to create new works because of the hassle. Things were this way in 1989 after the big blur of 1988, and like the way the depression affected our parents, I was uninterested in feeling that way again. Covers, catalogs, website, data-tracking and managing the physical assets, tapes, masters, ephimera related to the work... this detail work as it relates to each and every zidsic release is daunting. But I've made it as low-hassle as possible over the years while improving the quality of the data I manage and can pass onto interested parties via my website. I look forward to the future when more of my zidsic assets are digital and to that end I think about organizing things now so that I can make the transition easy when the time comes.

7-8-2002

Hi-Low 2001

This first year of the new millennium has been one of sweeping contrasts and creating a little checklist of 2001's eventful moments should help make my case clearer.

Job-No Job
January, May-September, late December vs February-April, October-mid December

Health-Sickness
My health has varied over the year and the massive health scare has been my father's battle with acute leukemia since late September

Hi-Fi vs Lo-Fi
I've willfully embraced both low and high fidelity equipment and recordings this year. From using portable tape decks, the lowest fidelity setting of my dr. sampler and kid instruments to my high-tech conversion of a third of the zidsic masters to cdr format. Include my first-time use of fancy pc audio composition tools versus my willful use of portable decks that give particularly brash recordings

New Peaks
In the beginning of the year I did a massive overhaul of my covers including printing lots of color covers, scanning old black and white ones, and making new files for all covers (made possible with the generous help of leigh and bob). While in DC this summer I digitized a third of my zidsic releases to cdr and a quarter of them to mp3 format at Contorted and Land of Ladno Studios. Then I reached various productivity landmarks such as:
+ Zanoisect and Bodycoctail battled it out for the title of second most productive zidsic project, each with over 60 releases available
+ Zanstones completed the 100th release blasting up to 111 by years end
+ the 107th Zanstones work was the 700th zidsic release
+ by year's end I had completed a tape a week on average for 2001
+ this boosted my overall productivity rate so that since my labels inception in fall 1984 I've averaged releasing a tape every 8 days

Here-There
Splitting my time between DC and Louisville was a first for me and I think I took to the strange situation in a robust and positive manner. It was a high being in DC on July 4th and a sobering reality-check to be there on September 11th and the aftermath.

Say It!
Not one to shy away from saying what I mean this year has brought forth perhaps a record number of APB's pouring over my feelings and thoughts throughout the year

New Born-Back From the Dead
I was able to start some exciting new projects this year including but not limited to second violin, VZL and patina. And I was able to continue various projects from previous years such as buddy if you like our music go to the vet, your life has been... for you, mechanic demonic azrael, masters of the ungentlemanly art, here be monsters, creamy porn stars plus the mainstays of bodycocktail, zanoisect and zanstones.

Read All About It
I have not had as much time as I wish to read the Economist and Louisville's local Business First publications to keep abreast of current affairs, but I've been reading books quite a bit to keep the brain humming.

With-Without Women
My lovelife sparked early in the year and then my lands laid fallow through the rest of the year. This summer I saw tragically little of my precious daughter Mariana, but this fall I was her daycare for a few months which was blissful.

Friends Near-Far
I've sparked new relationships by internet and post this year with marvelous outcome such as my new collaborations with Crypt from Madrid and Milkies from France. And I've lucked out hooking up with old friends in person like Lampshade and Zurich in DC and Rinus who came from Europe for a timely usa visit. And I met lots of interesting new people in DC and Chicago.

Three-Ways - naming names, my taskmaster, etc.

- nuts and bolts
Here is a missive about the nuts and bolts aspects of zidsic that perhaps I keep in my head which I'm willing to shed light on. Intentional or not a mystery will surely enshroud aspects of my large label until I openly discuss details of my activities. Over the years there have been varying levels of intent to obscurify various things at zidsic, but lately I've been eager to open up in general so here comes another attempt to demystify my zidsic empire.

-eye me mine
I am zidsic. I am zanstones, zanoisect, bodycocktail and many other things that sometimes includes collaborators either local or through postal audio actions. The temptation to use we instead of I in reference to zidsic is given into at times when I felt the need to gain credibility that a one-man-show concept doesn't seem to deliver. But the reality is it is due to my instigation, motivation, desires and willingness to do the work that zidsic as a label and the recordings that make it up exist. The high-productivity miracle that is my label is due to my energy and inspiration to leave this world a wealth of new and original audio experiences that only I'm capable of bringing forth.

-three ways
In a flash of lucidity tonight it occurs to me there are three ways that a recording develops here at zidsic. From personal source material upon which works are built is the first way. Fresh work from scratch is the second. And using external source material is the last way.
In the first instance I'm at work as a sonic explorer, and this is my earliest manner of working. I usually go out into the field with portable tape decks for this process and I more often than not work to create the soundings rather than record existing sounds and events. The studio time is spent composing with these sources using the powers of cut-up, loops and sound-on-sound.
Studio work is what constitutes the second manner of working. With or without effects I'm in a powercord bound recording situation either of my own or a friends for this process. An effort to disguise the sound source is frequently a priority.
Sometimes working alone can be a priority but in time things can sound the same in my ears and external variety is important. I often ask my friends for help. More of my friends are postal and internet contacts with home studios than local buddies. In 1985 I started soliciting forty second pieces from my home-taping postal network for my 7th Zanstones tape "40 x 40". This was the start of a long and fruitful process of collaborating with most of the people I trade recordings with, thus adding a vital new layer to our communications. So the third way of pulling together a new recording at zidsic is to call upon the continually growing international collaborative audio library I'm amassing.

-naming names
Lifting the shroud of mystery from zidsic project names I'm going to provide some history of the major zidsic groups. Titles of twentieth century artwork has long given me the appreciation for the power that a name can give to the creative product. Part and parcel of the way I am is how much fun I have with the English language taking special interest observing its misuse and twisting it in ironic and peculiar ways. Release and project titles at zidsic are my lingual playground.

Late in high school in the early eighties I was inventing group names in the new wave fashion. I remember writing list of potential names that I would call my band without really even thinking of forming a band. That I think of that now is funny as I don't recollect for a moment that I intended play one instrument, or sing, or even what role I'd play in a band, yet I was making a list of band names that I thought would be cool. One particularly silly one involved my pal Jimmy "Spiffy" Todd's nickname and mine - Capt. Spiffy and the Zanstones. A few years later when it was time to name my first experimental project I didn't hesitate to call it The Zanstones. Since putting 'the' in front of a band name was such a conspicuously 80's thing it became simply Zanstones after only two releases in 1984.

In 1985 the splinter project Zanoisect began alongside my love of wordcrashes. I took Zan+noise+sect to give it that dark industrial (second wave) naming quality.

Since 1983 I had been doing original collage postcard series that I sent to friends and mail-artists. For the purpose of doing these I maintained a folder with images and text I clipped from a wide variety of gathered visual material. Out of this came a number of the 1980 zidsic group titles. Your Life Has Been ... For You is part of a series of word collages using both editorial and advertising headlines.

Masters of the Ungentlemanly Art as well as Here Be Monsters are headlines clipped out of the Economist in the mid 1980's. The former was for an article about political cartoonists.

You, Me, Us & Them is from a snippet of dialog in The Ruling Class with Peter O'Toole. And their release "The World Sweats Into Our Brains" is a paraphrase of another line from that same great film.

Asa Nisi Masa is the phrase you speak when you find the door leading to the secret treasure according to a flashback scene in Fellini's "8 1/2". I used this metaphorically poetic name for the Felliniesque releases I do with Tim Ruth.

When I work in person with my compatriot Francisco Lopez from Madrid we take on two different names depending if we are in my home town or not. Lópezant is our Louisville-based recordings and concerts. This title has a few layers of complexity in that it involves a wordcrash of his last name and my first name spelled out to four instead of three letters. The fourth letter is crucial as the name then contains a sly reference to Francisco's deep knowledge and attachments to ants. In Spain, on the other hand I couldn't resist a fine pun in calling our project Zan Francisco.

A town paper with advertisements for local businesses in Zwolle, Holland, written entirely in Dutch and sent to me by Richard "De Fabriek" Van Dellen had a lovely English wordcrash that became the name for my new proto-new wave project: Bodycocktail. And I thought up the icon for this appropriately enough on a cocktail napkin... it's a line drawing of a martini where the glass and olive double as a body and head of a stick figure.

Grandbrother was the delightfully dysfunctional name to a crazed project of a roommate Beau Castner. It was used widely among our friends as a term of endearment. "How are you doing Grandbrother?" we would ask with overbearing sincerity when meeting a friend.

My collaboration with the Dutch brothers Henri and Albert Van Der Veen in the 1980's was named from a most amusing translation of a piece by my favorite Norwegian band Famlende Forsøk. The refrain goes as such:
Allah has no camel.
Allah has no wife.
Allah has no mustache under his nose.
Poor Allah.
Thus came the project name (no mustache under his nose). The titles of works by this project all involve wordcrashes and they are some of the earliest examples of this fascination at zidsic.

The Man Who Would PBKing is a tortured witticism playing off the title of the 1970's film The Man Who Would Be King featuring Sean Connery and based on a Rudyard Kipling novel.

Buddy if you like our music go to the vet comes from the title of a Polish tape I got from a very, very strange contact known as Zespoz Downs around 1986 or so. Both the name of the project and the release names (the later often being excerpts from Wallace Steven poems) is a conscious departure from the short names that are endemic at zidsic. And traditionally I've kept names short as I have to often hand-write the name repeatedly and long names are such a hassle to transcribe in letters, writing on tape shells and the like. But now that I have the ability to print things up using my computer I busted out some funky long titles with Buddy...

I was in a small bar in Barcelona with my new Dutch friend Rinus Van Alebeek in the fall of 2000 listening to a dj that was part of the same LEM festival the brought me to town and at which I met Rinus. The dj's name was mousedown and Rinus was wondering if this name would spell something when turned upside down. This wasn't so but I pointed out to him the opposite of mousedown is mouseup and we noticed this word worked upside down. This was the basis of the name of our new project mouseup/dnasnow.

When I was visiting my partner-in-crime Mike Honeycutt in his hometown of Memphis one time we took a shining to this asian restaurant which cooked some funky spicy Thai food. We were doing recordings and knocking ourselves out with this outlandishly hot beef and onion dish that the typo-ridden menu described as "Slikely Hot" or "so hot you will cry silently". This was during the early 90's when it was ever so trendy to name your band with a four-letter word such as Ride, Lush, Blur, etc., so we became Larb, named after the Thai dish.

Last but not least the random poetry/prose creator Jabberwocky, an extension to the Quark-XPress desktop publishing software, was responsible for churning out the name of my loop-based project. I fed the program with parts of speech using one word starting with every letter of the alphabet for each part of speech. I would have Jabberwocky generate random prose for greeking copy while designing with new typefaces I was developing at the time. This time being at my first job after the roof falling incident in 1997. When I saw the three words Creamy Porn Stars together for the first time I knew, just like when I first laid eyes on the word Bodycocktail, that my next project would have to bear that title!

-zidsic center for high-productivity audio production
I subject perhaps comes up most frequently in running zidsic is how prolific I've been. Where some people tread with fear, I run around gallivanting about with abandon. On a most personal level I am going to be glad I created such a massive body of audio because nothing I could have done creatively over the years would have captured what I've been through in my life and what I've been capable of doing at any given point in my wild life. On another hand it can't help but be exhausting approaching this subject from a defensive standpoint so frequently.
When the discussion inevitably arises nearly everyone rashly suggests that with such a large number of releases, quality must be poor in many respects to achieve such productivity. Then my brain reels at coming around to this subject from yet another angle to defending the wonder that is high-productivity audio production at zidsic.
To me it a beautiful and marvelous thing that I have created from scratch with love and panache: a body of 400 hours of original audio entertainment that has nothing to do with aol/time-warner, sony, vivendi, bertlesman or emi. This exemplifies my passion of reaching out to the world I live in to include the widest variety of noncommercial audio elements as I see possible. It's an example of how, once my enthusiasm is engaged I don't do things in half measure. This shows I am constantly capable of kicking arse within the vast domain of experimental audio. With my sensitivity and sensibilities in the auditory realm and my compositional proclivity I set forth to create a body of work like no other.
In the 1990's I began to take notice of statistics in relation to my productivity. Since then I've been conscious within any year of how I'm fairing that year versus others. This can't help but effect my propensity to create as when I have a productive year I feel great about myself. Nowadays I set informal goals for myself of between three to four releases a month on average over a year. It is a reasonably easy thing to make that many excellent releases a year as long as I get a fair amount of collaborative audio by post. I feel the challenges of doing new releases that are different than 700 other zidsic works are excellent for my development as an artist.
My studio situation improved to near perfection a few years ago as far as I'm concerned. Thus I truly feel guilty if I'm not producing lots of excellent recordings because at last I've set up a situation where it is a pleasure to make a new release.

-collectic
I confess to having a terminal collectic condition. I started collecting things as a kid and my obsessive nature has not let up... only the things I collect have changed! As this relates to networking and zidsic I started collecting tapes in trade, especially all I could from my favorite artist contacts. But soon I was more prolific than many of them and I had largely collected their entire output so I also pressured these contacts to send me original recordings for collaboration. In some cases such as Agog and John Wiggins I have many more collaborative works than official releases. This international collection of source tapes alongside my original audio research is the material used to create zidsic releases.
Thus new zidsic releases will continue to emerge as long as I keep up the fresh stream of source material to feed the conceptual and compositional processes I dream up all the time. For me this is a nice way for others to benefit from my collectic condition. At some point, as David Piff initially pointed out over 10 years ago, the collections as they relate to audio and networking shall form the basis for an intense archive.

-my taskmaster, my critic
The punishing critic and demanding taskmaster at zidsic is none other than myself. The immense amount of work that gets accomplished is an important outlet for my high-productivity keenly driven energies, and a result of my willingness to take on large projects with relish. As I get older I get a real kick out of the organization and production of complex tasks that are involved in running a label this size. The trouble I run into sometimes is starting bold initiatives and loosing track of them when new ideas take priority. So I'm always in a game of discovering old projects and deciding to abandon, finish or adjust them to fit new priorities.
I'm quite critical of the quality of what I do also, though not in a destructive way that impedes finishing troublesome works. Other people I write and know personally sometimes help critically inspire me, but only rarely do people come up with more demanding tasks or ideas that I come up with to torture my free time with. I will credit Mike Honeycutt and Jeff Surak for equal part inspiration and whip-cracking the last number of years though!
And then there are people whose works I love and respect whose enthusiasm for my work is crucial external motivation I certainly can use. John Wiggins, Yoshiaki Kinno, Tom Furgas, Adam Bohman, Richard Van Dellen, Charlie Newman and Brian Noring are a few such contacts who are especially helpful when I'm demoralized about my condition.

Now it's time for me to get back to work and quit slacking off writing this lengthy missive. Thanks for tuning in to the ongoing zidsic story.

Zan Hoffman - December 23, 2001

Fall 2001 - DRAMA! Tidbits & Digressions

Drama! Last time I checked in I was working in Washington DC and commuting home on Southwest Air twice a month and spending time with Mariana, my family, Rinus and a few Louisville friends. I arrived home in late September to be greeted with the news that my father was recently diagnosed with advanced leukemia. That changed everything. Just as I was stressing my living arrangements and future in DC this event emerged to send the signal to return home. I'll try to minimize the discussion of how my personal life has taken a whack with my father's condition, my mother's reactions, family interworkings, etc. I must note though, that the poor job market that I left in May has only gotten worse and I've re-encountered unemployment for months now. For the past few months I had also been sweating the lack of a girlfriend in six months or so, but now everything else is so intense that I've plum forgotten that worry for the time being. So the night before I left DC I threw my self a good-bye dinner at Paradise Restaurant and arranged a jam at Lampshade's studio with the crazy musicians I'd met during my stay. That taken care of I packed up the Imperial and cruised home in record time. I made one in-car tape recording on the way with my trusty high-intensity Aiwa portable deck that I bought last fall in Valencia for my final Zanstones show at the Observatori Festival. I bought the deck for playback as it's a small sliver jam box about a foot long and an inch or so thick and has two speakers, a tape in the middle and a radio tuner. This summer in DC I discovered when using it to record my Now Music Zanstones show that the Aiwa gives very bright and noisy recordings. I first used this as a feature with the Zanoisect work "Museum of Frenzy" which was recorded in various museums in downtown DC with Zurich and mixed in the open air with the Aiwa doing the mastering. On the roadtrip home I had the Aiwa in my lap as I'm driving through the mountains of western Maryland and West Virginia (passing over Negro Mountain at one point, I'd like to add) and I was singing a solitary note. The recording of this, plus the wind noise of the car, came out in an otherworldly way I didn't expect. I felt it was going to work perfectly with an Ultra Milkmaids source recording I received from France this summer. When I returned, the result of that experiment was the Zanoisect release "Mantra Milkies" (with an alternate "Milkies Mantra" mix also available). On the positive side of my return home is one excellent development. I've taken over day care responsibilities for my girl Mariana since I've been out of work. I have been spending every weekday with her in addition to my regular schedule. At first I was concerned with what I'd do with her all day long. But soon it became apparent that it was simple: we'd play, color, eat, walk my parents dog Ernie, play with Tim Ruth's girl Morgan who is Mariana's age, run errands in Eduardo my Imperial, and For fun we started pronouncing countries on my globe in the kitchen and this has led to me teaching my 2 1/2 years old girl world geography. And my patient and delightful work with her has paid off as she now knows the countries of South America, nearly all Asia and north Africa. Her pronunciation is great and sometimes hilarious as Sri Lanka becomes Shirley Lanka and Mongolia turns into a nicer Mongonia. Rinus Van Alebeek has left the building. To bring you up to speed in case you've just tuned in and have missed previous episodes, Rinus is my compatriot in audio recordings with the dnasnow/mouseup project. We met last fall in Barcelona as I played and he attended the LEM Festival in the Gracia district (word to my homie Victor Nubla there!). We soon formed dnasnow and started combining our recording efforts. I come from a background of experimental audio and Rinus is a Dutch author who also records marvelous personal historical audio works. I have heartily encouraged his audio efforts and we've kept up vibrant communication online since we've parted. This summer after returning to Holland from Spain, he was unsure of his next destination and I bugged him to visit me in America. And he did. For a few months. He arrived a few in DC a few days before Zurich and I were planning a roadtrip to Louisville. Rinus drove with us and he stayed in Louisville with Barb Hall. Barb, an ex-girlfriend from over 10 years ago who still lives around the corner from me, started writing Rinus months previously and they had formed a friendship which led to Rinus staying with her for the months he was in America. During the weekend Zurich was in town we played a twisted live show with Tim Ruth. This friendship between Rinus, Tim and Barb led to the formation of the project The Elvis Sisters. [[[When I was dating Barb there were these two characters who lived across the street: old, roly-poly sisters, one boisterous and the other quiet and henpecked. We called them the Elvis Sisters due to their matching dyed black pompadour hairdos and the real attraction was the out-to-lunch crazy way the boisterous one talked when she was scolding her sister on the way to the car. ]]] Since the impressive audio skill of Rinus is in his Sony Walkman recording techniques I constantly kept him lubricated with excesses of blank and pre-recorded tape to use to gather sound sources. The man logged over 24 hours worth of the stuff during his visit! We took all our sources and orchestrated all manner of things onto 8-track tapes. I insisted, to help in his education, that Rinus remix the whole lot of them. We finished 11 new dnasnow works while he was here and I put the finishing work into the 12th right after he left the building. After he left I redoubled my efforts to improving my zidsic empire with activities such as working on zids.net, starting and finishing recordings that have been on the studio docket for a while, using new collaborative material I've been getting in the post, putting together my next generation of mail-out, etc. Generally I've been kicking arse in such a way that people I write continually wonder how I do it. Here is some commentary about the recordings I've done this fall. After completing my first collaboration with Ultra Milkmaids I turned my attention to some blistering collaborative noise pieces sent to me from Spain by my new pal Crypt of Hinyouki. How to respect the Crypt sources yet put them to best use was difficult to conceptualize and I spent months in DC debating with myself about the best solution. The final answer involved resurrecting a one-off Spanish collaborative project from 1985 "Mechanic Demonic Azrael" and the result is massively challenging listening. "Mechanic Demonic Azrael Holotype" sent out a secret beacon to Rafael Flores who was the focus of the first Mechanic Demonic Azrael release and he proceed to e-mail me thus re-establishing contact after an absence of over 10 years. Life is beautiful, no? Lately I've been badgering my contacts to make me fifteen one minute collaborative pieces and since late summer the submissions have started arriving. The first in was my very first collaborative recordings from Chris Phinney from Memphis who I've been in contact with for over a dozen years. Our new project 'patina' is a fine and unique entry into the zidsic catalog I'm pleased to announce. Like other abstract projects of mine it's hard to describe or pin down and to say it's different from seven hundred other zidsic releases you probably have not heard either sounds like I'm being evasive. "Patina scent fondle" succeeds by exposing a variety of spaces and techniques while bonding together as a complete statement. Next on the studio docket was the third work by Second Violin. Both Zurich and I had a hand in the first work. We decided to use the nearly finished 60 minutes Zurich had assembled as part two, and concluded I would be responsible for the third installment. I had some obscure recordings Zurich and I had made in DC this summer which were overlooked for the first two releases so I culled that material. In conjunction with this I raided my massive Adam Bohman archive - over a hundred cassettes I traded for since the mid 1980s. I made a cut-up using excerpts from each side of every audio letter, live show, tour tape, project with friends, and more. Between all this material comes a very crusty and rewarding release: "Increasing Overdraft". In early November two project with Tim Ruth were finished one day after another. The third Asa Nisi Masa release "Ponder" was followed by a session with Rinus: the premier of The Natural History Museum of Sound. The latter is caught somewhere in the warp between dnasnow and Asa Nisi Masa, and the former is another twisted transonic carpet ride with Asa Nisi Masa. More one minute pieces poured in from Canada with both Ames Sanglantes and Praying Gods contributing fifteen works apiece and these inspired the latest Here Be Monsters work "A Tick for a Tack". This is nice in that it's noisier than any of the other eleven Here Be Monsters work and still lives within the framework of this project which started in January 1989. Fifteen sausages is the english translation of the Polish project XV Parowek run by my friend Bartek. His one minute tracks led to the eighth work by Your Life Has Been (...) For You, a project started in 1986 with some John Wiggins sources. I used some nice old collaborative recordings from three long-time domestic contacts: Wiggins, Agog and PBK plus some new recordings from an old Japanese collaborator Kazuhiro Ohtsuka on the work "Your Life Has Been Disturbed For You". Here is a digression worth making. I've been writing Kazuhiro since 1986 and we collaborated extensively until I lost contact with him in the late 80's or early 90's. In 1999 we bumped into each other again, but this time the arrangement has been different and rather amusing. He sends a collaborative tape with the words "please send me finished tape" written on the label. There is no letter, and the envelope is the very specific. We have been mailing collaborative tapes (him to me) and contributor copies (me to him) in this exact same envelope for about three years and there are ten zidsic releases he's appeared on during this time. So when this bandaged, taped and familiar envelope shows up in my post box I know it is time to start our next collaboration. Three more Zanstones releases to mention and class is dismissed for the day. 108-110 plus extra credit for checking out my new Zanstones pages. When Zanstones passed the 100 release mark this summer I started becoming painfully dissatisfied with the zids.net page that scrolled down for days describing each release. Impossible! Nobody in their right mind would put up with reading all that. So after bashing about a few new layouts I came to one which simply lists 25 releases and links them to solitary pages with the cover and description. I reconfigured the Zanoisect page too with all 60 releases listed on one page. I felt there was some source material I needed to make use of and this, plus some rediscovered old 8-track masters is what inspired Zanstones 108-110. The later is two Aiwa recordings of my last two Zanstones shows from Chicago and DC. Noisy business I will readily tell you. "Zanstones Breakthrough Chicago and DC" has my Deadtech show which was sparsely attended but pivotal in showing me a whole new way just as I was starting to feel nervous about the direction of my future shows. And it has an excerpt from the best attended show I did all year at an art opening at the Signal 66 gallery in DC. Plagued by no soundcheck, a late start, and sound problems aplenty this Aiwa recording comes across as intensely as I was feeling during the performance. There is a recording from the mixer from each show which tells a completely different story and this might indeed appear on another release, but this "Breakthrough" work powerfully tells of a new live Zanstones intensity. I'm very proud of the Zanstones 108 featuring guest audio by Planning & Lampshade (from DC) plus Tanja from Copenhagen. "Futile Planning Allegory" is a journey with playing and sound sources. "Squirreling Away Braggarts Rights" on the other hand was started after I uncovered an unfinished 8-track master many years old while trying to make sense of my many 8-track masters. I broke out the Indian sugar can and used 'Betty' (a gift from Zurich, the basis of an old instrument of his) to create tension on the string. I had a blast playing this instrument again which I first assembled maybe 15 years ago which I've not bothered with for over ten years. Ah, this features the fifteenth Polish sausage of Bartek's as well as some unremixed tidbits from hither and yon. A final tale of zidsic productivity before I close this missive. After I finished the 600th zidsic released in fall 1999 I had three landmarks I was looking forward to: my 100th Zanstones release, the 700th zidsic work and having 400 hours of recordings available in trade. May 14th I completed Zanstones 100 "Neue Carltones". September 6th I finished zidsic 700, the 107th Zanstones work "Elusive Instructions of Fortune". The 400 hour mark is a little more slippery to measure. Depending how you tabulate it I either reached it around November or will have clenched it with the 50th release of the year. Zanstones 110 is the 47th and I have most of December to hit that easy mark. Either way I mentioned it on my new homepage redesign, so it's 'official'. Lest people be confused that I'm only concerned about quantity I want to state that at zidsic I'm obsessed with creating an impressive number of high-quality recordings to share with the world. Oh, that's something else I finally did... revamped zids.net homepage since I realized nowhere on the page did it actually say what I do and what the site is about. See? As much work as I do, the work is never done here at zidsic. So stay tuned. Your friend in the bluegrass state, checking out.

December 4, 2001

DC5 Or how I spent my summer vacation in the capital of the US of A.

I could have picked a less interesting place to go this summer in search of work. Jeff "Zurich" Surak suggested the job market was OK in DC and in May I drove through eastern Kentucky, West Virginia and Maryland in my 1962 Imperial to find employment. By mid-May I had a job at Print 1 Printing & Copying doing computer graphic work.
While in DC I stayed with Carl Merson and Zurich and my job in Bethesda was 6 blocks away from Zurich's and a 30 minute bike ride from Carls. Zurich lives in downtown Bethesda directly by the metro stop which was a convenient way to get downtown, or to the Union Station. By June I had an arrangement with Krista that I fly home twice a month to spend 3 days at a time with our daughter Mariana.
Both Carl and Zurich have PC's that I used extensively on my quest to digitize my zidsic cassette and dat masters. I also composed releases on their systems to accomplish multi-track and overdub needs I could fulfill otherwise in the analog world.
In May I bought a new tape deck and started transferring cassette masters to cdr and mp3 formats. I did my first live Zanstones show in College Park, Maryland at a granola hut's open mic and this became "Fashionating Ideals". Zanstones 100 "Neue Carltones" was fashioned at Carl's house and studio, the first two of many Zanstones works from the summer. There was a nice and strange jam with Carl, V (James & Zurich) and myself which was remixed right before I left in late September as VZL. Late in May was a live show of Zanstones, V... and VZ at Now Music in Arlington, Virginia. More sound gathering on my part, this time at an office building construction site during a light rain storm... and ideal arena for acoustical potential in the Zanstones world. This month I also met the DC Theremin legend Arthur Harrison and I was able to play this outlandish instrument for the first time - because Arthur makes them!
At the end of May I returned to Louisville for the first time in a month to the first of a few chaotic visits. I continued to return every other weekend for four more months, each time seeing Mariana for three days and dealing with the disasters that erupted during my absence. Alternatingly it was a bill I could ill-afford to pay, a cut-off notice, someone's drunken car accident smashing my parents parked car in front of my apartment, and so on, and so forth.
June was the first month of the year I could start to feel that financial chaos was not behind every door. I was starting to pay off bills, and could on more than one occasion afford more than peanut butter sandwiches or raman noodles to eat. By this month I had digitized nearly all my DAT masters to cdr format. With my portable decks I continued to gather sound material, both playing instruments, and scraping around for sounds. On the forth of July I recorded an excellent piece of the fireworks exploding and echoing like a giant bug zapper off a nearby DC building.
Late July I started on the drawer, I believe. While brainstorming with Zurich about my next homemade instrument we landed on a drawer as a possible resonating space to wire up.
For much of the month of August Zurich's wife and child were in Moscow and we took the opportunity to get a ton of things done with our labels, projects, releases, recordings and leisure time consumption. My compatriot in dnasnow/mouseup Rinus van Alebeek arrived in Washington DC in mid August. We did a road-trip to Louisville where we did a live show with Tim Ruth (that is Zurich, Rinus and myself). Jeff and I drove back and Rinus stayed in Louisville to work on his book.
The last day in August I had long arranged a show in Chicago for my second collaboration with Joergen Teller from Copenhagen. I ended up doing a roadtrip from DC with Zurich instead and doing a Zanstones + Second Violin shows. Though sparsely attended and plagued with more souncheckless audio glitches for the Second Violin set, it was a breakthrough for me with the Zanstones set. I now see my way forward and around some barriers I couldn't see around previously. Plus it was a great time in Chicago - especially the next night for Assyrian cuisine, live music and belly dancing featuring Albert Baba and his orchestra.
At the Now Music show Zurich and I met John Rickman who knew us from our home-taper fame of old. He does recordings under the eb/sk moniker and in late August we did a show at a DC art appearing with them. They opened at the Signal 66's Sam Negro show and I was working all night gathering sounds and making a backing tape for the show. V... was supposed to play after Zanstones, but James didn't show up. The Zanstones show was muddled by no soundcheck and a PA with low-end feedback and Zurich tried to join in but couldn't get equipment to work out and it seemed like a bit of a bust all around - but the audience was large and appreciative and the recording was quite interesting.

So these last five months have not been to bad for me as I run down a quick list of...

achievements
paid bills, got out of this years debt
finally mailed out stuff for the first time this year
converted 35% of my zidsic masters to cdr format
25% of them to mp3 format
cdrs a plenty plus a binder for 200+ of them
serious museum visits
five live shows
11 new releases
dozens of audio source tapes

possessions
four art books
new jvc tape dubbing deck
cd player
new cd's and lps
the drawer
the neck (ex-betty)
1000 blank cd covers
1000 nipples
color covers and copies