All Point Bulletins

Interviews!

2006-04-03T07:03:00.000-07:00

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

2005-12-21T12:15:00.001-08:00

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

2005-12-21T12:15:00.000-08:00

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

2005-12-21T12:14:00.000-08:00

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!

2005-12-21T12:13:00.002-08:00

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

2005-12-21T12:13:00.001-08:00

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

2005-12-21T12:13:00.000-08:00

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

2005-12-21T12:12:00.001-08:00

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

2005-12-21T12:12:00.000-08:00

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

2005-12-21T12:11:00.002-08:00

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

2005-12-21T12:11:00.001-08:00

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

2005-12-21T12:11:00.000-08:00

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

2005-12-21T12:10:00.001-08:00

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

2005-12-21T12:10:00.000-08:00

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.

2005-12-21T12:09:00.000-08:00

- 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

2005-12-21T12:08:00.001-08:00

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.

2005-12-21T12:08:00.000-08:00

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

DC Trails and Trials

2005-12-21T12:07:00.001-08:00

In the beginning of May 2001 I tried a somewhat radical measure to shore up my pathetic job prospects in Louisville. I took my networking pal Zurich's advice and decamped to the Washington D.C. area to look for work. Initially I was intending to do a months worth of work and return. Once on the ground though, the reality of the situation proved different.

First, the assumption that the economy in Louisville would pick up soon and I could return to a job was a false one. If anything the situation has become worse as advertising companies across town have been laying of people in droves. Next, it took me two weeks in D.C. to locate some work and after a month on the job my finances have still not returned to normal yet.

So in order to make provisions to stay here longer I've arranged with Krista, the mother of my child, to return home every other weekend for three days to take care of Mariana. My existing arrangement entailed seeing Mariana six days a month and the new one just shifts which days those are. So I've been flying home twice a month to spend time with my precious girl Mariana.

I drove my 1962 Imperial to D.C. in the beginning of May, through eastern Kentucky, West Virginia and Maryland... an 11 hour drive. It was quite lovely really as the Imperial is an exquisite road-trip car and that part of the country is beautiful. In the trunk was clothes, my bicycle, various recording equipment and zidsic master DATs. I've been long meaning to transfer my catalog from cassette and DAT masters to CDR and MP3s and this DC visit opened up the opportunity to do this as the two people I've come to stay with both have equipment that allows for this.

Both Zurich and Carl Merson have been home-taping contacts of mine since the 1980's. Zurich lives in Bethesda with his Russian wife Tanya and their baby Maxim in an apartment, and Carl lives with his cat six miles away in a house in Wheaton. The job I found is at a copy shop/printer very close to Zurich's digs in Bethesda so it is an easy commute.

Besides the improved job market in D.C., one of the reasons I chose this area is that it allows me to accomplish much in my spare time when I'm not working. Thus I have the opportunity for converting zidsic masters, playing live shows, doing studio work, plus doing recording projects with various people here.

So far things are working out quite well. Krista is being very accommodating about this arrangement. Zurich and Carl have been helpful and flexible hosts. My job is going great as I like what I'm doing, who I'm working with and the conditions I work in. And I've been able to move the good ship zidsic forward, recording new releases, playing out live and doing a massive amount of digitizing of zidsic masters. I've met some really interesting people here such as Zurich's partner in "V." James, Carl's theremin playing/building friend Arthur and someone that knew of Zurich and me from our 80's home-taping fame who showed up at our live show in Arlington.

I've played two live shows, jammed with Carl, James and Zurich, and finished new releases by Zanstones and Zanoisect. And as of the writing of this missive on June 24th I've converted 25% of my zidsic catalog to CDR! So nobody can accuse me of inactivity.

June 2001

I just wanted to say, they all have a reason to exist.

2005-12-21T12:07:00.000-08:00

Greetings from the last day of January 2001. I have a quick idea I want to get across because there is something I need for you to know. All 678 zidsic audio releases available here have a distinct reason to exist. I find it impolite and off-putting when people suggest that not all of the releases can be good if I've done this many in such short time.

When I compile recordings and various efforts to amuse, entertain and annoy I'm driven by an imperative to do works that make a point nobody else is making. Every one of my releases exist separate from the excellent body of home-taping recordings which is my listening consciousness, yet informed by it, influenced by it, and driven by it.

I trade for all the recordings that I listen to most of my days over the last 16 years. I am very interested in the state of affairs of other home recording artists across the globe. Partly because it represents for me something uncorrupted by the music business, and largely because I'm strongly convinced that this is where the groundbreaking activities in the large field of audio arts are going on.

So it's these recordings that guide me on my way through myriad's of styles and techniques suggested or inspired by my favorite postal contacts. What I do here at zidsic is consolidate ideas, processes, jokes, and experiences into audio capsules which, over the years, build up a great picture of where I'm going and where I've been.

If I did all this in a hermetic way, exclusive of outside sonic inclusion, perhaps this whole exercise could be considered narcissistic or of only localized interest. But since 1984 I have included the people I trade recordings with into my art. That is: anyone I can beg to send me collaborative material. It is this reaching out to the world, capturing part of it, organizing it and sending it back out which gives zidsic its distinct nature as an integral part and a reflection of the home recording postal network from '84 to present.

It is good to note here that I take and give back. I don't collaborate with someone to 'ride their horse into town' as my Italian friend Onq once commented of people doing split tapes with famous act to get attention on themselves. I have a sincere interest in the widest possible palate of soundings for inclusion in the zidsic experience, and having sound collectors in the field helping me out is an eternal boon for my creativity.

Every zidsic release has a reason to exist. I'm at work this year to help tell the stories behind many zidsic releases, show the covers, suggest perhaps good beers to consume with different releases and generally bring the tapes to life. Now it's your turn to start collecting the recordings. I'm doing the hard work here, you go have some fun and listen to new zidsic releases to open up those ears of yours, ok?

January 31, 2001

BLASTOFF 2001

2005-12-21T12:06:00.001-08:00

Coming off the buzz of a phenomenal 2000, I've set some new priorities here at zidsic. I'm presently working on a zidsic 2000 review, encouraged by Jack Jordan, and I feel strongly the need to write something about the progress at zidsic in January 2001.

Since I was so productive putting out an incredible array of releases in 2000, I feel very little pressure so far this year to crank out new works. I am going into the studio as I am inspired, but I don't feel any compulsion to finish and remix works... just enjoying myself recording is enough for now.

The real energy I'm devoting to my new years resolution of banishing dysfunctional systems. This applies all over the place in my life, but since zidsic activities have been, and continue to be, such an overwhelming force in my life, naturally this is a place for the unwelcome slack to accumulate. Yes, I know "Bob" says we need more slack, but he's not checked into my wild life to see how unruly things have become.

The work at zidsic headquarters extends every direction from the moment I release a new tape. I've put systems into place in the last few years to simplify my life as it relates to putting out new releases. I've created a whole range of things to do while I listen back to the release for the first time. I jump on my computer, update my database and my website, create the cover and start the process of dubbing five copies. After printing at least six covers (or producing a series by hand), uploading the new webpages and making five dubs I can feel that I have an official release.

By pushing most of these activities into the 30 minutes of the first listen, I can relate what I'm hearing to the process to help achieve an artistic link, and I remove opportunities for slack in the production cycle. These are good things, especially considering how sketchy and drawn-out this process has been in the past. I am, to this date, still paying for my slack in the past on these counts. Tapes from 10 years or more ago without a minimum of five copies sent out in all that time, covers left unmade for years on end, insufficient data gathering about the releases themselves, and other crimes against zidsic have occurred over and over in the last 16 years.

The madness of the big blur of 1988 with over 100 releases nearly sunk the good ship zidsic in the next few years. It reached a fevered pitch in 1989 and 1990 when I felt like not recording at all for fear of adding to the overwhelming amount of things I'd already done which still lacked covers, promotion, etc. So backlogged I felt, it was nearly worth giving up to clear my head of the anxiety it caused me when I thought of all the unfinished work that needed my attention.

Happily for all involved, I persevered and, a look at my productivity over the years shows, if you know what you are looking for, my renewed enthusiasm and improved systems of making tapes easier to release. By 1996, I was back up to speed again, happily cranking out tapes left and right... the Bodycocktail years of plenty. It might appear that I am digressing from the present here, but clearly I'm communicating things I've never put to words, so this is a fine effort in that respect at the bare minimum. And actually I'm backing up so I can display a richer picture of how what I'm doing this January fits into the bigger history of zidsic and under the pretense that some people care, I continue, with a grin.

Once the zidsic system has officially released a new work, the pre-postal stage begins. Packages with new releases and letters get ready, address labels and custom forms get printed, mail-art gets prepared, packages get stuffed, all the good things that make the zidsic mailing a unique event are lovingly taken care of. Some of this activity is quite specific to the person I'm mailing to, and other parts can be done in series to help achieve a productive rhythm. It is exactly this activity which I've set to organize and streamline this January. Especially as it relates to incoming mail, letters owed, mail-art filled envelope series, and the organization of all materials related to these activities.

Despite past ambiguity on the matter, everyone should be aware that zidsic is a one-man show. Different people appear on my recordings, but that is where their help ends and my work takes over. I understand that people new to zidsic can be in for a bit of adjustment to wrap their minds around a rather large subject. I comprehend this well, as my work of explaining it all to new, curious and bewildered contacts is a never ending one. The entire concept that I can single-handedly be responsible for hundreds of hours of original releases, and that they don't suck, is somewhat mind-blowing for many people.

Recently I've been able to stand back and get an interesting perspective on what I have been up to. Keeping good database recordings of my releases and various details helps immeasurably to give me different ways to look at this data. I'm starting to look at my productions from the following perspective: zidsic is both wide and deep. It is something that, as a whole, is difficult to get a handle on, like some massive fantastic H.P. Lovecraft style architecture looming mysteriously in the distance. What is important is that, since the phenomenon in its entirety is nearly impossible to consume, any detail that you run across is of such a fine quality that you extrapolate that the entirety also must be of high standards.

And I create with the certainty that in the end, the world will be glad that I bothered. It has concerned me greatly since around the time I lived through falling over 30 feet off the roof of a house, right before finishing my 500th zidsic release, that the craft of what I do is up to a consistently high personal standard. This is not about sound quality per se, or some misguided hunt for studio perfection. It's about someone putting a tape into a tape deck somewhere in this world and recognizing they are hearing a zidsic tape, without negative connotations. It's about fixing mistakes before they make it to a master tape so that I don't have to cringe for the rest of my life when I hear back something I've done with an error intact. Thank you Tom Furgas to beating me up over that issue. And thanks to everyone who, like John Wiggins, has told me that the sound quality of what I've been doing in the last number of years has been drastically improved over the past.

I may or may not have brought this up before, but I think I bears repeating here. I was thinking about zidsic and what was a common link over 600+ releases and the following thought occurred to me:

There are tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of studios across the planet whose goal it is to turn out the perfect sound quality recordings. And I wish them all well, and you can go to the store and buy the results of these efforts until your ears overflow. But it's my firm belief that the closer you get to perfection the more perfectly you kill off what makes recordings interesting and worth hearing in the first place.

It is the latter that intrigues me, and the never-ending search for curiously engaging recordings featuring sounds + musics + noises + voices in all their imperfection which gives zidsic a reason to exist. As Grandbrother would say "We don't want to be too nice!" Or to quote a Bodycocktail release, "Don't give the people what they want"... under the belief that what people want is the known and what drives the zidsic bus is the unknown, or the not know as I like to say. It's the search for that divine moment of enjoying but not knowing what you are hearing that presses Zanstones recordings into existence, for instance.

I love what I do and I am hoping that my enthusiasm is reflected in the recordings I make, the words I write, the artworks and titles I spend endless hours at work on, and especially in the physical mail that gets delivered to you, my faithful listeners! I look forward to pressing this enthusiasm into more live events internationally in the coming years too. You, Me, Us and Them - emitting contagious enthusiasm... I give you the clues right there in my titles, I hope you're paying attention, dear readers.

Tonight I wind up this missive. If not, it has the potential to sit around and grow old and friendless. I may go back and take a whack at the grammar, but I wanted, in one evening, to pour over my feelings as they relate to zidsic, this January evening... as I sit typing away on my tangerine iBook, hovered over my heat register on the floor. Great strides are being made, nearly invisibly to the outside world, here at zidsic this month and this is my Address on The State of zidsic, as I feel it. And now I go to sleep and tomorrow I embrace the new day with my daughter Mariana, waking up, bright and shiny like a new penny. It's a phenomenal world we have here... take care of your corner of it, ok?

2001

my world august 2000

2005-12-21T12:06:00.000-08:00

I was just reading a May 2000 update that I don't think I ever posted, and that made me realize that it was out of date and needed to be modified. Instead of that, I'll put it online with this new one and between the two you'll see what I've been up to in 2000.

There are three things I've done at zidsic in the last month that are worth relating. In addition to cranking out releases, there's always a lot of busywork to be done at zidsic. Some of it is obvious - dubbing off tapes, writing letters, packaging mail - other things only present themselves in flashes of insight. OH! I need to do xy&z, I think while in the midst of doing something related. Dreaming up projects to accomplish at zidsic is a funny thing, a chapter all in itself if I cared to write it.

When I feel comfortable with being caught up in a certain way I'm often willing to take on new and time-consuming tasks. There are always a 1000 new ways to get on top of running my label with over 635 releases and here are the three before mentioned things I dreamed up in July.

+1+ Go methodically through every single master cassette in my 500+ master rack. First goal is to check it against the entry in my filemaker database. A number of master tapes go missing over the years as I switch systems and rearrange things. So it is actually a conceptually dreaded task to pour over the master tapes because once I've gone through each and every one, if something is *still* not there, it's lost. In addition to being a mental hurdle, physically checking over 500 cassettes, most with different things on each side, is time consuming and arduous.

Second goal was to catalog all the non-release b-side material. These tapes have all manner of things on the b-sides if it is not another release. Marking it all down was very exciting and interesting, provoking lots of new listening. I further broke these works down by these categories: collaborative, blank, source, to investigate, someone else's release.

There were more than twenty works in the 'to investigate' category and I'm excited to say that this includes some new archival releases! There were also works which were mixes and things unfinished from the 1980's largely which I then pulled together to compose the latest Zanstones release. Zanstones 81- Stately Punch has some great things which have been hiding out unfinished on the b-sides of master tapes recombobulated for your listening pleasure.

+2+ Over the last sixteen years I've been not only trading cassettes but asking the people I write to send me sound sources to use. They're all up in a separate section of my cassette rack and I decided that it might be useful to create a database of them. One of the purposes of this is to capture data on which zidsic releases I've used them on. This is very exciting skullduggery and it starts with me entering all the collaborative tapes I've ever received and used on a zidsic release. This weekend I largely completed the task entering 227 tapes.

+3+ In part of a recent effort to make my label more comprehensible I've embarked on writing a zidsic dictionary. This will work at giving some background or definitions for various titles used for projects and releases here at zidsic. I think much of the ideas behind these works were fine being obscure for the first 10 years, but eventually there's really nothing to hide and everything to tell. I'm over 50 terms into the dictionary now and I'll put it online when I feel it's coming around to 75% completeness, which will be this year sometime.

There are two rediscovered Minóy collaborations which I'm adding the zidsic catalog as I take two older works out to pasture. Hailing from 1987 "M(Minóyzanthropy) or Z15(12)M" is a churning twinkling wedge of earwax. Furthermore, "Minóy\Zannóy - Fractured Lingerie Break You Ears" had to be recovered from 1988. Gracefully bowing out are two works that I was never especially wild about "Keona Dearest" and "Mkstofu", both from 1988.

If all this putting in old releases and retiring other ones seems a bit odd, there is a zidsic rule hiding behind all of this. If I find a something old which I want to release I can't add it without taking something old away because otherwise I'd be counting up using a new number which is illegal. New numbers are reserved for new releases. This is never a problem because there are always a few zidsic releases that I'd not mind gently retiring, like in the above scenario. Ever since I straightened out the zidsic numbers in the mid-to-late 400's I've plotted out rules to ensure the smooth running of this label. By 'straighten out' I mean that since zidsic #450, the number represents how many releases I've done to date. zidsic 500 is thus my five hundredth releases.

As I approached 500 developed the old number/new number rule with a special provision stating three categories of releases would take old instead of new numbers. First is an old tape I've uncover, like described above. Next is a live recording, especially as most of them are older anyway. Thirdly would be compilations since that material doesn't qualify as new material from me. So I used these three categories of releases in the last few years to clean out my zidsic catalog quietly, stealthily improving the quality of releases available here.

These are some of the works no longer available at zidsic:
Mkstofu
Keona Dearest
Here Be Monsters Barbarymix
ZIL¿H A Flavorful Taste Of Nothing
Generation Unlimited Box Set
Your Life Has Been Prostituted for You for Antebellum
Zid for Medicinal Sick
Zid for No UN
Zanstones Zest Frilled Godwinkle

The last four were 'best of zidsic' compilations intended for release on other labels. Generation Unlimited Box Set is two already listed zidsic releases in special packaging and format. 'Flavorful Taste of Nothing' is a duplicate of another ZIL¿H release by this name. Same logic with Barbarymix... it's an alternate mix of "From Drama to Farce". Finally Mkstofu and Keona Dearest are gone with barely ever being there.

Oh finally, while old stories are coming out to play, there is the story of the Masters of the Ungentlemanly Art's release "Securing Blind Faith". The master tape was lost very early and I intended this tape to be an elaborate hoax, - securing the blind faith of someone who would order it and then respond by sending a blank side - but this never happened since nobody ever ordered the tapes. Alas in November 1998 I set the record straight by doing another more modern mix using sources by the same people originally used. This work is called "Securing Blind Faith II".

That's what I know from early August 2000, it's a wonderful world here at zidsic. One of these lifetimes I'll sort out my password problem and put up a new and improved site at zids.net, but until then I'm entering away on +2+ and +3+, wish me luck.

zidsic news may 2000

2005-12-21T12:04:00.000-08:00

I should have put a news section up here earlier. there is always something new going on here so I might as well report in every now and then. The last few days I've been going into the zidsic database and trying to write descriptions about releases of old - pulling tapes out of the master rack to play and to write about. Today I've been thinking about rehabilitating some releases that were ranked six out of ten on my personal scale of rating zidsic releases. In order to do this I've had to draw up a set of criteria for how each number on the ten scale reflects the quality of the release. here's my first-ever expose of my rating scale: 1-3: stinky, don't release 4- below adequate, but not stinky 5- adequate and mundane or above adequate and flawed 6- above adequate below satisfactory 7- satisfactory 8- hot not killer 9- killer not classic 10- a classic Of the three tapes that I reviewed one improved to a seven and two to nine out of ten! Two of them were misunderstood noise tapes, two of them ToFuZaHo's earliest releases. My collaboration with Kozi Matsuura "Kozan - Moju" was bumped up from a six to a seven. The first half of this release is some noise junctures with John Eberly (mumbles), and the second half is a wild collage of all manner of works with rhythmic backing. For the first time I actually cataloged who appears on this section, and accordingly I updated the relevant pages in my online zidsic site too. Speaking of which (small digression) by my 36th birthday in mid June I'm going to have my own domain name for my sounding and visual activities: www.zids.net I've been debating the url for a long time now and I feel very strongly about this excellent choice... it's still an acronym. This time it means Zanteson's International Distribution Service Network. The "I.C." of zidsic is dropped since this is specifically used for the cassette label, and the zids.net is the umbrella organization for all activities, all formats. It's through zids that I'll release zidsic works in formats alternate to cassette, like cdr and mp3. Returning to the discussion of rehabilitating old zidsic releases, it's like bringing them in from the cold when I upgrade them from six out of ten. Like the communist process of letting scorned members back into the party, upgrading the rating makes me more interested in getting these valuables back into action - in this case into more ears! The two surprise releases were the first ToFuZaHo releases composed by Tom Furgas. I've long thought them bleak and somewhat uninteresting, and now with the valuable distance of time I can reassess their value, and they are killer works. The first one "sTOp FUture plaZA pHOnes" has wonderful variety and is a careful composition of varied sound sources I supplied with new elements by Tom. Ever diligent to do good quality work Tom shines here working with different and curious sound works. And in a noisy vein, also from 1986, "sTOic efFulgent aZan pHOnotype" is a wild and intense piece of work! Here he treats my processed bowed non-instruments (snow shovel, cardboard boxes, styrofoam...) and the result, when turned up appropriately is excellent and quite arresting. I'm excited to count these releases among my great works on zidsic and I plan on promoting them accordingly. Here is the chronological listing/linking of the releases I've done in 2000. I'm really excited about these works: Zanstones 2000-Hal for a day Zanstones 2000-PBK for a day Zanstones-Quit Holding Back Zanoisect-zinking masses Zanstones-Tatertones Zanoisect-14 incidences to injury Themes for Complications-2000 Zanstones-Ambling Transfiguration Zanoisect-Obsessive naive questions Zanoisect-Sweet and Condensed Sizzling Bacon Zanstones 2000-Francisco For a Day Zanstones-found love just can Zanoisect-Skinchy Rotters Up Your Life Has Been-Fractured for You Zanoisect-Trial in the Valley of Decision Zanoisect-Tinder of Landmarks Zanstones-t t t t t t t t Zanoisect-Charvaka Enters Hastinapura Of these eighteen works, six of them I've ranked eight out of ten, one ten out of ten and the rest are nines. So you can see they're "hot" and "killer" works as well as one "classic": 14 incidences to injury, my collaboration with Simon Brown from Canada. The Zanstones 2000 series is a seriously challenging and involved series. To date Hal McGee, PBK and Francisco Lopez have been explored. Each person tackled by Zanstones 2000 I've written for over 10 years, and I have nearly all of their works. None of them are 'musical' influences, the issue at hand here is experimental influences. I've got all year left to finish the few other sections I'm dreaming of working on. I've alluded to this here and there, but I need to discuss my zidsic database and how it has been behind the improvements going on at the zidsic website. Over the last fifteen years I've used half a dozen systems to keep track of information relating to running my label. Since the early 1990's I happily settled on a series FileMaker databases to track all the information vital to the pleasureful running of this label. If keeping up with this is a hassle I get much less done because I'm unwilling many times to deal with the work. Over the last few years I've consciously improved the data that I track on my releases so that I can make the most of the information that I'm tracking. So here's another prized look into my zidsic system - a listing of all the information I enter in the zids master database for every zidsic release. group release release number master number cover location master location type of release date of release catalog section (print) rating web page tracks* contributors description* dist. by other label* [*=optional] +Group and release are self explanatory +Release number is noted if it's a series with half a dozen or more releases +Master number, ever since the 470's has been the actual number of tapes I've done. I strayed from that system in the early 100's and only got back to it in late 400's, and retroactively applied chronological numbering to the 450's. So in the near future when I release zidsic 633, it will be my six hundred thirty-third release. +Cover location directs me to a folder in a file cabinet which has nearly 30 file folders full of zidsic covers for over 600 releases. +Master location tells me where the cassette or dat master is. the shells of master tapes are marked in indelible ink on the spine with a number. Cassette masters are in one giant rack and dat masters are in two Indian wooden boxes by the stereo. +Type of release is a great field. Sometimes it's "n" to signify it's not a release, I keep track of some printed matter, some specialty tapes, typefont disks and more. It will be "yc" if it's a compilation. Then it gets interesting... "yzo" tells me it's a work featuring me that was mixed by someOne else, "yz" means it's my mix and "yza" signifies it features my stuff alone, no collaborators. By entering this information I can sort and count the number of releases by this criteria. +Date of release is obvious, but sometimes for my 1980's release I don't have an exact date so I use Jan. 1 (1-1). +Catalog section tells me what category to file it into. These have been worked and reworked over the years, luckily I have the authority to do this stuff. +Rating, as described above is my private way to tell myself how good the release is. I instituted it maybe 10 years ago, and it is perpetually subject to change with new listenings. Until sometime last year I used a system including .5's (8.5, 6.5, etc) but this changed as I felt this was too mushy. It was a lot of tough seat-of-the-pants calls for the 7.5's, 8.5's and 9.5's when I had to do the rounding. +This year I added the field web page to the categories, and it's paid of in spades. It was fairly painless to go back and do since it and 'catalog section' are the same thing by different names. After I wrote a fairly complex calculation in FileMaker I can export a link with the name of the release encoded in html as in the links above. This allowed me to do the most valuable page on the zidsic site: the collaborator page which lists everyone I've ever collaborated with. People appearing on six or more releases have these releases listed and linked to the appropriate page to read more about them. +Last year when Krista and I bought a printer I realized I could create a layout template in my zidsic database to be a cassette cover. So I added the field tracks where I can put all the liner information. Naturally the contributor field is a crucial one, listing as it does everyone I can figure out who appears on the tape. +Inspired by the Halbook, Hal McGee's exhaustive writings about every tape he's ever done, I added a description field to capture any biographical data about the release. So as not to beat-up on myself to hard I only make sure I keep current with new entries, and go back voluntarily to write about older releases. +Finally I added a field to keep track of any label that has distributed or is distributing a zidsic release. Well that's your inside guide to what it is like to keep tabs on each release I put out at zidsic. I keep separate databases tracking contact addresses, who I send which tapes to, postage expenses for everyone, and I was logging for a few years tapes and cds as I got them in. That, plus some other fields I've added or databases I've started, has fallen into disuse because it was a pain to bother with, without interesting enough outcome. This zids master database, as I started to mention above, has fueled excellent growth of quality information on my zidsic website. It's allowed me to pull together data for better understanding of the complexity of my label. The date and contributor pages I've put up are testament to this. The date page lists, in reverse chronological order, every release I've done broken down by year. Now featuring the return of the popular bar chart showing zidsic productivity by year. With this page you can keep up with what I'm doing now and you can dig back into the past to see how I've been keeping busy. Naturally I didn't always keep excellent records on each release, good habits were a long time coming, so as you go back into past many releases are listed as Jan. 1 creation dates. This is a generic date I use when I don't have a specific date. So somewhere buried in my description field for my own purposes it will say 'not 1-1' to differentiate from those that were actually done on Jan. 1st. The contributor page is described above and is the single most instructive page on the site as to what's been going down these last 16 years. There is no way I would have done this all by hand, or even tried... but with a little pushing a shoving, some fancy data manipulation tricks later, I was able to pull this off.

May 2000

my charmed and twisted life 1999

2005-12-21T12:03:00.002-08:00

Greetings dear friends of zidsic. I'd like to make a report from November 1999 to help acquaint everyone with this years' happenings. I started the year sober for the first time in fifteen years or so, so this was bound to be interesting as it related to zidsic, which has many recordings made while drinking. As I braced myself for this change I was frankly paranoid that my inspiration for recordings would be diminished or stunted. I made this sobriety decision as soon as I knew that I was going to be a dad that year. Simply put, I want Mariana to have a sober dad. I've quit without any help and I have no desire to tell anyone else to change their drinking habits. The upswing of this in my life is that I'm a lot more even and mellow. Less manic but not less zan. I'm really enjoying things I do more than ever. My life is really interesting and amazing by almost any standards. January first I remixed the other half of the tapes that were left over from the night before. On that newyearseve I started remixing the series of 8tk masters I'd been working on all month. So here are the first six releases of 1999: Jan 1, 1999 Zanoisect 24 Clear Now Jan 1, 1999 Zanstones 51 Patient Divide Jan 1, 1999 Zanoisect 25 The Faint End of a Stick Jan 1, 1999 Zanstones 52 Telling Zoo Key Jan 1, 1999 Zanoisect 26 tear within dowsed moments dementia Jan 1, 1999 Bodycocktail 54 Of Dense Flight Of these the most twisted I think is Zanoisect 26. January turned out to be quite a busy time at zidsic as the following titles will attest: Jan 10, 1999 Zanoisect 27 Found Hair By Sink And Turned, Clumped Thereby Symptom Harem Jan 11, 1999 Zanoisect 28 Her Hei Adam Bohman sent me some weird LP's that he picked up at charity shops in England and specifically he included a double lp of 70's contemporary German religious choral music that he insisted that I sample. Well I went to town and produced the above to works. I'll give up the key to the fanciful title of 27 - I looked hard at the German title and tried to imagine if I had overheard someone say this in German and I for some reason thought it was English, these are two of the things I'd guess was spoken. Jan 17, 1999 Zannóy\Minóy blast fills torn past The is no such thing as a co-incidence. Everything happens for a reason. Whatever happens is fine. So I find this age old Minóy tape in the Hal collection which I have in my 2nd studio in Krista's basement and I decide I'm going to break in the studio by doing an old-style zidsic overdub work using the Minóy tape as a backing source. So I work long and hard at the recording, more often than not in the dark, and I come up with a treatful title and wild packaging. No sooner does this happen when I get an oblique e-mail from mr. m. himself aka pawbone in the internet world. I had not heard of or from him in absolute years, everybody and their mother was asking me if I'd heard from him, and mr. m. surfaces online for about 6 months or less than vanishes. I'm some computer graphics and internet links, and few punny titles richer and the timing was nice. Jan 22, 1999 Zanoisect 29 Further Breakdown Jan 25, 1999 Zanoisect 30 Gnot Loot Jan 31, 1999 Zanoisect 31 the point of frigidity Jan 31, 1999 Zanoisect 32 Victim of Warmth Wow, now that there is a lot of zanoisect. I'm on a roll here... one thing which begs the next. These works are explorations on a limited sound source. Thinking that purity of source will add conceptually tighter bragging rights. Zanoisect is interesting project now. In one way it isn't zanstones because I don't want to pollute zanstones with a million experiments that must happen anyway. in another way it is often weirder, harder, bleaker, more estranged than zanstones. I've got a lot of ground to cover and I need project that let me deposit sounds in their library. One of these lifetimes someone will appreciate this amount of work. And viewed in a larger context it should prove interesting ground for investigation for someone enthusiastic about these soundspaces. Gnot Loot is a thorough investigation of the zither of charlie newman which he got when he asked his parents about getting a lute... instead he a got not lute but an old zither. This instrument having been extensively featured on zidsic tapes of the last few years is investigated in light of new developments. 31 & 32 are the excellent investigation of a pair of silver metal gates that I saw left open one glorious moist day... I think moisture adds great atmosphere to recordings, so I can't resist gathering sounds when it's rainy. At any rate these two zanoisect releases are very popular so far - getting enthusiastic comments from most people I've sent it to. Feb 5, 1999 Zanoisect 33 Nerima Run Feb 6, 1999 Zanoisect 34 Ream a ruin Feb 7, 1999 Masters of the Ungentlemanly Art 23 Uncharted Delirium Feb 8, 1999 Zanstones 53 Songburn Lotion Feb 12, 1999 Zanstones 54 Benevolent Detachment Feb 13, 1999 Zanoisect 35 and appropriation is thy name Feb 16, 1999 Zanstones 55 inverse zanatone do schein Seems like I was somewhat conscious of needing to do at least a certain number of tapes a month to hit the six hundred point within a fixed amount of time. So four tapes a month or so seemed reasonable to achieve between years start and zidsic's 15th anniversary on September 19. As it turns out I was at 603 by this point. A comfortable margin made easy by a prolific winter. Good stuff too. The first two another weird mail music drama unfolds. Kazuhiro Ohtsuuka appears out of the ether a decade after I last heard from him. At one point he sends me a tape with the explicit instructions to use as source material. Nerima Run is the first take on it and though this was interesting I felt it was too timid for the intensity of the result I was looking for so I went after the master with a vicious butcher knife and brought forth the much nastier Ream a Ruin. New material that I'd received in the mail dictated a new masters release and uncharted delirium is another interesting adventure for ungentlemanly art fans. Songburn comes from two directions the title came to me as a graphic for a Finish zine called sunburn was sitting exposed on my couch and the dyslexia kicked in and I thought I read songburn and thought that was cool. then I went and looked again and it said only sunburn and then I knew I had to make a release with that title right away. In the zidsic tradition of wordplay and invention. Put the marker down, note the date, send out copies, then I've been there first! So the release is based on the concept of an aural salve to remove the pressure after having too many songs crammed in ones head during the day, as when you are forced to listen to things beyond your control at work on out in public and it rots your brain with songs you don't want. This is the relief to unwind the ears and mind. During this whole time my girl Krista is incredibly pregnant and getting ready to have our kid, so I know time will be short after the baby is born so I'm getting in all the studio and zidsic time I can take. Usually late evenings as she's sleeping I go home to my apartment in the highlands and do some listening, dubbing, letter writing, zidsic maintenance, or recording and remixing. Benevolent Detachment comes from recordings I made of a water sewer drain during a huge storm... I was trying during the process of composing that remixing the work to not be anxiously on top of the recording and processing, but to take a distance, a disinterest of the kindest sort, so as not to imbue the work with too much personal intent and more to let things be as they are, as much as I can in context of a zanstones work. And Appropriation is Thy Name is the hilarious result of a series of culling the hal collection of crappy commercially intended cassettes. The hal collection is over three hundred tapes from the cassette collection of Cause & Effect, a seminal experimental tape label of the mid to late eighties in indy. At any rate in context to this, I took tapes with professional covers and uptight intent and decided they were too pathetic to keep but I didn't want to get rid of it completely because I felt guilty for some reason by recording over them as I had intended. So instead I took one of the higher quality cassette tapes and used it as an 8tk master and on each channel I recorded the bad e-m and the garish result is this release! And the last zanstones tape before the baby was the commission from the Barking Dog Dance Company. I did an original score to an eight person dance troupe, all women plus the male director. This was a really interesting, challenging and crazy experience for me. I just jumped in and delivered a really unique product that they accepted, bizarrely, with nary a change in concept! This is my first commissioned work and to work with a dance company was really interesting. I took a pad of paper and pen and drew sketches during rehearsal to relay vital information that I could go back into the studio and translate. After much searching I decided to try an all vocal work, to solve the major conundrum of choosing instrumentation. I worked on this all winter starting in november or december. It is in three movements, and I included in the beginning the demo for the first movement - it helps fill out the 30 minutes needed for the release, but was not used in the performance. The second movement launched a thousand ships, I mean two Zanstones releases in December "Zabazone" and "Baby LeRoi" which I gave as Christmas gifts to my sister and Krista respectively. On March Fourth, in the comfort of Krista's home, with two midwives on hand I witness the joy of childbirth for the first time in my life. It is the most extremely real moment of a lifetime. As Juliet delivers the baby I'm the first to exclaim "it's a girl!"... as I've never seen a baby this young before I'm at first bewildered but it was clearly not a boy. Krista is remarkable through the whole experience and at this moment she knows she has three girls now! Then I announced that she will be named Mariana Elizabeth Hoffman. We had been wavering between Paloma and Mariana and when I looked our little girl in the face I made the choice right then and there and Krista concurred. This baby born naturally into this world took immediately to her tasks of being alive, peeing on her dad, pooping up a storm while Juliet was trying to clean her and quite soon after this, breast feeding. Now THAT was real. Nothing to disguise or hide here... pure experience. Suffice to say this is a turning point in my life and a remarkable one at that. I now have someone to love more than anyone else in the world. It's a beautiful thing. Mar 17, 1999 Zanstones 56 concentrated snips flip Mar 26, 1999 Zanoisect 36 torn about blows Mar 29, 1999 Zanstones 57 28457 Ah the first three after Mariana. Each concentrated sound sources explored and cataloged. The first two are weird and not pleasant but occupying an interesting space. Blows features all blown objects including the orange plastic road pylon. Since I don't resort to numbers for releases alone, I thought I had the leeway to have at least one. And in typical numeric fashion this means something. This is twenty eight strings fo(u)r zanstones fifty seven. Compare this work to gnot loot and see the difference between zanstones and zanoisect. Apr 18, 1999 Zanstones 58 Cedar Row Must Go Apr 19, 1999 Zanstones 59 Oak Trees Can-t Read to Save Their Lives Apr 28, 1999 Zanstones 60 now we listen instead of count Wow I experience a violent emotional reaction when I witness the aftermath of tree removal for road widening - whole row of old growth cedar trees on one side and 70+ year oak trees on the other side... a couple score of the former and a few of the latter. What is to do but make a recording to explore my psychic displeasure, and thus Cedar Row Must Go is dedicated to the north side and Oak Trees Can't Read to Save Their Lives is the south side dedication. The latter title is two obscure references fused, first a logic problem from my 1984 semester at University of Louisville stated "Oak Trees Can't Read" and then in memory of the Douglas Adams plot to Hitchhikers Guide that the earth is being cleared for a hyperway bypass, and what? you didn't see the plans? they've been lodged at your local alpha century planning office for a parsec. I figured that the oak trees were the helpless victim of a plot on pieces of wood pulp press into paper format with ink applied. A format that oak trees are helpless to comprehend or defend themselves against. Brutal storms, bad winters, dry summers, tornados, yes all these they coped through, but not the zoning papers... that was their tragic demise. Both works are all vocal and the former deals with the feelings that the cedar trees went through as they were being cut down. Because cedar is one mean-ass bitch of a tree that doesn't come down easily, so I can only imagine how long it took them to remove them and how much suffering the uncomprehending trees endured. Sure they were ready to react to storms ripping entire limbs off, but this was something completely different feeling. It was machines making the tree vibrate and shake. I could continue, and I've written a detail discussion of it in anticipation of submitting it to an Austrian competition... which it arrived to late to be judged in even though it met the postmarked deadline. It was an interesting experience actually documenting my thinking on a specific release. I've been doing that more for my own benefit nowadays in my zidsic database. I take notes which help explain what I was up to so that when I go back years later I'll be able to remember. I've been going back and doing some older zidsic works but this is really an impossible task to do to every tape, so I took the pressure off myself and didn't ever imagine that I would have every tape discussed. This was all inspired by the Hal Book which hal intended to publish where he discussed in as much detail as possible his memories in relation to all his releases. It seemed like a remarkably ambitious concept for him and when I decided to apply it to zidsic I adjusted it to the circumstances. First as listed above, I've no expectations for this to be rolled out to every release. Second it is a largely private piece of information which is not shared or printed to accompany the release. On occasion I'll share it on a per tape and per contact basis, but this is largely a private undertaking at this point. Next I endeavor to put information into it contemporaneously with releases being finished so that it is living from the time I started it forward. I would extend it backwards as I saw fit and when I time to sit down and listen to it anew and write down observations then. I'm very conscious of doing as much archival activity as I can with zidsic as it grows. Since this is becoming a lifework in sounds the more information I collect and gather in relation to each release the better I am when I go to look back at it years, decades later. Now We Listen Instead of Count is another in the long line of maximalist zanstones releases which features all manner of sound sources and composition to accost the listener into a state of mind. The title is a glib comment against people who really can't listen to things but instead talk all the time over the recording and if they are pretending to like it they are busy cataloging and categorizing it, counting this and that. I listen to stuff with a lot of different people and it is amazing how some people can hear things but never know how to listen. Only if it is boiled down to a song format does it register as a unit. This work is adverse to that notion and instead extends your listening experience in many directions without immediately discernable composition or elements. May 1, 1999 Zanstones 61 Swinging Can't Wait May 23, 1999 Zanstones 62 What's What and What May 23, 1999 Zanoisect 37 Crippy Tump May 26, 1999 Zanoisect 38 Quantized Turpitude May was a good month for zidsic releases. Starting of with the swing set inspired Zanstones sixty one, a fun escapade in sound exploration. Sometimes it is possible to describe Zanstones releases as either external or internal, depending on if I conjured up the sound options in the outside world or in the studio. Under this distinction number sixty one is external and number sixty two is internal. The latter release I was kind of mulling about on right before a whimsical road trip to Memphis in my sixty two Imperial with Krista and Mariana. This was my first road trip in this car and it performed brilliantly... the best road trip ever for comfort and style, and a great story to boot. It was Friday afternoon which I took off and Krista, Mariana and I had a picnic right on the river next to the water tower. After this we were thinking of going to the zoo, and I was perhaps thinking of driving south of Louisville for a few minutes to go to Bernheim Forest. Once we started heading south on I-65 Krista and Mariana fell asleep and I just kept on driving and driving. Occasionally she would wake up a little and ask where we were going and I said, truthfully, I don't know. Finally as we approach Nashville Krista asks again, and then wonders aloud how far it is to Memphis to see Graceland. I took that as marching orders and we were on our way to Memphis, Tennessee. The trip was delightful, and the next stop for gas I start making the telephone call necessary to obtain the phone number of my good Memphis contact Mike Honeycutt. Like every other person I know in Memphis his phone number is unlisted (pay attention, this should tell you something about living in that city!). Fortunately for me I know that my ex-girlfriend Barb Hall had been down there just recently visiting him, so I call and leave a message on her answering machine asking her to leave Mike's number on my answering machine so I can check my messages later and pick that number up. We made it to Memphis in good time and as I pull off in Memphis for gas, as by law, we are in a sketchy African-American district of town. So I fill up with gas, check my messages, get Mike's number, fortunately, and leave him a message on his answering machine. We then get directions into town from the gas food mart attendants and off we go. Somehow we get onto some street I recognize and pull over at the first interesting looking restaurant, an Indian one, to get some much needed vittles. We called Mike again from there and he was home and agreed to meet us there, so we adjourn from there to his apartment after the dinner. We stay up all hours talking and doing a load of laundry since we didn't bring any extra clothes with us. Because his sleep schedule with Fed Ex is far different than ours he stays up to do some recording and cdr burning for me as we sleep. The next day after some middle eastern grub we head to a couple of thrift stores. Krista gets a change of clothes for her and Mariana and we take some money out of the bank and we're good to go. Eventually we head to Graceland with Mystery Mike, parking for free in the business next door instead of paying for parking (with an even longer walk) in the Graceland complex. And a complex it has become across the street from the 'mansion' itself. Starting with Pricillia's plane, then a music gift shop, then a restaurant, then another gift shop, the ticket area (with a gift shop or two nearby), then a movie theater, with another gift shop, then another theme restaurant and a gift shop and then the car museum with it's own gift shop (I don't believe I'm exaggerating here.) We decided in the interest of time and sweltering heat and humidity to forego seeing Graceland itself, a two hour wait in the muggy Memphis sun, and take my choice of seeing Elvis' cars. Jun 8, 1999 Zanstones 63 Floral Basket Laying Music Jun 13, 1999 Zanstones 64 eyecaster rolling around the corner Jun 28, 1999 Zanstones 65 A Shock of Hair Jun 30, 1999 Zanstones 66 Transonic Index Valve The month of June is upon us, strange times suggest strange creations, thus while marveling at the new bulletin from North Korea proclaiming, as it did, that students from across the country spontaneously descended on holy statues of Kim Il Sung to lay floral baskets at his feet, to the strains of floral basket laying music in celebration of some anniversary of the founding of a communists student league or other, I was in awe and called into action. I immediately searched the web for 'floral basket laying music' and came up blank. Well that was a niche I intended to be the first person to fill. You don't even want to know how twisted the result is. Five days later I created an altogether alien sounding environment using odd objects with sound production possibility laying around the house. As coincidence would have it all the objects I chose somehow related to Barb Hall, some metal chair casters, an eyeball gumball, etc. Barb had an expression of some obscure perhaps Beefheartean reference about an 'eyeball coming around the corner', so I twisted it with the reference to caster and the rolling efforts which I used to make sounds for this release. Then three days later I turned thirty-five, yeeeehah! I was reading "The Roots of Miro" and was taken aback by a comment that his art (in the specific phase being discussed) would contain a visually startling element, 'a shock of hair', or other. The phrase resonated and this new release came forth with intensity. Zanstones 66 went forward with a maximalist approach to zanstones this time - a transonic index valve let loose this sonic experiment. Jul 4, 1999 Zanoisect 39 The Dream from Endless Jul 4, 1999 Bodycocktail 55 as smug as a dog with two tails Jul 21, 1999 Lopezant Noise For Miller Lite Jul 21, 1999 Lopezant refrigerating outdoor bridges Jul 22, 1999 Lopezant indian hills sojourn Taking up where I left off with the Themes from Endless, I set forth combining two zanoisect techniques and combining them for The Dream from Endless. After some concerted effort I've revived Bodycocktail from a cul-de-sac I found myself in with Bodycocktail 54. I spent the summer and fall working on a new set of covers of old Bodycocktail classics for a release on my favorite Norwegian label SHiT Tapes... I was so flattered by the opportunity I decided that I wanted to do the best I could with some Bodycocktail songs that I've always felt I could remake and do differently. The works that were recorded around this ended up on Bodycocktail 55. My friend Francisco -call me 'Paco'- Lopez came in town during his latest US tour. It was a wonderful few days to spend with him again, we've met three times now, twice here, once in Spain for our Zan Francisco "concert for 300 magnetic tapes' tour in 1993. It's always an inspiration to have Paco in town because he's a wildly traveled and experienced character whose thinking is excellent in its conceptual clarity. One Friday night while we were eating Indian food on Bardstown Road we noted that the Toy Tiger across the street was having it's 12th annual home-made bikini contest that night. Against my general aversion to this red-neck joint I had to weigh the potential unique entertainment value that it would provide to my guest Paco. So late that evening between sound gathering exercises I took Paco to this most debauched southern white-trash red neck venue for an experience you can only get in the south of the good 'ol usa. Let's say for pure shock value this event more than exceeded my expectations and Paco was left slack-jawed at the quality of life exhibited around this kind of joint. Late 1990's red neck quasi-titty bars in the south have reached a really messed-up state that no foreigner can quite prepare themselves for, I'd suggest. As much as I shun this part of Louisville in my day-to-day life, I know it is out there for the asking and this was positively the funniest thing I could have done with Paco. At one point in the proceedings, held on the second floor of a 2-story parking garage in front of the large Toy Tiger sign with the neon kitty drinking a martini with a bouncing tail, the mc revving up the crowd asked for us to 'make some noise for miller lite" one of the sponsors of this fine event. I turned to Paco and asked him 'if miller lite really wanted some noise, why didn't they ask us personally, since we're such practitioners in their midst?' Before Paco left I made it a point to dub the dat field recordings that we had made together. The three releases listed above are the three different directions our material suggested to me afterwards. The name Lopezant comes from our joint name during our last Louisville concert in the early 1990s. Noise For Miller Lite is the pure noise samples we gathered from downtown Louisville. Refrigerating Outdoor Bridges are some great recordings made under different bridges downtown. I was joking about doing recordings of this sort with him and calling it 'bridges of jefferson county', but that was to hackneyed a name and I instead made allusion to a funny story Paco told me about someone in the southwest US making an impractical suggestion of air conditioning the outdoors to relieve miserable summer heat. The final work in this series is the only pure environmental recording on zidsic. We recorded the summer sounds in Indian Hills, the neighborhood we grew up in... Paco had been discussing how difficult it has become to make pure environmental recordings without some sound of human machinery showing up in it at some point... traffic, planes, machines etc. Trying to look around that situation from all angles gave me this point of view... this recording is about the valiant efforts of the indian hills insects to drown out all human machine noises in the night. Aug 3, 1999 Here Be Monsters 9 damning spot of reality Aug 13, 1999 Larb 4 Brawl Aug 17, 1999 ZH27 auf deutsch Aug 23, 1999 Zanstones 67 Emphatic Extrapolated External Elements Aug 28, 1999 Zanstones 68 Street Relief Aug 30, 1999 Here Be Monsters 10 Determine Modern Vexations Leading up to my 15th zidsic anniversary in mid September one will notice my productivity for August is strong indeed. Two new Here Be Monsters, two Zanstones and two others give us six new works, pushing me over the six hundred mark comfortably before fifteen years is up. As it turns out, I'm totaling up the running time of all zidsic releases put back to back and with zanstones sixty-nine it comes up to a lovely three hundred thirty-three hours even. Here Be Monsters comes out of a long slumber to help exercise some new and funky collaborative material I've received of late. Clearly this wasn't Masters of the Ungentlemanly Art territory and in my late zidsic tendency to not create new projects unless absolutely necessary (like Creamy Porn Stars, for instance) instead I revived this great old 4-track project. These work is done in stereo four-track, using my eight track, as I often do, as a glorified four-track. In mid-August Mike Honeycutt sent some hard-core collaborative remix that he had done of our Larb project. Blown absolutely away I insisted on releasing it knowing at Mike's pace it would be a zillion years before he put it out. Thus the newest Larb - Brawl. The big six hundredth release was a Zanstones like number five hundred. This once again takes in as many lessons as I've learned to date to pull out a diverse and acoustically diverse creation. The best and most alliterative way I could name it was Emphatic Extrapolated External Elements. If you break my Zanstones releases into two categories of internal studio works and externally gathered works combined in the studio, this work falls in the latter category. This work, of course, begged the next one which gathers even more sounds from streets and alleys in my neighborhood, a veritable street relief. Finally the second Here Be Monster work derives largely from some hilarious new Adam Bohman stuff I got in the mail. His audio letters are really an interesting piece of work all in themselves and as he combined some of them on his latest cd, it lead me into this territory. In a joyous irony the initial letters of each word of the title are equal to the initials of the dreaded, loathed, and feared Department of Motor Vehicles. ZH27 auf Deutsch is the final 'fill-in' release to firm up the six hundred zidsic releases. I've been quietly deleting indifferent or redundant releases in my catalog. The catalog is so big that only a snoop would be recognize what has come and gone. ZH27 milestones help focus my mind on my label. First it was five hundred releases, then 300 hours worth of recordings and most recently six hundred releases. Leading up to this point I've tried to make some more order out of the chaos that a label run by only one person can become. I set forth on two tasks. After buying 400 blank tapes the first one was to have at least five copies of every release dubbed and sent out. I spent a large amount of time in the secret basement studio at Krista's setting up zidsic tapes to dub. Now I have between one and two hundred tapes pre-dubbed ready to send, this includes new ones that I try to dub five copies of soon after release. I'm at a rare point in zidsic history where I have a massive amount of releases dubbed ahead of time ready to send once I owe someone. I still dub off tapes specifically for certain people, thus with the new release dubs I have perpetually had over a hundred tapes lurking around waiting for someone to hear. The second task at zidsic has been, before I finish up number six hundred, to weed out releases that are inferior or don't belong and replace them with live, new archival finds or compilations. To not run foul of zidsic rules (instigated somewhere in the four hundred seventies) these categories of recordings are the only ones that don't add to the climbing zidsic number. All new recordings are given a sequential number chronologicially linked. I figured this out on the lead up to five hundred... I wanted to start actually using zidsic numbers that reflected how many tapes I'd finished to that point. Accordingly some releases will have a zidsic number that is out of sequence from ones surrounding it. These are the 'fill-in' releases. ZH27 auf Deutsch is the last tape I needed to finish in fill-in process, it's a long discussed project where I gather some of the many songs I've done over the years sung in German. This should prove to be a hoot for my German contacts since I only muddle my way through the language taking great liberties as I can't really speak the language! Sep 7, 1999 Zanstones 69 Find Tricky Tweeks I suppose this was a busy month and I only felt the inspiration for one release. Zanstones sixty nine became the last tape made before the fifteenth anniversary of my zidsic label being founded, September 19, 1984. Each of the new Zan tapes, like sixty-nine and seventy set out to explore yet another set of multi-sonic environments. I find them difficult to describe differently one by one without giving up too many clues about specific instrumentation and thus changing the initial effect on you the listener since you'll be listening for things I may have mentioned. I can barely believe I've been able to come up with different things to say about six hundred tapes in my online explanation catalog. All while dancing around actually telling people the gritty details of what makes each tape tick. This missive in fact supplies much more details that I am used to making about my works. Perhaps it is one of these new honesty type things that I've been working with in my thirties... not being afraid to tell the world the truth as I see fit to report. As I say 'it's not easy being the mayor of honestyville' - but it is interesting because people are sometimes quite shocked to hear the truth when the have come to expect to hear lies and platitudes. Oct 3, 1999 Zanstones 70 Exasperating Supple Pathways Oct 17, 1999 Bodycocktail 56 Wiggles Free Oct 23, 1999 Courtiszan Meretrix And the Zanstones tapes keep coming! Plus more dividends from the SHiT Tapes project - the fifty-fifth Bodycocktail, including the twisted pink-tape remix. The master tapes for the Bodycocktail cover sessions used covers made up of large colored post-it note paper. Each tape being a different color. The strangest of them all is the pink tape which had really short versions of a bunch of songs. There are some very weird and fast versions of songs. I only used a few of them on the SHiT tape release so I fashioned an idea of making all the songs into on big mix by adding sonic elements to tie the pieces together on the master tape. Wow, that was some work involved, but the result is caustic, claustrophobic and wondrous in it's delirium - just right! This is only half of the tape and the rest of the tape features pieces not used in the SHiT tape release which needed releasing immediately. I received my first selection of collaborative material from a new Argentinean contact Courtis and was mulling over what to do with it when it all came to me on one fine day in late October. I rushed to put it all down on tape and thus we have the new project Courtiszan. I admitted above I shy away from creating one-off new projects, but this is one of those exceptions. There was no other place to put it and it is distinct itself, plus the name Courtiszan, once it came to me was like a revelation. I can only hope for more collaborative material from him so I make this a popular series because I'm excited where this is going so far. Nov 6, 1999 Zanoisect 40 Making Distant Subject Nov 24, 1999 Zanoisect 41 Of Shivering Timbre Nov 28, 1999 Zanstones 71 In a Time of Need The big crunch. My goodness, my life seems to involve certain amounts of conflict to keep me on my toes and this November is it. I started this letter in the beginning and things became rather intense and I've only found the last day of the month to finish this up. I'll discus the autobiographical data when I can step a little farther away from it and view it from a distance. But through all of this I get the opportunity to exercise one of my finest talents - adopting to change! You see, I can picture in my mind things already changed BEFORE the experience comes to pass, thus when it does come to pass it seems quite normal. People waste so much time and effort fighting, combating and avoiding all effects of change. The best thing about change is how it allows you to rearrange what is left using the most contemporary feelings and techniques. I think things that are changing involve decisions and judgement calls I made when I was younger, not as informed, experienced or understanding as I am today. When things change I have the opportunity to bear down on the subject with my present intellect and make the outcome conform to my present needs and interests. It is my artistic prerogative to seek out change and this attitude helps me embrace it in my life. I view the cheery part of nihilism is that when something is destroyed the debris is more dynamic and freed to be used in new and different ways since matter doesn't disappear when destroyed, it is just transformed. Oh, the releases? My first concern of the month is how the subject matter of my releases is treated in a distance from its source. This has been a concern of zanstones and zanoisect, verbalized or not, since the beginning... how to create a distance from the subject to the listener. In this work the pressure is on making distant the subject and making the distance the subject all at the same time. Using a push-pull to create a dynamic or a tension perhaps. Part of the crunch this month has been my parents moving drama, but what shakes down in relation to zidsic is my mom returned a gift I gave her years back of a wireless setup. I gave it to her for some speaking she was doing, hoping it might be useful, but it turns out all her speaking engagements already have equipment ready for her. Now that I got this back, a Nady wireless setup, I was wondering what use I could make of it outside a live situation which it was intended for. I put my studio thinking cap on and came up at last with a wonderful project where I'd take my sampler outside, grab and playback samples while running the tape live. Not only did this give a random quality as there will be gaps as I edit and delete samples, but I can purposefully take it in and out of range, not knowing the whole time what is being picked up. Really letting loose of control and once again allowing a certain type of equipment failure add to a creative project is an excellent exercise for me. Of Shivering Timbre is the result. Recorded one gnarly evening of the mind and remixed the next morning instead of that night as is usual with my anxious need to hear back what I've done. This allowed for an excellent remix plan that I would not have been fresh enough to come up with that night, but my morning I was ready to go at it. This was done in response to an e-mail that I had received that day asking me if I wanted to do a split tape with a new contact I've never heard of before in Canada. I was able to mail out the result in under 24 hours! Finally the crunchiest of Zanstones tapes for the year... number seventy one in 99% vocals and 100% out to lunch. Get all on up in there, I say!

11-1999

Outdoing myself Spring 1998

2005-12-21T12:03:00.001-08:00

It is with great pleasure and fine feelings in my heart and head that I write this message. It is May 15th, my dad's 68th birthday today and I'm designing a web site for his business. This life of mine is so fine, so really keen, I'm besides myself to describe it all.Starting with my health... it has been nearly a year since I had my accident, falling 32' off the roof of a three story house. I can report that I'm in excellent health. My injuries, broken pelvis, broken nose, black eye, etc. were virtually gone after 5 weeks after the fall. I can be a very spastic and energetic person and the recuperation really slowed me down to nothing, from which I built back up an ability to walk. It was an extremely lucky fall in that many things could have happened that didn't. Who is the most thankful person in this world? Look at me. My love life, and emotional life are doing quite well, thanks for asking. I've been dating the amazing Krista for 8 months now, this is a smart and fun relationship. My attitude in the face of all sorts of possibilities remains devilishly bright. I truly enjoy the way things have worked out for me in this world, and I wouldn't trade my position for another. My friend Matt commented to me the other day that at work he empties trash into an industrial dumpster with the letters ID emblazoned on the side. He said "Isn't that what the id is, a giant dumpster for our conscious waking lives?" Hello world. The next important issue is that on April first my apartment got sacked, and my laptop computer and some recording equipment were stolen. The new computer I received as replacement (I had renters insurance) is so impressive, it has literally changed my life. I can do so many more interesting things with my new capabilities. Now that I have a 56K modem for instance, I am finally online. I then spent a long week cranking out pages of my zidsic catalog, converting them from the print version to the online version, and updating the information to include the latest 33 releases. About these recordings... I now create recordings in 5 different projects. I realized at the end of last year that I needed a loop project so I created Creamy Porn Stars. It then occurred to me that between my five major projects I could create the full range of zidsic styles... Zanstones, for sound-on-sound recordings. Zanoisect- for all the noisy and oblique works. Multi-collaborative home taper collages by Masters of the Ungentlemanly Art. Musical, classical or songs by Bodycocktail. And finally loops, loops, and more loops by Creamy Porn Stars! The newest Fourteen Creamy Porn Stars "Candy Plastic Symbol" is a screamer. Nasty loops and crust. It actually isn't quite as mean as I was thinking it might be, it is instead a willing confrontation with vital sound and music loops. Thirteen Creamy Porn Stars "Charminar Please Sir" is the nicest of the bunch. Lo-key techno looping ceremony, perhaps in debt to the De Fabriek school. Eleven Cream Porn Stars "Can Penny Say: "Ask Your Niece the Mothra"? " is the percolating, itchy propulsion of the Asa Nisi Masa sources with looping modulation to boot. I recently received enthusiastic feedback about the Creamy Porn Stars project from a master of loops himself M. Nomized, so I'm glad to know it is a worthy project, I think I'll crank out a few more. Bodycocktail's latest is a conceptual instrumental work "Themes For Cities In Decay". A side long journey with many pieces and many instruments. Zanoisect last month let loose with a tasty, crispy treat, for sixty minutes straight, until your brain is indoctrinated. "Reign of Fire" is this new zanoisect release. Zanstones have been positively inspired by strings this year. Wow! They twist and tingle, sing and scramble under my dynamic fingers. I'm exploring some Indian themes with dedicated listening and performing structures. I have combinations and permutations which allow for excellent abstract possibilities. Zanstones, since 1983 has been my sound-on-sound project. The ways sounds, voices and noises behave against each other has been a study revisited for 15 years. The latest "Stringed Chiayta", zidsic 533 has my study for miniature suzuki violin and elongated viola. It is an intense, intricate, bedeviling, swimming, evocative series of places, vistas and gestures. Wait, pretend I didn't tell you what I used as instruments, because you'd never guess it in a million years otherwise. The latest Masters of the Ungentlemanly Art release, from Fall of 1997 "How We Knew We Were Here" has been met with a wide degree of approval. These Masters tapes are getting smoother and more refined as I go along. I have not done one this year, but you can bet your booties that one or more will arrive in 1998. This is the first APB I've written on my new computer to put online. Last fall I put together a collection of these writings into a complete form to re-release. And this last week I've now successfully put all my APB's up on the web. That was a piece of work. I was inspired because I just submitted my zidsic URL to all the search engines, and it occurred to me that soon these companies would be sending their engines to trawl up and down the zidsic site to categorize and get key words. I should have as much up there for them to index as possible, so I went ahead and crammed on my APB section and got almost all of it up in one day! The hope is that when somebody looks up the name of any given home taper I have collaborated with, the zidsic site will turn up. I have received a lot a good feedback and comments on my site and I'd especially like to thank Jack Jordan for his wise comments and picky editing help. Please send comments, advice and observations as this is a work in progress. Anything you like to see on the zidsic site?

A brief history of zidsic

2005-12-21T12:03:00.000-08:00

I assembled recordings I started in 1983 into a compilation tape and finally, in 1984 started a label, ZIDSICK, to release my recordings. At the time I was doing mail art and this seemed like another great outlet for my postal enthusiasm. The first cassette under the name the Zanstones was followed by some session work I did with Beau Castner, who lived in my neighborhood. I was going to the University of Louisville at the time and I had already spent two years at Drake University in Des Moines. Until I finished Zanstones VII 40 x 40 I had not delved into what was to be the mainstay of my recording activities over the years –p; mail-music collaborations. The 40 x 40 tape featured the first full-on collaborative format. By 1986 this was becoming the preferred format of recording. The electro-acoustic experiments of Zanstones continued alongside these activities, and also in 1986 the noisling splinter group Zanoisect rears its ugly head. By this time I was going to Drake again, and in 1987, the year of my graduation, I created some of the finest recordings I've ever done. This led to a blindingly prolific period over the first five months of 1988 where I finished over 90 recordings. I refer to this period as the big blur. In the late 80's and early 90's I did a number of four-track recordings including the Here Be Monsters project. In 1989 I formed the band Grandbrother with my new roommate Beau Castner. This prolific live and studio act produced many recordings until I moved out on my own in the fall of 1992. Starting March 1993 there has been a flurry of musical recordings, largely solo, with my project Bodycocktail (bent-out-of-shape proto-new wave music). Solo Zanstones, Zanoisect and other collaborative projects continue in the 90's. In June 1997 I finished my 500th ZH27 cassette release. In the fall of 1997 I started Creamy Porn Stars, a project dedicated to loop recordings. Since this time I feel that there are five major projects that are ongoing at ZH27 (plus many others on an as-inspired-by basis). Zanstones, my oldest explorative sound-on-sound project; Zanoisect recordings are the extreme recordings, ranging from noisy to austere; Masters of the Ungentlemanly Art exist because multi-collaborative home taper collages will never go out of style at ZH27; Bodycocktail continues to explore the musical probabilities left open, often in an audiobiographical manner; and finally Creamy Porn Stars churn out the exciting loop music.

1998

APB 97F

2005-12-21T12:01:00.001-08:00

These are some times. Write you now or you'll never know how impressive it all is. I'm alert to where I'm heading, what work needs done and how to bring about successful completion of my creative efforts. The ZIDSIC consolidation and amplification efforts have yielded excellent yet largely unseen results. I'm tirelessly correcting and improving all my mail-music-related systems and documentation. I've never been smarter, less threatened, and more able to cope with the vast demands of a label of 500 releases. Now I'm attacking from all sides. Fighting in every trench, conducting full scale assaults on the slack and ambiguous sectors of the ZIDSIC output. So many projects and ideas started, abandoned, neglected, poorly documented, under released, without covers have plagued the system intrinsically due to growing pains. I was talking recently with my mother and I mentioned that I've started eight lifetimes worth of projects, and I'm just working on knowing out two or three, lifetimes, worth. Now I have excellent motivation, computer classification abilities and an unbridled desire for things to be permanently fixed, right, complete and well documented. It's remarkable that I've created 280 hours of releases and unless I work my hardest and present it to the world I might as well have kept it to myself. This said, here are some specifics of what I've been doing with my label this year. The real activity started in July when I picked up working on my Explanation Catalog after an absence of 18 months. My new motivation and focus allowed me to see how much work was needed to get this 50 page work to press. I've been redesigning, rewriting sections, correcting contributor lists, writing descriptions of tapes released in the last 18 months and concentrating on making it as perfect as I can. After I finished my 500th ZIDSIC release on June 16th, my 33rd birthday, I determined that it would be best for me to concentrate on making the Explanation Catalog complete with 500 releases, and to use an addendum to list and describe all subsequent releases. This allows the print version to be a final version, once corrected and printed, to last for years to come. I have redesigned the catalog successfully down to 46 pages. Furthermore I have been using my database of ZIDSIC tapes sent out over the last dozen years to determine which tapes have successfully avoided good distribution. In my first steps to change this I'm working on making sure that all 500 releases have had at least three copies each sent out in trade. Many of my more obvious, favorite, crazy tapes have gotten fairly good distribution (15-25 copies sent) at the expense of the obscure ones that end up with one or two copies sent only. (We won't even bring up ones that I have no record of having ever sent to anyone). Part of this problem stems from imperfect records of tapes I've sent out, but I must work with what I have and make sure I'm effective at getting at least a few of every work out. On the front which has been an uphill struggle since 1988, I've developed a new system to make sure each tape has covers available for when I decide to dub off a copy. I was reading an open letter I wrote in '89 or '90 where I stated that if a tape didn't have a cover available, I'd just not send it out and choose another tape to send. This slacker policy is responsible for some of the poor distribution some fine tapes have received. So a new policy exists that if I am running off a copy of a tape without a cover, I will create, by hand, at least 5-10 covers for the tape as I'm listening to it & dubbing it off. So I believe that at this point more than 90% of my tapes do have covers in stock and I'm slowly but surely uncovering those delinquent few without covers and correcting the situation as it appears. I spent one full 'personal' day off work in October to determine the covers in and out of stock. I have one extremely full file cabinet drawer just for cassette covers that I had to go through and check against my catalog database. By October 9th, I've whittled the number down to 20 out of print, or never created covers. It was intense and somewhat scary to do this project that I've neglected and feared doing throughout the 90's. Since I've recovered from my accident I have taken great pleasure in writing long letters and truly communicating with my correspondents. In the past I've often felt harried, rushed and too busy to spend any length of time writing letters. I now have a much healthier attitude about my time and what it is worth and I make time for answering mail and I'm dedicated to keeping up with my networking. I have developed a great technique of having envelopes with goodies already in them ready to address once I get a piece of mail in. Then I am constantly aware of who I owe mail to, because I owe it until the package goes to post. This is so much nicer for me than the scattered and varied ways I've dealt with this in the past. This keeps me from feeling overwhelmed, even when I don't have money to mail the packages, I am at least relaxed in knowing that I'm on top of the situation, and things have not slipped through the cracks. I have been writing these 'all points bulletins' since at least 1985 and I have been sporadically filing away copies of these which, until last week, I never bothered looking back at. I recently decided it might be fun to do a booklet which contained a number of these from throughout the years. So I've been plowing through old files and generally amusing myself by observing the phases of development and confusion which I've been through over the years while trying to manage these Mail Music activities. This has actually done some good to also help me focus on what things I've started and never finished, and so I've compiled a list of projects to pull out of obscurity and finish. I'll report back on my progress in future letters. I'm now fortuitously dating someone who is very helpful and curious about my activities and thus she's inspired me to delve into some of these projects. Her qualities include a healthy interest in my networking activities with an 'outsider's' perspective on it, a passion for the written word (she's working on her masters degree in English), and a questioning and probing mind to dig below the surface to uncover more than the simple, facile explanations for things. This in turn allows me to clarify things and inspires me to pull things together to get them out to the world.

September & October 1997

33 or 1/3 of a Century

2005-12-21T12:01:00.000-08:00

In the course of my self-aware landmark birthdays, I knew after 25 was 33. The quarter and third century marks are great excuses to get serious and take grand inventory of one's place in time. I've recently read the piece I wrote at 25 and it has become imperative that I pen a 33 edition. It's not like I've not been thinking heavily about this time but I realize I have talked with friends about it but not specifically written how wonderful I feel. If I thought I'd gone somewhere by 25, judging by my 1989 criteria, I've gone far in the interceding eight years. Due to the reality that my life can be intense from year to year - I've finally grasped the excellent awareness of 'what time it is.' I'm strongly grasping the deeper and more fantastic understanding of a remarkable number of daily occurrences. My progress in putting my house into order, which is brought up again and again in letters I've written forever, has become such a joyous life-giving activity for me now instead of troublesome work, because I realize now how close my goal of excellent production and organization of ZIDSIC's 500 releases is to reality. I have the great fortune that my analytical mind can set straight the madcap activities of my tweaky creative mind (did I mention I'm a Gemini?). My new girlfriend carefully observed in reading old network APB's how self-demanding and guiltily apologetic for my shortcomings that I am, as if what I was doing already wasn't enough. At 33 I realize how I let endless creative ideas overwhelm my energy to finalize and release projects. I get caught up in an endless cycle of new and present activity and gradually forget unfinished sessions and efforts. Yesterday is so far away when today beckons. So in my 20's I shot off my gun in every-which direction and never collected the trophies for all the targets that I unwittingly hit. Right now in my life I am getting great joy in putting excellent projects to rest. Finishing and tidying up loose ends feels so good. As if 500 releases is not enough there are 10% extra of great things started and never completed. I once wished I could create days with 58 hours in them. I can see why now! What helps nowadays is that I have more focus and awareness of easy processes to complete things. I've developed excellent systems over the years for all the things I do creatively: music/mail/noise/ computing/dreaming/scheming/confronting & completing. And most importantly and rarely discussed is this whole ZIDSIC madness I've created no longer scares and intimidates me. Let's all heave a sigh of relief! I've got the whole concept down, it's just time which will improve things to a level to be appreciated. My new motto, in my new life is "It's Helpful to be Clear." One thing I've also neglected to write about over the last few years is I've finally taken to heart an old piece of advise from the Mighty Minóy "Why don't you get laid. Get away from those tapes. Jesus Christ!" I was largely without a significant social life until the 90's and the tapes and networking were a joyous and excellent escape. Then I finally found girlfriends (like Barb Hall from 1989-93). Then the diversity of women in my life allowed the push-pull which helps intellectual and emotional precepts to change and grow. I have developed, especially in my 30's, an unexpected and wonderful gift of social interaction which I just assumed was the sole right of my sister Liz. Her friends here used to refer to her as 'the sheriff' because it was as if she was someone who everyone in town knew. So when I'm out in public nowadays it's a hilarious social event, seeing all sorts of people who remember me but who I hardly know. So Minóy's advice was less about 'getting laid' per-se but more of a call to come out of my cave every now and then and get out into the real world. The audio clip in question joyously appears on my newest release (finished yesterday, as I write this on September 29th) "Toss Me In the Air, I'll Pay!" in a most amusing juxtaposition with a reading of the 1914 Vortacist manifesto. So now I've developed a balance between having a life and being a noisician/musician. I allow the outside world to come in, and then in the spare time I have when it is not intruding I use to work on networking, my label, recording and the such. Now on the more amusing front, my hunter/gatherer instincts have vastly multiplied my collections since I last reported on them 8 years ago. I'm planning to count my cassette collection sometime this year and I expect it is around 3000 (versus 1800 in 1989). My vintage necktie collection has ballooned from 200 to 670. My collection of suits and sport coats are equally vast, nearly 100 suits and even more sport coats. Vintage-wise I favor the looks from 1955-1965, so lots of suits and ties from that era, as well as other collectibles glassware, sunglasses (over 125 pairs), exotica albums, etc.

September, 1997

Please excuse the dust, we are remodeling

2005-12-21T12:00:00.001-08:00

April 1992, Louisville, Kentucky, the Xenophobic States of America. This is my last month at the residence I have lived in since May 1988. To think of all the changes that I have been through in this time and to think how much the world has changed around us since then. I have been through three major jobs and a few flaky freelance positions. I started at Paul Plaschke Studios (a 6 person advertising agency) where I lasted until December 1988. In January I was working a Crane Productions (a place that produced and marketed 4-color fast food advertising coupons). Over the next twelve months the company dramatically reduced its number of employees from 24 to 6. I saw the writing on the door and proceeded to do a sketchy freelance project building a computer database for The Disabled Citizens Computer Center. I was also freelancing with Crane on and off at this time. In the fall of 1990 I joined a 41 week project with United Research Company (a consultancy group) at Reynolds Aluminum Plant No.1: their very first plant in the world, located in what is now the middle of a run-down black side of town. This fascinating project lasted until June 1991. I took this month off to welcome out-of-town guests to a month-long 27th birthday celebration. I spent the rest of the year between two freelance projects, one with Reynolds and the other with Paul Plaschke. Finally in January 1992 I spent all month interviewing and landing a job with Fetter Printing Company, the highest quality & oldest printer in town. This is a job I could have for many decades to come. Basically my job is to work with clients supplying us with jobs on computer disk. I help clients understand what we require to process their jobs on my computer in our digital color pre-press system. Then once the jobs arrive I am responsible for processing the files. I honestly have never been so excited about a job in my life. I really have the premier Macintosh computer position in the city of Louisville!!! All the jobs I have held since I graduated from college in June 1987 have involved working on a Macintosh computer. It has been my vision to stick with a position which involves working on a Mac because I knew the technology would keep on improving and allowing me access to new windows of opportunity. In 1988 I could not have suspected what I would be doing today because the technology had not advanced to this point & nobody ever guessed it would at the time. At the time, ad agencies were only doing typesetting and basic black & white designs on the Mac. Now agencies can do full color designs including everything except high quality photographs. These can, in turn be combined with their files using the Fetter color pre-press system. The technological advances are exciting and impressive. In the meantime, since May 1988 the rest of the world has changed more than in any other 5 year span in my lifetime. Communism has collapsed, Germany is reunited, Margaret Thatcher lost power, United States went to war, peaceful, outward-looking anti-inflationary governments have finally arrived a South America. Europe is coming together just as the Soviet Union is coming apart. Infamous totalitarianist dictators fell the world around including ones in Romania, Chile and eastern Asia. This is not to say all the bad boys are gone we still have tyrants left in Libya, Iraq, North Korea and new butchers in Myanmar (ex-Burma). Now is the time to question our preconceived notions about the world and our place in it. I am confident that the rest of the decade will be a challenging time to live in. Please keep in touch and we will confront the future together. The ashes of the past blow as dust into the future.

April 1992

New Theory

2005-12-21T12:00:00.000-08:00

I have a new theory abut the future of the cottage industry of mail music exchange. I believe that ultimately in the 1990's the networks will experience an unprecedented growth. The proliferation of printed matter and publications documenting the existence of this cottage industry will lead more creative and active recording artists and experimenters into the arena of mail networking. Search for recognition and self promotion will be increasingly difficult accordingly since there will be something of a burden placed upon publications that promote awareness of the cassette culture. Many people have attempted to publish directories of the network including projects by Robin James (Cassette Mythos), Alex Douglas (Contact List of Electronic Musicians - CLEM), Hal McGee (Electronic Cottage), Michael And, Andi (Man's Hate), Lord Litter (KFR), Richard Franecki plus endless others I don't know about. Most of these people are crushed under the load of mail which must be answered and processed to keep up with documenting the international arena of cassette networking. I've known for years now that the scope of the network is way beyond my grasp or even conceptualization. I simply strive to hold onto people I write, and write new people only when I'm inspired to do so. I further assert that the stress-level and anxiety between warring factions of home tapers will widen and be far from disappearing through unity. The strength that it takes to be part of the network, the countless hours needed, the persistence, the tenacity and desire for recognition (in whatever form) which compels people to release tapes simply enforces this necessary difference of opinion. The radical difference in opinion about the relative value of certain types of music/noise which each home taper feels will enforce the stress. In early twentieth century Russia the abstract artists of the time would get together to form art movements and write manifestos about their new view of modern art. People joked that four different artists would get together and form five art movements! This comic illustration is how I view networking at times and it allows me to laugh at the pointlessness of arguments about righteousness of any given style or trend in home taping. Let the differences remain and let's get on with getting the mail out the door. I might fall asleep if I picked up a copy of Electronic Cottage and people agreed with each other entirely in every letter and article.

1991

Projects that have Never Died.

2005-12-21T11:59:00.002-08:00

I have started myriad of projects over the last few years in relation to my network activities. These are continuing projects that have not died. You may or may not have been informed about them so I'll pretend you know nothing and continue from there. My project "the Best of ZH27" is a series of tapes made by people who own more than 27 of my releases. Minóy, Tom Furgas and Nick have completed works for this series: The following list is of people who have more than 27 of my releases: Minóy 94 Tom Furgas 71 Al Margolis 64 Agog 61 Ken Clinger 56 Nick 52 Zurich (1348) 51 Dave Prescott 50 Don Campau 44 John Wiggins 37 Van Der Veens 36 Mike Honeycutt 35 Mark Hanley 32 Kozi Matsuura 32 Peter Moreels 32 Roger Moneymaker 31 De Fabriek 29 Adam Bohman 28 Mauro Guazotti 28 Crow 27 Yoshiaki Kinno 27 (That's 917 releases between these 21 people). According to my not entirely accurate reporting system. The concept of putting together the tape is to use as many of my tapes as you see fit as source material in a mix consisting of whichever tapes of mine you desire. My collection of Worthless Photographs continues to grow and grow. Many people I write know about this project and continually send me great and even more wonderful 'not-so-great' snapshots, slides, Polaroids, and negatives. I take this time out to thank everyone who has contributed to this never-ending project. I realize over the years I've been sadly lax in commenting personally thanking each and every one of you, but let it be known that they are appreciated and well received. ; My Manifestos, Monographs & More project is well on its way, but requires extensive work, coordination and very difficult to get submissions from the home tapers it is meant to serve. I have started issues on the following people who have tape labels of more than 27 cassettes: Generations Unlimited Sound of Pig Harsh Reality De Fabriek Minóy Cassetteworks Tom Furgas Cassettes ZIDSLICK Nick Fifth Column Tapes Frustapes Lonely Whistle I have received and typeset interviews with these people. Don Campau Yoshiaki Kinno I have manifestos from these people. Tom Furgas I desperately need articles on these people and labels. I would like insight from you if you have written any of these people for a while and have some of their tapes. I'm looking for personal, critical, analytical, or other views about the people behind the labels, their groups (bands/solo works), the label as a whole. I would like to know how your feel about how these things have changed, matured, departed, or become different over the years. Also how do you think these people/their labels fit into a larger picture of Mail Music Networking, or 20th Century Music. I had originally planned to have a few issues out by the end of 1990, but I have not received enough information on any of the people to start compiling MM&M. Please contact me with your ideas, concerns and input for this project. ; I've been reading an old issue of CLEM and was reliving the thrill of contact lists. I remember classic lists by people like Richard Franecki (Uddersounds), Lang Thompson (Playhouse), Dave Prescott (Neologisms), etc. and this has inspired me to do a current list of the nearly 100 people that I write ; My most exciting project now is a month long celebration of my 27th birthday in June, 1991. I've invited most of the people that I write to attend, and though nobody has committed 100%, here is a preliminary of people who have shown interest and who might show up in Louisville in June: Don Campau Dave Prescott Mike Honeycutt Roger Moneymaker Adam Bohman & Crow Richard Van Dellen (De Fabriek) Michael Chocholak Lawrence Salvitore Al Margolis Damien Bisiglia (Agog) Tom Furgas So please let me know if you are interested and then I can begin to firm up information, try to book a couple of gigs at the local alternative bars and make other preparations. ; A note on collaborations. Collaborations using tapes received in the mail is my life-blood activity. It's something I do, love to do, and can't think of not doing, and that I'll probably do for years and years, if not the rest of my life. In the last six years people have sent me tape after tape after tape of materials for me to use. Some have been used immediately, and most others have waited until I have a project requiring their use, or I'm in the mood to use them. My productivity has slowed down because it really doesn't pay to be prolific (as I learned in 1988) and so I don't use the collaborative tapes as quickly as I used to yet. I still go back to old tapes and pull material off for new projects. I've been much too slack in my issuing of contributors copies because of the time, expense and lack of blank tapes. But this is changing so hold tight. I'm planning to do a massive contributor dub down this X-Mess Helliday season when I'm actually going to be working short hours at my job. Now that I feel caught up in sending out tapes I owe in trade, this is the next step. All contributor copies will be dubbed down as cleanly as possible from the master, at real speed, onto chrome tapes of equal or better quality than the master tapes themselves. This is so you (the contributor) can have the best impression of the work and so that, if you wish, you can release the tape yourself . I can supply a master copy of the cover if necessary. It should not seem strange that I'm eager to have parallel distribution of a tape due to the limited distribution I can provide my tapes. Having it co-released on another label provides the tape with a wider audience (if only by a dozen people!) and one of the reasons I make these tapes is so they can be heard, not because I'm going to win some fancy-schmancy record contract, or make big bucks. As Amandaman says: "I'll take the slow winding road to fame. (Except the more that I look into it, the less inviting any form of fame is. Fame has some positive aspects nobody can deny, but the detractors are even more numerous, and much less worth working for). I've jumped subjects a bit in this section, but the underlying point is my collaborative activities are not dead and I plan to work hard to ensure contributor copies of my tapes get to where they belong, soon. ; Post Notes from Fall 1997 The MM&M project died through general disinterest from the network plus the preposterous amount of work it entailed above and beyond running my large label. I never released a contact list, but, finally in 1997 I'm getting around to doing one. The 27th birthday celebration guests included Mike Honeycutt and Adam Bohman. Not as many as hoped, but certainly the excellent documentation "A Salt ~ Battery" will attest to the wonderful times. I actually did get around to catching up with my contributor copies at last - lots of work to do though. I'm still collecting worthless photographs after 14 years or so!

Spring, 1991

Frumpy Greetings Danklings

2005-12-21T11:59:00.001-08:00

More of the newest news from 4730... Life erupts with thankful delight this year. I'm into my 3rd month @ Crane Productions as Network Administrator & Systems Coordinator. This job supplies me with appropriate income and the ever needed access to Macintosh computers... a fixation that I've developed over the last few years. It has become essential for me to be around a Mac in order to process the wealth of information swimming in my brain, and to work with the vitally powerful graphic programs available on the Mac. This brings me much satisfaction to be in this environment. My other environment, the apartment, has other luxuries I require...a perpetual supply of imported beers (Chimay Grand Reserve Abby Ale is the favorite for the month of March... it's a January 1988 vintage, delicious!), a 4 speaker stereo to play the myriad of cassettes on hand, a VCR for watching Peter Sellers videos (the favored actor for this season), a kitchen with gas ranges for cooking whatever ethnic food suits my whim, a closet with bunches of shirts, sport coats (special thrift store collection), plus my classic collection of 127 or so neckties. This is the life I lead... these are the things that bring me pleasure. In addition I now am leasing a car (Pontiac 6000 STE... the car with too many initials... it is an STE with ERC and a stereo with AMR and DNR!) which absolves me from the hassles of car ownership... ie car payments, repairs, and maintenance. This vehicle gets me to and from work, the Liquor Outlet & Cut Rate Liquors (where all the imported beers are), Europa, Jack Fry's, Lilly's/La Peche, Café Mimosa, Deitrich's, Timothy's & other fine restaurants, and most vitally: to the post office so I can mail these important letters & updates to your starved mind! The newest tapes to capture my interest include "Two Balls Have I" by Lawrence Salvitore, "Dreamstate" from Lonely Whistle, "Seven Days from the World" by Final Treat, "Fragment 1" from ND, "East Coast Variations on the Monterey Road Continuum" by Dan Fioretti, Bwana Dog's "Sacrifice of Reason" (Canadian live performance), and "Retreat House Dolls" from Nick. Thanks to the respective artists & organizations for keeping me so entertained. In addition I have come into contact with Charlie Newman, the man & mind behind Minimalogic and other weighty creative wonders. This has added new significance and color to my life since he is a vibrantly interesting and vital person to be in the presence of. The two cassettes he prepared for me of some of his older recording projects belongs to the list above. Also, special thanks to the Coca-Cola company for creating a product that I can readily buy to keep me awake during my working hours. Without this, life would surely be amiss. I still wish to enlist your assistance in any/all of the following on-going collections and projects. Here is a quick run-down of them. I am always requesting for people to send me their most worthless photographs for my ever expanding selection of bad photography. I'll take this time out to thank everybody who consistently sends me these pictures which are so very entertaining for their inherent valuelessness. There are quite a few followers of this collection here at 1027 (the apartment address)... people who constantly want to see the newest arrivals. It's great entertainment for new guests, because people in general LOVE snapshots and these are such a wide variety of subjects and styles that it amazes everyone. The second thing I collect & I fancy having people send me is neckties. I am interested in older second-hand ties that you can purchase cheaply at thrift stores, consignment shops, and yard sales... as well as hand-me-downs from relatives and friends. If you see any outrageous, out-of-control, wild or fascinating ties I'd be most interested in having such wondrous neckwear and I'll gladly send something equally interesting in return or exchange for this favor. Thirdly I am still interested in receiving pieces for my Embarrassing & Regrettable (E&R) project. This project [see my mailer ."..Thelma Sleeth"] is for recordings in which you attempt to accurately recreate the recordings style of your earliest cassette projects. Professionalism is frowned upon... instead I'm looking for, as the name suggests, truly raw material representational of your earliest forays into recording. There are no deadlines for any of these projects, so when the moment to act upon these projects arises, seize it & send me the results of your efforts on my behalf. Unrecent Replagiarism Billows-zh/kup

Sometime in 1990

She's such a hunk of womanhood she makes me want to sin

2005-12-21T11:59:00.000-08:00

Hips ahoy! It have been months since I've written an all-points bulletin so I'm sure you've missed out on some news that I can only begin to describe. First off it's the end of September, the first month in our new apartment setting. We played musical rooms in the carriage house that we live in. We annexed the final section of the first floor that was previously an efficiency apartment (one large room, a smaller kitchen and a tiny bathroom). So I moved out of my room into the efficiency, so my bedroom is directly next to my office/networking room which is a blessing. CBCIII (the macho guitarist for Grandbrother) moved into my old room and we turned his old room into the brand new Grandbrother Studio. I chipped the north wall to reveal the brick underneath. We also tore down the wood paneling in the living room which is now very spacious since I've moved my networking arena out of it (desk, files, and hordes of printed matter) and we move some furniture into the Jesus room (the studio, so named because it was once my storage room when I lived here alone and it was such a disaster you'd open the door, take one look, and exclaim "Jesus, what a mess!") Moving is always a difficult time for people, but this was the perfect type of move. It was an internal move which means you move all your possessions but only within the same building. So I got the benefits of the move: added space, an opportunity to take inventory of my possessions and to reorganize them, and a new environment, without the hassles of moving to another place (packing the car, etc).. I did discover quite a few things that I had been hiding away in closets and files which both excited and scared me. As always there are projects that I've started which I've unwittingly abandoned and they have risen to the surface again with this move. I spend all of my free time from work getting projects of one kind or another done. I have apartment related projects, organization to be done (filing of the hordes of printed matter I amass), local projects related to friends and family, networking projects (answering mail, making tapes), the big GULP project still drags on plus on top of all this I still have to eat, sleep and drink beer. Here's a closer look at some of these projects as they relate to networking. This month, within one week I got two albums in the mail from Europe that I'm on. I was expecting and excited to receive "Suthlgangblockade" from Runzlestirn & Gurglestock in Switzerland. It is an album of joyously cutup and dissected collaborations that have been done with a tape they sent out to various home-tapers. (I got my copy of this tape from Agog who was to busy to work on this project). The other album was both a surprise to receive and an even bigger surprise to be on. The new Famlende Forsøk LP "Ars Transmutoria" arrived from an unexpected source. The first piece, side one features a violin/vocal work I sent away for collaboration years ago and I subsequently forgot about and heard nothing about for years. The LP is a beautiful full-color gatefold release with lyrics on the inside printed in blue over a silver halftone picture of rocks. So it's not the disco fame and fortune of being on album that appeals to me, I'm just very proud to be a part of this richly produced, high-quality, classic Famlende Forsøk album. A dizzy thrill. On the album front, it took all summer for me to get the first few copies of my Generations Unlimited box set (GULP) released. Coordinating the project has been a labor of love for the last four months and now I'm at the stage of finally putting it all together into a fully packaged product and getting copies out. There was a seemingly endless amount of (self-inflicted) work to do including hand folding, stapling and trimming 400 booklets and adhering multiple graphics and visual elements to the packaging. Each copy (limited edition of 166) is distinctly and decidedly unique. There are so many elements and variables in the packaging, especially including the strange trinkets and 3d objects that I have collected to include that the Box Set is a veritable time capsule of my life for the summer of 1990. I've discriminatingly chosen and selected items from my environment and have solicited things from friends to make "Fragments from the End of Time" live up to its title. The LP/Box Set is available from me and from Dave Prescott in Boston. I'm not quite half way through finishing the project. It has been, and will continue to be, a lot of work, but I'm confident you'll agree, if you own a copy, that it mirrors or reflects the quality time that went into it. I'm not sure what Dave is selling it for, but I'm offering it for $11.27 postage paid domestically and I've yet to set a foreign cost because I'm not sure how much it will cost to send. I'll find this out when I mail my first copies overseas. I'd bet that there will be no copies to sell by the end of the year. As a final statement about this project: the format of an LP for me is just an opportunity to exert my creative efforts to produce more elaborate packaging and to generate awareness of my activities. It is by no means a platform for me to leap into other medias for presenting my sound works. I'm deeply committed to the cassette format and refuse to consider another format superior in any way. LP's and CD's have their place and their benefits, but they are not equal to or better than cassettes overallbut that's a different subject altogether. In terms of cassette output since the start of the GULP project (as I affectionately refer to it) I have been more particular about my releases nowadays and I put more time and effort into my new works. The first few months have seen the release of a few four track works including "Northern Lights Ascending," a new Here Be Monsters release called "So.................Ve Vait!" and a nearly complete addition "#4" to the Embarrassing and Regrettable series plus the epic ne Grandbrother tape "Operation Dankside." I'm also at work on a tape with solo prepared piano that I recorded in September. We found a damaged upright piano in the alley, so we dragged it in front of our apartment and removed what little remained of the entire front keyboard and mallet section leaving only the exposed strings and soundboard. It has been an exceptionally rewarding experience since I've always found the inside of the piano infinitely superior to playing using the keys. It is really surprising the sounds that can be made from it. We're eventually going to move it into the studio and do some Grandbrother recordings using it. The Here Be Monsters new release features a most scary piece of network gossip called "PM" which is a short four track follow-up equivalent to "Round One - Minóy vs Zannoy." It features a confusing and unsettling tirade by Minóy about Dave Prescott. The tape also features some wild four track compositions using the unparalleled media sounds of Shaun Roberts and it has a truly demented version of "The Perfect Asshole" by Lawrence Salvitore with added sounds by Minóy, Nick and Hal McGee. "Operation Dankside" has been a long discussed work that was four months in the formulation and fermentation before we had the guts to do it in the studio. It is a thematic representation of various events, people and ideas that we've experienced as Grandbrother including a sequence with a man who lives down the alley from us who threatened to use a Citizens Arrest against me if I continued to speed recklessly down the alley in my car. So the theme about policemen and concerned citizens recurs throughout the release on the three "Dankside Collages", the piece "I Like Cops" and "Citizens Arrest." We used sound and music sources from Das Fett (Holland), Shaun Roberts (UK), and the famous Minóy laugh. Plus "Dankside" features tributes to CBCIII's old boss "What Would the Fat Man Say?", the nefarious Cat Kid in "Cat Kid Knows" and the sadly departed Nancy (a cancerous old, smelly, cigarette smoking lady who lived in the efficiency apartment that we now own). The latter song "Dancing with Nancy" is unquestionably a Grandbrother classic. In the other part of my world I have a new job working for Reynolds Aluminum (at their first plant in the world!) doing Macintosh consulting for a 41 week project. This job is challenging, interesting, pays well and is rewarding. Unfortunately the plant is located in a raw area of town in what has turned into a black ghetto. Within the four blocks I have to travel south of Broadway there are 14 houses and four businesses that are boarded up on one side of the street! But if that is my only drawback to the job, I should consider myself lucky (as long as I don't get mugged!) This is the extent of what I've got to say this time around. Many points I've left untouched and many that I've gone on too long about. Next time you'll never know.

1990

Memphis & Nick

2005-12-21T11:58:00.002-08:00

The middle of March has provided me with some wonderful opportunities in networking. On Wednesday, the 15th I was informed that I could have the next two days off because I wasn't needed. Far be it for me to complain about having a four day weekend. So on Thursday afternoon I left town for Memphis. On the way down I recorded 30 minute 'audio travelogues' for 10 of my European contacts. During this time I discussed the American Interstate system, and read all the signs that I passed off to the listener, so that they could have a feel for what it is like to travel the interstate with me. The trip was a brisk five hours and I arrived in Memphis long before I was expected. I stayed the weekend at Roger Moneymaker/Swinebolt#45's apartment on Poplar Avenue. I also met up the unimitatable Richard Martin. During the course of the weekend we drank lots of imported beer (that I brought down with me), ate out at great Memphis restaurants, and listened to copious amounts of albums and cassettes. I went to a few thrift stores and bought five neckties & some Belgian-style ale glasses for drinking the Chimay Grand Reserve, Orval & St. Sixtus Belgian abbey ales that I brought with me from Louisville. (Actually I bought them across the river in Indiana where the selection is larger & less expensive). On Saturday night I met up with Chris Phinney/Harsh Reality briefly before heading to WEVL to do an hour radio show with RoLMo. This show lasted a couple hours as we encroached on Mike Honeycutt/Mystery Hearsay's time slot, since he was running late. This gave me an opportunity to play some of the fine tapes that I brought along with me. I played some Murray the Cop/ Legoland (from Bunk Nesbit/ WV), AO-turns the tables on (from Andrew Orford/ CA), Minimalogic (courtesy of Charlie Newman/ KY), RoVaMiMo (from the Winnies and Friend compilation of Bovine Productions/ PA) and some new recordings of CBC3 and myself (from the release "Staying Alive in 1989" by Grandbrother). This show was followed by some extremely delightful pandemonium with RoLMo, Mike & myself. There was continuous video documentation of this absurdity. In addition, Mike had brought all the cassettes that I'd ever sent him and we had a late night/early morning marathon ZIDSICK program. At 3:50 AM during an especially abusive audio assault the phone lit up and I was immediately asked "What are you all doing to us people out here in radio-land!?" I was amazed that anyone was still listening at this hour in the morning so I asked the caller how many people were actually there for this show (which they had been listening to in its entirety!) and I was told that there were two guys, one dude wrapped in tin foil and someone else who had passed out. This told me more than I wanted to know about my audience! The next weekend I had an extra day off because it was Freaky Friday, or Good Friday, or something, so I decided that I'd carry through with some previously discussed plans to meet up with the legendary Nick of Lucky Baby Retreat House and Level fame. I met him half-way between Louisville and Lintin at Paoli, Indiana (a one stop-light town). He parked his car there and we traveled back by my car to Louisville. I showed him the downtown concentrating on the five pieces of 20C public sculptures located in the Kentucky Center for the arts & the Humana building : An Alberto Giacometti, Louise Nevelson, Tony Smith, Jean Miró and the largest John Chamberlain sculpture in existence. I later took him to the less 'touristy' sights which a tour guide would never show you: the Incredible Thin House, and the Shoe Tree.

1990

End of 25 Ans

2005-12-21T11:58:00.001-08:00

As the twenty-fifth year of my life comes to a close, I'm taking a look at what this year has yielded. I was very excited to turn a quarter of a century and I wrote a form-letter like this discussing my feelings at the time. This year has been magnificent for me. To begin with, my major accomplishment of this year was to organize the elements of my life that I'd previously shunned or ignored. The most time-consuming and difficult activity was supplying covers for cassettes that I created in the last few years (especially 1988) which never had covers. I use my computer database to list all of my master cassettes and then I created a category telling me if the tape had a cover, and if it was still in print. I then gathered all possible information for more than 90 tapes which were without covers and typeset it. Next I selected about a hundred computer graphics I've done in the last four years to serve as cover art. I let my girlfriend Barb match up titles with the art. Next I pasted up and copied master covers and finally printed up and trimmed the copies. I also had to reprint about 50 covers that were out of stock. I've yet to complete this task. I've done about 25 of them and I'm still looking for the other master covers. This search took me to the next and most monumental task. I dug into the dozen boxes in my closet to finally sort and organize their contents. These boxes contained thing I've saved throughout the 80's including artwork, many items from collected, seven years of mail art and mail music, notes from my parents, receipts from events I've attended and dozes of other categories. I've proudly complete this task which took about a month of concerted effort. I'm now unafraid to set up new categories for things to be filed under. This is my key to success in organization. I previously never could sort through all of this stuff I've accumulated because I had nowhere to put most of it. That in turn made me very frustrated and I gave up quickly and left the job undone. I can't possibly describe what a relief it is to be so well organized after all these years. I used to dread opening the closet to try to find something that was in one of the boxes because they were so haphazardly organized. Now it is still a monumental task to keep up with the level of organization but I can proudly say I can find things that I'm looking for. I'm especially happy with the way I've organized all the mail that I've received. Each person who I currently write has a file on my floor by my tape collection. Each file is divided into three sections: art, letters, catalogs and various printed matter. All of this organizing ("It's the artists' prerogative to organize" says Lawrence Salvitore) puts my 25 years into perspective where I can get an overview of what I've done to date and then use this as a sounding-off point for future activities. I have done very few recordings this year because I've felt uncomfortable with faithfully categorizing and cataloging what I've done to date. Now that I've done this I feel free in my 26th year to work on projects which I can assimilate into my current structure. The projects that I've done in my 25th year are as follows. ND is releasing "Fragment 2," a booklet with interviews and a cassette that I'm splitting with Agog. I've typeset this work and am proud how it has come out. It should be ready by late June. I'm working very hard on the astounding graphics and packaging of my first album to be released on Generations Unlimited. I'm very excited about this and people who own this album will no doubt be equally impressed and surprised.

June 1990

Scribblings Constitute

2005-12-21T11:58:00.000-08:00

These scribblings constitute my thoughts on the act of writing letters and many of the reasons behind what I put into them. This will fail to be a treatise on the subject due to my poor spelling and form, my willingness to express scattered thoughts as they arrive in my brain, and because this is meant to have a friendly informal style. When I write letters there is rarely one style that I use, it is most often a personal attempt at accurate communication, yet I'm often wandering astray as many thoughts are striving to be placed on the paper, and often, half way through the this process these thoughts are lost in the wake of more urgent thoughts. Thus I have some unendurable long sentences with a seemingly endless series of digressions. Also, in my rush to put these thoughts on paper I take some liberties with my cursive handwriting and longer words get hopelessly jumbled as my brain rushes ahead, as my hand tries to keep pace. I also tend to interrupt myself to present observations like I just heard three pieces (Quadrilles) by Eric Satie on WUOL and the whole set lasted no longer than it took me to write one of the long sentences above. I was shocked to hear the announcer come back so quickly. Also I tend to use letters as a transient document of recent activities and events. I suppose that I write no less than 25-40 letters each month. It is entirely impossible for me to estimate the true number. I am always backlogged in the mail that I need to answer. In fact I vividly remember the last time that I was confident that I had answered all my mail. It was during the summer mail drought in 1986. I even had the spare time then to write new people. At times I find writing letters an oppressive and never ending duty, a responsibility which cannot remain ignored. Other times I get real excited about answering mail and will write multi-page letters to everyone. Style-wise, when I write my networking pals I'll rarely have the strict 'across the page/vertical' style. I'll write like this diagram (sort-of): I'll switch directions at the end of a paragraph or a thought. It's quicker to write this way and it is easier to fill a page this way. And, after reading years worth of letters it's fun to read mail in that manner. As I write this time it is past 2am and I am having my first beers of the evening. I've chosen a Samuel Smith Taddy Porter as my first beer and I have previously poured, yet not began drinking a celebratory beer. This is bottle no. B35871 1987 of the rare and coveted Thomas Hardy Ale. As I drink and write I'm listening to classical radio. I'm going to chose a tape to listen to soon. Actually I have already chosen a tape to listen to but I have been so pleased with WUOL that I've yet to turn the tape on. I have now had my first sip of the Thomas Hardy Ale and I'm overwhelmed as I usually am by the marvel of the beverage which clearly surpasses the entire concept of beer. Now I'm listening to my 1988 master tape #12: ZORYRICFT by SHMUSPAG (that's what's on side A). This is the third time I've ever listened to this tape. I last heard it on May 13th. It's a shame that I have not listened to this tape more as I'm really impressed with it now. Curiouser and Curiouser. My letters are a fascinating barometer for my emotional condition. This is because I'm not afraid to write letters when I'm in strange or bad moods. It matters not if I'm angry, melancholy, excited, inebriated, or whatever if the mood strikes me to write a letter I go! I feel it would be needless self censorship to not send letters that I've written while in strange or bad moods. The people I write would know that these moments exist and I'm not always even-headed and happy. What a bore I'd be in this case. A fascinating thing about letters is how one can be distracted in the middle (or wherever) and return without the reader knowing what has transpired. So if I left after writing this line [here] and come back [now] there is no knowing where I went, what I did, how long I've been gone, etc. And as long as the same train of thought is kept there is no telling or knowing that I actually left! It is only when I make mention or reference to early occurrence that you can gauge my absence from this letter. So, to be relevant, here's what's new: I'm still listening to the SHMUSPAG side mentioned earlier. It is a real delight to hear. I've finished my Taddy Porter, and half of the Thomas Hardy Ale and I've begun the next British beer, Royal Oak ale which is brewed by the Pope Brewery, the same people who brew Thomas Hardy Ale. Royal Oak is a great ale in the classic sense. It's not as strange and wonderful as Thomas Hardy Ale, yet is delightfully clear and rich tasting. This letter will allow you to judge, as many people have done before, how drinking effects my letter writing. In a self-augmented way I can say that I notice the obvious traits of the loss of motor control (which takes a while to notice since the handwriting is already bad), plus I am more prone to being more whimsical and obscure not to mention outright strange and unpredictable as I drink more. A reason I continue to write beyond the (theoretical) limit of my reasonable ability to communicate is that when the barriers or rationality are broken down by inebriation, I am prone to doing some amazing word slinging. I get caught up in fitting words together for aesthetic purposes or to salve my obscure ability to conjure up abstract concepts/constructs. Also, to put it more simply I have fun with words most of the time and I come up with more unpredictable and strange combinations. By now I have finished listening to SHMUSPAG and have commenced listening to the more demanding series AIR. I'm starting with "Compressed Air" (88 master tape #7). There are some great moments here, but it requires a lot of attention because the mix is dense. I've also finished the Royal Oak and have read back through my first four pages of scrawling so I could focus on what I've said so I could judge what is left unsaid. I am prone to, and have fun doing , original doodles and art directly on my correspondence. One of the more stupid and vain reasons for this is I have a conviction that eventually I will become famous (accidentally, not through my nonexistent efforts) and this will allow the people I write to reap the awards of having valuable original art of mine. Also, and more realistically, I get praise from people on the aesthetic appeal and insistence of my mail and I dare not let people down by depriving them of my time and creative effort. It comes down to the fact that one (even minor) compliment or observation on the about of (quality) time and effort I put into the aesthetic impact of my mail-outs, this will keep me going for weeks or months. Also I can't imagine doing it another way. That's me. That's my style. That's what I do. How could I, or why would I, stop!?! I also frequently include original or limited edition series artworks along with my mail. Even the series rarely is as much as 20. So the scarcity should add to its value (it's not as if I do scores of copies of something and impersonally distribute it to anyone). People will write me and say that they have a series of my artworks in their room or apartment or office and this thrills me. It is one of the genius mutilators which keeps me working, creating and sending these out. Well "Compressed Air" is still raging away. A dense and impenetrable mix it is. Even when I recognize some of the source sounds I've combined to create this, they are wedged and buried amongst lots of other signals sources. Audience is always an interesting consideration when writing letters.

Maybe 1990

CLIP IT! the story of grandbrother live

2005-12-21T11:57:00.002-08:00

The Café Dog, every Friday night, around 8 PM.. .it's Grandbrother's live show. The crowd in this tiny coffee shop/art gallery can range from three people to maybe 25 bewildered souls. Very few people are ready for what they hear, except the regulars and the Grandbrother groupies. The Grandbrother live show is a funneling of energy and emotion through purely acoustic means. The acoustics of the Dog, with its high ceilings, lends itself perfectly to the Grandbrother phenomenon. CBC III's ringing 12 string acoustic (or 8 strings, or however many have remained unbroken) thrashing fills the room with its presence. Even during the quieter lounge versions the room is full of sound... no need for amplification... it only stands in the way between the message and the audience. In fact, even acoustically Grandbrother can be too loud for this small location. The acoustic Grandbrother set is a statement about the superfluousness of amplification. None of the alternative outlets at which Grandbrother occasionally will do a hit-and-run show (play one or two songs, then leave) are so large that there is a need to plug in. In addition, this provides freedom of maneuvering & set-up placement. Why play on a stage when there is nobody near it? If all the patrons are at the bar, play at the bar: it's disarmingly simple. Zandbrother's booming voice fills the entire place, requiring the patrons that choose to carry on conversations to speak loudly to each other. The reason for this ferociousness is because there is an insistence of the Grandbrother songs which is often mercilessly delivered to unsuspecting audiences. The repertoire of Grandbrother consists of a perplexing amalgamation of styles. This is because the songs performed are not Grandbrother originals, but they are amazing songs written by home-tapers... pieces so hopelessly obscure to the public, they might as well be originals! This includes brutal songs about animal suffering and human cruelty by Man's Hate, songs of light emotional searching by Don Campau, the delightfully surreal show-tunes of Lawrence Salvitore, and a handful of songs by other home-tapers. This is not the land of jealously guarded copyrights by the artist who wrote the songs. There are to be no lawsuits over infringement. This is a situation where the composer is delighted and amazed to have their work reinterpreted, reconstructed and remolded to fit into Grandbrother's reductive and enhancing styles. Entire pieces originally orchestrated to include drum machines, keyboards, guitars, bass & studio trickery are stripped down, reduced to their bare elements, then reinvented in the pure Grandbrother mode. They become simultaneously true to the originals and true to the Grandbrother musical concept. Songs can be interpreted differently at any given Grandbrother show. The nature of the audience can cause drastic variations of existing material, as can the level of intoxication which Grandbrother has reached. As one of them grabs for the next exotic imported beer, he consults the other in the decision of which to choose. "Should I have a 'dog beer', an Orval or the Samichlaus, Grandbrother?" is a typical question raised at this crucial moment. Once this decision has been reached Zandbrother pops off the cap and they choose which song to play next. There is never a predetermined set list. The order of the songs is never planned out in advance. It all depends on how the audience is that night, how Zandbrother's voice is behaving, how many strings CBC III has broken, and other factors. Zandbrother flips through the many tattered pages of lyrics to decide which song comes next, as CBC III looks through his special Letramax notepad with the cheat-sheet chords written down. The difference in the performance is once CBC III remembers which chords are used in the song, his notepad is ignored, but Zandbrother sometimes clings tenaciously to the lyric sheets for support and assistance on some of the more difficult, or temporarily forgotten songs. (see Grandbrother section )

1990

A Quarter Century

2005-12-21T11:57:00.001-08:00

This marks the start of my second quarter century. I'm most aware of the significant developments in my life during the first twenty-five years, and this brings me enormous hope for the next score and five years. Among the landmark developments I can enumerate it must be recognized how my postal networking has enriched and invigorated my life. During the last five years I've written a couple hundred people in pursuit of the exchange of art, audio works, culture, ideas and theories, worthless photographs, and other things too complex and/or obscure to list. The things I've gained from this vast network of creative thinkers and doers are utterly irreplaceable. This augments and invigorates my daily thoughts, habits, language usage, interpersonal communication and more. To me it is richer than garnishing inspiration from a "master" in a given field, because the people I write who inspire me are people I know, I can communicate with and perhaps eventually meet. The gulf between us is negligible compared with that between myself and any given famous fantastic living artist or musician. With all this glowing praise for how mail correspondents help me I can't pretend it is always a beautiful and satisfying thing. There will always be frustration with contacts who disagree on matters of aesthetics, personal beliefs, or technique. In addition there can be unbearable waits for response to things deemed important. But the mature way to handle the latter is to understand no matter who you write, mailing is not the only thing they do with their life. You can't expect people to ignore daily responsibilities and to always be in a mood to respond to their mail. You can't count on people to always be able to finance it because you're surely not the only person they write, and with a network of any size it can become expensive. For instance, with limited exception I've not mailed anything for the entire months of May and June. Also, I've needed to place a tape order for over eight months now, and still have yet to do so. (Most recently I was fiscally wiped-out by having to pay estimated personal self-employment tax 13% for FICA/Social Security alone, not to mention other Federal, State and City taxes!) My excuses for not mailing vary from stupid and inexcusable to unavoidable. I don't single out people that I'm going to wait to respond to. It is an evenhanded complete mail drought from me that everyone experiences. After all these years (spoken like a veteran) there are simply times that I don't feel like dealing with the responsibilities inherent with networking. It is most interesting to consider the number and variety of things I've collected in my XXV years here on Planet Earth. From friends and people I write I've assimilated easily one thousand worthless photographs; I have an entire wall and more of cassettes numbering around 1800, I've collected over 200 vintage neckties (easily 125 this year alone); my imported and domestic beer bottle collection includes about 300 bottles from maybe 25 countries or more. These are but a few of the things I've collected and gathered over the years, but I brought these up because these are constantly expanding collections. I'd like to thank the many people I write for helping me with most of these, and I do it here because by the time I get to answering a piece of mail, I often forget to thank the people for the enclosures that were mailed with the letter I'm responding to. Nineteen Eighty-Nine has seen many aspects of my life enhanced and enriched. My employment status is very satisfactory. I'm the network administrator for Crane Productions. In this position I am responsible for ensuring a smooth running group of computers and users on this network consisting of about 20 people. This has become over the first few months a minor part of my job, as my new task is an exciting test of developing an Order Entry/Telemarketing based relational database for Crane (a company that coordinates the production and distribution of full-color advertising inserts for the fast-food industry). It's a vibrant business which I'm pleased to be a part of. Next on the really exciting front, this year has brought a serious love and best friend into my life. Barb Hall and I are an uncommonly well matched pair because we share sincere enthusiasm for many of the same things. We both find art, architecture, music and other aesthetics very involving and rewarding. We happily influence and effect each other's opinions on things. We also have a rare understanding of what it takes to make this compatibility successful and rewarding It is difficult to write about how this works but we spend countless hours talking and discussing all manner of items ranging from the hopelessly obscure and witty to subjects which are deeply involving and demanding. I find there is nothing quite as satisfying as being able to express oneself to someone who understands, and in return understand the other as well. On the creative front I've been less active this year by far in recording than I have been in doing explorative abstract art. I try all manner of creative diversions. My medium varies from markers to inks (a favorite and very effective medium) to tempera and paints. I generally work on 22" x 28" sheets of posterboard because I'm so prolific sometimes this is a very affordable surface. I sometimes work on odd sizes of paper or on sheets of FoamCore. I've done no less than 125 posterboard works this year plus easily 100 other works. Certain techniques yield really exciting results, but with all this output it become difficult to place a value on or to understand these works as a whole. I'm keeping all the art for personal archival reasons. When I show my works to friends or acquaintances I'm invariably questioned as to what I'm going to do with all this art. I can't convince some people of my rationale behind keeping the art and not selling any of it, or giving it away to friends or relatives. There are a number of reasons why I'm so stern about my decision. Initially I don't' wish to sell my art because I work in an entirely unhindered way. Nobody (except Barb) has any control over what I do next, or what technique or aesthetic judgment I'll use. This leaves me ultimately free to do what I wish, and doing this make me very happy. If I were to sell my art I'd be putting a value/price on each style/technique/etc. and I'm convinced that once I noticed what kind of thing sold most and sold for the most, I'd be inclined to do more of this accordingly. This would artificially distort my creative methods, and that's a fear of mine. Secondarily, I don't give away my art because I'm creating these things at a very rapid pace, and I can't know which are best since what I like the best now may turn out to be a favorite in the future. I do go back to older works and learn things from them though, (i.e. I like the color choice on one, I like the technique on another, etc.). and this helps me grow as an artist. If some of my works were removed I'd not have this valuable learning experience. And, I'd be very upset with myself if it occurred to me months or years later that I'd given away or sold a piece which, at the time I didn't think much of, but which I now realized was one of the best works I've done. Also, when I'm physically the person who archives my works, I can be held responsible for its condition and safekeeping. Once it is out of my hands it is subjected to an intangible amount of variables. Accidents do happen, and if they do, they were my very own accidents and I can only blame myself. I don't want to hold grudges or spite someone else for such things.

June 1989

A Quarter Century

2005-12-21T11:57:00.000-08:00

June 1989

Snatch a falling car

2005-12-21T11:56:00.002-08:00

Well this is a new thing for me. In fact it is also a new thing for you too because as I am writing this I am writing it with the intent that this parcel of correspondence will be the most recent element of communication to go into your package and after that I'm going to seal it up and mail it to you. So I suppose I should make this real good so that you will be thrilled that I bothered with this at all. Now, recently I have been thinking of telling everyone about the newest groovy sounds of wonderment. They are being created by my roommate CBC III & myself, together as Grandbrother. We have officially completed 2 cassettes: "Staying Alive in 1989" and "Deskrewerk", and we've recorded enough for a few more if we mix it all down and do the dreaded cover work. The most recent Grandbrother studio sessions have featured some nifty musical pieces (keyboards, drum machine, guitar, bass, voice, etc.). and some out-of-control vocal madness. Grandbrother also performs live every Friday night at a small coffee shop/art gallery called The Café Dog. We do acoustic thrash (12 string guitar by CBC III & vocals by Zandbrother) covers of songs by Man's Hate, Don Campau, Selves w/o Shells, and Lawrence Salvitore. The small audiences are always enthusiastic and appreciative. Other recording activities include some masterful four track master tapes which have been created in the last 6 weeks. Featured on these are such luminaries as PBK, Agog, Nick, Mika Jaxun, Crow, Tom Furgas, and Ditto. The releases that have been mixed down or otherwise completed are: (no mustache under his nose) FINNULIFY, (no mustache under his nose) SLIPLUMMET, ºZIL¿H (yet untitled), Here Be Monsters - From Drama to Farce (2 mixes one by myself done the same day I recorded it, and the other by my girlfriend Barb, days later--a 'blind' mix as she's never used a 4 track before plus she had never heard the master four track), and in addition there are a couple tapes that are so good at defying description that I have yet to title them! My current employment status working for Crane Productions (producer of full color advertising inserts) as a systems coordinator. Crane has over 20 Macintoshes and I am the network manager, as well as all-around know-it-all handyman for Macintosh related situations. The job pays real well, I have good hours, there is a surfeit of good looking fellow-employees to distract me, and this position demands creative problem solving & that's something I love to do. I also have access to the newest powerful graphic software and some wonderfully fast machines to work on. So, the creative end is not suffering either! I have held this job since the beginning of 1989 and I have changed my mailing address accordingly since I now can't receive my mail at Paul Plaschke Studios, my previous place of employment. I have a post office box, and luckily, all of my mail is being accurately forwarded to this address. Please note that I can be reached at PO BOX 4730/LOUKY 40204 from now until (at the very least) the end of June & I assume if all goes well I'll use that PO Box for quite a longer time than that. I'll take this time out to give a run down [for those people who have written me for the last 2-4 years] on what all the addresses I've kept have related to. I realize that when somebody changes address it is confusing, so maybe this will shed light onto my different addresses. To start at the very beginning: 132 Council Road/40207 is my parents address. They have lived at this location since 1970 and this therefore is the most permanent address I could use. I am certain that they will live there for years to come, so if you ever think you've lost me completely & irrevocably, you can try dropping a note to that address & I'll eventually get the mail. Following this I used two addresses while I was away in DM%IA attending college. The 1st address: 1319 30th/50311 was my dormitory where I lived for two years. The other address: 1300 34th #6/50311 was where I lived my last/senior year in college. It was a dreadful apartment stuck smack in the center of Greek Street, (Fraternity/Sorority row). After I graduated in 1987 I used my parents address for another year since that is where I was living. In June of 1988 I got an apartment two blocks away from my new place of employment: Paul Plaschke Studios at 2012 Patterson/40204. I had an agreement with my boss where I could receive my mail at work. This was a delightful arrangement which I dearly loved. I could not, for reasons too complicated and boring to mention, receive mail at my apartment, so this was very convenient. After I changed jobs at the turn of the new year, I decided to get a post office box 4730/40204 since there is a post office less than 2 blocks from my apartment. I got a 6 month lease which means I will need to renew it in June/July & this will be dependent on where my life is at this time. I have had good success, as I mentioned above, with having my mail forwarded, so please keep sending to the post box even after that date. I've written a few update letters this year, none of which have gotten out to everybody I write because of my pitiful inability to get all my mail answered and mailed away. One of the complications here is that I owe tapes to a good number of people and I have run out of blanks. I have been real slow at reordering so if you have a tape in this package, consider yourself lucky... if not, and I owe you one, you are on my long list of people that this condition applies to. I have hordes of tapes ready to release, so when the tapes finally arrive, rewards will be sprinkled on my networking contacts liberally. I have had a few people comment that I have not been ultimately personal in my responses in that I have been negligent in commenting on cassettes and answering questions directed at me. How do I plead? Guilty, under duress. It should come as no surprise that the way one must lead their life in order to keep up with networking requires excesses of free time. I find that I use much of my free time listening to the enormous collection of cassettes that I've amassed... keeping up with listening to my own creations is a full time job in itself! I also get real sloppy in the way I store my incoming mail. I ensure that I respond to every piece of incoming mail by immediately creating a reply envelope by scrawling on the front of the envelope the address of the person whose mail I received that day. I don't always reread the letter when I reply, and that is the no-good reason why questions remain unanswered. Much of the mail that I am sending out today has been ready for quite some time (some as long as two months!) but I simply have not made it to the post office to process the goodies. Other piece of mail have been waiting for some element before I can send it (a tape, specific printed matter, a letter, etc). So in my urgency to get all of this mail out (about 40 pieces or so) I'm going to forge ahead and send this letter hoping that it will take the place of a more personal piece of correspondence, if one is not included. Apologies to those who get short-ended, or those who, in the letters that I wrote, were promised a tape & don't have enclosed. Please feel free to remind me what specific things I promised & did not deliver. I will make a concerted effort to rectify the situation next time. In conclusion, this is the newest of the new. It doesn't get any fresher than this. In fact, between the time this article is generated and the time your package went to the post office, there will be a delay of no more than 15 minutes. So you got one hot off the press here. Fresh from my mind to you. Nothing could be newer & more enrichingly current than this.

Sping 1989

Inky Vultures: Focal Length View from ZIDSLICK 1989

2005-12-21T11:56:00.001-08:00

This catalog represents the work completed in the year 1989. The original recording, or four-track master, may have been made in 1988 and mixed down or assembled in 1989. The time has come to draw the line between making a tape for release, and releasing it. I freely admit that I have done 2-3 times as much of the former than the latter. This situation has been exasperated by the Bleak Blank Tape Shortage of 1989. I've needed to order blank tapes since easily November 1988 and have never done so due to various logical and dumb reasons. Yet I have received a whole lot of tapes in exchange despite the fact I've sent virtually no tapes out in exchange. I direct this communiqué towards those great souls who have sent me wonderful tapes and waited patiently, or impatiently, for something in exchange. Not only have the return tapes been lacking, but my rate of response this year is admittedly pathetic. It is this same rate which has, in the past, annoyed me and confounded me in the past with people I've written. For the last 18th months or so I've come to grips with the fact that my tape distribution is hopelessly out of control. I see various contacts of mine happily increase the size of their catalogs and I nodded my head knowingly. I empathize with their enthusiasm but I fully know the vast responsibilities of keeping a whole catalog of tapes (more than 75 or so) actually available. There is the matter of having enough covers, having all the covers made, having sent out all necessary contributor copies, keeping track of who has received copies of all these tapes, not to mention other complications which are constant worries. To address these matters, when I run out of covers for a certain tape - that's it. I'll send out another tape instead. I blindly guesstimate that I owe 279 or more contributor copies for tapes I've made. Many of these are from tapes as old as 2-3 years ago. It's not a purposeful neglect, but when things get out of control as they are, I cope in peculiar ways. I'm going now through my third or fourth method of keeping track of who has received my tapes. I'm doing this on computer again, which is the most logical but not necessarily practical way. Computers handle the information brilliantly, but I don't have my own computer to do home work. note: I could not find neither the full original text nor the accompanying catalog.
I have run out of tapes now but I am reordering tomorrow and I'll send you a chrome 60 in August. I plan to have 100 tapes completed by then (a milestone in my ZIDSICK history). I am now at 98 and I'm 2/3's the way through the tape RoVaMiMo, a collaboration with RoLMo of Swinebolt #45 from Memphis [a friend of MHMH] and Mike Vargas from Temple Hills, MD. On the reverse is a picture from my cover of the tape I prepared for release by No Unauthorized in Paris. Soon I'll have tapes distributed in Paris, NYC, Tokyo, and Amsterdam (suburb) I'm pretty excited. I have been doing this networking / cassette production since the summer of 1984. I officially began ZIDSICK in November 1984 with 5 tapes. My productivity rose during the summer of '85 and it exploded in 1986 (I had 68 tapes finished at the end of '85!) My largest time consumption is in cassette cover and catalog preparation, because I am very picky about craft in my art and I spend countless hours correcting minor flaws and details which I'm sure go unnoticed. Destroy Your Radio,

ZaHo 1989

Ear Waves, Tongue Waves Back

2005-12-21T11:56:00.000-08:00

I've been reminiscing over the history of networking recently. This has been prompted by an interview given to me over the phone by Ear Magazine. This in turn was amplified by a conversation I had next with some friends and strangers where I attempted to explain, for the umpteenth time, the concept behind networking and how it fits into my life. It's impossible to deny the importance that this activity plays in my life. And at the same time I must stress what networking isn't. Namely, a way to make living, or to earn extra money. This is a motivating feature for some, but for me there are clearly defined reasons I draw this distinction. First, I spend my 9-5 day making a living at something I enjoy. I do freelance Macintosh computer consulting, in whatever form it takes. I figure if somebody wants to pay me to be around a machine that I enjoy, there's a great thing! Thus, due to my success on this front there is no urgency to supplement or enhance my income. Next, years of experience and discussions with the major people in the cassette culture has proved one point over and over. There is NO way to make a living by promoting and selling cassettes. The best run and most promoted labels only serve to break even. Their expenses of postage, promotion and supplies eat up all of the income. The amount of effort, time, and devotion needed to just reach this break-even point is staggering. I've realistically recognized that tape orders are a luxury and not to be relied upon as income. Furthermore, when one sets out to promote one's activities, in order to get the customer base upon which to rely on orders, it take concerted efforts to reach out to as many people as one has means. To me this spells disaster to a delicate equilibrium which I have spent years achieving. What I've worked hard over the years to do, is to pay appropriate attention to the most interesting people I write. This alone is a full-time activity for me since I have scores of commitments and requirements for my free time. On top of keeping up with those people who I owe mail to, the old contacts, the newer ones, and ones writing for the first time requesting information, I have to keep up with the organization of my activities. The logistics of running a label, and of physically mailing to scores of people every month is overwhelming all by itself. Thus I have shunned the profit motive of cassette networking because, for me, it is simply not worth it. If I had to spend time catering to people who order my tapes, I would subsequently spend too little time on my essential contacts. Due to the enormity and scope of my present activities, I have a tenuous grasp upon this activity. Put very briefly, another stance I take to limit my exposure is I don't send my tapes out for review, and I don't send tapes to radio stations. This simply falls under the category of overextending myself. I also feel guilty sending a tape to these people when I owe contributor copies to people who appear on my multi-collaborative tapes. As stated earlier, it's difficult to deny that my life is effected by this all encompassing activity of networking. I have an entire world of "points-of-reference" to this activity. In my every day life, even when I'm not actively doing mail-oriented tasks, countless things emerge where I can draw upon these points-of-reference to enhance my interaction with people. One thing I'm fond of doing is re-plagiarizing ideas and concepts that I cull from my vast resources of mail-music genius. And when I present these ideas or thoughts to my unsuspecting audience, they tend to be so amazed or perplexed at the audacious or brilliant concepts that they can't even question their originality. They rarely, if ever, question the source. So if I expouse a Jupitter-Larsen theory of nihilism, or Minóy woollybrainmania, it's a powerful statement and people are understandably unknowing about networking so they couldn't possibly guess at the source. They'd sooner guess that I've read about this in some magazine or book than come to grasp with the concept that I actually write and know the people whose ideas and words I'm appropriating. I don't mean to make this sound as if I'm stealing without giving the artist due credit If people query about it I'll gladly give credit where it is due. But it is easier to not have to explain yourself at every step of the way. It's strange enough using somebody else's ideas and words, let along having to be a constant walking footnote and bibliography for yourself. Plus, due to the extremity of some ideas it would serve only to lessen the impact if I had to cite sources every time.

May 4, 1989

Forward to 1989!

2005-12-21T11:55:00.000-08:00

I'm attempting to make 1989 a well documented extension of my life in 1988. I am pleased, in retrospect, with how most of 1988 turned out for me. Here is an overview as I see it now in mid Janu89. Early '88 was The Big Blur. During the first three months I was without a job and living with my parents. This stress led to a notable drinking binge (I largely consume the widest variety possible of imported beers, preferring the darker/nastier ones). A lot of this drinking was a solitary, holed-up-in-my-room activity where I'd do this late at night and proceed to record an unbelievable number of cassettes. I managed to create 90 potential releases in less than five months. The major down-side of this was not the lack of quality, but the sickening lack of documentation. Some of the finer works are so poorly documented, that I have a very difficult time knowing who was part of the work and who to send contributor copies to. The reason I dub the winter/spring The Big Blur is that I barely remember recording many of the tapes and some are downright alien to me now. The second down-side of this period is my inability to grasp the reality of what it would take to release even a fraction of these works. It soon became obvious that I needed another label for these 1988 recordings. So ZIDSLICK '88 was born in February. Standing for the Zan's International Distribution Service's Latest Independent Cassette Kreations ZIDSLICK allowed me to freeze the growth of the already cumbersome ZIDSICK 127, plus it gave me a chance to have a new beginning. During this time I developed a project which I dubbed OPUS. I wanted to work with the idea of collaborations in a new way. I realized that some people have sent me quite a few source tapes. I thought it would be fascinating for that person and others to hear what it would sound like it I took tapes from one source and combine them with each other, thus putting together a collaboration where the person is combined with themselves! This proved mostly successful. The AGOG OPUS was not well accepted, but the Nick Opus (GREY SLAY I-IV) was very popular. My work with John Wiggins lead him to an interesting observation. WIG OPUS confirmed his original thesis that no matter how you combined his sources they would still retain his identity. So, even though he didn't combine/choose/mix the sounds, the result was still very much a recording of John Wiggins. My creative outburst came to a welcome stall in June and July where I created less than a dozen tapes. In June I created the wonderful KENGUTS which was my answer to the classic work by Ken Clinger: Zanguts. It was a not-even-close-to-greatest-clips of the inimitable KC. During this time I was hardly sending out any of the things I recorded in '88 because I was overwhelmed by the enormity of the task. I barely even made covers for most of these cassettes. And only by the very end of 1988 did I even catalog my output for the first half of that year. A big turning point in 1988 was in April when I finally landed a job which was challenging, interesting, rewarding and which paid well! I was brought into Paul Plaschke Studios to choose a computer system, purchase it, and automate the office management of this 6 person graphic design agency. This job gave me the security of a full time job plus it allowed me to move out on my own. So I rented an apartment two blocks from work and about 8 blocks from downtown Louisville. This was a delightful change to be living real close to work (I could wake up as little as 10 minutes before work) and real close to the invigorating climate of the downtown. I took advantage to this geographical change by eating out extensively at expensive restaurants which was an real treat. Also this new employment took up lots of time so that could cut down on my out-of-control creative output. The fall brought along all sorts of changes and modifications to my life and activities. In October I bought my first multi-track cassette recorder. Having the Fostex X-15 has changed the way I record dramatically in two ways. First: due to the time that it requires to set up and lay down tracks, many insignificant whims are never started, thus the quality of what I do record goes up since more thought goes into it. Second it allows me to change the mix of any and every piece which I record on the four track. Also I can have a dense mix of many sources where none of them are washed out due to generational loss. Plus the pause-editing capabilities of the X-15 are phenomenal. I have not even a clue as to how many tapes I have recorded in the fall and winter of 1988, but during this part of the year I have made sure not to repeat the mistake of The Big Blur. I have been documenting my recording activities quite well. This organization is what I hope to bring into 1989. I'm doing well so far at making sure that every bit of pertinent information is noted. I also have recently created a master list of all the four track masters & remixes from October, through my latest recording by ºZIL¿H featuring PBK & CBC3. My major lag in 1988 which will continue to plague me is getting covers completed and copied. It has become a never-ending nightmare because of the complexity of my recordings, and the because of the frequency that I record my 30 minute releases. Finally, the last development in 1988 was my change of employment. I'm now doing consulting and developing HyperCard (a Macintosh computer program) for a dynamic company which produces full-color advertising inserts. I've changed my address to a post office box to insure that I get all my mail safe, intact and in a timely manner. This address will be good until at least July 1989 and probably long after that.

January 1989

1988 1991 1997 2004 Trading Figures

2005-12-21T11:53:00.000-08:00

`In spring 1991 I compiled a list of people who have more than 27 ZH27 releases. Here's are updates from fall 1997 & early 2004.Granted some of the 91 and 97 figures are quirky and contraditory. Still it's interesting to note things such as: to be in the top 10 in '91 you only had to have 37 releases. In '97 it took 87 releases to be in the top ten and now it takes 139. Top 5: 91 >55; 97 >100; 04 >154.`
Who	1991	1997	97 Ranking	04 Ranking	2004
Minóy	94	124	2	15	127
*Tom Furgas	71	126	1	2	195
Al Margolis	64	104	3	15	127
Agog	61	104	3	10	139
Ken Clinger	56	100	6	12	129
Nick	52	65	14		57
Jeff Surak	51	61	15	5	154
Dave Prescott	50	83	11		85
Don Campau	44	87	10	13	128
John Wiggins	37	68	13	11	133
Van Der Veen	36	36	27		36
Mike Honeycutt	35	101	5	1	199
Mark Hanley	32	55	19		73
Kozi Matsuura	32	36	27		36
Peter Moreels	32	32	31	-	43
Roger Moneymaker	31	44	23		45
De Fabriek	29	90	7	4	160
Adam Bohman	28	88	9	3	181
Mauro Guazotti	28	90?	7		44
Crow	27	58	18	-	44?
Yoshiaki Kinno	27	54	20		84
Al Perry	43	24?			46
Bunk Nesbit	40	26?			44
Caustic Tapes	54	20?			58
Das Fröhliche Wohnzimmer	62	14?	-	9	140
Dino DiMuro	30	31			30
Frustapes	62	14?			64
Hal McGee	49	22?		13	128
Jack Jordan	41	25?		17	109
Francisco Lopez	70	12?	-	6	144
Luis Mesa	41	25?			55
Mika Jaxun	36	27?			46
PBK	61	15?		17	109
Robert Ommundsen	28	30			44
Rudolv Ebner	28	33	-	-	33
Shaun Roberts	34	30?			33
Tomasz Szumski	28				27
Mike Tetrault	28				29
Abnormal					42
AON	-	-	-	-	42
XVP					41
Borft					77
Crypt					42
Bryan Day					53
Brian Noring	-	-	-	6	144
Dave Fuglewicz					70
Chris Phinney					39
Jorge Castro					47
JTY					33
Kei Yakota	-	-	-	-	32
Lawrance Salvitore					37
Leigh Julian					55
Carl Merson					46
Charlie Newman					38
No Unauthorized	-	-	-	-	50
Onq					30
Tonspur					42
Jan Wallo				6	144
*Tom Furgas has recieved but not kept all releases.		Some figures mysteriously go down between '91 and '97 and thus have a "?" after them.			a figure in BOLD ITALIC means the person is inactive an that's a final figure.
`The results are in for 1988. Here are the totals for the number of tapes sent to me by my major correspondents:` `PBK 24 Nick 16 Tom Furgas 15 Watergate 13 Dan Fioretti 12 Ken Clinger 11 Mike Jaxun 9 Crow 8 Mark Hanley 8 Don Campau 8 Amanadman 7 John Wiggins 7 Corrosive 6 Shaun Roberts 6 Jacek 6 Technological Feeling 6 Swinebolt#45 4 Nihilistic 4 Mega Mago 4 Shit Tapes 4 Das Fröhliche Wohnzimmer 4` `All others sent less than four tapes. Many thanks to all who kept my ears in action for 1988. Comments on this numeric phenomenon are most welcome.`
1988 - 1997 - 2004

Zis is the time.

2005-12-21T11:52:00.000-08:00

Here are the newest thoughts to creep from my brain through my fingers (as plodding of a process as that is). The year winds to an end and I try to contemplate the sum total of this year's productivity. The first process that I started was the dreaded task of cataloging the recordings that I did in the Great Spring Blur of Jan-June 1988 where I recorded over 90 thirty minute compositions. This cataloging is only the second step of documenting these creations. The third step is putting this raw information which I used at the time into meaningful formats. This is more of an impossible task than one may understand. During this Blur my documentation of recording elements is obscure and unintelligible at points. Most significant finds in this Blur are the two series You, Me, Us & Them (with unimaginable chaotic dense mixes of masterful sources) plus Shmuspag the most propellant and challenging of thresholds. The fourth step will be producing covers for all the releasable cassettes. Printing and distributing are the last steps. Beyond this documentation I am attempting to document all the cassettes that Mr. Minóy have made wit me an wit himself and wit a fuew udder duudsz and whre heeze just wanking around with his reberb and his sot wabe rabeo yep dis be oll dose taips eyem tran tew liist. Lots and lots of elevation of ankseteyeitie stuff is in that neb-u-less bundh uf tayps. This material pertains to all cassettes send from 923 west 232 from late ate tea fore to may dis yir. Communication is not possible with the mighty Minóy now, dust no ashes. Clap loudly and your hearing will improve measurably. I have counted every cassette in possession (an arduous and ridiculously impossible task so many cassettes show up out of hidden nooks and crannies and more arrive in the mail daily, then some that I counted are ones that I have runnnnnnnnnnnnoff to send away) But I imagine that if I keep sending out tapes at the rate I get them in, I can keep my tape collection below 1800 tapes. Thank the deity of mud that many of these tapes are unlistenable most of the time, otherwise I would never ever be able to accurately chose the right one to listen to. The newest methods I've used to listen to tapes which I have not listened to in the last twenty months or so is to uncover these culprits and randomly choose between them. (These amounted to atleastseventyorso caseesssesseesssessseesstetttes). My girlfriend gave me a new set of numbers daily to help me work my way through my collection. During this process I was forced to listen to quite a few tapes that I would have never ever choose to listen to in my entire lifetime. But many of them proved to be interesting in a transient way. I have also singled out the tapes that I received in 1988 from the rest of my colelelelelelelction of K7's. This will amount to around 250 tapes by year end. Quite a few of these are collaborative works which have been instrumental to the success of much of my recent four-track works. These works are only slowly being mixed down and will follow far behind the aforementioned Blur tapes in releasing structure. There are quite a few interesting people who have helped destructure in my life in 1988. In the spring and early summer Crow sent me half a dozen pieces of mail including four cassettes. It is difficult to stress or explain how this affected my life during the period I was absorbing these works. It is the marvelous benefit that genius mail gives me which keeps me alive even in the most drab times of my life. An addition to the wonderment of source material I received there were may new people writing me this year (as I watch many of my older contacts fade away, a thankful cycle which maintains the reasonable number of contacts one can cope with). There is a hard barrier for me to cross when I write new contacts. I must yearn to relive the days where I only distributed under 100 tapes. Yet Calgon will not take me away. To digress is the noble and circumloquatious way to keep from confronting the unavoidable. It is difficult to take initiative on all the tasks that confront me. Even if I had the time, I surely would find it easier to be doing something else.

late 1988

my son, you look so sad.

2005-12-21T11:51:00.000-08:00

struggleIn my never ending struggle to keep on top of answering all my mail & commitments, I have developed a number of systems without which all activities would be reduced to chaos. There have been a number of times when the scope of what I'm doing has threatened my sanity and ability to carry on at all.

networkThe size of my network has not really grown or shrunk much in the last year. I blindly assume that I am in contact with about 100 people, and quite frankly I really don't want to know the exact number. Also, it is hard to guess the size since some people come and go & it is hard to know the scope of my network at any given time.

sourcesMy entire output of cassette releases and creations is based on using sound sources provided by the people I trade tapes with Over the last year or so I have never had a lack of interesting collaborative tapes because I am constantly asking people to send me source tapes, and I get them from the most unlikely places. I will have some months where I will receive 10-15 source tapes, and even during my lean months, I rarely get anything less than 5 tapes. Even if I used each of these tapes just once, I would still have quite a large number of releases resulting from such work. And with good sources I will use them multiple times in widely varying contexts, so as to get the most mileage out of the great tapes. I've used some sources upwards of 4-6 times!

recordingsTo add to an already out-of-control situation I now have new & better recording equipment which makes me want to do even more recordings. This in itself would not be a bad situation for most people: where it becomes a problem for me is that I have a history of being prolific with the creation of cassette releases, and I quite simply can't keep up with myself. I create so many things that I am never completely aware of all that I have done in the past. I am constantly unearthing recordings that seem to be obscure and alien, ones I don't even remember doing for the most part!

coversThis year has been much worse than most because I have not kept up with cassette cover production. I sporadically create covers, and rarely print up enough of them to constitute an actual release of the work. My enthusiasm for certain tapes comes and goes and often I get half way through doing documentation, art or other elements of the cover, and things get interrupted or waylaid. During the last six months or so I have made it to a copy shop to reproduce covers only once. Previously, I would need to visit the copy shop at least a few times a month. It should be obvious that I'm not getting everything copied as needed. I rely much too much on output from the laser printer. This computer generated copy, typesetting & graphics is great, but I still need to photocopy lots of things that can't be accomplished by the means that I use now.

releaseWhen I actually have covers it does not necessarily mean that the tape will be released. There are many variables which determine how a tape is released, a major one being which tape(s) will be appropriate to send to the people that I owe tapes to. Sometimes, I copy off a couple releases (not specifically for someone) and then decide which person, of the many that I owe tapes to, would like or enjoy the given tape the most. Most other times I copy off specific releases for certain people since I have a good idea of what they want to hear. Occasionally people will specifically request a certain tape. This, honestly, is what I usually prefer, yet sometimes there are problems which make it impossible.. if I'm out of the cover... if I can't find the master tape (see later section)... if I would rather not release the specific tape anymore... or other reasons more specific to the circumstance. There are times when my enthusiasm for a tape lasts as I run off 3-5 copies & send them away, but then it fades and this is all that is ever sent of of said tape. This is never an on-purpose censoring of a release, it merely reflects my changing attitudes to my creations where I constantly favor the idea of getting a newer tape released, instead of trying to catch up and send out more copies of earlier tapes. A prime example of my inability to keep up is that I have very recently sent out the first four copies of the tape "Tons Better Than Nothing" which I both recorded and did the cover for in the fall of 1986. Most of my ill-released works hail from the period from fall 1987 forward.

mastersThroughout 1987 & 1988 I have had difficulties with my master tapes. Since all my releases are 30 minute works recorded onto one side of a chrome 60 minute tape, there are often two completely unconnected works backing each other up on my master tapes. So, on six tapes there will be twelve completely unrelated works. Sometimes I am very familiar with the tape & instinctively know what is on both sides, but, most often I struggle to find specific works that I want to release. I will look over the same three rows of tapes dozens of times and never find what I am looking for. Other times I find ignored releases on the back of the most unlikely tapes! The solutions I have thought up to solve this problem would take more time and effort than they are worth.

1988

Zidsick Update: Mid-June 1985

2005-12-21T11:49:00.000-08:00

1) I have obtained a new typewriter so that once I catch up on backlogged mail I will be able to respond much quicker. A delay in the answering of all correspondence must be expected. This is due to many reasons" a) I have very little spare time. There are many things to be done here prepare new cassette tapes, make audio letters, listen to new music, and an abundance of organizational activities.

2) I am working slowly on a new and funky Zidsick catalog. I am not nearly half done with this and I don't spend much time on it, so it's completion has no planned date. Once completed this shall take a large burden off of me because I spend much of my time telling people of new releases, instead of sending them a catalog.

3) Here is a rundown on new releases. I am finally releasing "Mental Scream" my 6th Zanstones tape that was originally destined only to be released by Shinichi Igari in Japan. It is a 60 minute noise cassette, full of harrowing and intense distortion and effects. It is created by mixing together the two previous versions of the cassette with each version being unique, and each subsequent copy being further removed from the original signal. All recordings were done on low quality "Low Noise" cassettes, so I'm able to offer it very cheaply: $1 plus postage and handling! I have very recently completed my 9th cassette (I surprised myself by doing so, so quickly). It is a 30 minute tape that has yet to be titled. My tenth cassette is a high quality/maximum diversity cassette available presently as a chrome C-30 or a normal bias C-60. It is entitled "Interrupting the Erupting Ceiling as the Floor Cascades Relentlessly Sideways."

Mid-June 1985

The Zanstonean International Distribution Service Spring '85 Update

2005-12-21T11:48:00.000-08:00

The mail out has been rather slow over the last few months. This is because of an utter lack of funds, I am now back under (meager) funding. This will mean that I will be mailing much more often and have a quicker response to most mail (and, I'll actually be able to send it!) The Mail Art mailing has suffered the most from this mail drought. I hope to be able to spend more time at it this summer (starting May, when University of Louisville lets out).

My Independent Cassette Kvmpeni is going through a face lift in the month of April. I am planning on printing up a new catalog, new tape covers, and possibly some type of xeroxine.

I have done some substantial recording recently and I plan to be recording more by late April and early May. I will print up a list of future tape releases. I may reinstate the very short-lived Zanstonean Press for various writings this summer. I may do tape reviews and who knows what else.

I have finally completed my new Mail Art and Mail Music contact lists. The MM list has brief descriptions of each listing. I will be printing updates to this list periodically. I am still accepting contributions to my two themes: Tragic Cows (audio and/or visual confrontations) and the Mating Call of Bob the Dog (30-60 second time limit).

I am working on my seventh Zanstones K7 which will consist of 40 forty second pieces. Many of these will be long distant collaborations. If you would like to collaborate with me, then send me a few forty second pieces on a chrome tape. I will work with it and when I have finished the tape (all 40 pieces) I'll record the tape onto your cassette and return it to you. Feel free to do anything within the forty seconds, and send many different ones for me to choose from!

Here is the confusing story of the tapes of Zanstones. My first tape "the Subtle Art of Puddle Pushing" is now available only from Red Rat Recordings (Holland). My second tape is not currently available. But it may be released by Mental Screen (it's "Simulated Aural Intake Mechanism.") My third tape "Crawling Up the Wall to Trip Over the Ceiling" is proudly carried by Zidsick. My fourth tape "Mein Gesamptmusikwerk-AE" is also carried by Zidsick. My fifth tape "Provisionally Entitled Untitled" is in limbo. It has 30 minutes of material on it, and I haven't the time to release it yet. It may be one of the tapes that I release in combinations (see below). My sixth K7 is going to be released by Mental Screen (or another label of Shinichi Igari). It is a C-60 noise project made specifically for Japanese release. My seventh tape's details are listed above. No title has been planned for it. The same goes for my 8th tape "Achtesteinzeitaltermusik", which has enough material to be released. It is a high quality recording (C-30 chrome tape). It is possible that my ninth tape will consist of collaborative projects.

I am considering releasing a K7 (or a series of them) with collaborative projects between Ken Clinger (CA) and myself. It would most likely be in a C-60 format.

Combination tapes (this is not related to combination skin). I may combine a few shorter tapes into groupings on longer tapes. I have released three 15 minute K7's (soon four) and I'll be releasing a few C-30's. I could combine different combinations of those tapes onto C-60's and C-90's.

My Mail Art & Mail Music networks have been experiencing growing pains that I'm unaccustomed to. If you think that I could be ignoring you, please write me and confront me with this problem. I hope to be as personal as possible, it's getting hard to do.
Out of Space, Out of Time, Out of Sight, Out of Mind Sir Zan the Mailable

Spring 1985

Post Notes Fall 1997
No new xeroxine emerged until Sick Tricks in 1986. Tragic cows theme received a few mail art submissions and one audio track by Ken Clinger. "The Mating Call of Bob the Dog" end up as a C-15 release. Zanstones VII "40 x 40" was finished in summer or fall of 1985, a classic. Zanstones VI "Mental Scream" (the title a take off of the Japanese label it was intended to be carried on: Mental Screen) was never released in Japan but it was folded into the ZIDSICK catalog. The KC collaborations became the Zidbovinesick and later Kenandall series.

ZIDSICK in the works

2005-12-21T11:35:00.000-08:00

I'm accepting contributions for two projects now.

I'm compiling my second compilation which is almost finished, so if you want to be on it, don't delay in sending me your contribution. If it doesn't make it on this, I hope to release a third tape which it would appear on. I wish I could say that all contributions will appear on it, but I can't make promises, I just feel that some stuff fits and others doesn't, what more can I say? Please include a searchable page with the work so it can appear in a booklet that "should" accompany it. (Include your address and any other important info).

I'm also inviting people to record their aural confrontation of the theme "The Mating Call of Bob the Dog." This piece should range from 30 seconds to one minute. Feel free to include more than one contribution, and ANYONE is free to contributions FORTH AND CONQUER!!!

FYI
I also am a mail artist and am interested in trading with others.
I collect worthless photographs, so send me those bad snapshots.
I would like to know of any good people who trade Mail Music and Mail Art so send me your favorite contact addresses.
I am sick of getting junk mail so I forward mine to other people, I urge you to do so too, just cross out your name and address and write "forward to" then drop it in the mailbox, no stamp needed!
I would like to contact as many people in the music/mail art networks as possible but I just don't have the time, money or resources to do so, so I would be grateful if you would put my name on your contact lists, or mention me, etc. Thanks. (Once I establish contact with you, you immediately are on my contact list).
Here is a new theme:I am accepting both aural & visual confrontations on the theme "Tragic Cows." There is no size or time limit!
Here are some tapes planned for release in the late winter or spring of 1985:
ZIDSICK 14: "And...uh...er...um" This is my second compilation that should have a xerox booklet with artwork by the contributors.
ZIDSICK 15: sanctioned "Provisionally Entitled Untitled" New works which stress new sonic exploration, better sound quality and diversity.
ZIDSICK 16: "The Mating Call of Bob the Dog" b/w "Tragic Cows" if I get enough contributions I'll release a tape plus booklet with them.
ZIDSICK 17: "This is ZIDSICK" (possibly entitled "Void if Worthless") This will be a compilation of pieces that are representational of some of the tapes on the label.
ZIDSICK 18: Robert I. Gillham of England is recording a one-of-a-kind release just to be distributed solely by ZIDSICK. Watch out, the man has a touch which is golden! This should be a tape which encompasses the Pop, Rock and Experimental side of RIG.
ZIDSICK 19: I plan to release a tape of collaborative pieces that I will be doing with people from all over the globe. I have just started doing this, so I have no title or length planned yet.
I am working on a contact list for my Mail music people that might be similar to the one that addressing does. I also am going to be making a Mail Artist list, so ask for a copy of either (they'll be free) if you are interested.
Due to financial situations, my "mail out" is a lot slower than I would normally like, so I am sending many things third class and surface rates. I hope you will bear with me however long it will take me to get back under funding, then all will be better.

late 1984

Post Notes Fall 1997

+The second compilation (and...uh...er...um) was never finished due to the annoyance of compiling and dubbing 90 minute comps like my first one. After "The x 13" I did no more C-90's and instead standardized to 15, 30 and 60 minute tapes.
+ I gave up mail art around 1987 since my mail music networking took up so much time and I knew, of the two, this was the most important and vibrant one. Plus there was largely a better guarantee of quality of work in your mail box with mail music than mail art.
+ I still receive and collect worthless photos and in fact I just received one in the mail yesterday from a stranger.
+ The post office has clamped down on forwarding junk mail second class mail can no longer be forwarded.
+I'm always interested in getting home taper contact lists and/or just a few addresses of your favorite contacts that will trade tapes.
+ Here's what happened to my planned 1985 releases:
#14 "And...uh...er...um" never materialized (see above) although I compiled the first half of the tape which I may release in a limited edition, 12 years later.
#15 "Provisionally Entitled Untitled" (now called "The work formerly known as 'Provisionally Entitled Untitled'"!) came out well and is still available.
#16 "Tragic Cows" never received enough submissions, but "The Mating Call of Bob the Dog" became a wonderful C-15 compilation with contributions by Ken Clinger, John Wiggins & his HBO staff, the Haters, Psychodrama and more.
#17 "The Best of ZH27 - Feeling Groovy" C-15 came out that year or the next and it focused on the most musical and accessible of my works to date.A C-30 release
#18 "Bypass" by Robert I. Gillham, an artist gone from the network for 10 years is still available.
+ The collaborative work planned opened the door to hundreds upon hundreds of tapes, starting with Zanstones VII "40 x 40."
+The 'financial' situations have continued on and off ever since this time. Usually mail music expenses came in fourth after my major expenses of room, board and import beers!

Hello and welcome to this ZH postcard

2005-12-21T11:30:00.000-08:00

Hello and welcome to this ZH postcard. This one has become rather old and it has had sufficient viewing here so I feel that I can now part with it. I have been doing mail art since late fall 1983, now I have done over 125 original postcards, over a dozen postal art letters, and I have sent thousands of worthless items through the world mail systems. My current search for items from around the globe consists of the desire for trade of the following items: postal art, xerox art, original cassette tapes, and worthless photos. If you have any of these to trade, either send them and expect my equivalent in return, or tell me about it and I'll send mine first. Besides making postal art I also create original aural compositions, otherwise known as aural collages, sound sandwiches, or to some "noise"! This is done under the name of The Zanstones - with some friends. I also occasionally play violin and viola in a band called the New Sport Band. I also distribute their tape.

Well I've given you a brief rundown of what I'm up to, how about yourself? What do you do? What kind of things do you do with your spare time? What kind of music do you like? Do you have any contact addresses of people who do mail art or tapes? I have two international contact lists available upon request (one for tape artists another for mail artists). Until I receive your prompt reply, remember: The end of the world is not coming anytime soon, so carry on as normal!

Your Correspondent, Mr. Zan

Late 1983 or early 1984