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Resonant Thoughts: W. David Marx’s “Blank Space: A Cultural History of the Twenty-First Century” (2025)
“The term paradigm, despite rampant overuse in marketing copy and mocked as meaningless jargon by The Simpsons, describes a specific phenomenon in social science: the macro-values that set the logic of our choices and aesthetics. When a new paradigm emerges, the previous established styles lose all their value” (123). “The logic of ultrapoptimism ultimately blessed… Continue reading
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Database: Claire Rousay On Looking For Activity Within The Waveforms
“I’ll drag a file into Ableton to see it visually. I’m just looking for activity within the waveforms. Like, something happened here, because the signalling changed. There’s obviously a reason for that. I’m interested in that reason. Something is happening and I need to get it out. I guess that’s important to me.” Claire Rousay… Continue reading
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Resonant Thoughts: Ben Ratliff’s “Run the Song: Writing About Running About Listening” (2025)
“It occurred to me that there was a connection between the act of listening and the act of running, and I began to write from that point of connection” (24). “I am talking about running the song: a way to engage with the music’s forward patterns, its implications, its potential, its intention, and even its… Continue reading
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Notes On An Autechre Concert, 2025
If you’ve been following Autechre for years, on recordings and in performance, you may have realized that they’re evolving in ways you are not. You assume the comforts of steady beats, hummable melodies, verses leading to choruses, predictable instrumentation, and genre conventions while they’ve left music’s crowdsourced paths, wandering the wilds of their software, exploring.… Continue reading
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Database: Robin Guthrie On Using Effects Pedals To Create One’s Own Sound
“I found with a couple of the right pedals I could go anywhere and sound like me, which has more to do with limited playing skills and the chords that I make than anything else. It evolved from my frustration with being a really fucking mediocre guitar player when I was learning to play. A… Continue reading
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Resonant Thoughts: David Deutsch’s “The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World” (2011)
“…in reality the future is unlike the past, the unseen very different from the seen. Science often predicts – and brings about – phenomena spectacularly different from anything that has been experienced before” (6). “Discovering a new explanation is inherently an act of creativity” (7). “We never know any data before interpreting it through theories.… Continue reading
