Step one: Dig around in your webhost’s cPanel, find a WordPress installer option.

Step two: Notice that you have several installations, become curiously interested in cleaning that up.

Step three: Go to the admin link for each of the sites, fail to notice the true significance of the fact that they all point to the exact account.

Step four [and this is crucial]: Delete.

I’ll skip the part where I checked the site and cried – it’s just not dignified for an artist. The words ‘delete existing database’ now have an emotional context that simply had not existed prior. I should have consulted @linehaus first.

Damn me.

*addendum: I may not have overwritten the previous database…

After a semi-year of computer crashes, hard drive failures and general drunkenness, I look forward to getting this project out to the world.

Stay gold,

~aegis

I opened up Logic Pro for what was to be just a quick peek into some settings. Made not a single move. Closed the project, opened a new one and… nothing. Logic opened the new project just fine, but alas, nothing. Nothing from the control surface. no pretty row of lights indicating tracks waiting for both love and torment, no snapping to attention of mechanized faders, and, worse yet, no response when I touched the controls…no response when I touched the controls…no response when I touched the controls. Sorry, flashbacks.

I hadn’t realized now much that tactile thing have become a part of my workflow. The transport knob waiting, no quivering for my touch, an extension of my simplest thought, my will imposed on the machine. And that has been taken from me. And now I’m haunted. I’m dogged by thoughts of mysteries to be solved. Who is the culprit and did I do it to myself? And if so, how? Though I have no time to investigate, I do find my hand seemingly of it’s own volition, stealing over to the faders, the pan pots, the transport knob, at inopportune moments, to probe and caress as if mnemonic touch could reveal the One Universal Truth and in so doing convert the machine to it’s old state, true and obedient.

Which is all I really want.

~aegis

Never look a gift horse in the mouth. I was happy to get that new track recorded and fairly well mixed as well as put some much needed mixing touches on last week’s material. Where does that leave the album? Nine songs recorded with another seven awaiting vocals, plus a slew of half-baked ideas awaiting their turn at the aegis’ brain well. To them I bid a good night and a wish for patience.

You too.

aegis

P.S. The new track is Nothing Is As It Seems, enjoy.

The next two days have been set aside for tracking, so expect some demos up by Monday.

I miss recording and editing late at night and leaving my mess for the world to see, I mean, hear. I miss putting up tracks as soon as they’re recorded. I miss that.

But, as you may well know, I am hard at work writing and recording new songs. This is an update. So you can stay metacognitive on all things aegis. Did you know that I like lowercase and bold? I do. Apparently, I also like not finishing songs before I start new ones. ‘Cause that’s what I’ve been doing. But don’t think that I’m disappointed or in despair over that. Quite the contrary, I’m ecstatic at getting so much material down. Plus, coming back to songs after giving them a break gives some much needed perspective. November’s looking very good as a release target date. I’ll have, of course, a concrete date soon. And then I’ll be back with a new podcast.

Genres. I know people need to have ways of qualifying and categorizing music to make it easier to describe. But really, isn’t that just lazy. Can’t you just say,”It’s melodic song-writing using harsh and artificial sounds in a pop song format”? Or is it easier to say Industrial Indie-tronica or Darkwave or Coldwave or- what the hell does any of that mean? Who makes up these labels?

The next album’s going to be Country. I mean, the next album’s going to be Country and Western music category, a blend of popular musical forms originally found in the Southern United States that roots in traditional folk music, Celtic music, blues, gospel music, hokum, and old-time music. Okay, maybe genres aren’t so bad after all…

~aegis