Summary

This has been a “shadow year,” as the illustrious Leyland Kirby might call it.

Time’s passage has revealed new realities. The slow-burners decelerated further. Subterranean constructs were demolished. There is a renewed sense of discretion with operations.

In short, I’m saying “no” much more than usual. The increased focus and slower pace has felt healthy, though uncomfortable.

Flash Crash, Deus Ex Machina Company, and FoundSound are just some of the fallen.

Major Arcana

• Coral Carrier Incarnadine began her multi-decade voyage.
• FADE SCATTER REPLICATE marked the return of Stuxnet.
• Sound + Process interviewed the Northern Information Applied Sciences & Phantasms Working Division.
• Flash Crash, crashed.
• They Became What They Beheld performed Live @ The End of the World and released EP2.

Channels

I share my work on multiple channels. https://nor.the-rn.info continues to be the primary source for updates. The website featured heavy redesigns this year.

Secondary channels include stuxnet.me, Intertext, GitHub, Discord, SoundCloud, YouTube, and Instagram.

Tertiary channels include the email newsletter, gemini://tilde.club/~tse/, and Mastodon.

Stuxnet

The Stuxnet project continues.

FADE SCATTER REPLICATE is the latest. Part two of that saga is in the works.

I am toying with the idea of with singles. Radio mix. Club mix. Slow mix. All that. I realized I’ve compromised some of my songs by trying to confine them to a single cut. So many deserve more room to breathe.

And the long-heralded “Kowloon City” mix may finally see the light of dawn….

Coral Carrier Incarnadine

The CCI project continues at an intentionally glacial pace. Last year included deep explorations into cryptography-based game mechanics, web interfaces, state management, and collaborative world building. There was a rather substantial (and surprising) side-quest to build the soot sprite library. We also watched a few movies together on the Discord.

Klang Magazine

In January, Max and I launched klangmag.co. We’ve been publishing articles, sound packs, software, and memes each week.

From our manifesto:

Klang Magazine is a bilingual journal in English and Spanish that will consist of commissioned editorials in text and audio form, published twice a week. These editorials will consist of —

• Essays and critical listening conversations on newly released albums, written and/or hosted by the artist themselves, rather than album reviews and rating systems from a staff critic.
• Text and audio reports on niche topics related to international underground music scenes, developments in music and audio technology, and the ecology of sound in a rapidly changing world, written in first-person by practitioners on the ground throughout six continents.
• Original DJ mix, recording, and sample pack commissions of new works by DJs, producers, and performers of all styles of organized sound, with original essays and artist statement accompaniments in both text and recorded formats.

Sidereal Lobby

Ryan and I are up to our old shenanigans again.

Online Events

Aside from the final Flash Crash events and a few ad-hoc programming livestreams I held relatively few online events. I briefly ran the CRYPTOPYRE series. I also performed one concert.

Offline Events

I played my first show since the pandemic started at The Love Song in Los Angeles.

Stealth Tech Projects

Rylee and I are working on something special for norns.

Jordan, Brian, Dan and I are working on norns.community version 2.0. See my writeup on version 1.0 here.

I’ve helped some friends with Discord bots & integrations.

I’m learned some more Python and starting to get deep into TypeScript.

Stealth Music Projects

I have several collaborations, remixes, and theoretical “bands” in the works, each more or less under the general umbrella of techno.

Forward

Looking ahead, I expect this coming year to be even more withdrawn.

On a personal level: I’m entering a new season of life and my usual existential reveries are mutating in strange ways. The pandemic and it’s chain-reactions were (are) absolutely awful for me. I am still heart broken. The fact we haven’t really made time or space to collectively heal - even a little bit - as as society leads me to conclude we never will.

Thank you for following me.

Much love,

Tyler