Grand Old Time in the Old Towne Pub

Nothing old fashioneder than a bunch of synths

Last night, my much anticipated and overly prepared for set went without too many hitches at the Old Towne Pub in Pasadena. My Mort Solár bandmate Mike Skogman shot some clips of me playing, which I have strung together into a medley.

LA Synth Club is a big part of my life (not to mention my social life) these days. I’m always dragging friends to join, so consider yourself invited. If you live in the LA area, join the Discord, check out our events, lurk, say hi, tap your toes, jump up onstage, whatever works for you.

https://www.instagram.com/lasynthclub/

The club has a linktree with Discord links but it’s not showing up cleanly in Substack, so I will leave that to you.

The last few weeks I have really been worrying about this set a lot. Although it was a mere 30 minutes (only the second time I have played that long), I really wanted to go into it with a plan this time. I’ve been learning to use a Squarp Hapax sequencer, my first real sequencer, which meant I had a few distinct tracks banked and ready to go, and could just find opportunities to have fun with them. I can hear plenty of places where this needs work, routes to follow in further exploration, but I tried to keep it pretty simple on this first outing.

At midnight (depending on time zone), Mort Solár’s second EP, Infinite Attack, is gonna drop. So excited for people to hear these tunes! As soon as it shows on Spotify, I will set it live on Bandcamp. If you haven’t heard our first EP, or any of our wacky jams, you can listen to some of that on Bandcamp or on YouTube:

https://mortsolar.bandcamp.com/

https://www.youtube.com/@mortsolar

Mort is not really like anything either Mike or I do on our lonesomes. We both enjoy spending time in Mort’s universe and hope you do as well. The crazy cover for Infinite Attack was designed especially for this album by Ish Galvan and Vince Vargas. Ish writes crazed fiction, and together they make the Tamale Guy comic, so we knew they would be perfect for the job. They really shot that cover out of orbit!

Shall I ramble on? I shall, since I haven’t dropped one of these in a while.

Currently reading: Gene Wolfe’s The Book of the New Sun. This is something that gets recommended almost reflexively on reddit. I think there are now podcasts (more than one!) devoted to exploring its mysteries and puzzles. But although it is deep, it is also just a rich and compelling fantasy novel—well, four novels linked into one continuous story, the so-called New Sun Book. It’s my second time through the entire series. I’m somewhere in book three.

I am extremely tired after last night’s show but after a nap maybe I’ll feel like taking in a movie. Y2K, which I saw a few days ago, was mostly a dud, with a lot of its gags feeling borrowed from other comic apocalypses—especially the appearance of a real celebrity (Fred Durst in this case, instead of Zombieland’s Bill Murray). There was one bit that kept me laughing for a few minutes after it happened, otherwise the timing felt a bit off on stuff that should have been much funnier.

Oh! A couple events are in the early planning stages. To celebrate all the tunes I put out this year, and to hang with those who care to hang, I am thinking I will do two livestream/listening parties around New Year’s Eve, one on Bandcamp and one on YouTube. For Bandcamp, I will possibly be doing a listening party in the afternoon (California time) on New Year’s Eve, and for YouTube, a livestream with music on New Year’s Day itself, mid-morning or thereabouts. For Bandcamp to stream a listening party, I think I need an album to release—so I will put together a compilation of all the 2024 Bandcamp releases as an album. That will play while I sit in chat with anyone who wants to come by. I won’t release the album—I don’t want to maintain a random compilation to confuse people in the discography, and the music is available already. It’s just a thing to make the listening party possible. On YouTube, I will probably just start a livestream and then play more or less the same tracks, with maybe some additional inserts. NOTE: I DO NOT PLAN TO INCLUDE THE THREE HOURS OF JAMUARY STUFF in these listening parties, although on YouTube I will be free to do whatever I want on the spur of the moment, so maybe I’ll sample some of it. Depending perhaps on the suggestions of those who join. There is already a lot of music to play, so people can pop in, say hi, leave whenever. I still need to firm up my plans.

*squints at the rest of the month*

“Oh fuck…I forgot about Xmas.”