The Return of FRANTIC! the band

FRANTIC!, the first proper band I was in, is tHE bOY and Mr. Random, founded in 1998. We've had some long hiatuses, a few lasting years at a time. But we are back making music again. Yesterday was the second time we've met to create mayhem in a month. I made a mix of our first jam (June 22, which was full of mysterious malfunctions) and posted it on Bandcamp several hours ago. Here it is:

The Ruckus Room

A new (old) VCR that I bought on eBay arrived a few days ago, and I've put it into action along with the one I already had that is still functioning properly. Two others have mostly crapped out. I'm going through VCRs! These old machines seem to have a very limited lifespan when put to work in the sweatshop of the VHS dubbing project here chez Random. Luckily they are (usually) cheap. I got the last one for $25 + $20 shipping. I'm down to the last four boxes of tapes, or less than 100 to go. Yeah, that seems like lot, but it's a mere fraction of what I started with. The late 80's through early 2000s were a very prolific time for me and videotape!

I believe I mentioned that I've been binge-watching the White Centipede Noise podcasts. Well, in order to access more complete content and the WCN Discord server and other goodies, I joined the WCN Patreon, committed for a year. That's over a hundred bucks, so I guess I'm serious! Exposure to so many Noise creators and aficianados is reawakening the multimedia artist in me, it feels like. I want to paint and make collages and zines and videos and CDs and cassettes and get involved with the mail art scene, such as it is in 2026. Sadly, the number of people with CD and cassette players has dwindled to a scant percent of the general population. But on the other hand, people who are really into DIY art and music tend to own them. Noise people actually tend to favor cassettes as their preferred format. There is a strong analog and fierce anti-AI sentiment among the members of that subculture. And I'm mostly down with that. Although, I must admit, I love working with Ableton Live on my MacBook to make music and sound art. But AI can just fuck off in general. I've spent enough time with chatbots to know it's as much a cancer as a boon. It's especially a cancer in the creative realms. Perhaps more of a boon in specific tech areas, but I definitely hate having to deal with AI in business communications. I digress.

The major fruit of the VHS dubbing project is that I'm freeing up lots of room in The Bunker, which is what we call the "bonus room" off the garage. The previous owners of this house used it for storage, and kindly left several metal racks in there. The owner before that, the one who did a major remodel of the entire house, used it for making pottery: there's a 220-volt outlet where she powered her electric kiln. Storage is still a major use for us. We have a couple shelves for pantry items, and there are still lots of shelves occupied by stuff I moved over from the old Chamber of Randomness, that I still need to sort through. But dubbing and tossing the VHS tapes has freed up so much room already! I've got space for a small project table up against one wall, and soon there'll be room for even more space to make art, etc.

Speaking of room names, e.g. The Bunker, I've been calling the large downstairs room the "Family Room"—for no particular reason except that when we watch TV, it's in there. But recently Mrs. Random made known her distaste for that label. Family rooms are for families with kids, I guess, and when I looked up the actual definition, FRs are referred to as central hubs where a family can relax, watch TV, play games, listen to music, where tidiness is not a priority, and where close proximity to the kitchen is key. Our room downstairs is far from the kitchen, and it's not a central hub. It's actually a place where I make a lot of noise on a regular basis. My bands play in there; our records and most of our CDs are there, along with a hi-fi with big speakers. For a party last fall we had dancing there. So I did some research, and I've decided I'm henceforth going to call it the RUCKUS ROOM. Okay? Okay!

A much larger subset

Last night I worked on a new "ambient music" album, a release that will appeal to a much larger subset of the world population than my "noise" releases. Not that I care! Hahaha. But anyway, the tracks in question were the last ones I made at the old house, last July and August, so that gives them a certain aura in my mind. Not exactly sentimental or nostalgic, but the feeling of the end of an era. Also, they were among the last tracks I made in Ableton Live version 11, for what it's worth. The only reason that's significant is that I had to re-save the track projects in the latest version (12.4) before I could do any last-minute edits and touchups. The album should be ready to release sometime this week. Then probably back to noise, no input mixing, and other weirdness.

The VHS dubbing project has stalled a bit. One of the VCRs is crapping out, and I have another one on order. Radio Free Random is still on hiatus. I keep thinking I might revive it as a noise station, but the effort of clearing space and setting up the gear has been too much of a mental and physical hurdle so far. I mean, I have enough stuff going on to keep me busy and entertained without adding more right now. Truthfully, I am governed by whims and obsessions. When/if the RFR bug hits, I'll be driven by forces I won't be able to resist, and it will happen.

It's gotta be me

I'm sitting on the living room couch between the Tinycats, Griffin and Fleur, here the early morning. It's quiet. The night of deep booms and sharp cracks is over, though I'm sure we'll hear random artillery here and there throughout the next few days. We enjoyed a low-key outdoor dinner party at a neighbor-friend's place last night. Kept kitties in overnight. Betty wanted out but it comforted us to know that she was sheltered from the explosive sounds; yeah it was probably more about us than her. She's a tough former street kitty, savvy and cautious but unafraid.

Mr. Random's noise factory AKA Rogue Deployment has been busy making more recorded racket. Check the Fame Fighter label Bandcamp page for the latest albums: mrrandom.bandcamp.com. My recent experimental forays have involved "no input" mixing, where I connect outputs to inputs on a mixing board, fiddle with the faders and knobs, and record the often highly interesting audio feedback output in real time. My latest album Aching Glass started life as a long no-input recording, which I subjected to various processing and effects and layered a couple field recordings of a fallen tree next door being sawed up last week. It was tons of fun to make.

Yesterday I printed out the NaNoWriMo writing that I did last November: 30 days of "quality nonsense." I used 8.5x14" legal sheets, and it came to 82 pages. Very nice to have it all printed out in physical form. The vast quantity of text surprised me. I had little feeling for how big it was while it was still only in digital form. Now I'm slowly going through with a pencil and lightly editing. Things I am looking for are the same word repeated too soon after its initial use, and unintentionally misspelled words. I intentionally misspelled and even made up many words as I wrote the drafts, so it's not like anybody else could do this editing. It's gotta be me.

A few weeks ago I transcribed a bunch of pages of typewritten nonsense pages that I wrote in 2019—using one of my AlphaSmart Neo devices—so that stuff is in digital form now and ready to print out and subject to the same editing treatment as my NaNoWriMo material. My current idea is to combine all this nonsense text into a book at some point. But what actual form that will take is still TBD. I might want to add images and even more text. I might want to give it some kind of interesting visual form, something creative and provocative. Who knows? It's like how I make sound art, in the moment.