Every year, for 48 hours, I take a deep dive on reading up on random trivia for this film. This is a pretty good dump of random insights.

Nice review and insights on the previously lost footage from the original shooting script. I love this movie. These bits aren’t needed to improve the film but they are still interesting.

As I understand it, this is quite significant. This paragraph in particular pretty much sums it up: "If Tumblr were to add ActivityPub support, it means users on Mastodon could follow Tumblr users’ posts from their own Mastodon instance — without having to use the Tumblr app. It could also provide Tumblr users with an entry point into the so-called fediverse without having to face some of the complexities that are involved with signing up for Mastodon for the first time."

I have used Atom for years. It has plenty of quirks and is far from perfect but switching editors is a huge pain. Not stoked about this but hopefully I can migrate to greener pastures.

now THAT'S a trailer

I was invited to partake in a profile over at Nashville Voyager and I decided to take it as an opportunity to really share my story. I'm not sure if anyone wants a tome of text about my history with the Internet but it's out there if anyone does want it!

I tend to be a bit self-deprecating so I feel oddly obligated to point out that I'm not really sure what Nashville Voyager is. The folks at Grand Palace had their own profile back in September and recommended me. I was invited to fill out a lengthy form containing the questions you see in the interview. The site itself is filled with pages and pages and pages of similar profiles from all sorts of people around Nashville. There's near zero editorial input on the interviews - these are all people describing themselves in their own words (myself included). I don't think it's a bad thing by any means but I have questioned what the purpose of the site is.

That's not to detract from my glorious interview! I'm happy to have been asked to submit and I'm, mostly, happy with the answers I provided.

I had no idea this existed and it is as absurd as I'd hoped for

Holly+ is an AI voice model from Holly Herndon that allows anyone to upload audio to the tool and get back audio in the distinct Holly+ voice. There's a wonderfully insightful rundown on the whole project and the larger topic of voice impersonation (see Midler v Ford, Waits v Frito-Lay, The Andy Warhol Diaries, Anthony Bourdain Voice Deepfake, etc etc).

Coupler (one of my favorite ambient musicians outta Chicago) teamed up with Herndon, Mat Dryhurst and Sam Rolfes to create a cover of Dolly Parton's "Jolene" and set it to pretty wild mocap'ed performance featuring a semblance of the Holly+ avatar.

That's a lot to digest but the summary is: smart and talented people crafted a cover of a classic country song using some (currently) cutting edge tech and the results are worth your time. The cover itself isn't a far cry from the original but the quality of the Holly+ vocals are stunning... it's hard to believe that it's an AI generated experience rather than an actual human performance.

another Nashville artist that checks all the boxes for me; social commentary, memorable melodies and a dark delivery.

Continue to love this band and their videos just further solidify that enjoyment. Top notch.

As I continue helping to produce podcasts for We Own This Town, I've found that the biggest blocker for releasing shows is the actual editing of the podcast. This isn't exactly a surprising revelation but it turns out that cleaning up an audio file is a considerable amount of work.

I currently use Audition to perform this task but lately I've been really fascinated with a new type of tool that allows you to simply edit a transcript of your show while simultaneously editing the audio itself.

I started with Descript, a desktop app that allows you to edit both audio and video via transcript and even overlay your own additional audio if you want (i.e. music queues). It's quite nice and works relatively well without too many abrupt edits but does have a pricing plan. You get 3 hours of transcripts free but after that, you'll need to pay $12 per month. Not a bad deal by any means and my experience with the app has been pleasant. They've even got an experimental feature that lets you insert new audio with voice cloning!

More recently, I've been playing around with Edit Eddy, a web based version of the same thing developed by Headliner. The app is currently in beta, so it's entirely free to use. I doubt that will last forever but I'll take what I can get right now! It's certainly a bit less feature rich than Descript (for now) but the basics are all there and seem to be more intuitively executed in terms of UI/UX.

Both seem to be very solid options if you're looking to try your hand at editing some audio with a rather clever new technique; deleting text.

incredibly thoughtful, insightful and well crafted run down on the very basics of Sound

A perfect endurance challenge. via Uncle Skelly.

Predictions on Twitter’s future from the end of October. No way to know how it will play out but it’s a good read

For the past year I've been fairly obsessed with Print-On-Demand apparel. It's exactly what it sounds like; you come up with a design for a garment, use a service like Printify to place it and then whenever someone orders it, they print it on demand.

The technology has come a long way since it was first introduced and the quality of prints is finally at a very acceptable level. I still think screenprinted tee's are superior but it's really hard to rationalize the expense of ordering a batch of tees when you have no clue if anyone is going to buy them.

Long story short, I put together some yewknee shirts and posted them to the yk Records shop (since they share a logo). No clue what sort of demand there is for this kind of thing but it was fun to put together; particularly the Pronunciation Guide Tee which is possibly the most nonsensical of the bunch unless you get it.

If you want one, get one! If not, no hard expense for me! Win win.

I believe this is what you might call synergy. I run a podcast called We Own This Town: Music that highlights local Nashville music. I also run a small indie label called yk Records that, primarily, releases music from Nashville based artists. The latest episode of WOTT Music is a lengthy interview with one of my yk Records artists discussing a very personally influential record released in 2006; and re-issued by yk in 2022. Forget Cassettes was formed in the early 2000's and I've been an ardent follower since the very first show (literally!). The sophomore album Salt was never issued on vinyl until this year when yk released it and I couldn't be more happy to help them celebrate the sixteen year anniversary.

It was a treat to sit down with Beth Cameron, Jay Leo Phillips and Aaron Ford to discuss how the album came together. They were kind enough to spend a length amount of time going over each track, discussing what they remember about the writing, recording and overall evolutionary process of the whole thing.

I've always wanted the label and the podcast to serve as a bit of historical documentation for the local music scene that I enjoy so much. With this particular episode, I think I checked both boxes quite well.

You can listen to the episode in the embed above, over on the WOTT site, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever else you prefer. I hope you'll give both the album and the podcast a listen.

I love going to NOLA but it's usually not all that vegetarian friendly. Now I have a very handy guide of where to visit. Stoked.

5 albums locked behind a wetransfer password. I'm not even that familiar with this band but the challenge of deciphering The Message has me intrigued enough to keep brute forcing at it.

The level of Halloween dedication I aspire to. This installation is nuts!

2 tracks from this Sydney psych-doom-rock band that hit the spot. Load it up into your Halloween playlist stat!