plugs & promo
Mic check. Mic check. This thing on? I have returned, but only briefly to plug and promote some projects.
NEW MIX (SORT OF)
Substack doesn’t support embed code otherwise I’d have a Mixcloud widget available for quick accessibility, but if you follow this link (or click the picture above) you can listen to the digital recreation of my all-vinyl set at Good Faith Gallery’s second Nite Market, an event where local vendors showcase their talent and attendees commune in the lot behind the gallery against a beautiful backdrop of Downtown San Diego. Honestly, this one wasn’t as robustly attended as the first one which was held in May. It should be noted that the event in May was hosted during a time when people were desperate for any excuse to gather socially. Bars hadn’t quite fully opened for shows yet so naturally Nite Market served as the perfect venue to see all the same people you tried to avoid pre-pandemic. By mid-July all the familiar faces of the scene that show up to these type of purportedly art-focused, community driven gatherings were presumably back to their usual haunts.
It’s hard not to feel like a fool playing to a small crowd, but since I don’t exactly have people flooding my inbox with requests to perform I like to use any opportunity to hone my skills and see how people respond to my selections. I’m confident in what I play, but I still have a lot of technical aspects to learn!
This digital reconstitution feels a bit Frankenstein in practice, reviving the vibe of an event that’s already passed, but doing so gave me the opportunity to smooth over transitions and to correct the moment when my Nancy Nova 45 began to skip (I think the disc might have been a bit warped), but I was quite proud of how quick and accurately I dropped the needle on the next track to spare everyone the stuttering loop and crackling air space. It has also given me the chance to really appreciate how intuitive my approach to building sets is. I’m actually surprised by my ability to carry a particular element of one song to the next. Apparently it’s a skill that is difficult to master—though not impossible to learn, you simply gotta listen to a lot of music! My friend Pablo recently sent me a video calling out DJs claiming they play open format sets when they are effectively not because many of them aren’t developing a mood that makes sense across songs, which is obviously especially key when you’re playing to a dance floor. Locating an asset or quality of one song that can link it to the next track is essential when crafting a cohesive set otherwise you’re basically hitting shuffle on a playlist. As corny or trite as it sounds, it truly is all about the vibe~
It’s my intention to recreate and upload my first Nite Market set and an ambient set I played at the A Fistful of Sand Dollars tape release at Folk Arts Rare Records in June, but don’t hold me to it.
A FISTFUL OF SAND DOLLARS: SELF-RELEASED SONGS FROM SAN DIEGO COUNTY
Here is the J-card and cassette I designed for my pals Ian, Scott, and Brendan’s ongoing collaborative archival cassette project, High Quality Cassettes. A Fistful of Sand Dollars collects a genre- and time-spanning assortment of self-released songs from around San Diego County, ranging from jazz to breezy AOR to gospel and corridos. While you’re at it, check out their first release, Become the Moon, a compilation of Central Asian music originally circulated through the Soviet state-run record label Melodiya.
Substack has built-in embeddable widget support for Bandcamp so here you go:
Unless they’ve sold out, copies are available for purchase at Folk Arts Rare Records located at 3610 University Ave. San Diego, CA 92104. They’re open 7 days a week from 10am-6pm.
NO CINEMA!
Issue #3 of NO CINEMA!, the independent quarterly on film culture(s) and politics I have been helping with since last year, is slated for delivery soon, or maybe copies have already arrived in your postboxes by the time you read this. I don’t know, I’m not in charge of that side of things. Currently the only way to obtain copies is to subscribe to the magazine’s Patreon, which you should absolutely do if you have the means and interest because it sustains the project and compensates contributors. Our web shop is set to launch shortly which will allow you to purchase individual back issues. As far as layout design goes, it’s admittedly not my expertise, but I’ve been developing a lot of knowledge and experience with each successive issue, and I think the magazine’s visual quality is discernible. Although our covers will continue to be Risograph printed for the foreseeable future
, we made the decision to forgo applying the process to the guts of our magazine which has given us the option for multiple colors and clarity at a lower rate; I think it has enhanced the overall appeal of the magazine and has made my life easier when assembling the document for print—I don’t have to think in layers, THANK GOD.
A special John Carpenter themed Issue #4 is currently in the editing stage and will be published in October. Coming in at around a projected ~80 pages, it’s going to be our biggest issue yet!
With subscriber tiers starting as low as $3/month, it’s a steal: https://www.patreon.com/nocinema
Follow the magazine on Twitter and Instagram for updates.
If you’d like to submit to the magazine, pitches for Issue #5 are open. Please don’t be shy! We're always looking for offbeat perspectives, comics, interviews, polemics, collages, photo essays, diagrams, diaries, haphazard notes.
Send pitches to: nocinemaquarterly@gmail.com
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Thanks for reading. I’ve got a few essays simmering that I hope to share with you soon.
The forthcoming NC! John Carpenter issue, and presumably all special issues going forward, will not have a Risographed cover.