visceral_assassin

original photograph Rosemary Bannon Tyksinski

Somewhat unsuspected, a strange new ENTITY creeps onto the scene. Join DJ MisterEntropy for a night of the finest dark electronic music & drinking, in the gloomy depths of the Underground Lounge -- all in celebration of a mysterious, subterranean, creature's birth and subsequent education, on what it is to be alive and human ... or something like that. It's complicated. Expect the unexpected.

ENTITY
Thursday May 28 9PM - 2AM
Underground Lounge
952 W. Newport $3 cover 21+w/id

october was pretty busy and has gone by too fast. there's a lot to tell but I'm a little constrained by time and internet access problems lately. but kinetic had a show on oct. 18 and defcon, the gothsicles, tonikom, prometheus burning, and terrofakt played. I managed to take many bad pictures, but there are enough good ones of to reveal to the world.
the gallery is here and major props go out to chrissie martin who took photos 135 - 178 or thereabouts, and shored up my shortcomings with her superior skill and knowledge of photography. when I some time, I'll learn how to use my camera properly and somehow acquire a better lens. I've also got playlists galore and all the odd things swimming around in my brain that needs leaking out. later for that.

so, where to begin? I have been neck deep, living in truly interesting times and right now I don't really know what to make of the whole. and of course, far too much time has gone by to make a legitimate stab at conveying all the fine details and individual episodes. so, to make matters simple I'll just try to be straight forward for once.

basically, the entire fabric of my reality has been ripped asunder and stiched together again with rich veins of emotion and unstable faultlines in the foundation. there has been joy and wonder, and pain and confusion and if it wasn't all so unstable and prone to sudden changes, I would probably flee from the onslaught of unintended novelty.

things began to build personally and unravel professionally [well, in a manner of speaking, my job being what it was and who I worked for etc] shortly after my departure from montreal in may. festival kinetik was a truly wonderful experience and it was a suitable distraction for what was awaiting me once I returned home. the drive from montreal was something like twelve hours all told, and my mind was hundreds of miles away. we were getting battered by a sudden, heavy, rain storm and I'd just sent an email off to switzerland. a few short weeks before my trip, a situation that I'd become deeply involved in was going to be forever tilted in one direction or another, either towards a deeper, more complicated, and exciting involvement with me or in the opposite, yet entirely familiar direction of bittersweet acceptance and loss.

somehow -- it still seems more like a random jumble of half-formed moments; lots of music, brief bursts of conversation amid the noise and lights, looks, furtive touches, and disembodied messages floating around cyberspace. not very concrete in the way of intention though the word on the street is that I made the first move. in any case I found myself pursuing a woman who wasn't watch you would call "available" and at that point in the journey she'd gone to europe for some time and distance to go along with fun at wave gothik treffen and switzerland was a place for reflection and salvation and deciding on, if not everything, at least a determination of intent. I wasn't really worried per se, because I'd long become accustomed to accepting how these things go ,,, but really, I had [really, I still don't as I'm new to this kind of thing] no idea.

so skipping past the anguishes and confusion and fine details of the ups and downs, I'll get to how things are now: as it stands I am one half of a couple. I have a girlfriend, who goes by the name of sandy and who has met the vast majority of my friends and has become a major part of my life. we've formed, in a very short time, a very deep bond that consists of shared passions and hopes, a complimentary set of personality traits and a easy manner of communication that is an extremely good thing because when it comes down to it, the circumstances of our meeting, getting to know one another and trying to make a go of things, hasn't been without it's share of hurdles. that stuff I'll keep under wraps, besides the lack of explosions and car chases, it's pretty dramatic stuff for the most part. among a great many things that I appreciate about the situation, I enjoy the fact that we're not boring.

so yeah, that's strange and wonderful, considering my history and that would be plenty for my sense of personal development and growth, but of course there is more. a couple weeks after returning from montreal -- and a brief stop over in toronto where I unfortunately missed a hastily arranged rendezvous with angel_electric -- I managed to get fired from my hated job at ipg because of an asinine epsiode that ranks pretty damn low on the list of asine episodes that have occurred in that accursed place over the years.

so, long story short, I had to accelerate my plans for professionaly self-improvement and progress. I've wrangled with the bureaucratic forces of unemployment and made an ill-advised decision to attend community college in order to transfer to columbia without securing reliable financial aid first and I'm broke and tired all the time because, though I've managed to find limited work in the glorious retail field [cashier for upscale booze chain] apparently that's not a good thing to do in tandem with collecting unemployment for some stupid-assed reason. worse of all, my euphoric feeling of freedom and possibilty has been bogged down by these issues and the lack of time I have for spending with sandy or just sitting by myself and having some peaceful contemplation and time to think. and while I'm at it, today was bad because my main computer is dead, my mp3 player bit it, and the white sox got knocked out of the playoffs. my wishlist consists of: new, or fixed computer, 80 gig ipod, and a decent job to pay for these things. if such a job appears, I am more than willing to ditch school, start at columbia in fall or spring at night and on weekends and have time to have a life again. it would also be great if zapevaj wasn't off laboring in omaha, but that would be selfish of me.

it's not all bad of course. sandy really is lovely and perfect and it's beyond me what she sees in me, especially considering how much she's had to give up and the fundamental changes to her world she's experienced as a result of our relationship. I have met a couple of her friends; alcippe and gothic_rebecca who are spectacular, and there seems to be lots of positive action on the kinetic front. mainly, I just want to be a little [just a little] more settled in my earth-bound material situation -- well, at least I got fired and emptied out my 401K before the financial crisis could eat it. alright, that's enough of a chunk for now. perhaps later I can bitch about not knowing what's going on in my friends' lives next time.

I should be in class now, but I've just spent far too long dealing with the local unemployment bureaucracy and now I realize that the last few months have contained epic levels of turbulence and I should/will get to all of that in the near future. instead I will spam. people should come out, the new space is awesome.

oh yeah, I made a muxtape that has no dance music on it at all.

come on out. I'm spinning on a school night.

well the deluge continues. there's been a steady stream of activity on my end and I'm a little stunned and dazzled by it, and today was fitting with the sudden heat and brightness and tempestuous winds blowing crap into my eyes, forcing me to stagger around feeling ragged and off.
I guess the six months of gray has about run of course. I like it there, it's all cool and dark and quiet, but I can work with the changes.

this week isn't as crazed as the ones previous. the accessory show the week before last was relatively successful but played hell on my nerves; there were the usual bursts of chaos and the sound guy made no friend but the crowd enjoyed themselves. I had to declare smoking cessation amnesty for that night and in fact had many pleasant conversations and interesting moments -- the majority of that occurred before the show but whatever. accessory were great guys and their professionalism alleviated the impact of the technical deficiencies and kinetic didn't grow broke. I couldn't get a decent serving of whiskey and had to beer it all night but that's rock n roll I guess. oh, I didn't get to dj either but I wasn't really in the mood by the time 3am rolled around so it's no big deal. there is nexus 6 friday however and I shall lay down beats with extreme prejudice.

that weekend was tiring but a great deal of fun in the end. and darknes came to visit and liquors drunkened us and there was neo action and the house of sexytude hosted it's first party in a long while that was really fun and had interesting people show up on top of my beloved peeps -- and no one trashed the joint. good times. I believe I did other things during the week following, but nothings really coming to me -

INDOC band acquisition is going fairly well, I image things should be solid by early may and perhaps a couple other projects will come to fruition in that regard. work has been inoffensive for the most part and there are some terribly intriguing situations in the old personal life I tell ya -- so yeah, lots of things developing.

I'm still doing a crap job of getting writing time in and reading the books piled next to my bed, not to mention a whole list of scattered things I need to do to get the disparate strands of my life to coalesce into something smooth and functional. I'm a little herky jerky but I do have an almost concrete notion of my goal(s) so as to gauge my progress. and I continue to acquire more music than I can easily absorb -- in two days my 200 tracks from emusic kick in again and the mad beast is fed again. ah well, me and infomorph at neo this friday and I'm gonna roll on over to nocturna on saturday since I've been bedridden the previous two occasions. onwards ... oh zapevaj menaced the cat today.

I'm making a languid attempt at taming chaos, not really committing fully to the actual tangible necessity of doing. I guess I haven't completely accepted the reality of the situation, that I've actually simplified some things and chosen a path somewhat, reluctantly stearing clear of the noxious green, hallucinogenic clouds: really I only wanted to post this



everyone should skip work or what have you the next because things are starting on the late side. I go on at 2:30. In other news, festival kinetik is apparently a go, at least for friday and saturday. more intriguing is talk of visiting toronto for a bit upon our return. and the INDOC artist roundup is getting into full swing and hopefully a couple nice surprises before september rolls around. now I'm gonna clean my room.

I've got far too much music to contend with at the moment; I've got tattered, bulging case logics, teetering stacks of plastic, and the bleak voids of rapidly diminishing hard drive space on both my laptop and overburdened zen vision m -- the zen's meager 40g hard drive makes me feel inadequate, so it looks like I'll have to shuffle over to some clean, terribly well-lit place and acquire an ipod -- unless the fine folks at creative man up and come up with something to suit my needs. I blame emusic -- well probably more specifically ant-zen and hymen for tossing up their sexy back catalogs -- and the crappy dollar oh well. in any case there's a lot here and there's the fresh stuff from hive on it's way and I plan to make a bunch of comps with all kinds of styles represented to litter neo with for the next nexus 6 -- oh that reminds me:



I swear the night was like an hour and a half old at that point. kevin must've really rubbed someone the wrong way. hilarious. I've been going to neo for thirteen years and it took this note to actually make me notice that there is indeed a tip jar for djs -- I'm thinking people would probably prefer a coin slot carved into the dj's neck, but I digress. I really should try to get more dj gigs -- of course that would require an effort at being more amiable and outgoing in the public arena ... well it's something to consider. the balkanization of the industrial scene sure as hell doesn't make it easy for one to have a cohesive set, especially when I've only got two separate hours to work with. I'm best when I have time to meander. but really; synth-pop, future-pop, ebm, tbm, hellektro, powernoise, rhythmic noise -- I'm not even gonna go into the old-school stuff. I'm just trying to pinpoint when it was that these tentatively associated genres started vying for supremacy. it's a silly argument most anytime it's started [though rhythmic noise trumps all because a skillful practioner can appropriate elements of just about any subgenre imaginable ;-) ] but it's especially silly when the scene (well club going scene at least) is mad tiny and fighting over the scraps in a large metropolitan area -- but there is hope; last time I spun at neo I got a packed dancefloor for enduser and tricked surly old-school types who were there early into dancing to din[a]tod -- well they do sound straight out of 1984 without sounding like they're trying to sound like they're straight out of 1984.

but I was only going to wrap up 2007 by giving my best of list ... then all this nonsense happened. and so

sonic area - explore
talvekoidik -- silent reflections
tonikom -- epoch
5f-x - the xenomorphians - your friendly invasion
din[a]tod -- the sound of crash
burial -- untrue
otx -- a world in red
dazzling malicious -- psychoanalyse
thermidor -- 1929
scorn -- stealth

this year saw me gain an interest in dubstep -- though it really seems like a continuation of bit's and pieces of things like illbient, darkhop, dark dnb, triphop and well, scorn, that I've liked for years. so I'm considering running up to lava on friday for Bass Goes Boom for a change of pace --though this new comp from spectraliquid has a band called mobthrow with a song called "deathstep" so maybe the pace has changed only ever so slightly. aw well, 'nuff said.

like a shiver, perhaps, or maybe a ghost, the uncertain passage of time between nods. one of those long pointless nights. I'm not all that certain if much of anything from the past year deserves dissection, analysis, or serious scrutiny. nope. definitely not. in any case I maintained an ungainly forward-leaning stagger for the most part, nothing epic in the way of failures or success and that shapeless broken thing lying at the bottom of the stairs has been scooped into a box and thrown into a closet ... onward with the dirty business of living.


oh yeah, there was a party and pretty pictures.