Tag: nyc

Cat Links hola sayulita! / tracks / vid / your song is beautiful: 2002-2012

ok [sarsaparilla session 20210330, lowell ma]

Solo acoustic version of “ok” from Hola, Sayulita! (2010), and also included on my early-years greatest hits collection Your Song Is Beautiful: 2002-2012 (2012).

This performance is from March 2021 in the old Hood’s Sarsaparilla Soda factory, my temporary home Lowell, MA for the last 8 months. We leave Lowell for good in ~2 weeks on 7/31. I will be wistful about this place, but am also ready to return home to NYC, if only for a few months. Home is home, no matter how long you’ve been gone, or how long you can stay.

A couple days ago, my phone served up some video “memories” of a 2018 trip into Manhattan’s West Village. That night, I took an uptown F from Brooklyn, saw my brother play with his band at The Bitter End, walked a few blocks around Bleeker, and went home. It was just life as we knew it pre-covid, hopefully will know again. Maybe that’s why the images fit so well over this song of enduring friendship, no matter how far-flung in distance and/or time. The videos’ random appearance was my City telling me, “I’m still here, and I’m ok, too.”

The shot of the ambulance in the middle verse, is from covid times, fwiw, and the opening shot’s from a quick round-trip to Brooklyn two weeks ago to start moving back home. Cat is working on the latest final season of Dexter up here in MA, and it was hilarious to see the book that the show was based on sitting in a front-stoop giveaway pile on our block.…

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Cat Links sounds / sunrise highway / tracks / vid

[vid] There Goes The Sky (escape from nyc version)

A fav song took on new resonance in late May when I escaped NYC for a few days, for the first time since December 2019. Performed in Bridgehampton NY, interspersed w/ footage from the heaviest part of NYC’s (1st?) lockdown from March to May.

Original Version on Sunrise Highway (2015)

Lyrics

I set out walking, just to find a friend,
Make a human connection in a world of pretend,
To share faith in the future, in the face of decay,
‘Cos when you can’t escape the night, every dawn is the end of days.

Walls get high,
Darkness amplifies,
There goes the sky.

You can understand, doesn’t mean you feel.
The hardest things to show are the easiest to conceal.
Actions can destroy more than words can heal.
God save us all when all the truths are revealed.

Walls get high.
Darkness amplifies.
There goes the sky.

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Cat Links real life / words

Eye-Roll 20190617a

Untitled

Most car horn use is an expression of a driver’s loneliness, masked as urgency.

Car horns should not only be all in the same key, but also the same mode. Doesn’t have to be major. I’ll take Mixolydian, even Aeolian.

Untitled

Frivolous horn use should be per honk – $0.25 for the first second of duration, $1.00 each additional second. Call the oversight/enforcement system HornHeeder – like ShotSpotter meets EZPass.

Using a car horn for anything beyond a true warning is the same as when a dog barks out of lonesomeness, or chews its paw out of idiocy.

Untitled

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Cat Links dogs / img / Luna / Luna Stories / nstgrm / nyc

[img] “My name! Free condo for me!”

“My name! Free condo for me!” Luna exclaimed.
“Not how it works.”
“Fiddlesquats! Demand they license my name, then. I refuse to be their Playboy Bunny!”
“An infringement claim. That’s rich, Luna.”
“Shut up, you’re the not-rich fringement!”
“OK, ok. Just drop your deuce.”
April 26, 2019 at 01:43PM
via instagram

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Cat Links aired|reviewed|remixed / particle theory / sounds / tracks

Drifting Moon / Spinning Earth (drum remix)

So this is awesome. Producer and musician Lee Rosevere asked if he could “bash and crash” over Drifting Moon / Spinning Earth, so I stripped the original drum and percussion tracks and sent him a pre-master studio file. From 3000 miles away, he came back with the glorious result above.

From his SoundCloud description:

Westy Reflector recently posted this song of his:

I really liked it, but wondered what it would sound like with [different] drums. Graciously he sent me the bed tracks and this is the result.

Lee Rosevere
Happy Puppy Records
Twitter
YouTube
Free Music Archive

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Cat Links aired|reviewed|remixed

manhattan bridge [henry chalfant] train

manhattan bridge train [disquiet0011] [off still echoes (2013) and a disquiet junto project] runs underneath a look at the Pera Museum’s (Istanbul, Turkey) “Language Of The Wall” exhibition of photographs by Henry Chalfant of New York City subway car graffiti and street-art.

A perfect ride for my track.

Published on Sep 22, 2014
Language of the Wall: Graffiti / Street Art
13 August – 5 October 2014

Duvarların Dili: Graffiti / Sokak Sanatı
13 Ağustos – 5 Ekim 2014

Muzik | Music:
Manhattan Bridge Train [disquiet0011]
Westy Reflector, 2013

www.henrychalfant.com
www.peramuzesi.org.tr

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Cat Links a few words on / favs

[a few words on] @wrenarthur: benchmark


A close friend for years, Wren Arthur (no question one of my fav people ever), runs Olive Productions, the production company owned by Steve Buscemi and Stanley Tucci. Prior to this gig, she honed her production skills as a Producer for Robert Altman (yeah, that Altman) and remains a sought-after actress in the highwire world of independent NYC film and theater. And way before either of us were anything or even knew each other, Wren ran the day-to-day at Tortilla Flats on Washington Street, where she may or may not have kicked me out of the restaurant’s Elvis Room for not being “Borgnine enough.”

Her most current project, Park Bench, a “talking show” hosted by Buscemi, is absolute deep, true New York City in the best way, an entertaining street-side diversion on the surface with an undertow of sneaky subversion. Try balancing that on the end of a fork.

Episode #4: Benchmark with Rosanne Cash and Michael Shannon defines the semi-non-fictional genre Arthur and Buscemi set out to create. The episode’s disarming blithe extra-real universe will infiltrate your subconscious and a few days from viewing, you will flash back to one or two moments and smile, like you know a secret you’ll never spill. And then you’ll want to watch it again.

There is an arc, so watch the series from the beginning. Your only penalty will be having to watch the episode above twice.

Oh, and today the series was nominated for an Emmy in Outstanding Short-Format Non-Fiction.…

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Posted-onBy lineBylinewestyreflector
Cat Links sounds / tracks / transient lines

one city

she walks into union square
sends the pigeons flying
didn’t think i’d find her there
didn’t think of trying

she sits on a bench above the subway
as the trains rumble by
i see her shake

inside the hiss of a subway’s brakes
it means everything and nothing just the same

a city
to strangers
one city
two strangers
one city
too strange

dreams between drags on a cigarette
while i watch
under the lights of an august city
that will never stop

red street, the light of a taxi’s brakes
it means everything and nothing just the same

a city
to strangers
one city
two strangers
one city
too strange

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Cat Links disquiet junto / sounds / tracks

no brooklyn bound [disquiet0018-3×3]

sound 1: field recording – downtown new york city subway 6 train weekend service disruption announcement and surrounding ambience. recorded with iphone garageband.
sound 2: constructed beat – iphone garageband drum samples
sound 3: synth – programmed iphone animoog

minute 1: the drum is primary, backed by stabs and swoops of the synth and cut up portions of the subway announcement.
minute 2: the subway field recording runs full and uninterrupted, with the beat and synth stabs and swoops slightly tweaked, but retaining the same basic phrasing.
minute 3: the synth comes forward with a 2nd part, laid over the cut up subway announcement and drum beat.

the drum beat is a long phrase (fourteen 8-beat measures?) that repeats three times w/ a couple variations. i considered the entire phrase as one sound, even though it’s made of a kick, snare, high hat and cymbal. this was my first time using garageband to construct a beat and the result sounded something like my old boss dr-5. made me smile for that alone. the synth sound was programmed in iphone’s animoog app, and then played live using the app’s D#-minor pentatonic keyboard over the other 2 tracks. first minute is one take, second and third minutes contain a second take and the third minute a third take as the add’l part.

though everything was generated/recorded by an iphone, all sounds were dumped into sony acid (my daw that i just can’t shake), and all cutting up, loop creation, compression application and rendering happened there.…

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