The overriding theme of 2011 could take on a number of guises. It could be the Year of the String Quartet. Or perhaps the Year of New Amsterdam Records. An argument could be made that it was the Year of Spotify.
It certainly wasn't a year dominated by Japanese rock. Yes, the top half of the Favorite Edition 2011 list is occupied by Japanese artists, but they're the concentrated minority in a series of lists dominated by string quartets and new music ensembles.
My tastes have been shifting gradually away from Japan over the past few years, but it seems 2011 marks the first real evidence of that wane. Another indicator -- new release e-mails I receive from CD Japan don't actually feature specific albums by artists I like. They're all compilations now.
It took two years to line up the pieces to make it happen, but it's done. I live in Seattle now, close enough to Hawai´i to make traveling less arduous but far enough to keep me away from the orbit of familial crazy.
I live in a bona fide gay neighborhood now. I can walk or take public transportation, which actually is preferable since city planning in Seattle seems to be an oxymoron. (Take one wrong turn, and you'll find yourself on the other side of town.)
Seafood and Asian cuisine options are abundant, but of course, that means surrendering Papalote and Azul Tequila. But hey -- I can find plate lunches here. They won't give Grace's Inn any sleepless nights, but if I crave something from the islands, I don't have to make it myself.
Cedar season had to kick me in the nuts before I left Austin -- compounded by the fact the allergies really masked a stress-induced cold -- but I like the fact I'm spending my January free from the death grip of allergies.
My apartment has a balcony with the Space Needle squarely in view. I keep the vertical blinds open as much as possible because I love the view. I can see the Sound, the mountains, the downtown skyline. Back in Austin, I kept my vertical blinds closed because all I had look at was a swimming pool.
It's almost five months to the day since I last updated this site.
Is it dead? I'd like to think not, but for the time being, it won't be updated till I get through a pretty major event happening in my life right now -- I'm moving to Seattle.
In my mind, I've been done with Austin for the last half decade, but I wasn't in quite the financial or professional shape to justify a move. Now it seems those proverbial stars have lined up. I landed a job with the University of Washington, which I'll start in mid-January.
So now my life will be occupied with finishing up work projects, packing, organizing a move, finding a place to live -- not much time to update a blog neglected for nearly half a year.
And even after I've settled in, I question whether this site will continue in its present form.
The four-day Thanksgiving holiday weekend was just the right length of time to get a lot of work done. In addition to touching up the last few tracks of Original Confidence, I slammed through some initial remixes for Imprint.
Some of the mixes online right now are incomplete, and of course, I'll be tweaking them endlessly from now until time eternal.
At first, I thought I would be remodeling these tracks in the similar fashion I redid Restraint, but I found myself backtracking, even attempting to preserve a lot of elements in the original mixes.
The material calls for it -- the style of music on Imprint requires a more solid sense of rhythm than I can provide, so parts that I could conceivably play live, I've left to the machines. Except for the acoustic guitar parts. At some point, I'm going to have to face those.
But not on "Choices". This track was one of the last I wrote for Imprint. I vowed at first to stop writing when I reached 10 tracks, but the album felt as if it were missing something. I thought about the bass line to Sade's "Paradise", and I wanted to get that kind of feel. It ended up being "Choices".
I pretty much changed the drums and the guitar sample on this track. Nothing else was really touched from the original mix.