[{"categories":["other music"],"contents":" Lucy Gooch – Desert Window Listen/Purchase Desert Window sits somewhere between folk song and dream logic. Lucy Gooch’s layered vocals and soft electronics recall mid-era Björk and Kate Bush at their most exploratory, but scaled way down and turned inward. It’s quiet, patient music that opens up the longer you stay with it. Maybe my favorite album of the year. Ron Heglin – Tom Djll – Duos for Voice and Runglers Listen/Purchase A standout for me this year, Duos for Voice and Runglers feels like two signals meeting in fog, neither fully translating the other. Ron Heglin’s voice bends and mutates like a half-remembered language while Tom Djll’s runglers spark, stutter, and short-circuit around it. The result is a fragile truce between flesh and machine, hovering just long enough to leave a trace. Friendship – Caveman Wakes Up Listen/Purchase Caveman Wakes Up feels like sunlight hitting stone for the first time, followed by a sideways grin. Friendship writes songs that wander with intent, full of sharp observation, dry humor, and melodies that feel casually worn but carefully placed. It’s deeply smart music that pretends not to be, unfolding at its own unhurried pace. Daniel Knox – Mercado 48 Listen/Purchase Mercado 48 unfolds in hushed piano figures and a voice that sounds weary but steady. Daniel Knox writes with a rare clarity about isolation, doubt, and endurance, touching the human condition without grand statements or sentimentality. The restraint gives the songs their weight and staying power. The Bats – Corner Coming Up Listen/Purchase Corner Coming Up lands as another quiet affirmation from a band that has always trusted small gestures. The Bats sound completely at ease here, writing songs that feel modest on the surface but deeply assured underneath. For longtime listeners, it’s comforting without being nostalgic, proof that their instincts are still intact. James McMurtry – The Black Dog and The Wandering Boy Listen/Purchase The Black Dog and the Wandering Boy shows James McMurtry operating at full strength, sharp, unsentimental, and quietly funny in the way only truly smart writing can be. “Sons of the Second Sons” stands as one of the year’s best songs and one of the finest he has written, cutting deep while keeping its balance. The record carries that same mix of wit, moral clarity, and hard-earned perspective throughout. Mike Majikowski – Invisible Listen/Purchase Invisible centers on double bass, but it breathes and drifts like the best ambient music. Mike Majkowski lets tones emerge, recede, and blur at the edges, turning resonance and silence into equal partners. It’s deeply physical music that listens as much as it speaks, slow-moving and quietly absorbing. Sean McCann – The Leopard Listen/Purchase The Leopard is a meticulously constructed opera that dissolves narrative into sound, voice, and hallucinated detail. Sean McCann moves between radio play, ritual, and dream logic, letting scenes eat themselves and reform in slow, uncanny cycles. It’s immersive and disorienting work that rewards surrender more than interpretation. Greet Death – Die In Love Listen/Purchase Die In Love finds Greet Death settling into their weight, writing with more patience and intention than before. The songs feel sturdier and more self-aware, as if the band has learned how to stand inside the noise rather than push against it. Even so, the record suggests a horizon just beyond reach, making their growth feel both earned and unfinished. Little Mazarn – Mustang Island Listen/Purchase Mustang Island moves with a restless curiosity, its songs leaning into landscape and memory without ever settling into easy answers. Little Mazarn blends warm acoustic elements with unusual rhythmic and sonic shifts, creating music that feels lived-in and thoughtful. There’s a sense of wandering here, like watching light change over a place you think you know and realizing you only just arrived. John Camp – Proceed Listen/Purchase Proceed is precise and unpretentious, built from clean lines and patient movement. John Camp shapes sound with purpose, letting patterns emerge and shift without excess. His guitar playing is great as per usual and the result is music that feels both thoughtful and deliberate, rewarding close attention and lingering in the quiet between notes. Aiko Takahashi – The Grass Harp Listen/Purchase Small piano figures surface and disappear, never insisting on themselves. What Aiko Takahashi builds here is less about melody than attention, a slow tuning of the ear to touch, breath, and residue. The Grass Harp rewards patience by quietly changing how you listen, even after it ends. Sally Anne Morgan – Second Circle The Horizon Listen/Purchase Circling rather than advancing, the music moves like a body finding its own pace again. Sally Anne Morgan lets fiddle, banjo, and subtle textures trace slow arcs that feel shaped by weather, breath, and repetition. Second Circle The Horizon listens closely to cycles rather than moments, rewarding attention to how things return slightly changed. Chrome Chasm – The Hermit Listen/Purchase Long, patient passages stretch out and slowly shift, built from guitars, pedal steel, and soft brass that bleed into each other. Chrome Chasm favors atmosphere over momentum, letting pieces change almost imperceptibly. The Hermit works best when you stop looking for direction and let the sound settle in around you as if you were listening to the best of Philip Glass. Mekons – Horror Listen/Purchase Horror finds the long-running The Mekons doing what they’ve always done best: taking serious ideas and letting them breathe through rough-edged, restless music. Lyrics jump from historical reckoning to present-day malaise, and multiple voices shift the focus like a conversation that won’t settle for easy answers. The result is an album that’s both pointed and surprisingly warm, full of sharp critique and the band’s lived-in sense of collective strength, and it underlines why they’re still vital after all these decades. Tropical Fuck Storm – Fairyland Codex Listen/Purchase Fairyland Codex feels like a controlled delirium, raw edges and strange turns unfolding with brutal clarity. Tropical Fuck Storm blends noise, melody, satire, and bleak humor in ways that never feel accidental or sloppy. For a band that seems capable of anything, this record pushes their restless inventiveness into sharper focus without losing the off-kilter charm that makes them so amazing. They can do no wrong in my book. Schatterau – Übers Jahr Listen/Purchase Quiet, seasonal, and attentive, this record moves at a human pace. Schatterau works with field recordings, piano, and soft electronics in a way that feels observational rather than expressive, documenting time passing rather than dramatizing it. Übers Jahr rewards repeated listening, not through revelation, but through familiarity slowly deepening. Pale Blue Eyes – New Place Listen/Purchase Built with their own hands and clearly trusted, the songs settle in without strain. Pale Blue Eyes let guitars, synths, and steady rhythms lock together naturally, nothing overthought or undercut. New Place proves how rare it is to self-record and still sound this sure of yourself. Chris Brokaw – Ghost Ship Listen/Purchase Keeping up with my friend Chris Brokaw almost feels beside the point. He writes like someone taking notes while moving through the world, attentive and unsentimental. Ghost Ship drifts between memory and presence, songs arriving worn but intact, carrying the quiet authority of someone who has lived inside the questions long enough to stop explaining them. Shiner – Believemeyou Listen/Purchase The songs hit like well-placed turns in a familiar road, nothing wasted and nothing rushed. Shiner locks smart melodies into tightly wound structures, letting tension and release do the talking, just as they've done for decades now. Believeyoume sounds seasoned rather than softened, proof that precision and feeling do not cancel each other out. Thor \u0026 Friends – Heathen Spirituals Listen/Purchase Heathen Spirituals unfolds as three long instrumental movements that feel meditative yet charged, like ritual music pulled from a minimalist dream. The ensemble builds from simple marimba lines into layered sound worlds where cello drones, winds, and even a wordless choir give weight to every shift. Recorded live in an empty auditorium, the music moves slowly but insistently, a kind of spacious, hymn-like ambient work that suggests both quiet reflection and something approaching awe. Lathe of Heaven – Aurora Listen/Purchase This one hit me right away and stayed there because of the guitar lines and vocal melodies that many Flock of Seagulls fans will love. Lathe of Heaven has a real feel for mood and melody here, songs that glow and fray at the edges without losing their center. Aurora already feels strong and considered, and it also makes me excited to hear what happens when they tighten the screws just a bit more next time. Ben McElroy – Elkwort Listen/Purchase Elkwort feels less like a composed record and more like something overheard. Breath, bow scrape, and wheezing organ drift in and out, never settling long enough to become comfortable. There is a rural, almost medicinal quality to it, as if these sounds were gathered rather than written. It rewards patience, not with big moments, but with a sense of being quietly altered by the time it ends. Eli Winter – A Trick Of The Light Listen/Purchase This record is Eli Winter stepping fully into himself. The playing is open and generous, curious without showing off, and confident enough to let ideas breathe. It moves easily between folk, jazz, and abstraction, but always sounds grounded and human. The Necks – Disquiet Listen/Purchase Disquiet tests your patience and rewards it in equal measure. This is the record where The Necks unapologetically take up more than three hours of your life with slowly unfolding, improvisational terrain that feels alive and weathered at the same time. It’s hypnotic without being easy, mysterious without being opaque, and when it clicks it feels like you are breathing the same air as these three. Jogging House – Kiosk Listen/Purchase Kiosk is Jogging House in a slightly sunnier mood, where loopy tape fragments and hazy melodies feel personal and gentle rather than shadowy. The whole thing was built by chopping up tape loops and running them through a sampler and modular gear, then recording straight to tape in live takes, which gives it an unguarded, human energy. The Ex – If Your Mirror Breaks Listen/Purchase This one feels less like confrontation and more like communion. The Ex still clang and surge, but there’s a warmth under the abrasion, a sense of people listening hard to each other while the world rattles outside. The songs feel handmade and a little crooked, full of motion, humor, and unease. Strange music that somehow leaves you steadier than when you started. Water Damage – Live At Le Guess Who? Listen/Purchase This record is less like a performance and more like a condition you submit to. Water Damage lock into a single idea and refuse to blink, pushing repetition until it turns viscous and hallucinatory. Time stretches, details warp, and what starts as brute force slowly becomes meditative. Music as pressure system. Simple in the best way, smart in how long it holds. Old Saw – The Wringing Cloth Listen/Purchase The recording here from Old Saw feels quietly unsettled, like folk music remembering something it would rather not. Old Saw stretch familiar acoustic shapes until they thin out and blur, leaving space where certainty used to live. Nothing here rushes, nothing insists. It just hangs in the air, damp and unresolved, and somehow feels truer for it. Michael Grigoni * Pan•American – New World, Lonely Ride Listen/Purchase New World, Lonely Ride is a road trip at sunrise with no destination, just the hum of asphalt and the slow bloom of atmosphere around you. Michael Grigoni and Pan•American weave distant electronics, sparse guitar, and field recordings into something both expansive and intimate. It’s not beat-driven. It’s mood-driven, a study in space where silence counts as much as sound. A lonely ride that somehow feels like company when you need it. Ancient Death – Ego Dissolution Listen/Purchase Not a lot of metal on the list this year, but Ego Dissolution is a stand-out. The riffs and rhythms are steeped in tradition yet feel alive and unpredictable, like old school mechanics running through an cosmic filter. It's an album that sounds like it’s wrestling with its own shadow and winning. Piers Faccini \u0026 Ballaké Sissoko – When The Word Was Song Listen/Purchase This recording exemplifies music from before music was separated into styles. Voice, guitar, and kora move with an easy gravity, each note chosen, nothing wasted. It’s intimate without being fragile, ancient without feeling precious. Songs as shared memory, passed hand to hand, still warm when you receive them. Cheer-Accident – Admission Listen/Purchase Admission feels like a band that never lost the joy of surprise. Cheer-Accident twist and pivot with gleeful unpredictability, leaping from jagged art-rock hooks to jazz-tinged turns and oddball harmonies that land just when you think you know the road they’re on. It’s smart without being precious, strange without being alienating, and full of moments that make you both grin and scratch your head. An album that rewards curiosity and refuses to sit still. They've reached Thinking Plague status I think. Seabuckthorn – A Path Within A Path Listen/Purchase Do you want to listen for direction rather than following one? Put this in your headphones, then. Much like other Seabuckthorn records, the sounds arrive lightly, guitar, bowed strings, fragments of air and place, each leaving a trace before moving on. Nothing here insists on meaning, yet everything feels intentional. It’s music that trusts the listener to wander, to notice, and to find their own way through it. tree // nature – Triple Heart Chamber and Dancing Mechanical Tree Listen/Purchase Long drones stack, phase, and grind until repetition stops feeling passive and starts feeling structural, almost architectural. You can hear the mechanics working, oscillations nudging against each other, time stretching and folding in on itself. It’s visceral because of the volume and density, analytical because the process is always exposed. Music that doesn’t soothe so much as recalibrate your nervous system. ","date":"2025-12-30","permalink":"http://tateeskew.com/weblog/2025-12-30-top-35-albums-of-2025/","summary":" Lucy Gooch – Desert Window Listen/Purchase Desert Window sits somewhere between folk song and dream logic. Lucy Gooch’s layered vocals and soft electronics recall mid-era Björk and Kate Bush at their …","tags":["ambient","drone","experimental","music"],"title":"Top 35 Albums of 2025"},{"categories":["Community","Running","Trail Running"],"contents":"The Age Behind the Words There is a moment, somewhere in the middle years, when you hear yourself say it.\nI\u0026rsquo;m gettin\u0026rsquo; too old to do that.\nIt comes out quiet, almost courteous, the way someone excuses themselves from a conversation they are still listening to. But tucked inside those words is a small surrender, the kind that happens before anyone else notices. A door that you close from the inside.\nAge can make you broader. Age can make you smaller. Both are possible. Both are waiting.\nThe Kind of Labor That Keeps You Human I have spent my life working in ways that do not always look like work. Some of it happened in studios, in rooms full of wires and microphones and people trying their best to make something that mattered. Some of it was tuning old machines that had their own moods. Some of it was building systems that now live on servers in cold rooms I never physically see anymore. Some of it was running trails, raising children, or keeping a farm from slipping back into the forest that never stops reaching for it.\nAll of it has been labor, and not the kind anyone would confuse with hustle. It is the kind of work that teaches you your size in the world. The kind of work that reminds you there is always something bigger than you, something that needs your attention and your hands…and often your heart. A lot of people could use that kind of work these days.\nMusic taught me that effort is not always loud. Recording taught me that listening is work in its own right. I spent years in rooms leaning into the hiss of tape and the hum of amplifiers, making small adjustments for hours. You learn to stay present when no one else can hear what you hear. That kind of attention becomes a craft. It becomes a discipline. It becomes a way of being in the world.\nNone of this work ever asked how old I was. It asked for presence. It asked for patience. It asked for the willingness to show up again and again until the thing became itself.\nAge has not taken that from me. If anything, it has sharpened it. Getting older is not the problem. Forgetting your place in the work is.\nBob Hayes, Walking Into the Weather Years ago, I watched a short documentary called The Hard Way on PBS and it has stuck with me ever since. I rewatch it when I\u0026rsquo;m on the downward slope of \u0026ldquo;the stoke\u0026rdquo; over the course of the year when trail running. A man named Bob Hayes is at the center of the doc. You watch him long enough and you realize you are in the presence of someone who never left his post.\nHere is the film if you want to see for yourself:\nBob is near 90 years old during the shooting of this. Yet there he is, splitting wood in the frozen days, tending his farm, connecting with his community, and running up mountains. He moves without complaint. He has no interest in appearing younger. He is committed to the life that shaped him. The one where instead of sleeping in the comfort of his own bed the night before a race, he\u0026rsquo;s on a cot near the starting line under the stars.\nBob works because it keeps him in the world. Because the land would miss him if he stopped. Because a life without usefulness is a kind of long funeral.\nWatching him, I feel something like recognition! Not in the scale of his days, but in the way he refuses to withdraw. He meets age the way he meets winter or a 100 miles run. He steps toward it.\nThe Trouble with Comfort Comfort has a way of convincing you that you have done enough for now. Rest turns into retreat. Ease becomes a kind of hiding. You start imagining yourself as fragile before anyone else does. Don\u0026rsquo;t do that!\nThis is how people shrink. Not through illness. Through permission.\nAnd the work changes too. The body shifts. Your goddamned knees and hips speak up loudly. The back writes its own small warnings when you crawl into or out of bed. The hills you once ran without thinking now ask for your breath and quads in a new way.\nIt would be easy to bow out. To say the trail is for younger legs, that the distance is too much, that your pace is not what it used to be.\nIf I say I am too old to do that, I am usually protecting myself from the awkwardness of meeting my body as it is now, not as it was. Age is not the enemy. Becoming brittle is.\nStaying Available One of the quiet places where I\u0026rsquo;m gettin\u0026rsquo; too old to do that shows up is in the work of being available. Not the heavy lifting, not the long runs, not the physical jobs that clearly get harder with age. I\u0026rsquo;m talking about the small, steady responsibilities that hold a community together. The everyday ways we show up for other people.\nIt is easy to let yourself believe that those things belong to younger folks. Let the neighbors deal with it. Let someone else check in on the person who is struggling. Let someone with more energy take the call. Before long, availability starts to feel optional. Then burdensome. Then something you quietly age out of.\nBut that is one of the traps of growing older in this dominant culture. We start mistaking withdrawal for wisdom. We start talking ourselves out of being useful. We start imagining that our presence is no longer needed, or that being tired is reason enough to turn inward.\nFor me, I\u0026rsquo;m gettin\u0026rsquo; too old to do that usually shows up in the form of hesitation. The little pause before saying yes (or no). The thought that someone else will handle it. The feeling that I\u0026rsquo;ve done enough. But when I follow that path, I can feel something in me getting smaller. Not older. Smaller.\nBeing available is about willingness. It is about being someone your people can rely on, even when you are not at your strongest. Eldership is not built on youth or speed. It is built on steadiness. The ability do the important work of your time and not be seized up by living heartbroken at times!\nAge is not what gets in the way of that. Unwillingness is. And if I give in to that, then I\u0026rsquo;m gettin\u0026rsquo; too old to do that becomes a story I tell to excuse my absence, instead of a lie I refuse to live by.\nAging in Two Directions I have seen people age in two directions. One direction is marked by the quiet arrival of I\u0026rsquo;m gettin\u0026rsquo; too old to do that. It starts as a practical thought, then becomes a habit, and eventually a posture. These people turn inward. Their world shrinks to the things that ask the least of them. Their responsibilities lighten, not because life requires it, but because they slowly step away from them. The days get quieter in a way that feels more like pulling back than settling in.\nThe other direction looks different. These are the people who grow wider as they age. They stay involved. They stay curious. They keep saying yes when it would be easier to say no. They do not use age as a way out of participation. They let it deepen their place in the world. Their years become something they carry with a kind of steadiness, not something they hide behind.\nThe difference between the two has very little to do with how strong someone feels. It has everything to do with how willing they are to remain in their own life. How they respond when the thought I\u0026rsquo;m gettin\u0026rsquo; too old to do that shows up at the door. Whether they agree with it, or whether they push back and keep going.\nBob Hayes pushed back. He widened. He kept moving because motion made sense to him. He kept tending the work that shaped him. He kept showing up for the land, for the running community, and for the life he had built. He did not step out of the stream of things just because the years added up.\nHe shows that elderhood is not something you age into automatically. It is something you practice. It is a way of living that keeps you connected, useful, and available long after the world expects you to slow down.\nChoosing the Work So the question for me is not whether I am too old to do that. The real question is what I choose to do with the years in front of me, and what kind of elder I\u0026rsquo;m becoming as I go.\nI want to be someone who steps in rather than steps back. Someone who keeps learning, even if I have to take my time with it. Someone who still rides the old bikes because they keep a part of me awake. Someone who still runs, even if the pace has changed. Someone who lifts what needs lifting when the moment calls for it. Someone my people can reach without apology.\nAnd somewhere in that, I can hear a different sentence forming. Not I\u0026rsquo;m gettin\u0026rsquo; too old to do that, but This is still mine to do.\nNot as a denial of age, but as a refusal to let age decide the shape of my days. A small declaration that I am still here, still useful, still willing.\nAge can make a person withdraw, or it can anchor them more firmly in their place. One path closes the door and waits for the world to pass by. The other keeps the door open and meets whatever arrives with both feet on the ground.\nI know which one I want.\nThe Work Ahead If Bob Hayes left anything behind for the rest of us, it is the reminder that age does not ask for surrender. It asks for honesty. It asks for steadiness. It asks for the kind of effort that fits the season you are in, not the one you miss or wish you still had. And most of all, it asks for presence. To still be part of the world around you. To still give something real of yourself to the people who count on you.\nWhen I sit with that, the phrase I\u0026rsquo;m gettin\u0026rsquo; too old to do that starts to shift. It stops sounding like a limit and starts sounding more like a moment worth noticing. A place where I might be pulling back out of habit, or fear, or a tired story I have carried without thinking. It becomes a reminder to stay with the work that keeps me human, the work that ties me to other people instead of isolating me.\nI am not trying to hold on to youth. Youth had its season, and I lived it. What I want now is something steadier and more rooted. I want to age in a way that feels honest to who I am becoming. I want to stay useful. I want to keep showing up in ways that matter, even if those ways look different than they used to. And I want the people in my life to feel that I am still here with them, not drifting toward the edges.\nIf that is the work in front of me, then I\u0026rsquo;m gettin\u0026rsquo; too old to do that loses its power. I am not too old. I am simply on the next stretch of the trail, moving at the pace that fits. And for where I am now, just as Bob was in his time, I\u0026rsquo;m right on time.\nBob Hayes — December 31, 1926 — May 14, 2018 Obituary\n","date":"2025-12-03","permalink":"http://tateeskew.com/weblog/2025-12-03-im-gettin-too-old-to-do-that/","summary":"The Age Behind the Words There is a moment, somewhere in the middle years, when you hear yourself say it.\nI\u0026rsquo;m gettin\u0026rsquo; too old to do that.\nIt comes out quiet, almost courteous, the way …","tags":[],"title":"I'm Gettin' Too Old To Do That!"},{"categories":["other music"],"contents":" First Ten Standouts Alan Licht – Havens listen/purchase\nI\u0026rsquo;m not sure what else needs to be said about Alan and his guitar music. This new album explores repetition and subtle morphing pieces that will fill you with goodwill. I4A – I4A 3 listen/purchase\nI4A continues to fly under the radar making \u0026ldquo;dishwashing music\u0026rdquo; that shows an immense amount of maturity through smart composition and ideas that are modern sharp takes with Traffic and Kraut origins, but somehow wholly different. Läuten der Seele – Die Reise zur Monsalwäsche listen/purchase\nThis is the final installment of Christian Schoppik\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Water\u0026rdquo; trilogy. The first two showing up on this yearly list in the past as well. He makes beautiful collages that don\u0026rsquo;t get long in the tooth or introduce boredom. Wussy – Cincinatti Ohio listen/purchase\nAs a fellow Midwesterner, this record is almost achingly too on the nose. Wussy continues to write music that immediately shows that they\u0026rsquo;ve listened deeply to thousands of records and they are able to relay their existence through your speakers. Nala Sinephro – Endlessness listen/purchase\nThis is what happens when you have an ear for a journey and surround yourself with great musicians. If Broadcast wanted to make a record with mid-era Miles, you\u0026rsquo;d find something like this on the tape. Jeff Parker ETA IVtet – The Way Out of Easy listen/purchase\nAn album that has an immediate impact on first listen and still gives upon repeated listening. Which is exactly what Jeff, Anna, Jay, and Josh are doing in the room together…listening. METZ – Up On Gravity Hill listen/purchase\nFor me, this is METZ finally delivering the melody that I knew they were capable of, without losing the raw power that they somehow deliver in trio form. This will pummel you from start to finish…and you\u0026rsquo;ll immediately replay it in its entirety. Mount Eerie – Night Palace listen/purchase\nI think perhaps Phil has finally made an album that is the essence of what he truly is as an artist/human. It\u0026rsquo;s all here, everything he\u0026rsquo;s embodied over the last decades. Introspective, quaint, fuzzy, cloudy, and abrupt. Blood Incantation – Absolute Elsewhere listen/purchase\nThis is the best death metal band going and this is the best record they\u0026rsquo;ve made to date. Obviously they\u0026rsquo;ve been deep diving into the German ambient crates and it has imprinted itself into their approach. This is gigantic and sprawling. Take your time. Merope – V?jula listen/purchase\nThis is a beautiful album of recordings rooted in Lithuanian folk music, but tied together through the ancient and modernity. It\u0026rsquo;s perfectly paced and the emotions communicated are easily received. As artists, we only hope we can fully realize our ideas like this. —\nTara Jane O\u0026rsquo;Neil – The Cool Cloud of Okayness listen/purchase\nTJO continues to make music that tickles her fancy at any given moment. She\u0026rsquo;s careful in her craft and as she shifts styles, she always has a common thread throughout all of her albums…she\u0026rsquo;s got immense taste. Klimperei – Cirque Klimperei listen/purchase\nThis is a collection of pieces from the history of recorded music from Klimperei and it\u0026rsquo;s so perfectly well done. Kudos to Time Released Sound \u0026amp; Time Sensitive Materials for doing such a wonderful job sequencing and packaging this up. A must listen AND physical purchase. Eric Fourman – Dread listen/purchase\nEric Fourman has been inconspicuously making music in the Middle TN area for years. Quietly releasing some of the best drone music pieces without any speck of pretension. Not merely fucking around, he obviously develops compositions that first and foremost are for himself. The Hard Quartet – The Hard Quartet listen/purchase\nRio\u0026rsquo;s Song may be one of the coolest sing-along simple tunes released in quite some time. Jim White\u0026rsquo;s drumming is so perfectly good here while the contributions from Matt, Emmett, and Stephen don\u0026rsquo;t feel like throwaways you get with most \u0026ldquo;supergroups\u0026rdquo;. Gillian Welch and David Rawlings – Woodland listen/purchase\nDo I really have to put something here? Empty Trainload Of Sky sounds like it was written 50 years ago and is already a classic. The rest is just the best Nashville duo of the last 25+ years. Enough said. German Error Message – German Error Message (S/T) listen/purchase\nSticking to the Middle TN area of my home, German Error Message has continuously released music that combines experimental folk with the bedroom recordings most musicians make for only themselves. You can tell he\u0026rsquo;s a lifer and he\u0026rsquo;s waiting on nobody to put things into the world. Melos Kalpa – Melos Kalpa (S/T) listen/purchase\nI wouldn\u0026rsquo;t necessarily call this a supergroup, but perhaps for me it is. This first album from a collection of musicians that I admire, showcases how a group of people improvising and piecing together ideas can result in a wonderfully moving abstraction of feelings and ears. Amblare – Amblare (S/T) listen/purchase\nYou are only allowed to listen to this album via large amounts of volume. You know immediately that this is Midwestern in origin: big drums and guitars, playing with time sigs, melodic vocalizations and lyrics revolving around heavy emotions. Pan American \u0026amp; Kramer – Reverberations Of Non-Stop Traffic On Redding Road listen/purchase\nMark Nelson teams up with Kramer to create almost exactly what you would expect from these two collaborating. This is super patient stuff that resembles the sun shining off of the lake as I currently look out the window. daily rituals – all the ways in which i am mute listen/purchase\nIncredibly wonderful field recording collage work that lets you take part in the disintegration of time with microsound and elecroacoustic approaches. Klaus Weise – Sabiha Sabiya listen/purchase\nKlaus Weise from Popol Vuh gets a reissue of this past tape that was originally released in 1982 on Aquamarin Verlag, the distinguished publisher of New Age books and music and it feels as full of place as the music he used to make with his aforementioned collective. Myriam Gendron – Mayday listen/purchase\nLook, I could use comparison of Myriam to Nico, but that would cheapen what she really does…but would it? Los Days – Dusty Dreams listen/purchase\nI have immense respect for Tommy Guerrero. I think Tommy and Max Schaaf are the epitome of how skateboarding creativity radiates out into other life works. This is the newest sun-drenched exploration of sound with his friend Josh Lippi and it delivers as per usual. Belong – Realistic IX listen/purchase\nI wasn\u0026rsquo;t sure if we\u0026rsquo;d ever get another Belong record, but I\u0026rsquo;m sure glad we got one. This one finds them drowning in wash that isn\u0026rsquo;t subtle by any means, but it\u0026rsquo;s all the better because it\u0026rsquo;s cloudy with a chance of mist all day. Headphones on for this one. Arcwelder – Continue listen/purchase\nThere was a reason we\u0026rsquo;d pile into a warm bar in the Midwestern winter with piss soaked bathroom floors…Arcwelder were playing. Magic Tuber Stringband – Needlefall listen/purchase\nThis is a beautifully put together recording of an evolving palette of string music. Improvisation through loosely based structure is what it sounds like to me. Exploration of sounds through togetherness and a shared record collection. Outstanding stuff. Itasca – Imitation of War listen/purchase\nSometimes Itasca comes across as a sister artist to The Weather Station who was recorded in a studio that understands that the process is just as important as the end result. Derek Monypeny – The Oppositional Imagination listen/purchase\nDerek makes music here that differs in style from track to track, but all encompassing what I love about making my own guitar music…whether prepared, droned, strummed, or aggressively picked, you\u0026rsquo;ll find emotion hurled into the room. Ned Collette – Our Other History listen/purchase\nNed returned this year with this particular album that recalls his absolutely amazing 2018 album, Old Chestnut. This music is serious business, and you know it. Seabuckthorn – this warm, this late listen/purchase\nSeabuckthorn is a cold hardy plant that puts on thousands of small berries that are found to be medicinal. So are these musical pieces found on the newest collections of sounds from Andy as he crafts beautiful improvisations with friends in tow. Finom – Not God listen/purchase\nDare I say this might be the best thing that Tweedy has produced…ever? These women understand what they want to say and how to say it. Melodic, witty, and perfectly arranged. Kudos to Tom Schick for such a fantastic sounding recording. Chef\u0026rsquo;s Kiss Stefan Christensen – In Time listen/purchase\nYou can definitely hear the Träd Gräs Och Stenar family tree here. At times Stefan and crew will veer into kraut territory, but firmly holding onto their obvious psych tendencies. Fire up the Marantz and throw it on already. Brandon Tani – The Road Was Bent From The Way We Took It listen/purchase\nTani takes you around to the places that make you wonder if you could recreate daily in your life if given nothing but some love and time. This is supposed to be abstract music, but it feels like it has purpose. Found sound and concrète approach, but with focused ideas. Winged Wheel – Big Hotel listen/purchase\nExploring more of the motorik sounds and drowning the vocal in a room the size of Central Station. 12XU will never let you down, kids. Mystery Waitress – Bright Black Night listen/purchase\nSometimes I want to hear something fairly pop influenced, but somehow it still holds on to threads of being pretty without all of the preciousness. That seems to be a theme that falls out of New Zealand quite often (think Tiny Ruins). Flying Nun seems to have had a knack for finding this stuff for 40 plus years and here\u0026rsquo;s the latest in that long line. Mountain, what a song. ","date":"2024-12-13","permalink":"http://tateeskew.com/weblog/2024-12-13-top-35-records-of-2024/","summary":" First Ten Standouts Alan Licht – Havens listen/purchase\nI\u0026rsquo;m not sure what else needs to be said about Alan and his guitar music. This new album explores repetition and subtle morphing pieces …","tags":null,"title":"Top 35 Records of 2024"},{"categories":["other music"],"contents":" First Ten Standouts Pale Blue Eyes – This House listen/purchase\nLayered melodic synth pop that recalls German motorik, Ulrich Schnauss production, and The Engineers – Always Returning era recordings Scivic Rivers – S/T : listen/purchase\nKids don\u0026rsquo;t write albums like this. Mature finely crafted songs in the vein of Talk Talk\u0026rsquo;s later output and passing moments of Bob Welch Fleetwood Mac material Jeannine Schulz – Pure : listen/purchase\nIncredibly patient ambient micro-shifts of drift that feels completely organic Lankum – False Lankum listen/purchase\nIrish folk ensemble bringing drones and minimalism to out of this world melodies Simon Joyner \u0026amp; The Echoes – One Carried A Lantern : listen/purchase\nWhat else can be said about Simon? Inspired, practiced, and full of life lived songwriting Blood Incantation – Luminescent Bridge : listen/purchase\nQuite possibly the best death metal band going right now. Heavy, spacey, with ambient interludes PJ Harvey – I Inside the Old Year Dying : listen/purchase\nPJ and John Parish continue to do extraordinary things together. This album is maybe her darkest since Is This Desire? Läuten der Seele – Ertrunken Im Seichtesten Gewässer : listen/purchase\nIf Christian releases an album every year…here it will be. Field recordings interspersed with very smart imaginative collage work Ned Milligan – Considerable : listen/purchase\nQuiet and delicate sounds that not only can get lost in the background of life, but overwhelm you with their intricacy when focused upon Alberto Lizarralde – Haizetxe : listen/purchase\nCollection of unreleased pieces from the maestro himself recorded in Basque on a 4 track reel to reel —\nJames Ellis Ford – The Hum : listen/purchase\nThink in the arena of Eno producing Brendan Perry and Barrett-era Floyd backing. Beautiful stuff Scott Solter \u0026amp; Rohner Segnitz – The Murals : listen/purchase\nMeticulously crafted dark ambient pieces that push and pull you with glistening ease. Stunning sound design Ibex Clone – All Channels Clear : listen/purchase\nHere is your Big Star ran through the LSD laced post punk of the Meat Puppets with a Bob Mould delivery Tommy Guerrero – Amber of Memory : listen/purchase\nBaritone guitars gently swaying in the wind drenched in sunny layers A Journey of Giraffes – Empress Nouveau : listen/purchase\nPrecise ideas of calm and reflection smartly captured to make you dream. I still don\u0026rsquo;t believe John made this music in Baltimore Vor-stellen – Parallelograms : listen/purchase\nImprovised Krautrocky goodness served on a \u0026ldquo;band in a room\u0026rdquo; platter Gary Peters – Beginnings: Collected Pedal Steel Works : listen/purchase\nGary situates you on a pastoral landscape, makes you dizzy from dissonance, and rocks you to sleep in the top of a tree with his pedal steel with this collection John Francis Flynn – Look Over the Wall, See the Sky : listen/purchase\nRe-imagining traditional music with wit and high levels of creativity and passion American Analog Set – For Forever : listen/purchase\nDropping a lot of the preciousness found in their music from decades ago, but keeping the minimalist approach to melody. Make dinner to this album…it\u0026rsquo;ll taste better Ori Barel – Alkaline River : listen/purchase\nModular synth compositions that are playful and push a sci-fi narrative. This isn\u0026rsquo;t someone just fucking around with modular, this is well crafted stuff Susan Alcorn Septeto del Sur – Canto : listen/purchase\nSusan continues to be one of the best pedal steel players around. Rearrange your noggin\u0026rsquo; with a journey through improvised pieces that only masters at their craft can pull off Tomáš Knoflí?ek – Serendipity : listen/purchase\nField recording deconstruction through electronic manipulation that challenges you upon each listen Barn – Luminescence : listen/purchase\nBrutal technical death metal that builds on what Chuck and his band Death originated. Watch out for these young guys. SO GOOD Arthur Russell – Picture of Bunny Rabbit : listen/purchase\nUnreleased recordings from the master. Wobbly tunes that exhibit what I love about personal recordings that you suspect will never see the light of day. The Pines of Rome – The Unstruck Bell : listen/purchase\nLook, we don\u0026rsquo;t get many records like this anymore. Thanks to The Pines of Rome for making music again so that we can indulge in our slowcore daze again. Cate Brooks – Tapeworks : listen/purchase\nPerfectly arranged long form ambient passages that make me jealous that I didn\u0026rsquo;t compose Bill Orcutt – The Anxiety of Symmetry : listen/purchase\nNot your normal Orcutt guitar recording here. This delivers a layered loop approach that morphs as the repetitive fight of rhythmic dance ensues. Masterful in the vein of Philip Glass Slowdive – everything is alive : listen/purchase\nYou know what Slowdive sounds like, right? Well, this might possibly be the best album of their long career. After \u0026ldquo;Kisses\u0026rdquo; plays on the album, I expect Casey Kasem to come on and announce the next track. The Necks – Travel : listen/purchase\nTrio music brilliantly played and always rides the line of complex and completely accessible. In my opinion, their best since 2013\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Open\u0026rdquo; Abstract Concrete – S/T : listen/purchase\nIt seems everything Charles Heyward does, it turns to a delicious plate served up exactly how I like it. Experimental, smart, abstract post-everything chamber pop Benoît Pioulard – Eidetic : listen/purchase\nThomas pours his influences all over every recording whether he\u0026rsquo;s channeling masters of ambient, early-era Floyd, or Amon Düül II. When I hear this newest recording, I think Beck meant to make this record when he made Morning Phase KMRU – glim : listen/purchase\nAbsolutely beautiful pacing on this mix of drone and micro-music as KMRU continues to grow into a fascinating artist Justin Walter – Destroyer : listen/purchase\nImagine if you kept wanting a new Broadcast album that had 3-2-1 Contact segment transitional music. Justin made it for you right here Giovanni Di Domenico – Succo di formiche : listen/purchase\nStunningly beautiful experiments in contemporary classical composition that makes you want to crawl into the recording studio Yo La Tengo – This Stupid World : listen/purchase\nStill going strong after all of these years. When I hear \u0026ldquo;Aselestine\u0026rdquo; I\u0026rsquo;m instantly transported to a million cold Midwestern days stumbling to find out where I was going ","date":"2023-12-19","permalink":"http://tateeskew.com/weblog/2023-12-18-top-35-albums-of-2023/","summary":" First Ten Standouts Pale Blue Eyes – This House listen/purchase\nLayered melodic synth pop that recalls German motorik, Ulrich Schnauss production, and The Engineers – Always Returning era recordings …","tags":null,"title":"Top 35 Albums of 2023"},{"categories":["art","community","computing","running","trailrunning"],"contents":"\nThese are my year-end totals for running over this past year. A year in which I spent the first three weeks of January having numerous invasive health tests done, which limited my ability to get out on the trails to start the year. A year that had me fighting metatarsalgia in my left foot for over a month, which kept me at lower mileage as I nursed it back to strength. A year that had me fighting COVID for two weeks straight and stripped me of nearly three months of fitness in just those two weeks of downtime. See, sport…especially endurance sports…push you to your limits, reset your expectations, humble you, increase your empathy, inspire you, call you out when you think of phoning it in, and most importantly in my case…keep my mental health in check. I guess you could say those first six things are a recipe for the last.\nBeing an artist, as well as part of the world of technology, I often hear disparaging remarks and quips about sport. They are often delivered in the tone of \u0026ldquo;I could really care less\u0026rdquo;, but be rest assured they really want you to know just how little they care about it. I do understand there are aspects of sport, almost always due to the capitalist/financing parts that our dominant society has perpetuated, that people find obscene and unfavorable. Truth is, that could be said about damn near everything in these dominant cultures that make money the main driver to every aspect of something that is core to the human community…housing, medicine, sport, music/art/literature, food systems, appropriate technology, and ways of organizing.\nI have always thought that the sport I was engaged in never really built up my character as much as it actually just revealed my character.\nSport has been a part of my life from an early age and the people it placed around me and the places it has taken me always taught me incredible things along the way. I have always thought that the sport I was engaged in never really built up my character as much as it actually just revealed my character. Whether you are on mile 35 with a 500 feet climb in front of you, struggling to calm your nerves in a crucial situation, or you are down by 2 with seconds to go and the odds largely against you, you\u0026rsquo;ll almost always find out what kind of person you inherently are. This is exactly why I am drawn to the endurance side of sport and spend hundreds of hours putting myself in these types of situations every year. It reveals a jumping off point from which you can start the real work on yourself. Your character, your health (both physical and mental), your abilities in persistence…and endurance.\nOver the years some of the people surrounding sports, teams, and events I\u0026rsquo;ve been a part of have had a really large impact on these revelations of my character as well. Some have taught me hard lessons about loss, some have been exemplary in their work ethic and playfulness, and a few have even been perfect mentors on how NOT to act in pursuit of achievements by their ability of not being able to absorb a win with the grace at which one must absorb a loss. These are sometimes the best revealers of your innate character. These types of people have shown up in all aspects of my life, but the ones that show up with a diverse range of interests, put things into the world through creation, AND revel in the human affair of sport or endurance are often the most impactful for me.\nSo, for you other creative people and technologists that I engage with on a daily basis who find the act of sport to be a useless endeavor…perhaps it is time to reach out to me, lace up a pair of shoes, and join me in the woods to have some of your own character revealed in a way that you might have never imagined.\n","date":"2023-01-01","permalink":"http://tateeskew.com/weblog/2023-01-01-the-arts-technology-and-sport/","summary":"\nThese are my year-end totals for running over this past year. A year in which I spent the first three weeks of January having numerous invasive health tests done, which limited my ability to get out …","tags":null,"title":"The Arts, Technology, and Sport"},{"categories":["other music"],"contents":"There were a lot of amazing albums released this year. As per usual, I\u0026rsquo;ve spent countless hours engulfed in new releases along with the albums of the past that I love. I couldn\u0026rsquo;t possibly list everything I listened to this year that I thought was worth sharing, but I\u0026rsquo;m going to list thirty-five albums here that really connected with me this year. I listened to all of these albums a lot this year and these were the ones that I was often returning to in times of not deep diving into back catalogs. These are in no particular order, but I will say that the first ten albums I have listed here are real standouts for me this year!\nIf you enjoy these albums, please spend some of your hard earned money on the ones that you really connect with. Every bit helps these artists continue to make compelling records. I\u0026rsquo;m also posting some of the album covers from this collection of records to showcase some of the artwork.\nFirst Ten Standouts Joe Rainey – Niineta : listen/purchase\nEnvelope pushing Native American record engulfed in drum/singing…skin-tingling singing Eric Chenaux – Say Laura : listen/purchase\nIncredibly smart jazz informed experiments with voice and guitar Jeannine Schulz – Humble : listen/purchase\nAmbient micro-shifts of drift full of organic movements Läuten der Seele – Läuten der Seele listen/purchase\nMangled collages in the arena of Mr. Rogers John Scofield – John Scofield : listen/purchase\nWorld class solo guitar of original pieces and interpretations of classics Art Of Primitive Sound (W. Maioli, P. Meyer, L. Maioli) – Strumenti Musicali Della Preistoria: Il Paleolitico : listen/purchase\nPrimitive instruments in wide open recording spaces Mali Obomsawin – Sweet Tooth : listen/purchase\nNative song/singing framed within beautiful jazz freak-outs John Also Bennett – Out there in the middle of nowhere : listen/purchase\nPatient lap steel guitar and field recordings in desolate landscapes Robert Haigh – Human Remains : listen/purchase\nHarold Budd inspired works of piano and space Peter Phippen – Into the Ancient : listen/purchase\nWorld renowned ancient flute player with shimmering surroundings —\nHorse Lords – Comradely Objects : listen/purchase\nKnitting Factory ready wicked smart mathy push and pull experiments in rock Firebreather – Dwell In The Fog : listen/purchase\nSuper heavy and melodic Pabst induced Gibson LP doom sludge Lifeguard – Crowd Can Talk : listen/purchase\nYoung kids channeling Unwound and Southern Records classics Mike Baggetta / Jim Keltner / Mike Watt – Everywhen We Go : listen/purchase\nImprovised stomps with jazz leanings trio work \u0026rsquo; t Geruis – Bain D’Étoiles : listen/purchase\nMicro music that pushes repetition in the best way possible Jon Camp – Jon Camp : listen/purchase\nGuitar rag freak folk journey The Web of Lies – Nude With Demon : listen/purchase\nHeady scuzz that channels everything from Sonic Youth to Satisfact in garage lore Cafe Kaput – Maritime (Themes and Textures) : listen/purchase\nChanneling the best of what Eno had to offer in his early ambient inventions. Top shelf Rosales – Woven Songs : listen/purchase\nBeautiful slow shifting drone Thought Forms – Clean : listen/purchase\nPsych guitar based music without all of the tropes and reimagined acoustically Friendship – Love the Stranger : listen/purchase\nSongwriter based tunes channeling Richard Thompson and David Berman Naujawanan Baidar – Khedmat Be Khalq : listen/purchase\nAfghan street psych pumps that you can dance to Lay Llamas – Goud : listen/purchase\nExperiments in pop song writing but channeling krautrock, acid-folk, and Foetus Adam H. – Floods : listen/purchase\nOutstanding shifting long-form quiet to loud ambient passages Yellow6 – A Change In the Weather : listen/purchase\nPerfectly paced guitar based music for those that love Labradford, Pan American and Alan\u0026rsquo;s guitar work in Low Deniz Cuylan : Rings of Jupiter : listen/purchase\nSuper mature guitar pieces channeling the likes of The Durutti Column Éliane Radigue \u0026amp; Frédéric Blondy – Occam XXV : listen/purchase\nLong form organ drone that changes with every listen Gary Peters / Talk West – The Different Same : listen/purchase\nPedal steel with just a bit more structure than the great Susan Alcorn Desolate Shrine – Fires of the Dying World : listen/purchase\nSwirling black metal that you are constantly catching up with Golden Feelings – Golden Feelings : listen/purchase\nSun saturated reverb drift with a hint of Pieter Nooten or Robin Guthrie Beaunoise – Buchlaworks: Module III : listen/purchase\nSmart improvised modular explorations Aldous Harding – Warm Chris : listen/purchase\nSongwriter-based music with unique phrasing wrapped perfectly within John Parish approaches Sawako – Stella Epoca : listen/purchase\nFalling apart fragments of found sound, horns, piano/synth composed framing Sawako\u0026rsquo;s voice with perfection Pan American – The Patience Fader : listen/purchase\nStillness defined through delays, guitar, attention to detail…and patience Undeath – It\u0026rsquo;s Time To Rise From the Grave : listen/purchase\nKiller classic death metal songs not over-produced like so many in the genre these days ","date":"2022-12-20","permalink":"http://tateeskew.com/weblog/2022-12-19-top-35-albums-of-2022-1/","summary":"There were a lot of amazing albums released this year. As per usual, I\u0026rsquo;ve spent countless hours engulfed in new releases along with the albums of the past that I love. I couldn\u0026rsquo;t possibly …","tags":null,"title":"Top 35 Albums of 2022"},{"categories":["other music"],"contents":"As I do every year, I wanted to share my favorite albums/recordings from this past year. There are 25 recordings here that I really connected with throughout the year. These are in no particular order and I\u0026rsquo;m putting a link to each one of these albums in case you want to have a listen or purchase these records directly from the artist or their label.\nOrla Wren – The Blind Deaf Stone – listen/buy\nEleventh Dream Day – Since Grazed – listen/buy\nKryshe – Neuron – listen/buy\nSunburned Hand of the Man – Pick A Day To Die – listen/buy\nCucina Povera – Lumme – listen/buy\nLow – HEY WHAT – listen/buy\nMega Bog – Life, and Another – listen/buy\nmarine eyes – idyll – listen/buy\nAlastair Galbraith – loss – listen/buy\nSteel Bearing Hand – Slay In Hell – listen/buy\nTomáš Knoflí?ek – Vaguely Delimited Targets – listen/buy\nTropical Fuck Storm – Deep States – listen/buy\nGreen-House – Music for Living Spaces – listen/buy\nClearing – Grow – listen/buy\nPeter Broderick – The Wind That Shakes The Bramble – listen/buy\nHathor\u0026rsquo;s Rose Choir – Hathor\u0026rsquo;s Rose Choir – listen/buy\nKnife Crime – Lovely Gary – listen/buy\nLucy Gooch – Rains Break EP – listen/buy\nAndrew Tuttle \u0026amp; Padang Food Tigers – A Cassowary Apart – listen/buy\nBlack Swan – Repetition Hymns – listen/buy\nSarah Davachi – Antiphonals – listen/buy\nForest Robots – Horst \u0026amp; Graben – listen/buy\nJogging House – Flaws – listen/buy\nMoral Collapse – Moral Collapse – listen/buy\nFrancis M. Gri – Stille – listen/buy\n","date":"2021-12-28","permalink":"http://tateeskew.com/weblog/2021-12-28-top-25-records-of-2021/","summary":"As I do every year, I wanted to share my favorite albums/recordings from this past year. There are 25 recordings here that I really connected with throughout the year. These are in no particular order …","tags":null,"title":"Top 25 Records of 2021"},{"categories":["cycling","running","trailrunning"],"contents":"Over the last few months, I was given the okay to start running again. I had missed it terribly. Running long distances has always been something I\u0026rsquo;ve not only had a penchant for but has also been a meditation practice for me. People often ask me what I think about for hours at a time when I\u0026rsquo;m running these long distances. Honestly, I try not to think at all. I just try to breeze through trails as you see in the photos below.\nWith that said, this morning I was indeed thinking while sitting at my desk about something that I have noticed even more after being forced to take a break from running and cycling. Something I have not missed during my break when not running or riding on trails is the ridiculous nature and response of people in vehicles and bystanders along public roadways. On at least three occasions over as many months since I\u0026rsquo;ve started back running and riding, I\u0026rsquo;ve experienced things thrown at me and being yelled at as I propelled myself forward on my legs or two wheels. This is obviously a big reason why I spend most of my running hours on trails. I was thinking about writing an essay here about this very thing and relating it to psychology or sociology, but I figured someone had already written something along those lines. So, I went on a search and it didn\u0026rsquo;t take long to come across this particular essay from Paul Theroux. I thought I would share it here. This specific essay comes from his collection of writings entitled Fresh Air Fiend\n![](/images/trailautumn.jpg) Trail at our farm in Tennessee\nOne of my favorite quotes from the essay:\nYet the response is so lacking in tolerance that I cannot help but think that at its source is a wild anger, a fear and frustration, at being faced by a free spirit, someone who cannot be controlled. — Theroux\nThe Moving Target A COURAGEOUS but obscure traveler named Nathaniel Bishop, from my hometown of Medford, Massachusetts, rowed a small boat called a sneakbox twenty-six hundred miles, from upper New York State to New Orleans, around 1877. When he arrived at New Orleans, exhausted, and tied his boat to a jetty, a group of young drunks congregated near his boat and mocked him, threatened him, and swore at him. This, I have come to think, is a very American reaction, rewarding eccentric effort with scorn and violence.\nIn the 1920s, the long-distance horseman A. F. Tschiffely saddled up in Buenos Aires and rode ten thousand miles northward, heading for New York City. He crossed deserts, mountain ranges, jungles, swamps; he labored over the Andes, toiled through Central America, trotted across Mexico. But the worst was to come. His most dispiriting days on this two-and-a-half-year journey were those he spent traversing various American states. \u0026ldquo;I had a great deal of trouble with \u0026lsquo;road hogs,\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo; he wrote in Southern Cross to Pole Star, and he told how American motorists would deliberately swerve in order to scare him.\n\u0026ldquo;Off and on different objects were thrown at us, and once even an empty bottle, whilst shouting, \u0026lsquo;Ride \u0026rsquo;em cowboy!\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo; On a back road in the Blue Ridge Mountains, a man calculatedly sideswiped him, injuring his horse\u0026rsquo;s leg (the driver then honked and waved in triumph). After two more serious incidents of this kind, Tschiffely abandoned his epic trip in Washington, D.C., and took the train to New York.\nAt this point, the reader who is a jogger or similar sort of outdoor exerciser will shudder with recognition. Practically every jogger I know has been heckled or threatened in this way. Anyone who runs by the roadside, it seems, is subjected to catcalls, honks, verbal abuse, unwelcome invitations, and guffaws. Objects are flung from cars—coins, food, beer cans. People spit. It is remarkable how forcefully people can spit when there is someone either to impress or to intimidate. Women joggers occupy a special category of potential victim, and wherever they exercise, they can accurately be described as running a gauntlet.\nIn London, such behavior is less common in my experience—bystanders are more used to eccentricity. They have to be, because people live at such close quarters. Henry James remarked on this one hundred years ago in English Hours: \u0026ldquo;We seem loosely hung together at home as compared with the English, every man of whom is a tight fit in his place.\u0026rdquo; He goes on to say, \u0026ldquo;It is not an inferential but a palpable fact that England is a crowded country.\u0026rdquo;\nAmericans, who boast of living in a place with plenty of room for everyone, tend to object to any sort of proximity, and at the slightest hint of a loss of elbow room say, \u0026ldquo;You\u0026rsquo;re in my space\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;Get out of my face.\u0026rdquo; At the same time, the pressure of crowds and the uncertainties of class have made Britain a more tolerant and gentler place. Anglers can be awful to canoeists, but that is strictly territorial in a country where fishing rights are sold by the yard on rural rivers. Few people are bothered by joggers, horse riders, or athletes in outlandish clothes. The British cyclist causes the least comment of all—it might be anyone, a policeman, a schoolchild, a commuter, a racer, or your elderly father-in-law. The British jogger is allowed his or her share of the road.\nAmerican joggers are frequently harassed by people in moving cars, and these antagonists are their single greatest risk, far greater than bone spurs, gut aches, hammered knee joints, or hot flashes. I have found no literature on the subject of anti-social behavior toward people who make themselves visible through solitary exercise. What might be perceived as harmless heckling seems to me to express an intention that is related to assault, obstruction, even rape and murder.\nI don\u0026rsquo;t jog—too tough on my muscles and bones, it makes me feel unwell. But I value solitary aerobic exercise of other kinds, such as pedaling a bike, paddling a kayak, and rowing a boat. I happened to be cycling when I realized that my presence aroused a sort of hysteria in bystanders or people passing in cars. They shouted abuse, they laughed. What\u0026rsquo;s so funny? They threw things. It was actually worse in bad weather, as though there were something in the very nature of adverse conditions that made people gloatingly more abusive, because I was more vulnerable. Rain or cold days brought out brutishness in them. I endured it for a while, and then I asked around. I was not alone. Most cyclists have stories of this kind, and joggers had much worse ones, and women joggers told the worst persecution stories.\nFleeing to the ocean doesn\u0026rsquo;t help. Rowing my boat off Cape Cod, I am constantly harassed by speedboats. What is it about recreational motorboaters (as opposed to fishermen in motorboats) that makes them such a callow, aggressive breed? Something to do, perhaps, with the fact that boozing and boating often go together, and so many of the boaters are teenagers, not old enough to drive a car. A rowboat is no match for one of these foaming monsters that goes slapping past. I have lost count of the number of times such boats have almost swamped me. I can only believe that it is deliberate. Is it possible the boaters don\u0026rsquo;t know they throw up a five-foot wall of water in their wake?\nThe smaller and frailer-seeming the boat, the greater the threat. In my kayak I am frequently yelled at, barracked, hectored, and mocked. Kids on Jet Skis are unspeakable. They sideswipe, they strafe, and they leave you in no doubt that these machines (\u0026ldquo;personal watercraft\u0026rdquo;) are just the latest in a long line of technological atrocities unleashed on a peaceable world by Japanese manufacturers.\nAnecdotal evidence overwhelmingly indicates that anyone who jogs or rows or cycles in the open, in this free country, is asking for some kind of trouble. As I\u0026rsquo;ve said, it ranges from an obscene gesture to an attempt at murder. This is worth examining as a social phenomenon, partly because we take for granted that it will happen, but also because it is a specifically American occurrence. I have cycled and rowed in other countries, and I have been stared at, but not harassed. The aggression in the American reaction often has a comic veneer, the bullying, joshing sort which characterizes a certain variety of our humor and which makes it indistinguishable from sadism. The origin of this kind of heckling might be summed up in the old-time shriek \u0026ldquo;Get a horse!\u0026rdquo; but it is much more serious than it seems, and I believe it constitutes an actual threat.\nIn the most common situation, the threat comes from more than one person—rarely is it one-on-one. The group of people in the car or speedboat, the phalanx of jet skiers, are nearly always male. Their response appears to be a reflex of violent envy directed against an isolated and vulnerable person—the skimpily clothed jogger, the madly balancing paddler, the panting cyclist. It is like an objection to the assertive freedom and health implicit in these pastimes, and it might be bound up with the suspicion—in a minority of cases a well-founded suspicion—that someone who exercises this way so publicly is showing off.\nYet the response is so lacking in tolerance that I cannot help but think that at its source is a wild anger, a fear and frustration, at being faced by a free spirit, someone who cannot be controlled. And the instance where the foolish person plows by in a speedboat and lets loose a loud and stupid remark might be explained by his sudden realization that for once in his life he is stronger and faster and apparently superior. Such a person would deny he is a criminal, and yet his reaction is the impulse behind most crime: the eagerness to commit an act of violence because the victim seems weak, ludicrous, exposed, and naked—victims nearly always seem that way. Crime is a monstrous sort of unfairness, and so it is always in the criminal\u0026rsquo;s interest to pick on an especially weak or supine target.\nWhy does this, as far as I know, mostly happen in America? What is it that rouses us and incites us against people pursuing innocent and healthful objectives? Perhaps that is part of the answer: the very innocence and robustness implicit in jogging or cycling might themselves be a kind of provocation. As for the shouting, well, Americans tend to think out loud—you get perfect strangers yapping at each other all over. In our strenuously verbal and competitive culture, great stress is placed on self-assertion. The irony is that people jogging, paddling, or cycling are exhibiting in a non-aggressive way those same demonstrative characteristics. And as I mentioned, it is more than likely, too, that joggers and other fresh air fiends are motivated to a certain extent by impure enthusiasm. There are many who could be described as hotshots, seeming to invite comment. It is hard to see a person cantering on a horse without imagining that person thinking, I am on a horse and you\u0026rsquo;re not.\nEven so, that is no reason for the person to be violently harassed. We are described as a nation that respects the rights of individuals, but I have seldom found this to be the rule. Eccentricity—even the healthy eccentricity in these one-person pastimes—is commonly perceived as a threat. I suspect that we are more deeply conservative and threatened by novelty than we imagine. Generally, we don\u0026rsquo;t want to believe that we are, and we cling to a mythical notion of ourselves as tolerant and liberal-minded. I think our tolerance is mostly posturing. It is unpleasant to contemplate, but this swift impulse to harry the jogger or to swamp the small boater seems like a specifically American trait, one of our worst, arising from the pack mentality of our competitiveness, our vocal masculinity, our contempt for eccentricity, and our self-justifying humor in which the butt of the joke is always a weak victim.\nI wonder whether it is possible to widen this argument and make it political. So much in American foreign policy is related to implied threat or the wish to control. I think our irrational reaction to any number of countries that have chosen an unconventional path to political or economic fulfillment is an example of this envious bullying. We are always talking about freedom as though we valued it. If we truly valued it and practiced it, we would probably talk about it less often instead of treating it like a mantra in the hope of overcoming our baser instincts.\n","date":"2020-11-10","permalink":"http://tateeskew.com/weblog/2020-11-10-ridiculed-by-their-waves-of-trauma/","summary":"Over the last few months, I was given the okay to start running again. I had missed it terribly. Running long distances has always been something I\u0026rsquo;ve not only had a penchant for but has also …","tags":null,"title":"Ridiculed By Their Waves of Trauma"},{"categories":["interviews"],"contents":"A couple of months ago I was interviewed by Simone Walraven for her Songlines program on Dutch NPR. We talk about a lot of different things: my music, agroforestry, ancestral trauma, nature connection, hope, and Skip James. There\u0026rsquo;s a podcast version now available of the interview that was aired on the radio station. Maybe a couple of you would like to listen, so I\u0026rsquo;m sharing.\nhttps://radio2.nu/TateEskew\nDirect Link to Listen on MixCloud: Listen to the interview here\n","date":"2019-12-28","permalink":"http://tateeskew.com/weblog/2019-12-28-dutch-npr-interview/","summary":"A couple of months ago I was interviewed by Simone Walraven for her Songlines program on Dutch NPR. We talk about a lot of different things: my music, agroforestry, ancestral trauma, nature …","tags":null,"title":"Dutch NPR Interview"},{"categories":["ambient guitar pieces","tate's music","tate's records"],"contents":"What a day it was! A few bats emerged to fill the expedited spring twilight to eagerly dive-bomb unsuspecting insects that must be confused by the unanticipated elements. Adept at moves usually offered by barn swallows during late summer evenings as they dart about just above the field full of uncut hay seemingly tied to the tail of a kite. A bullfrog even spoke up…perhaps hoping to find some early romance or maybe even warn the other virile croakers in the area that this is his year. Let it be our year.\nCredits Written and recorded by Tate Eskew during 2017/2018\nAll field recordings and track recordings by Tate on his farm in Tennessee, U.S.A.\nMastering by Chad Blinman @ The Eye Socket\nFunctional Equivalent Recordings\n","date":"2018-03-09","permalink":"http://tateeskew.com/weblog/2018-03-09-new-album-a-day-in-bon-aqua-released/","summary":"What a day it was! A few bats emerged to fill the expedited spring twilight to eagerly dive-bomb unsuspecting insects that must be confused by the unanticipated elements. Adept at moves usually …","tags":["music","tate eskew"],"title":"New album \"A Day in Bon Aqua\" released"},{"categories":["interviews"],"contents":"Recently I was approached by the wonderful Prepared Guitar weblog, which is written by the admirable Miguel Copon. Miguel is a professor at the Instituto de Arte Contemporáneo in Madrid, Spain. I think it\u0026rsquo;s incredible that he is documenting such a lovely topic and I was very flattered to have been asked to do an interview.\nI\u0026rsquo;m a true believer in community and I think Miguel has created awareness and community in an area that is very dear to me and a lot of my friends. Keep up with your phenomenal work Miguel, and I very much look forward to playing in front of you in the future.\nYou can read the interview in it\u0026rsquo;s entirety here: Tate Eskew – 13 Questions @ Prepared Guitar\n","date":"2014-10-15","permalink":"http://tateeskew.com/weblog/2014-10-15-prepared-guitar-interview-13-questions-2/","summary":"Recently I was approached by the wonderful Prepared Guitar weblog, which is written by the admirable Miguel Copon. Miguel is a professor at the Instituto de Arte Contemporáneo in Madrid, Spain. I …","tags":["interview","prepared guitar","tate eskew"],"title":"Prepared Guitar Interview… 13 Questions"},{"categories":["art","fmrl arts"],"contents":"Over the last few months, my friend Chris Davis and I have been putting on shows in Nashville as FMRL. We\u0026rsquo;ve already hosted a number of wonderful events which have included the likes of Jason Lescalleet, Jeremy Bible, Dark Tips, Evan Lipson/Bob Stagner, Kevin Brown and Sam Jacobs. This, along with my other passions in regenerative design, really helps to build community. Building community and culture is vital to me and I\u0026rsquo;m so proud to be a part of this series. We have a number of shows scheduled for presentation throughout the Autumn and Winter. Here\u0026rsquo;s a list of what\u0026rsquo;s coming up. Please come out to say hello and support these artists.\nYou can buy tickets to these events at our website: http://fmrlarts.org\nUpcoming Events\nMonday, Sept. 29: Michael Chapman and William Tyler\nFriday, Oct. 10: Lakha Khan\nSunday, Oct. 26: Father Murphy\nThursday, Nov. 13: Paul Metzger and Tim Kaiser\nSunday, Feb. 1: Battle Trance\nSaturday, April 11: Trevor Watts/Veryan Weston Duo\n","date":"2014-09-28","permalink":"http://tateeskew.com/weblog/2014-09-28-fmrl-arts/","summary":"Over the last few months, my friend Chris Davis and I have been putting on shows in Nashville as FMRL. We\u0026rsquo;ve already hosted a number of wonderful events which have included the likes of Jason …","tags":["art","bob stagner","chris davis","dark tips","evan lipson","fmrl","jason lescalleet","jeremy bible","kevin brown","nashville","sam jacobs","tate eskew"],"title":"FMRL Arts"},{"categories":["live","tate's music"],"contents":"FMRL Presents a Spectrum of Guitar\nhttp://fmrlarts.org/2014/08/27/fmrl-presents-a-spectrum-of-guitar-w-sir-richard-bishop-tashi-dorji-and-tate-eskew/\nLine-up order:\nTate Eskew – Set starts at 0:00\nTashi Dorji – Set starts at 22:28\nSir Richard Bishop – Set starts at 1:00:20\nSpecial thanks to Chris Davis, Emily Holt, Amy Eskew, Scott Spiedel, Brian Murphree, and Ernie Paik. Also to Emma and Yazoo Brewing Co. for their arts patronage.\n","date":"2014-09-07","permalink":"http://tateeskew.com/weblog/2014-09-06-recording-from-recent-show/","summary":"FMRL Presents a Spectrum of Guitar\nhttp://fmrlarts.org/2014/08/27/fmrl-presents-a-spectrum-of-guitar-w-sir-richard-bishop-tashi-dorji-and-tate-eskew/\nLine-up order:\nTate Eskew – Set starts at 0:00 …","tags":["fmrl","guitar","live","sir richard bishop","tashi dorji","tate eskew"],"title":"Recording from recent show…"},{"categories":["ambient guitar pieces","tate's music","tate's records"],"contents":"My newest release, oldowan, has been released on Functional Equivalent Recordings. You can buy a limited edition cassette (48 of them made), which is an imprinted cassette within a black muscletone custom case and comes inside of a drawstring burlap bag.\nTate Eskew explores minimalist guitar drone in two 11 minute pieces with the release of \u0026ldquo;oldowan\u0026rdquo;. Exploration of regenerative ecology and indigenous culture inspired the two compositions. Instances of calm reflectiveness are slowly interrupted by passages of anxiety and moments of contentment.\n","date":"2014-03-19","permalink":"http://tateeskew.com/weblog/2014-03-19-new-album-out/","summary":"My newest release, oldowan, has been released on Functional Equivalent Recordings. You can buy a limited edition cassette (48 of them made), which is an imprinted cassette within a black muscletone …","tags":["ambient","cinematic","drone","experimental","guitar","minimalist"],"title":"New album entitled Oldowan out now…"},{"categories":["tate's music"],"contents":"Here is the artwork for the new EP I will be releasing soon on cassette and digitally. It\u0026rsquo;s minimalist guitar drone in 2 pieces with each being 11 minutes long. I have two other releases nearing completion that I hope to get out within the year as well. More on those later. Here are the artwork and tracklist for the new EP.\nHabilis – 11:17 Ergaster – 11:17 ","date":"2014-02-06","permalink":"http://tateeskew.com/weblog/2014-02-06-new-ep-oldowan-artwork-and-tracklist/","summary":"Here is the artwork for the new EP I will be releasing soon on cassette and digitally. It\u0026rsquo;s minimalist guitar drone in 2 pieces with each being 11 minutes long. I have two other releases nearing …","tags":["drone","guitar","minimalist","oldowan","tate eskew"],"title":"New EP “oldowan” Artwork and Tracklist"},{"categories":["computing"],"contents":"UPDATE: This information is long out of date. With the release of the awscli toolset in pypi years ago, things have changed a bit. Also, Amazon is forcing you to VPC on new accounts (years ago now). I will not be updating this post, but maybe you can find something useful here.\nRecently I\u0026rsquo;ve been building the underlying system platform for the development of our distributed application on AWS. We do a lot of clustering using Storm and Hadoop, which means that we sometimes spin up hundreds of instances that may only live for a few hours during a run. Getting metrics, logs and all of those \u0026lsquo;must-haves\u0026rsquo; centralized has been part of this build-out. When working with large amounts of machines in short-lived clusters, it becomes a real pain in the ass to use the built-in DNS/naming mechanism/scheme that AWS provides by default. Everything starts to look the same inside of your reporting/metrics/monitoring tools when working with the arbitrary names given to the instances. Hence, this article.\nIf you are not aware, there are thousands of machine instances running in AWS and Amazon only has a limited number of IPv4 addresses in their block(s), so all of the virtual machines are provided with DHCP addresses via NAT inside Amazon’s network. This means that most of the time when you reboot an instance it will come up with a new IP address/hostname, so the setup described below not only provides us with an easy to remember hostname, it also dynamically updates our Route53 DNS with the new hostname provided by Amazon. One other reason you might use the information here is that Amazon limits the number of Elastic IPs that you receive with your account (5). You can request more, but with this setup and/or utilizing Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) you won\u0026rsquo;t need to.\nWe are also going to make sure our script we use to update our DNS information uses the Name tag of the instance for the hostname. This is a great way to set hostnames automatically with configuration management or your preferred tool for provisioning. I use salt-cloud to spin up instances and it automatically sets the Name tag to the name you provide when initiating your instance. Perhaps there will be a post here about salt-cloud in the future.\nIt should be noted that the info below is specific to CentOS instances. With a little massaging this can easily be adapted to your distribution of choice. Let\u0026rsquo;s get started.\nFirst things first…Setup Route53 as your DNS Provider If you are a very large organization, you might only want to delegate a subdomain to Route53. To do that, go here for direction to make this happen.\nIf you are wanting Route53 to handle everything for your domain, it\u0026rsquo;s super easy to set up as well. Go here for easy instructions on how to do this.\nSetup IAM role and permissions for updating Route53 We will want to set up a new user and group in IAM that will have specific permissions to update our DNS and read our Name tag. Let\u0026rsquo;s create a group in IAM first. I called my group dns-admin, but feel free to name your group whatever you want as long as you can remember what the group is for. When you are creating the group, select \u0026ldquo;No Permissions\u0026rdquo; in the wizard when it asks about setting a policy. Once you have the group created you need to add two policies to it. The first policy described here is to give any user within the dns-admin group permission to read the tags associated with an instance. Remember, we are going to use the Name tag of our instance to set our hostname. The second policy will be used to give permissions to update Route53 with the correct information.\nSo, select the group you just created and go to the \u0026ldquo;Permissions\u0026rdquo; tab. You will see a button to \u0026ldquo;Attach a Policy\u0026rdquo;. Click it and select \u0026ldquo;Custom Policy\u0026rdquo;. For the policy name, I used \u0026lsquo;describe-tags\u0026rsquo; for my first policy. In the policy document area you will want to copy and paste the text from below:\n{ \u0026ldquo;Statement\u0026rdquo;:[ { \u0026ldquo;Sid\u0026rdquo;:\u0026ldquo;Stmt1358183399710\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;Action\u0026rdquo;:[ \u0026ldquo;ec2:DescribeTags\u0026rdquo; ], \u0026ldquo;Effect\u0026rdquo;:\u0026ldquo;Allow\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;Resource\u0026rdquo;:[ \u0026ldquo;*\u0026rdquo; ] } ] }\nRepeat the above process, but this time name your policy \u0026rsquo;edit-dns\u0026rsquo; and copy and paste the text from below in the policy document form field. NOTE: Make sure you change the text where it says YOUR_ZONE_ID with the zone id for the domain you are using in Route53. To get the ID, just go to the Route53 web console, select the domain zone and you will see the Hosted Zone ID number in the right side column.\n{ \u0026ldquo;Statement\u0026rdquo;:[ { \u0026ldquo;Action\u0026rdquo;:[ \u0026ldquo;route53:ChangeResourceRecordSets\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;route53:GetHostedZone\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;route53:ListResourceRecordSets\u0026rdquo; ], \u0026ldquo;Effect\u0026rdquo;:\u0026ldquo;Allow\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;Resource\u0026rdquo;:[ \u0026ldquo;arn:aws:route53:::hostedzone/YOUR_ZONE_ID\u0026rdquo; ] }, { \u0026ldquo;Action\u0026rdquo;:[ \u0026ldquo;route53:ListHostedZones\u0026rdquo; ], \u0026ldquo;Effect\u0026rdquo;:\u0026ldquo;Allow\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;Resource\u0026rdquo;:[ \u0026ldquo;*\u0026rdquo; ] } ] }\nNow, let\u0026rsquo;s create the user that we will add to this group. I named my user the same as my group, \u0026lsquo;dns-admin\u0026rsquo;. You will be asked to download the credentials/keys for this user as soon as you create the user. If you\u0026rsquo;ve created users before, you know that this is the ONLY time you get this information, so make sure you download it and keep it safe. We will need these keys in a minute.\nOnce you download your keys, add the user to the group we just created and we are done with IAM.\nFire up an instance Once you have Route53 and your IAM user/group set up to use with your domain, fire up and instance using your base AMI. I\u0026rsquo;m sure you already have a base AMI that you configure with an init script or perhaps configuration management tools like Salt, Puppet, or Chef. Right?\nAfter your instance comes up we need to log into the instance and grab the tools that we will utilize in our scripts.\nTools we need cli53 – https://github.com/barnybug/cli53 ec2 API Tools – http://aws.amazon.com/developertools/351 ec2-metadata – http://aws.amazon.com/code/1825 Install and configure cli53 cli53 is a great tool that interfaces easily with the Route53 API, making it easy to do updates. The easiest way to install cli53 is to just use \u0026lsquo;pip\u0026rsquo;. On CentOS machines, pip\u0026rsquo;s executable is \u0026lsquo;pip-python\u0026rsquo;. Other distributions just use the name \u0026lsquo;pip\u0026rsquo;. Run the following command to check if the \u0026lsquo;python-pip\u0026rsquo; package is installed. If it\u0026rsquo;s not, the command will install it for you.\ncommand -v pip-python \u0026gt; /dev/null 2\u0026gt;\u0026amp;1 || { yum install -y python-pip; }\nNow, the command to install \u0026lsquo;cli53\u0026rsquo; using pip.\npip-python install cli53\nNow, let\u0026rsquo;s configure the cli53 tool with our AWS keys and other settings. We will create the the file \u0026lsquo;/etc/route53/config\u0026rsquo; and enter the details there. Enter the following to create the file and set permissions correctly:\nmkdir /etc/route53; chmod 700 /etc/route53; touch /etc/route53/config; chmod 600 /etc/route53/config\nPaste the following in the \u0026lsquo;/etc/route52/config\u0026rsquo; file. Make sure to replace the text within the quotes for each setting with your own keys, domain/subdomain, and TTL. I use a very short TTL because sometimes instances will be initiated and shortly thereafter rebooted. Use the keys that you downloaded earlier when we created the \u0026lsquo;dns-admin\u0026rsquo; user in IAM.\nSet access and secret key of a user that #only has access to the following AWS objects/privileges: #\u0026ldquo;ec2:DescribeTags\u0026rdquo; #\u0026ldquo;route53:ChangeResourceRecordSets\u0026rdquo;, #\u0026ldquo;route53:GetHostedZone\u0026rdquo;, #\u0026ldquo;route53:ListResourceRecordSets\u0026rdquo; #\u0026ldquo;route53:ListHostedZones\u0026rdquo; AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=\u0026ldquo;YOUR_ACCESS_KEY_ID_HERE\u0026rdquo; AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=\u0026ldquo;YOUR_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY_HERE\u0026rdquo; ZONE=\u0026ldquo;THE_NAME_OF_YOUR_DOMAIN_OR_SUBDOMAIN\u0026rdquo; TTL=\u0026ldquo;30\u0026rdquo;\nInstall and configure ec2 API Tools The ec2 API tools require Java. The application servers I use require Oracle\u0026rsquo;s Java, so I bake that into my base AMI. Therefore my $JAVA_HOME env variable is set accordingly. Just make sure that if you use the OpenJDK or JRE, that you point $JAVA_HOME to the correct place in the config below. So, install java however you like and then continue on.\nRun the following commands to install the API tools to /opt/aws\nmkdir -p /opt/aws wget -q http://s3.amazonaws.com/ec2-downloads/ec2-api-tools.zip unzip -qq ec2-api-tools.zip rsync -a \u0026ndash;no-o \u0026ndash;no-g ec2-api-tools-*/ /opt/aws/\nMake sure to add \u0026lsquo;/opt/aws\u0026rsquo; to your PATH and set the following env variables. You can do so by editing or creating the file \u0026lsquo;/etc/profile.d/aws.sh\u0026rsquo; and adding the following:\nexport EC2_HOME=/opt/aws for i in $EC2_HOME do PATH=$i/bin:$PATH done PATH=/opt/aws/:$PATH\nSource the \u0026lsquo;/etc/profile.d/aws.sh\u0026rsquo; file to make sure the PATH is added in your current session.\nsource /etc/profile.d/aws.sh\nAlso, as mentioned above, make sure the $JAVA_HOME is set. I do this by creating the file \u0026lsquo;/etc/profile.d/java.sh\u0026rsquo; and adding the following for Oracle Java:\nJAVA_HOME=/usr/java/default export JAVA_HOME\nInstall and configure ec2-metadata The only thing we have to do to install \u0026rsquo;ec2-metadata\u0026rsquo; is to download it from the link above, place it in \u0026lsquo;/opt/aws\u0026rsquo;, and make it executable. That\u0026rsquo;s it!\ncd /opt/aws wget -q http://s3.amazonaws.com/ec2metadata/ec2-metadata chmod +x ec2-metadata\nCreate the script to update Route53 and set the hostname Next on our list is to create the script we will use that will update Route53 and set our hostname based on the Name tag of our instance. Create the file /usr/sbin/update-dns-route53 and paste the script printed below into the file. Make sure to replace the YOUR_DOMAIN_HERE text with the domain you are using. Also, make the file executable after saving it.\n#!/bin/sh #This script will get the Name tag of the instance from EC2 and apply it #both as a CNAME record #in Route53 for the specified domain below and update the hostname on the #machine and in the hosts file.\nMake sure only root can run our script if [ \u0026ldquo;$(id -u)\u0026rdquo; != \u0026ldquo;0\u0026rdquo; ]; then echo \u0026ldquo;This script must be run as root\u0026rdquo; \u0026gt;\u0026amp; 2 exit 1 fi\nLoad configuration . /etc/route53/config.sh . /etc/profile.d/java.sh . /etc/profile.d/aws.sh\nExport access key ID and secret for our tools export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY\nReplace this with your domain DOMAIN=YOUR_DOMAIN_HERE\nHOSTNAME=$(/opt/aws/bin/ec2-describe-tags -O $AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID -W $AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY \u0026amp;lt;br\u0026gt;\u0026ndash;filter \u0026ldquo;resource-type=instance\u0026rdquo; \u0026amp;lt;br\u0026gt;\u0026ndash;filter \u0026ldquo;resource-id=$(/opt/aws/ec2-metadata -i | cut -d \u0026rsquo; \u0026rsquo; -f2)\u0026rdquo; \u0026amp;lt;br\u0026gt;\u0026ndash;filter \u0026ldquo;key=Name\u0026rdquo; | cut -f5)\nIPV4=/usr/bin/curl -s http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/public-ipv4\nSet the host name\u0026lt;br\u0026gt;/bin/hostname $HOSTNAME.$DOMAIN echo $HOSTNAME.$DOMAIN \u0026gt; /etc/hostname\nSet host name on Red Hat variants /bin/sed -i \u0026lsquo;/HOSTNAME/d\u0026rsquo; /etc/sysconfig/network echo HOSTNAME=$HOSTNAME.$DOMAIN \u0026raquo; /etc/sysconfig/network\nAdd fqdn to hosts file /bin/cat \u0026lt; /etc/hosts\nThis file is automatically genreated by /usr/sbin/update-dns-route53 script 127.0.0.1 localhost $IPV4 $HOSTNAME.$DOMAIN $HOSTNAME\nThe following lines are desirable for IPv6 capable hosts ::1 ip6-localhost ip6-loopback fe00::0 ip6-localnet ff00::0 ip6-mcastprefix ff02::1 ip6-allnodes ff02::2 ip6-allrouters ff02::3 ip6-allhosts EOF\nUse command line scripts to get public hostname PUBLIC_HOSTNAME=$(/opt/aws/ec2-metadata | grep \u0026lsquo;public-hostname:\u0026rsquo; | cut -d \u0026rsquo; \u0026rsquo; -f 2)\nCreate a new CNAME record on Route 53, replacing the old entry if nessesary /usr/bin/cli53 rrcreate \u0026ldquo;$ZONE\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;$HOSTNAME\u0026rdquo; CNAME \u0026ldquo;$PUBLIC_HOSTNAME\u0026rdquo; \u0026ndash;replace \u0026ndash;ttl \u0026ldquo;$TTL\u0026rdquo;\nNow that we have our script, we will want to run it at boot time every time the instance is started. To do that, let\u0026rsquo;s put the following in \u0026lsquo;/etc/rc.local\u0026rsquo;\n/bin/bash /usr/sbin/update-dns-route53 \u0026gt; /tmp/updatedns 2\u0026gt;\u0026amp;1\nNotice that we are redirecting the output to \u0026lsquo;/tmp/updatedns\u0026rsquo;. I\u0026rsquo;ve done this so that if there is a problem with the image not updating its name, you can look in this file for errors. Keep that in mind when getting this to work.\nCreate \u0026lsquo;delete-dns-route53\u0026rsquo; script and initscript So, we\u0026rsquo;ll want to delete these entries each time the machine shuts down, so we need a delete script, too. Create a new file \u0026lsquo;/usr/sbin/delete-dns-route53\u0026rsquo; and paste the following into it. Also, make sure to make the file executable after saving it.\n#!/bin/sh\nThis script will delete the hostname from Route53 on shutdown of the machine Make sure only root can run our script if [ \u0026ldquo;$(id -u)\u0026rdquo; != \u0026ldquo;0\u0026rdquo; ]; then echo \u0026ldquo;This script must be run as root\u0026rdquo; 1\u0026gt;\u0026amp;2 exit 1 fi\nLoad configuration . /etc/route53/config . /etc/profile.d/java.sh . /etc/profile.d/aws.sh\nExport access key ID and secret for our tools export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY\nHOSTNAME=$(/opt/aws/bin/ec2-describe-tags -O $AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID -W $AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY \u0026ndash;filter \u0026ldquo;resource-type=instance\u0026rdquo; \u0026ndash;filter \u0026ldquo;resource-id=$(/opt/aws/ec2-metadata -i | cut -d \u0026rsquo; \u0026rsquo; -f2)\u0026rdquo; \u0026ndash;filter \u0026ldquo;key=Name\u0026rdquo; | cut -f5)\nDelete the hostname from DNS on shutdown /usr/bin/cli53 rrdelete \u0026ldquo;$ZONE\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;$HOSTNAME\u0026rdquo;\nWe want to make sure this delete script runs every time the machine is powered down because every single time it\u0026rsquo;s powered down, could be its last and we don\u0026rsquo;t want our zone to become full of obsolete entries. Create the file \u0026lsquo;/etc/init.d/removednsfromroute53\u0026rsquo; and add paste the following text in it:\n#!/bin/bash\nchkconfig: 35 10 10 description: Removed DNS entries from Route53 . /etc/init.d/functions lockfile=/var/lock/subsys/removednsfromroute53\ncase \u0026ldquo;$1\u0026rdquo; in start) touch $lockfile ;; stop) /usr/sbin/delete-dns-route53 1\u0026gt; /tmp/deletedns 2\u0026gt;\u0026amp;1 rm -f $lockfile ;; restart) $0 stop $0 start ;; *) echo \u0026ldquo;Usage: $0 {start|stop|restart|status}\u0026rdquo; exit 1 ;; esac exit 0\nAs you can see, we call the \u0026lsquo;delete-dns-route53\u0026rsquo; script within the init script.\nNow, add it to the correct runlevels by issuing the following command:\nchkconfig \u0026ndash;add removednsfromroute53\nWell, there you have it…short and sweet, right? You might now want to create a new AMI based on this instance for your new base image. Moving forward if you spin up your instances with a Name tag, the name within the tag will be set as the hostname, the host\u0026rsquo;s file will be updated and a new CNAME will be created within Route53. Get DNS\u0026rsquo;ing…or something like that!\n","date":"2013-03-06","permalink":"http://tateeskew.com/weblog/2013-03-06-automating-dynamic-dns-updating-with-aws-instances-and-route53/","summary":"UPDATE: This information is long out of date. With the release of the awscli toolset in pypi years ago, things have changed a bit. Also, Amazon is forcing you to VPC on new accounts (years ago now). I …","tags":["amazon web services","aws","cloud","devops","dns","route53","systems engineering"],"title":"Automating Dynamic DNS updating with AWS Instances and Route53"},{"categories":["permaculture"],"contents":"Just ask anyone that knows me and they will surely tell you that I am constantly spelling out the virtues of permaculture. After they hear my passionate ramblings, they are often as excited as I am about the possibilities it provides and they soon realize that it\u0026rsquo;s not a matter of \u0026lsquo;should they get involved\u0026rsquo;, but a matter of \u0026lsquo;how to get involved\u0026rsquo;. I\u0026rsquo;ve been getting this \u0026lsquo;how do I get started\u0026rsquo; question a lot lately, so I thought it was time to put some things in a post here so that I could point people to a single spot to branch out from. This missive will not be an intro to permaculture itself, but rather a \u0026ldquo;getting started\u0026rdquo; post with resources to use to start educating yourself and taking action.\nFor those of you that don\u0026rsquo;t know what permaculture is, the definition of it changes ever so slightly depending on the person you are talking to in the ever growing community, but I particularly like this one:\nper·ma·cul·ture /?p?rm??k?lCH?r/\nNoun:\nPermaculture is the study of the design of those sustainable or enduring systems that support human society, both agricultural \u0026amp; intellectual, traditional \u0026amp; scientific, architectural, financial \u0026amp; legal. It is the study of integrated systems, for the purpose of better design \u0026amp; application of such systems.\nAt it\u0026rsquo;s core, permaculture adheres to three ethics:\nEarth care People care Return of surplus There are also twelve design principles involved. You can see in the graphic below the three ethics in the middle and the twelve design principles circling them.\nThe importance of all of this cannot be stressed enough. Trust me that when I say that you will be infected by knowledge, ideas, process and action once you really start to educate yourself on all of these things. During your education, self or otherwise, you will see examples of changing landscapes at massive scale that will invigorate you to no end. You will see how simple observation and small actions can lead to major change. You will ask yourself, \u0026ldquo;Why hasn\u0026rsquo;t anyone pointed all of this out to me before?\u0026rdquo;. There will be a lot of moments where dots that were seemingly at odds, connect. There will be a lot of \u0026ldquo;lightbulb\u0026rdquo; moments happening at every page turn of a book on the subject, every click on a permaculture topic, or every video you take in.\nA lot of what I will post here will be targeted at people who don\u0026rsquo;t necessarily have a lot of land to work with. In essence, small scale permaculture that you can practice nearly anywhere. There will be some posts in the future about large scale regenerative design, but for now we\u0026rsquo;ll get everyone excited about designing and creating these systems in neighborhoods and small lots. Some of these resources will be posted just to get you excited and to show you what is possible by utilizing permaculture to it\u0026rsquo;s fullest extent. This isn\u0026rsquo;t an exhaustive list by any means, but one to get you motivated and taking action in your local community. For instance, I\u0026rsquo;ve not listed the original Permaculture: Designers Manual book by one of the founders of permaculture, Bill Mollison. As it suggests, the manual is a textbook and will be a huge resource for you in the future, but for now let\u0026rsquo;s get you motivated!\nPermaculture resources to help get started Video Redesigning Civilization — with Permaculture Green Gold – Documentary by John D. Liu Peter Bane – How I'm Preparing for the Local Future: Permaculture Permaculture Research Institute Zaytuna Farm Tour – Apr/May 2012 w/ Geoff Lawton Farming with Nature – A Case Study of Successful Temperate Permaculture w/ Sepp Holzer Mark Shepard on Restoration Agriculture Permaculture Keyline Water Systems: Don Tipping @ Seven Seeds Farm Establishing a Food Forest the Permaculture Way Backyard Permaculture The Agro Rebel w/ Sepp Holzer Books Gaia's Garden, Second Edition: A Guide To Home-Scale Permaculture![](http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=theeskhom-20\u0026l=as2\u0026o=1\u0026a=1603580298) Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability![](http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=theeskhom-20\u0026l=as2\u0026o=1\u0026a=0646418440) The One-Straw Revolution: An Introduction to Natural Farming (New York Review Books Classics)![](http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=theeskhom-20\u0026l=as2\u0026o=1\u0026a=1590173139) The Vegetable Gardener's Guide to Permaculture: Creating an Edible Ecosystem![](http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=theeskhom-20\u0026l=as2\u0026o=1\u0026a=1604692707) Restoration Agriculture: Perennial Permaculture for the Farm The Resilient Farm and Homestead: An Innovative Permaculture and Whole Systems Design Approach Paradise Lot: Two Plant Geeks, One-Tenth of an Acre, and the Making of an Edible Garden Oasis in the City![](http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=theeskhom-20\u0026l=as2\u0026o=1\u0026a=1603583998) Websites Permaculture: Wikipedia Entry The Permaculture Institute Permaculture Principles Bill Mollison: Co-developer of permaculture David Holmgren: Co-developer of permaculture Edible Forest Gardens w/ Dave Jacke Permaculture forums at permies.com Worldwide Permaculture Network Permaculture design courses I must point out that one of the quickest ways to dive straight in is to take a permaculture design course (PDC). These are intensive training courses taught by people who themselves at some point took a PDC and have a lot of information and knowledge to share. If you are looking to take a course near middle Tennessee, my good friends Cliff Davis, Jennifer Albanese and Jessie Smith have courses setup quite frequently. You can visit Cliff and Jen's family business website here to register for a course: Spiral Ridge PermacultureBelow you can find a list of other places that you can take a permaculture design course. Whole Systems Design – Vermont Siskiyou Permaculture – Oregon Midwest Permaculture – Illinois Regenerative Design Institute – Northern California There are a number of other places offering permaculture design courses. If you don\u0026rsquo;t see one in your area listed here, just search around and you will find one. If you run a course and want it listed here, please contact me.\nI genuinely hope that the information here moves you to action. I know that nearly everyone I introduce these concepts to becomes engulfed with them. I\u0026rsquo;m quite available for your questions and love to share information.\nDo you have some resources that I should post here? Contact me, let me know and I will add it.\n","date":"2013-03-03","permalink":"http://tateeskew.com/weblog/2013-03-02-permaculture-where-do-you-start/","summary":"Just ask anyone that knows me and they will surely tell you that I am constantly spelling out the virtues of permaculture. After they hear my passionate ramblings, they are often as excited as I am …","tags":["education","food forest","gardening","learning","PDC","permaculture","permaculture design course"],"title":"Permaculture, where do you start?"},{"categories":["open source","other videos"],"contents":"I\u0026rsquo;ve written about Open Source Ecology a while back. I think it\u0026rsquo;s a super important project and I\u0026rsquo;m always keeping up with how things are progressing. They\u0026rsquo;ve recently created this video in hopes of landing a $100k prize from the Focus Forward competition. Enjoy the video and please vote if you enjoy what they are doing.\n","date":"2012-11-18","permalink":"http://tateeskew.com/weblog/2012-11-18-open-source-ecology-2/","summary":"I\u0026rsquo;ve written about Open Source Ecology a while back. I think it\u0026rsquo;s a super important project and I\u0026rsquo;m always keeping up with how things are progressing. They\u0026rsquo;ve recently created …","tags":["ecology","marcin jakubowski","Open source","video"],"title":"Open Source Ecology"},{"categories":["images","permaculture"],"contents":"Last week we were out driving trying to find a possible site for our eco-village. A cold front was coming from the north and could be spotted through this hollow.\n","date":"2012-11-11","permalink":"http://tateeskew.com/weblog/2012-11-11-839/","summary":"Last week we were out driving trying to find a possible site for our eco-village. A cold front was coming from the north and could be spotted through this hollow.\n","tags":["country life","homesteading","permaculture","sustainability","wooded dreams"],"title":"Homestead Land Searching"},{"categories":["permaculture"],"contents":"\n","date":"2012-11-10","permalink":"http://tateeskew.com/weblog/2012-11-10-835/","summary":"\n","tags":["country life","gardening","homesteading","permaculture"],"title":"Permaculture – Revolution Disguised as Gardening"},{"categories":["other music","other news"],"contents":"It\u0026rsquo;s been quite some time since I have updated here. There\u0026rsquo;s been a lot going on and I\u0026rsquo;ve been trying to stay focused on the projects in the hopper.\nOver the last 10 months or so, here are some things that have been going on.\nI recorded a 10″ record with Nashville natives, Ttotals. It is called \u0026ldquo;Silver on Black\u0026rdquo; and you can take a listen and buy it here:\nWe also recorded two new songs for a 7″ series that will be put out by Sonic Cathedral. One of the songs will be selected by the label and then mastered by Sonic Boom from Spacemen 3 for release.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve also started recording an album with Deli. I believe we have 4-5 songs tracked and continue work as time is available. I think it\u0026rsquo;s shaping up to be a wonderful record. It will be released on Functional Equivalent Recordings sometime in the future.\nOver the last 11 months I have been recording my newest solo record, as well. At this point, I have no idea when it will be finished, but it\u0026rsquo;s very close. Andy Gregg and Josh Fuson are sharing percussion duties and Nate Dort has contributed bass to a few songs. Hopefully, I will have something to share soon.\nFinally, I also have an album worth of ambient guitar music for a new release. It will see the light of day at some point as well.\nIf you are interested in hanging out at our farm and recording some music, practicing some permaculture, or brewing some beer, just let me know!\n","date":"2012-09-18","permalink":"http://tateeskew.com/weblog/2012-09-18-latest-happenings/","summary":"It\u0026rsquo;s been quite some time since I have updated here. There\u0026rsquo;s been a lot going on and I\u0026rsquo;ve been trying to stay focused on the projects in the hopper.\nOver the last 10 months or so, …","tags":["deli","nashville","permaculture","recording","ttotals"],"title":"Latest happenings…"},{"categories":["interviews"],"contents":"Tate Eskew @ Dave\u0026rsquo;s Place from maurice barrett on Vimeo.\n","date":"2012-01-24","permalink":"http://tateeskew.com/weblog/2012-01-24-interviewed-by-maurice-barrett/","summary":"Tate Eskew @ Dave\u0026rsquo;s Place from maurice barrett on Vimeo.\n","tags":null,"title":"Interviewed by Maurice Barrett"},{"categories":["tate's music","tate's records"],"contents":"This has been a long time coming, but as of today my new album Semiotics comes out today on Function Equivalent Recordings. I\u0026rsquo;ve spent an immeasurable amount of time on this recording. It has been recorded in my home studio over the past few years as I have moved around. At times, I had no studio and I wasn\u0026rsquo;t able to work on the album at all. Other times, I was so full of ideas I couldn\u0026rsquo;t get them down quick enough. This is the object of that process.\nYou can buy the record here: Buy Tate Eskew\u0026rsquo;s Semiotics Record\nYou can either buy a downloadable version in pretty much any format you like, or you can add 2 bucks to the total for a limited edition hand packaged CD (100 available) Fold-over jacket inside of a poly bag w/ sticker. Here are a couple of photos of the CD. Click to see a larger photo.\nFeel free to share this page or the page where you can buy the album on your Facebook page.\nTake some time to relax and listen.\nBest,\nTate\n","date":"2011-10-04","permalink":"http://tateeskew.com/weblog/2011-10-04-my-new-albums-semiotics-released-today/","summary":"This has been a long time coming, but as of today my new album Semiotics comes out today on Function Equivalent Recordings. I\u0026rsquo;ve spent an immeasurable amount of time on this recording. It has …","tags":["experimental","functional equivalent recordings","music","rock","semiotics","tate eskew"],"title":"My new album, Semiotics, released today…"},{"categories":["tate's music","tate's videos"],"contents":"Here is the new video for the last track off of my newest ambient/noise EP. The track is called Calm Future. You can buy the new EP HERE.\n","date":"2011-09-05","permalink":"http://tateeskew.com/weblog/2011-09-04-new-video-calm-future-off-of-modality-ep/","summary":"Here is the new video for the last track off of my newest ambient/noise EP. The track is called Calm Future. You can buy the new EP HERE.\n","tags":["ambient","drone","experimental","modality","noise","tate eskew","video"],"title":"New Video – Calm Future off of Modality EP"},{"categories":["tate's music","tate's records"],"contents":"Today my new ambient/noise EP entitled Modality is available to the public. I\u0026rsquo;ve been writing, improvising and recording this type of music for years, yet this is my first release to the public. I have always done this type of stuff for myself as a release from my normal songwriting and I felt like it was time to let a few songs go. It\u0026rsquo;s full of resonating drones, noise guitar and quiet patience.\nYou can buy a limited edition (100 available), hand-stamped CD-R of the EP by CLICKING HERE. If you buy the CD you get an immediate download of the record as well. You can buy just a download if that\u0026rsquo;s your thing, too.\nIn other news. I\u0026rsquo;ve completed two songs that will be released on 7″ vinyl in the near future. This too will be released on FUNCTIONAL EQUIVALENT RECORDINGS sometime in the future. I\u0026rsquo;m also working on a song for a split 7″ with my friend CHAD BLINMAN. Finally, I also have a rock record with a more traditional approach to songwriting that will be released within the next two months. It\u0026rsquo;s a guitar driven full length record and I\u0026rsquo;m really excited for everyone to hear it.\nWell, that about sums up the current and near future news.\nSupport your independent artists.\n","date":"2011-08-02","permalink":"http://tateeskew.com/weblog/2011-08-02-my-new-ambientnoise-ep-entitled-modality-released-today/","summary":"Today my new ambient/noise EP entitled Modality is available to the public. I\u0026rsquo;ve been writing, improvising and recording this type of music for years, yet this is my first release to the public. …","tags":["ambient","experimental","modality","noise","tate eskew"],"title":"My new ambient/noise EP entitled Modality released today…"},{"categories":["other music"],"contents":"About three and half years ago, I spoke with Caldwell, from The Bubblegum Complex, about doing a record together and it really never panned out as we got caught up with life. With my new record in the bag and set to be released this Autumn, I\u0026rsquo;ve been starting other projects with people and I thought now is as good a time as any to see if Caldwell wanted to ease back into doing some songs. Caldwell is recovering from surgery in Mississippi so we couldn\u0026rsquo;t really get together in my studio to record some new stuff, so what we did was started with an acoustic track that Caldwell had hastily recorded to get his idea down. He was having trouble writing a lyric and melody for the song…so I took a stab. In the end, I only ended up doing the vocal/lyric and adding a mellotron to the track that has a huge pre-delay reverb out to a delay. I cleaned up the track a little frequency-wise and here is what we have…our first attempt at collaboration. We plan on doing more of this and hopefully, once Caldwell has recovered, we\u0026rsquo;ll be able to write and record a whole noise-filled record together here in Nashville. For now, you\u0026rsquo;ll probably see tracks pop up here and there on this site.\nSTREAM [/images/the\\_peasant\\_revolt-calling_out.mp3][2] DOWNLOAD [The Peasant Revolt – Calling Out][3] ","date":"2011-06-24","permalink":"http://tateeskew.com/weblog/2011-06-24-new-project-the-peasant-revolt-calling-out/","summary":"About three and half years ago, I spoke with Caldwell, from The Bubblegum Complex, about doing a record together and it really never panned out as we got caught up with life. With my new record in the …","tags":["caldwell dunlap","calling out","music","tate eskew","the peasant revolt"],"title":"New Project…The Peasant Revolt – Calling Out"},{"categories":["other news"],"contents":"Craig Schumacher is a wonderful engineer and needs some help. He is the owner/operator of WaveLab Studios in Tucson where, among many others, he has recorded; Neko Case, Calexico, DeVotchKa, Animal Collective, and Iron and Wine.\nEarlier this year Craig was diagnosed with head and neck cancer. His doctors believe that with the proper treatments (which have already begun), he stands a good chance of beating this. The bad news is that the treatments are painful and costly. The out-of-pocket expenses will be enormous, not to mention the fact that there will be periods in which Craig will not be able to work.\nLast year, Craig’s wife Karen was diagnosed with breast cancer. Following treatment, she is currently cancer-free. Needless to say, these back-to-back cancer diagnoses have been tough on them, emotionally and financially.\nWords of encouragement can be sent to Craig privately via email and/or publicly on the Facebook page here. To help out financially, with even a small donation, please donate below:\n","date":"2011-04-20","permalink":"http://tateeskew.com/weblog/2011-04-20-help-craig-schumacher-of-wavelab-studios/","summary":"Craig Schumacher is a wonderful engineer and needs some help. He is the owner/operator of WaveLab Studios in Tucson where, among many others, he has recorded; Neko Case, Calexico, DeVotchKa, Animal …","tags":["craig schumacher","engineer","music","recording"],"title":"Help Craig Schumacher of WaveLab Studios"},{"categories":["other music","zero art sessions"],"contents":"A few years ago I had the pleasure of sitting in my studio with my friend, Patrick Krief, and recording the 4 songs below. He was in town performing with his band, The Dears, and we were able to get some time before the show to knock these recordings out. We recorded live to 2-track using a single microphone and ate some brownies after the session. Patrick is a passionate musician and I think it really comes through in these performances.\nI plan on putting more of these Zero Art Sessions up as I record them or dig up old stuff. Once the new studio is up, I plan on making this live session experiment a semi-permanent fixture here on my site. Enjoy the music.\n","date":"2011-01-29","permalink":"http://tateeskew.com/weblog/2011-01-29-patrick-krief-zero-art-session-recorded-live-to-2-track-on-may-3rd-2007/","summary":"A few years ago I had the pleasure of sitting in my studio with my friend, Patrick Krief, and recording the 4 songs below. He was in town performing with his band, The Dears, and we were able to get …","tags":["montreal","music","nashville","patrick krief","the dears","zero art sessions"],"title":"Patrick Krief – Zero Art Session – Recorded Live to 2-track on May 3rd, 2007"},{"categories":["art"],"contents":" ![](/images/Brian-Dettmer-Integrated-Electronics.jpg) Brian Dettmer – Integrated-Electronics\nI\u0026rsquo;m always on the lookout for art and artists that inspire me to create my own works. Luckily, once in a while I run across someone\u0026rsquo;s work that I\u0026rsquo;m just in awe of and it inspires me to get on with my own creative endeavors. Brian Dettmer is one of those people.\nFrom Wikipedia: Brian Dettmer (born 1974) is an American contemporary artist. He is noted for his alteration of preexisting media—such as old books, maps, record albums, and cassette tapes—to create new, transformed works of visual fine art.\nBrian\u0026rsquo;s creations are quite amazing. He carves books with the steady hand and eye of a surgeon. In my eyes, he\u0026rsquo;s one of the best visual artists of my generation and I hope he continues to push forward in life and his art. Thank you, Brian.\nYou can see a lot of Brian\u0026rsquo;s work at these sites:\nBrian Dettmer Personal Site\nKinz + Tillou Fine Art\nPacker Schopf\nToomey-Tourell\nMiTO\nSaltworks\nA couple of Brian\u0026rsquo;s carved books ![](/images/Brian-Dettmer-Modern-Painters-1873.jpg) Brian Dettmer – Modern-Painters-1873\n![](/images/Brian-Dettmer-Webs-New-Inter-Diction.jpg) Brian Dettmer – Webs-New-Inter-Diction\n","date":"2010-12-10","permalink":"http://tateeskew.com/weblog/2010-12-10-brian-dettmer-featured-artist/","summary":" ![](/images/Brian-Dettmer-Integrated-Electronics.jpg) Brian Dettmer – Integrated-Electronics\nI\u0026rsquo;m always on the lookout for art and artists that inspire me to create my own works. Luckily, once …","tags":["art","brain dettmer","visual art"],"title":"Brian Dettmer – Featured Artist"},{"categories":["art","other music"],"contents":"There aren\u0026rsquo;t too many times in my life where I\u0026rsquo;ve felt completely overwhelmed and engulfed by a live music environment. When those times hit and the goosebumps don\u0026rsquo;t go away, I remember why I started playing music in the first place. A couple of years ago my wife, Amy, got us tickets to see Philip Glass: A Retrospective to celebrate his 70th birthday at the Schermerhorn Symphony Center here in Nashville. We were very excited to see a group of musicians play some Philip Glass music. When we arrived at the symphony hall, we had no idea what was in store for us. It turns out that it wasn\u0026rsquo;t just a \u0026ldquo;group of musicians\u0026rdquo; that were to play, but Philip himself and his original ensemble. I can\u0026rsquo;t explain the feelings that coursed through me that night as I swam inside of every detail. I felt nervous, full of anxiety, incredibly happy, and incredibly sad as I was lulled in and out of twisting arpeggios. You don\u0026rsquo;t so much listen to Philip and his ensemble as you perhaps live inside of their cacophony of life. It was one of my favorite experiences that I\u0026rsquo;ve encountered in my life. Period.\nThanks, Philip for all of the inspiration and thank you Amy for giving me the experience\nAlso, be sure to check out Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts. You can stream it on Netflix if you so desire.\nhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91NyQkeZO_M ","date":"2010-12-06","permalink":"http://tateeskew.com/weblog/2010-12-06-philip-glass-trainspaceship-parts-1-2-from-einstein-on-the-beach/","summary":"There aren\u0026rsquo;t too many times in my life where I\u0026rsquo;ve felt completely overwhelmed and engulfed by a live music environment. When those times hit and the goosebumps don\u0026rsquo;t go away, I …","tags":["einstein on the beach","music video","philip glass"],"title":"Philip Glass – Train/Spaceship Parts 1 \u0026 2 from Einstein on the Beach"},{"categories":["zero art studio news"],"contents":"Well, I think this is the final floor plan that will be built starting around the first of the year. I\u0026rsquo;m still waiting on a few quotes for different parts of the construction, but I have a decent idea of what it will all cost. As you can see, I\u0026rsquo;ve changed the layout of the staircase and substituted a spiral staircase for the wide staircase at the rear of the control room. This provides 4 extra feet of space directly behind the console. You can see the previous design here.\nThe new (final) design:\n![](/images/zero_art_studio_floorplan-finaly.png) Final Zero Art Studio Floor Plan\n","date":"2010-11-29","permalink":"http://tateeskew.com/weblog/2010-11-28-zero-art-studio-final-floor-plan/","summary":"Well, I think this is the final floor plan that will be built starting around the first of the year. I\u0026rsquo;m still waiting on a few quotes for different parts of the construction, but I have a …","tags":["zero art studio"],"title":"Zero Art Studio final floor plan"},{"categories":["other news"],"contents":" my wife, my son, my daughter, my entire family passionate friends — past, present and future health ability to reason science music ability to use all of my senses human compassion human and natural works of art progressive ideas ","date":"2010-11-25","permalink":"http://tateeskew.com/weblog/2010-11-25-thankful/","summary":" my wife, my son, my daughter, my entire family passionate friends — past, present and future health ability to reason science music ability to use all of my senses human compassion human and natural …","tags":["thankful"],"title":"thankful…"},{"categories":["open source"],"contents":"Every once in awhile I will come across a project that I absolutely love and get excited about. This is one of those times. Take a look at the video below and then go to Openfarmtech.org and read about what these guys/gals are doing. Super amazing stuff.\nThey say this about themselves:\nOpen Source Ecology is a movement dedicated to the collaborative development of tools for replicable, open source, modern off-grid \u0026ldquo;resilient communities.\u0026rdquo; By using permaculture and digital fabrication together to provide for basic needs and open source methodology to allow low cost replication of the entire operation, we hope to empower anyone who desires to move beyond the struggle for survival and \u0026ldquo;evolve to freedom.\u0026rdquo;\nRead about their \u0026ldquo;Global Village Construction Set\u0026rdquo; while you are at their wiki.\nhttps://vimeo.com/16106427 ","date":"2010-11-14","permalink":"http://tateeskew.com/weblog/2010-11-13-open-source-ecology/","summary":"Every once in awhile I will come across a project that I absolutely love and get excited about. This is one of those times. Take a look at the video below and then go to Openfarmtech.org and read …","tags":["eco","open farm tech","Open source","sustainability"],"title":"Open source ecology…"},{"categories":["tate's demos","tate's music"],"contents":"Here is another demo. This song is was actually recorded for my record, Semiotics. This is the first demo I did for this song on a 4-track cassette. It\u0026rsquo;s only guitars and some of the parts have now changed in the final version. here it is:\n/images/tate_eskew-comet_is_closer-guitar-only-demo.mp3\n","date":"2010-11-08","permalink":"http://tateeskew.com/weblog/2010-11-08-demo-tate-eskew-comet-is-closer/","summary":"Here is another demo. This song is was actually recorded for my record, Semiotics. This is the first demo I did for this song on a 4-track cassette. It\u0026rsquo;s only guitars and some of the parts have …","tags":["comet is closer","demos","tate eskew"],"title":"Demo – Tate Eskew – Comet Is Closer"},{"categories":["tate's demos","tate's music"],"contents":"So, I was thinking the other day that I should just start posting old demos of songs that I have laying around. My friend Chad was kind enough to dig through old CDs and old computer drives to find a bulk of this stuff. Most of it I had forgotten about. Some of it is cool, some are mediocre and some of it is total shit.\nThe first track I\u0026rsquo;m going to post is called Waking Up. I did this demo around 10 years ago. I\u0026rsquo;m pretty sure at a dark time. I originally wrote the song in about 1997 while living in a smoke-filled apartment in Los(t) Angeles. I\u0026rsquo;ve always wanted to record this song again in my studio with layers of guitars, but have never done it. Maybe it\u0026rsquo;ll just stay as is in a time vault.\nAnyway, here you go:\nTate Eskew – Waking Up\n/images/tate_eskew-waking_up-no_guitar.mp3\n","date":"2010-11-06","permalink":"http://tateeskew.com/weblog/2010-11-05-old-demos-come-to-see-the-light-of-day/","summary":"So, I was thinking the other day that I should just start posting old demos of songs that I have laying around. My friend Chad was kind enough to dig through old CDs and old computer drives to find a …","tags":["demos","music"],"title":"Old demos come to see the light of day- Demo – Tate Eskew – Waking Up"},{"categories":["zero art project","zero art studio news"],"contents":"I believe Amy and I are really close to being able to start working on the new studio. I\u0026rsquo;ve gone through tons of iterations of the studio design and I\u0026rsquo;m ready to add another. this one has a loft space that would contain the control room, which would look out over the live room. a lounge/apartment would be downstairs below the control room/loft. What do you think?\n![](/images/zero_art_studio-proposed2.png) Proposed Zero Art Studio Design Layout\n","date":"2010-11-03","permalink":"http://tateeskew.com/weblog/2010-11-03-zero-art-studio-new-design/","summary":"I believe Amy and I are really close to being able to start working on the new studio. I\u0026rsquo;ve gone through tons of iterations of the studio design and I\u0026rsquo;m ready to add another. this one has …","tags":["zero art studio"],"title":"Zero Art Studio – new design"},{"categories":["art","other videos"],"contents":"I must say that I absolutely love this concept and delivery. I\u0026rsquo;ve designed similar boxes as prototypes, but here Craig delivers them into a wonderfully immersive experience. Bravo!\n","date":"2010-10-29","permalink":"http://tateeskew.com/weblog/2010-10-29-sun-boxes-by-craig-colorusso/","summary":"I must say that I absolutely love this concept and delivery. I\u0026rsquo;ve designed similar boxes as prototypes, but here Craig delivers them into a wonderfully immersive experience. Bravo!\n","tags":["art","videos"],"title":"Sun Boxes by Craig Colorusso…"},{"categories":["site news"],"contents":"Well, nothing like not posting for a year and coming out swinging. By the subject of my last post, I\u0026rsquo;m sure all of you know what I have been up to over the past 10 months. That\u0026rsquo;s right, baby wrangling. What can I say, it has been an amazing experience and Ruby is absolutely wonderful. Hence, the reason there are no posts here for nearly a year. Although, I have indeed come back to internet life and redesigned the website. I have been meaning to do it for quite some time, but I always mean to do things with free time and consistently fail at finishing said things, but not this time!\nWith that said, I\u0026rsquo;m hoping I can start getting some recordings together to post here\n","date":"2010-10-28","permalink":"http://tateeskew.com/weblog/2010-10-28-new-site-layout/","summary":"Well, nothing like not posting for a year and coming out swinging. By the subject of my last post, I\u0026rsquo;m sure all of you know what I have been up to over the past 10 months. That\u0026rsquo;s right, …","tags":null,"title":"What a year!"},{"categories":["site news"],"contents":"Well, we did it (Actually, Amy did it). We had our beautiful baby girl. As you can see by the lack of posts here, we\u0026rsquo;ve been just a tad busy with everything. Mostly we\u0026rsquo;ve been staring at Ruby Jessica, but we\u0026rsquo;ve also been enjoying family and friends, baking bread, planning gardens, losing our baby weight, reading, etc.\nTwo things that are of the music-related sort that I should probably mention. My incredible friend Chad Blinman started teaching at Berklee College of Music this semester and I\u0026rsquo;m very happy for him. He\u0026rsquo;s a great engineer and an even better human being. Good luck Chad and Nicole!\nAlso, my friends Nate Dort and Josh are going to be doing the RPM challenge this year and I wish them luck. I may stop by for a guitar track here and there, but I won\u0026rsquo;t be involved in the capacity that these two will be. Enjoy the process, guys.\nThat\u0026rsquo;s it for now. Hopefully, I\u0026rsquo;ll be able to post here and at the new blog more often since the chaos of the holiday season is over and Ruby is here now.\n","date":"2010-01-24","permalink":"http://tateeskew.com/weblog/2010-01-24-baby-on-board/","summary":"Well, we did it (Actually, Amy did it). We had our beautiful baby girl. As you can see by the lack of posts here, we\u0026rsquo;ve been just a tad busy with everything. Mostly we\u0026rsquo;ve been staring at …","tags":null,"title":"Ruby Arrives"},{"categories":["site news"],"contents":"I\u0026rsquo;ve been crazy busy, what with the baby coming, taking care of this 5 acres of land, staying in San Francisco for a week, and on and on. Watch out summer, you\u0026rsquo;ll be gone soon and everyone\u0026rsquo;s favorite season will be upon us. So, some bullet points:\nPlanting grapes, fruit trees, and nut trees on the property Fixing up the nursery Not recording music Sucking up information at an alarming rate ","date":"2009-09-05","permalink":"http://tateeskew.com/weblog/2009-09-05-whoa-see-ya-summer/","summary":"I\u0026rsquo;ve been crazy busy, what with the baby coming, taking care of this 5 acres of land, staying in San Francisco for a week, and on and on. Watch out summer, you\u0026rsquo;ll be gone soon and …","tags":null,"title":"Whoa, see ya summer…"},{"categories":["tate's music"],"contents":"Well, the summer heat has put its filthy hands on Middle Tennessee. the good part is that the garden loves it and fresh strawberries were picked just last week. Incredible…\nBelieve it or not, I\u0026rsquo;ve started writing new songs when time is available and I\u0026rsquo;m very happy with what has come about so far. I miss very much having my studio, as it\u0026rsquo;s a huge part of my writing process, but I\u0026rsquo;m also excited to see how the new stuff turns out since I don\u0026rsquo;t have that at my disposal for now. With that said, I\u0026rsquo;m going to try to finish my album Semiotics by year-end (before baby #2 comes). If it\u0026rsquo;s not finished by then, it may be a while…\nThanks for the emails, everyone. I still find it hard to believe that people read this crap.\n","date":"2009-06-21","permalink":"http://tateeskew.com/weblog/2009-06-20-summer-heat-and-new-songwriting/","summary":"Well, the summer heat has put its filthy hands on Middle Tennessee. the good part is that the garden loves it and fresh strawberries were picked just last week. Incredible…\nBelieve it or not, …","tags":null,"title":"Summer heat and new songwriting"},{"categories":["other news","zero art project"],"contents":"I started Zero Art Radio 12 years ago this October. We went through a lot of crazy times and fights with large labels and in the end it was just costing too much money to keep up the labor of love in the format that we tried to keep it in. It was always a labor of love and all I and everyone involved ever wanted to do was expose great artists to lots of people. We did accomplish that over the years and for that we were very happy.\nOver a year ago now, we decided to move to a format where I would record bands in the studio and release the songs as \u0026ldquo;Zero Art Sessions\u0026rdquo; on the website. This is a much better way to involve the bands and it also gives people a glimpse into their live sound. My wife and I moved to a wonderful new house on 5 acres where we planned to build the recording studio. The problem is, and it\u0026rsquo;s a very good \u0026ldquo;problem\u0026rdquo; to have, we are expecting our second child! So, the studio and the project associated with are kind of on hold. Unless, of course, someone wants to donate $30k or $15k and some time spent outdoors to get the studio building up and going! Free studio time forever, kids!\nWith that said, I\u0026rsquo;ve decided to start posting 5 song podcasts on Zero Art Radio so that I would feel like the site was still doing something constructive. I really hope everyone enjoys them and finds them worthwhile. I\u0026rsquo;ve never done anything 12 years straight, with the exception of my music and Zero Art Radio. From here on out, I hope to add continuing to be a good father, good husband and good friend to that list.\nEnjoy.\nZERO ART RADIO PODCAST\n","date":"2009-05-16","permalink":"http://tateeskew.com/weblog/2009-05-15-zero-art-radio-podcastsalive/","summary":"I started Zero Art Radio 12 years ago this October. We went through a lot of crazy times and fights with large labels and in the end it was just costing too much money to keep up the labor of love in …","tags":["podcast","zero art project","zero art radio","zero art radio podcast"],"title":"Zero Art Radio podcasts…ALIVE…"},{"categories":["site news","zero art studio news"],"contents":"Well, that first month didn\u0026rsquo;t take long to pass, did it? I kept busy over the last month by starting a pretty nice exercise regime, building a whole new infrastructure for work, and getting the bicycle ready for spring riding and commuting (if I can talk my wife into letting me ride 15 miles one way to work. she thinks I\u0026rsquo;ll be killed.)\nI\u0026rsquo;m back to running anywhere from 5-10 miles every morning and enjoying it. I\u0026rsquo;m seriously thinking about running a 25k in June.\nTake a look at the new bike setup (ride surly!)\nAs far as music goes. I\u0026rsquo;ll be playing with my friends Nate Dort and Josh Fuson in the coming months. We\u0026rsquo;ve decided to get together on occasion and play some music. A downtempo kind of project ala American Analog Set, LOW, Popol Vuh, etc. We\u0026rsquo;ll see where it takes us. We are also still working on Zero Art Project as well. Hopefully, we will be able to move forward sometime this spring. If anyone is interested in helping, please do not hesitate to go to the site and send me an email.\nMy Semiotics album is on hold until the studio done. The album is so very close to being done, but time is limited and going to another studio isn\u0026rsquo;t very convenient. It will get done, but who knows when. I may post some songs that are near completion so you can hear where they are heading.\n","date":"2009-02-03","permalink":"http://tateeskew.com/weblog/2009-02-02-new-year-new-ideas-and-work/","summary":"Well, that first month didn\u0026rsquo;t take long to pass, did it? I kept busy over the last month by starting a pretty nice exercise regime, building a whole new infrastructure for work, and getting the …","tags":["beer","bicycle","bourbon","semiotics","surly"],"title":"New year, new ideas, and work"},{"categories":["site news"],"contents":"You know, we engineers spend ridiculous amounts of money on preamps, compressors, eq, etc., yet when all is said and done, the end result is compressed into some horrible sounding mp3 file and listened to on a pair of crappy earbuds. My friend Chad and I have discussed this ad nauseam. We even started Functional Equivalent Recordings so that we would have a place to not only release our music in the form we want it to be heard in, but also to express that we want higher fidelity in the recordings released by all artists, which we don\u0026rsquo;t find to be particularly ground-breaking and wonder why this isn\u0026rsquo;t the norm already.\nI was reading the new Tapeop magazine a few days ago and loved the interview with T-bone Burnett. Apparently a team of engineers and himself have been working on a new release format called XO∆E (CODE). They say\ncreates high-definition audio files that are virtually indistinguishable from the original master tapes. The resonance, warmth and presence that has been realized with CODE is unprecedented in the digital era.\nI can\u0026rsquo;t seem to find any other information about the format as he also stated in the Tapeop interview that there would be a higher quality downloadable format as well. Either way, I think this is a great idea, yet I will withhold judgement of the format until I hear it.\nAlso, I recently came across Bandcamp. It\u0026rsquo;s a great place for artists to upload their albums and have them transcoded to lots of different formats. They also make them available to buy either by a price you as the artist set or by letting the fan set their own price. Oh, it also sounds great! Give it try and see what you think.\n","date":"2008-10-13","permalink":"http://tateeskew.com/weblog/2008-10-13-bandcampmu-and-quality/","summary":"You know, we engineers spend ridiculous amounts of money on preamps, compressors, eq, etc., yet when all is said and done, the end result is compressed into some horrible sounding mp3 file and …","tags":["Audio file format","bandcamp","fidelity"],"title":"Bandcamp and quality"},{"categories":["site news"],"contents":"Bands in Town is something I came across today and it seems pretty cool. It shows a tag cloud of artists that are playing in a specified area and the dates when they play. It will even let you take a listen to the band via a streaming player.\nlast.fm users can log in using their username/pass and it will filter to bands that it thinks you\u0026rsquo;ll like. You can also filter based on location and distance from that location.\n","date":"2008-08-25","permalink":"http://tateeskew.com/weblog/2008-08-25-bands-in-town/","summary":"Bands in Town is something I came across today and it seems pretty cool. It shows a tag cloud of artists that are playing in a specified area and the dates when they play. It will even let you take a …","tags":["Band","Bands and Artists","music","Tag cloud"],"title":"Bands In Town"},{"categories":["site news","zero art studio news"],"contents":"…or maybe there is a hell in the making and it\u0026rsquo;s practicing the heating technique here in Middle Tennessee in early June. Anyway, it\u0026rsquo;s damn hot and if you plan on doing anything outside, say like mowing 5 acres, moving rock, trying to clear a space for your child\u0026rsquo;s cabin/playset, running long distances, picking strawberries, playing washers, or drinking beer then you better be out there before 10 am.\nThere is a possibility that the build-out of the new studio may resume here shortly. we will see how things pan out, but I\u0026rsquo;m pretty damn excited that it may continue within the next couple of months.\nI\u0026rsquo;d also like to thank everyone that has sent an email and left notes regarding the weekly song project I did to start the year. It was really great taking the first 10 weeks of the year and writing and recording songs with personally imposed limitations and minimal tools.\n","date":"2008-06-14","permalink":"http://tateeskew.com/weblog/2008-06-14-there-actually-may-be-a-hell/","summary":"…or maybe there is a hell in the making and it\u0026rsquo;s practicing the heating technique here in Middle Tennessee in early June. Anyway, it\u0026rsquo;s damn hot and if you plan on doing anything outside, …","tags":["recording studio","zeroartproject"],"title":"There actually may be a hell"},{"categories":["site news"],"contents":"Well, it\u0026rsquo;s been a few weeks. We are getting settled in the new house and I think I\u0026rsquo;m going to set up to record some stuff while we plan the studio design for the build out on the back acreage. I think I\u0026rsquo;m really close to the overall design/layout of the new studio. I\u0026rsquo;ll post a drawing of it soon to see what everyone thinks. you can then offer your suggestions and i will dismiss them immediately since it\u0026rsquo;s not your studio! cool, eh?!\nAnyway, I was saying…I\u0026rsquo;m going to go get a lot of my studio gear out of storage (poor gear) and see about maybe finishing the record in the house with just a couple of mic pres. I\u0026rsquo;m really bumming about not having a space, but I\u0026rsquo;m going to make do with what I have and get to recording some stuff. There are only 3 songs left to track for the new record, so maybe it\u0026rsquo;ll get done. Maybe not…\nDaniel started t-ball and his swing is reminiscent of Wade Boggs, although his hustle is ala Manny Ramirez. Kid\u0026rsquo;s got no hustle in him. I think it may be because he\u0026rsquo;s still not sure which base to run to! Oh, the confusion!\nAmy has a new job and is loving it.\n","date":"2008-04-29","permalink":"http://tateeskew.com/weblog/2008-04-28-settling-in-the-new-house/","summary":"Well, it\u0026rsquo;s been a few weeks. We are getting settled in the new house and I think I\u0026rsquo;m going to set up to record some stuff while we plan the studio design for the build out on the back …","tags":null,"title":"Settling in the new house"},{"categories":["tate's music","weekly song experiment"],"contents":"I\u0026rsquo;m not sure how I did it this week. I started recording this song at 9 o\u0026rsquo;clock tonight. It\u0026rsquo;s now 10:21. I recorded this up in the bonus room bathroom. I\u0026rsquo;ve been sick as all get out this past week and I\u0026rsquo;m still not over it. I couldn\u0026rsquo;t sing and I feel pretty bad at the moment. We also are living amongst boxes at the new house. This week was a struggle.\nThis week\u0026rsquo;s song is entitled P_neumonia_. It\u0026rsquo;s how I feel and maybe I should go to the doc to find out. Anyway, head over to the weekly song experiment page to give it a listen.\n","date":"2008-03-10","permalink":"http://tateeskew.com/weblog/2008-03-09-week-10-weekly-song-experiment-pneumonia/","summary":"I\u0026rsquo;m not sure how I did it this week. I started recording this song at 9 o\u0026rsquo;clock tonight. It\u0026rsquo;s now 10:21. I recorded this up in the bonus room bathroom. I\u0026rsquo;ve been sick as all …","tags":["music","tate eskew","weekly song experiment"],"title":"Week 10 – Weekly Song Experiment – Pneumonia"},{"categories":["tate's music","weekly song experiment"],"contents":"Here we are at week 9. I have no idea how I wrote and recorded a song this week. This week we moved everything out to our new house and we have tons of sorting and unpacking to do.\nThis week\u0026rsquo;s song is called Song For a Former Friend. Head over to the weekly song experiment page to take a listen. Thanks again for your email and notes.\n","date":"2008-03-02","permalink":"http://tateeskew.com/weblog/2008-03-02-week-09-weekly-song-experiment-song-for-a-former-friend/","summary":"Here we are at week 9. I have no idea how I wrote and recorded a song this week. This week we moved everything out to our new house and we have tons of sorting and unpacking to do.\nThis week\u0026rsquo;s …","tags":["music","tate eskew","weekly song experiment"],"title":"Week 09 – Weekly song experiment – Song For a Former Friend"},{"categories":["computing","gear"],"contents":"I was recently looking into the lemur as something to use to control live performances via a touch screen and got really into some of the technology used. So, I started digging deeper to see what else was out there. I had seen Microsoft\u0026rsquo;s multi-touch coffee table some time ago, but as with most things Microsoft, who knows when it will be out and how buggy it will be. Then I stumbled upon this multi-touch device. Watch the video on the right side of the page. I\u0026rsquo;ve always hated interfacing with a computer, even though that\u0026rsquo;s what I do to earn a living, and this is getting closer to how I would like to interact. I think voice commanding and this multi-touch approach are great ways to interact with computing platforms, especially when it involves creating music or other types of art.\n","date":"2008-02-27","permalink":"http://tateeskew.com/weblog/2008-02-27-multi-touch-interaction-screen/","summary":"I was recently looking into the lemur as something to use to control live performances via a touch screen and got really into some of the technology used. So, I started digging deeper to see what else …","tags":["lemur","multi-touch screen","ray kurzweil"],"title":"Multi-touch interaction screen…"},{"categories":["tate's music","weekly song experiment"],"contents":"This week was a complete blur. In fact, tonight is the only night I was able to record and it was performed under very heavy eyes. We are in the process of moving to our new house and there is a lot of work to be done so this week\u0026rsquo;s song is just 3 guitar parts and I think it shows the kind of mood at the moment. Tt\u0026rsquo;s entitled Quiet, Tired and Other Things\nWith tired legs and a tired mind…I leave you. Enjoy week 8 of the weekly song experiment. Head over to the weekly song experiment page and have a listen.\nGood night.\n","date":"2008-02-25","permalink":"http://tateeskew.com/weblog/2008-02-24-week-08-weekly-song-experiment-quiet-tired-and-other-things/","summary":"This week was a complete blur. In fact, tonight is the only night I was able to record and it was performed under very heavy eyes. We are in the process of moving to our new house and there is a lot …","tags":["tate eskew","weekly song experiment"],"title":"Week 08 – Weekly Song Experiment – Quiet, Tired and Other Things"},{"categories":["tate's music","weekly song experiment"],"contents":"Here it is. This week\u0026rsquo;s installment of the weekly song experiment. This week\u0026rsquo;s song is about our son, Daniel and I conned my wife Amy into singing it with me. I think she did a great job and she\u0026rsquo;s also pretty.\nThanks, everyone for the comments and emails. I always appreciate getting them and I do respond to every one of them.\nSo, head over to the weekly song experiment page and take a listen to the song for this week, M_y Son_\n","date":"2008-02-17","permalink":"http://tateeskew.com/weblog/2008-02-16-week-07-weekly-song-experiment-my-son/","summary":"Here it is. This week\u0026rsquo;s installment of the weekly song experiment. This week\u0026rsquo;s song is about our son, Daniel and I conned my wife Amy into singing it with me. I think she did a great job …","tags":["music","tate eskew","weekly song experiment"],"title":"Week 07 – Weekly Song Experiment – My Son"},{"categories":["tate's music","weekly song experiment"],"contents":"This week I was able to sing again. The head cold has passed. I was able to knock this song out within a few days this week. We\u0026rsquo;ve been incredibly busy working on the new house so that we can get moved in, but I\u0026rsquo;m enjoying trying to cram music time in. It really does feel great to just create it and let it go. I don\u0026rsquo;t know how many people are out there listening, but it really doesn\u0026rsquo;t matter. It\u0026rsquo;s out there.\nTo those that are listening, this week\u0026rsquo;s song is called P_owered by Fear_. Head over to the weekly song experiment page and put it to your ears.\n","date":"2008-02-10","permalink":"http://tateeskew.com/weblog/2008-02-09-week-06-weekly-song-experiment-powered-by-fear/","summary":"This week I was able to sing again. The head cold has passed. I was able to knock this song out within a few days this week. We\u0026rsquo;ve been incredibly busy working on the new house so that we can …","tags":["music","tate eskew","weekly song experiment"],"title":"Week 06 – Weekly Song Experiment – Powered by Fear"},{"categories":["site news"],"contents":" well, it seems that someone has finally figured out a way to use a real guitar plugged into your pc soundcard to control a \u0026ldquo;guitar hero-like\u0026rdquo; game called guitar rising. (sorry for the shitty photo to the left)\ni think i like this idea much better than the idea of guitar hero. this actually has some real world usefulness to it. i think this could be a great learning tool for people that want to learn how to play and it would probably help timing issues for people that already do play the instrument. the game isn\u0026rsquo;t out yet, but the makers state that their company is \u0026ldquo;…an independent video game development studio dedicated to bringing unique games and genres to market. GameTank was founded to develop games that enable players to acquire real-world skills while being thoroughly entertained.\u0026rdquo;\nreal world skills? who needs those?!\n","date":"2008-02-05","permalink":"http://tateeskew.com/weblog/2008-02-05-guitar-rising/","summary":" well, it seems that someone has finally figured out a way to use a real guitar plugged into your pc soundcard to control a \u0026ldquo;guitar hero-like\u0026rdquo; game called guitar rising. (sorry for the …","tags":["guitar","guitar rising","video game"],"title":"guitar rising…"},{"categories":["tate's music","weekly song experiment"],"contents":"I\u0026rsquo;ve had a head cold all week so I wasn\u0026rsquo;t able to write anything with lyrics, so what you get is another instrumental piece. This week\u0026rsquo;s song is entitled The Middle Way.\nPushing myself to practice this and I think the song portrays a piece of that.\nHead over to the weekly song experiment page to listen to the new song.\n","date":"2008-02-04","permalink":"http://tateeskew.com/weblog/2008-02-04-week-05-weekly-song-experiment-the-middle-way/","summary":"I\u0026rsquo;ve had a head cold all week so I wasn\u0026rsquo;t able to write anything with lyrics, so what you get is another instrumental piece. This week\u0026rsquo;s song is entitled The Middle Way.\nPushing …","tags":["music","tate eskew","weekly song experiment"],"title":"Week 05 – Weekly Song Experiment – The Middle Way"},{"categories":["gear"],"contents":"I\u0026rsquo;ve always loved whatever Eric Barbour over at Metasonix was up to, but this is something that I can really get behind. I\u0026rsquo;ve wondered in the past why someone with incredible vacuum tube skills had never made an amp that was completely hybrid and looked as grotesque as this does.\nLadies and gentlemen, I give you the Metasonix G-1000 Guitar Amplifier. I can only imagine how cool this sounds.\nIf you have never checked out Metasonix, head over there, and indulge. Also, if you know of any other cool makers of crazy stuff like this, send them to me!\n","date":"2008-01-31","permalink":"http://tateeskew.com/weblog/2008-01-31-metasonix-g-1000-amplifier/","summary":"I\u0026rsquo;ve always loved whatever Eric Barbour over at Metasonix was up to, but this is something that I can really get behind. I\u0026rsquo;ve wondered in the past why someone with incredible vacuum tube …","tags":["gear","metasonix"],"title":"Metasonix G-1000 amplifier"},{"categories":["tate's music","weekly song experiment"],"contents":"Well, here it is. This week\u0026rsquo;s song experiment.\nHead over to the weekly song experiment page to listen or download the new song – Y_our Plan_\n","date":"2008-01-28","permalink":"http://tateeskew.com/weblog/2008-01-27-week-04-weekly-song-experiment-your-plan/","summary":"Well, here it is. This week\u0026rsquo;s song experiment.\nHead over to the weekly song experiment page to listen or download the new song – Y_our Plan_\n","tags":["weekly song experiment","your plan"],"title":"Week 04 – Weekly Song Experiment – Your Plan"},{"categories":["tate's music","weekly song experiment"],"contents":"The new song for my weekly song experiment has been posted. I also added links so you could download them in Ogg format if that\u0026rsquo;s your bag. During the week sometime I will probably add links to include FLAC encoded files.\nThe project is proving difficult to fit in with the time available, but it\u0026rsquo;s a really good experiment.\nAnyway, the new song is entitled O_blivious_. Head over to the weekly song experiment page to listen or download.\nla la la la…\n","date":"2008-01-20","permalink":"http://tateeskew.com/weblog/2008-01-20-week-03-weekly-song-experiment-oblivious/","summary":"The new song for my weekly song experiment has been posted. I also added links so you could download them in Ogg format if that\u0026rsquo;s your bag. During the week sometime I will probably add links to …","tags":["flac","music","ogg","weekly music project"],"title":"Week 03 – Weekly Song Experiment – Oblivious"},{"categories":["site news"],"contents":"i\u0026rsquo;ve actually taken the time to put a donation button scheme together. you can select your level of sponsorship by going here. once there you can choose one of 3 levels (amounts of money). the first is bill gates, second is steve jobs and the woz and the third is linus torvalds. you\u0026rsquo;ll then have a chance to enter a message and donate the amount selected. once you donate you will see your donation in the \u0026ldquo;donate\u0026rdquo; box on the sidebar over there ====\u0026raquo;\nif you selected gates, you get a \u0026ldquo;W\u0026rdquo;. if you selected jobs and the woz, you get an \u0026ldquo;A\u0026rdquo;. if you selected torvalds, you guessed it, you get an \u0026ldquo;L\u0026rdquo;. it will also show your message when you hover the letter that represents your donation.\nnow, what the hell are you waiting for. donate some cash. daniel is hungry.\n","date":"2008-01-20","permalink":"http://tateeskew.com/weblog/2008-01-20-donation-buttons/","summary":"i\u0026rsquo;ve actually taken the time to put a donation button scheme together. you can select your level of sponsorship by going here. once there you can choose one of 3 levels (amounts of money). the …","tags":["donations","linux","tate eskew"],"title":"donation buttons…"},{"categories":["tate's music","weekly song experiment"],"contents":"Well, I\u0026rsquo;ve managed to get another song done this week. You can check it out over at the weekly song experiment page. The weeks are getting quite busy as I have a lot of things to do over the next couple of weeks. It should make for an interesting go at it with these songs.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s very weird not to use my studio monitors to mix these experiments. I\u0026rsquo;m only using headphones, so if the low end isn\u0026rsquo;t 100% correct, well, now you know why.\nThe new song is called Deny the Anxiety. Enjoy.\n","date":"2008-01-13","permalink":"http://tateeskew.com/weblog/2008-01-13-week-02-weekly-song-experiment-deny-the-anxiety/","summary":"Well, I\u0026rsquo;ve managed to get another song done this week. You can check it out over at the weekly song experiment page. The weeks are getting quite busy as I have a lot of things to do over the …","tags":["music","tate eskew","weekly song experiment"],"title":"Week 02 – Weekly Song Experiment – Deny the Anxiety"},{"categories":["tate's music","weekly song experiment"],"contents":"I\u0026rsquo;ve decided to start a new weekly song experiment for 2008. You can read about it on the weekly song experiment page. I\u0026rsquo;m not sure how I\u0026rsquo;m going to cram this into the limited time I already have, but I think it would be a good exercise to take on.\nThe first song is posted and from here on out the weekly song/piece of music will be posted on either Sunday or Monday. The first song is entitled Bring It All To Me.\n","date":"2008-01-06","permalink":"http://tateeskew.com/weblog/2008-01-06-weekly-song-experiment/","summary":"I\u0026rsquo;ve decided to start a new weekly song experiment for 2008. You can read about it on the weekly song experiment page. I\u0026rsquo;m not sure how I\u0026rsquo;m going to cram this into the limited time I …","tags":["music","weekly song experiment"],"title":"Week 1 – Weekly Song Experiment – Bring It All To Me"},{"categories":["books"],"contents":"Amy, my wife, got me the new Oliver Sacks book Musicophilia and it\u0026rsquo;s really incredible. I\u0026rsquo;ve just started reading it, but the book grabs you at the preface. I\u0026rsquo;ve read one other sacks book, Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood, which was really great. sacks is an amazing writer and quite a scientist (he\u0026rsquo;s a neurologist). I think about how the brain reacts to music almost daily. I\u0026rsquo;ve also often wondered why humans seem to have some primal instinct that draws them towards music/rhythms and the reason why some people have a greater ability to \u0026ldquo;just get it\u0026rdquo; and a \u0026ldquo;brain\u0026rdquo; for it. Oliver Sacks covers this in an amazing fashion. if you love both science and music, this thing is a must-read. it\u0026rsquo;s quite inspiring.\nThere are some videos of Dr. Sacks talking about a few of the subjects in the book:\nOliver Sacks Videos\n","date":"2008-01-01","permalink":"http://tateeskew.com/weblog/2007-12-31-music-and-the-brain/","summary":"Amy, my wife, got me the new Oliver Sacks book Musicophilia and it\u0026rsquo;s really incredible. I\u0026rsquo;ve just started reading it, but the book grabs you at the preface. I\u0026rsquo;ve read one other sacks …","tags":["book","brain","music","oliver sacks"],"title":"Music and the brain…"},{"categories":["site news"],"contents":"there is a fantastic david byrne article over at wired magazine\u0026rsquo;s site. i love pretty much everything david byrne does, yes, even that crazy french shit on one of his recent albums. he\u0026rsquo;s always been an incredibly insightful person with regards to the music industry and this article is no different. i have to say that his outlook on this whole craptastic music industry is quite inspiring and i hope he\u0026rsquo;s right. this is the stuff i am most interested in with regards to what \u0026ldquo;models\u0026rdquo; work in this day and age.\nDAVID BYRNE: What is called the music business today, however, is not the business of producing music. At some point it became the business of selling CDs in plastic cases, and that business will soon be over. But that\u0026rsquo;s not bad news for music, and it\u0026rsquo;s certainly not bad news for musicians. Indeed, with all the ways to reach an audience, there have never been more opportunities for artists.\nwouldn\u0026rsquo;t it be extremely great to have david as your uncle?\n","date":"2007-12-20","permalink":"http://tateeskew.com/weblog/2007-12-20-david-byrne-other-peoples-problems/","summary":"there is a fantastic david byrne article over at wired magazine\u0026rsquo;s site. i love pretty much everything david byrne does, yes, even that crazy french shit on one of his recent albums. he\u0026rsquo;s …","tags":["david byrne","music","music industry"],"title":"david byrne – other peoples problems"},{"categories":["site news"],"contents":"okay, tad turned me onto this and now i have to send someone over to snuff him out. it\u0026rsquo;s goddamn addictive. this is a warning to you all. absolutely do not download this.\nactually,go ahead…download it and ruin your life. thinking about going to the museum this weekend? how about meeting up with friends for a drink? perhaps you want to go check out that band you\u0026rsquo;ve been reluctant to go see because you\u0026rsquo;ve heard they have a drummer who thinks he\u0026rsquo;s in some mid-70\u0026rsquo;s prog band. well, forget about all of that shit. the physics of the armadillo run have got you by the privates, my friends.\nArmadillo Run\n","date":"2007-12-11","permalink":"http://tateeskew.com/weblog/2007-12-10-armadillo-run/","summary":"okay, tad turned me onto this and now i have to send someone over to snuff him out. it\u0026rsquo;s goddamn addictive. this is a warning to you all. absolutely do not download this.\nactually,go …","tags":["armadillo run","game"],"title":"armadillo run"},{"categories":["site news","zero art studio news"],"contents":"well, a whole summer has passed since my last post. we\u0026rsquo;ve been incredibly busy building a new house on 5 acres east of Nashville. we are really excited and can\u0026rsquo;t wait to get our things moved in. it looks like we will be able to move in the second week of november. i will also be starting on the new studio as soon as we get moved in. the slab floor is poured, the exterior walls are studded, the plumbing for the kitchen and bathroom are already roughed in and i should be ordering the trusses by the end of november. the studio build-out will be a drawn out effort as it will be built with quality and when money is available to put forth. in the meantime i will setup the console/gear in the new 2 car garage and finish my record starting in december.\ni\u0026rsquo;ll also be starting a record with Jason Melcher this winter. various friends will be playing on the record. look for that next year.\nthe sequoia album we recorded at zero art studio is done and you can buy one from the band.\ncubs – playoffs…who would of thought. 3 and out i would venture to guess…\n","date":"2007-10-04","permalink":"http://tateeskew.com/weblog/2007-10-03-summer-coming-to-an-end/","summary":"well, a whole summer has passed since my last post. we\u0026rsquo;ve been incredibly busy building a new house on 5 acres east of Nashville. we are really excited and can\u0026rsquo;t wait to get our things …","tags":["jason melcher","recording console","sequoia","zero art studio"],"title":"summer coming to an end…"},{"categories":["site news","zero art studio news"],"contents":"Well, we close on a new house later this month so everything regarding the studio and album is kind of on hold until everything can be settled. the new place will be on 5 acres east of Nashville. The new studio will be a 1200 square foot facility that will have it\u0026rsquo;s own kitchen/bathroom. I\u0026rsquo;m extremely excited and can\u0026rsquo;t wait to get started. there is a lot of construction to finish up, but it will be completely worth it in the end. I will definitely document the process as I did with the last build-out.\nI just finished recording and mixing a record for Sequoia, a Chicago-based band, here at Zero Art Studio. I think the record turned out pretty great. It\u0026rsquo;s in the process of being mastered and should be out before summer\u0026rsquo;s beginning. don\u0026rsquo;t know what it\u0026rsquo;s going to be called, go ask them.\nThat\u0026rsquo;s the quick and dirty update.\n","date":"2007-05-07","permalink":"http://tateeskew.com/weblog/2007-05-07-moving-and-life/","summary":"Well, we close on a new house later this month so everything regarding the studio and album is kind of on hold until everything can be settled. the new place will be on 5 acres east of Nashville. The …","tags":["cubs","sequoia"],"title":"Moving and life…"},{"categories":["site news","zero art studio news"],"contents":"It\u0026rsquo;s a good time of the year. Things are incredibly busy here as of late. I just finished tracking basics for the new Sequoia album here at Zero Art Studio and spirits are high there. I\u0026rsquo;ve also found a little bit of time to work on Semiotics, which is taking much longer to do because I keep adding more and more projects to the plate.\nMock Orange was recently here at Zero Art Studio mixing their upcoming album, which is still untitled at this point I believe. It sounds good, trust me.\nI also have recently completed a live Zero Art Radio session with Patrick Krief from The Dears. Patrick has just released a solo album that is really incredible.\nThat\u0026rsquo;s it for now.\n","date":"2007-03-08","permalink":"http://tateeskew.com/weblog/2007-03-08-records-and-baseball/","summary":"It\u0026rsquo;s a good time of the year. Things are incredibly busy here as of late. I just finished tracking basics for the new Sequoia album here at Zero Art Studio and spirits are high there. I\u0026rsquo;ve …","tags":["Mock Orange","patrick krief","semiotics","the dears","zero art radio","zero art studio"],"title":"Records and studio update"},{"categories":["site news"],"contents":"I just wanted to let everyone know that I\u0026rsquo;m looking for a trumpet and/or cello player to play on the record. Progress is being made on the album and I would like to add a few more players to the project. If you know of anyone, or you yourself play, contact me with the contact form on this site.\nPlease go see TJO while she\u0026rsquo;s out on tour.\n","date":"2006-11-09","permalink":"http://tateeskew.com/weblog/2006-11-09-looking-for-trumpet-and-cello/","summary":"I just wanted to let everyone know that I\u0026rsquo;m looking for a trumpet and/or cello player to play on the record. Progress is being made on the album and I would like to add a few more players to the …","tags":["cello","tara jane oneil","tjo","trumpet"],"title":"Looking for trumpet and cello…"},{"categories":["zero art studio news"],"contents":"this past weekend i managed to build an old style slat bed/couch for the studio, using chisels and all. the utilitarian lounging device, as i like to call it, will also act as a nice bass trap for the back of the studio directly behind the listening position of the console. it\u0026rsquo;s also big enough for someone to sleep on in case they stay over while recording. i\u0026rsquo;ll have pictures up at some point, but i still have to get cushions made for the backrest. amy is going to make them instead of me buying some half-assed cushion that i won\u0026rsquo;t like anyway. so yeah, a couch/bed.\nstill working away on my album and jordan\u0026rsquo;s as well when we find time.\n","date":"2006-10-10","permalink":"http://tateeskew.com/weblog/2006-10-10-rough-carpentry/","summary":"this past weekend i managed to build an old style slat bed/couch for the studio, using chisels and all. the utilitarian lounging device, as i like to call it, will also act as a nice bass trap for the …","tags":["bass trap","recording console","zero art studio"],"title":"rough carpentry…"},{"categories":["site news"],"contents":"this will be the official page of tate eskew. this site will contain information regarding the music and projects that tate is involved with and it will also showcase the newly built zero art recording studio. there are a lot of things to complete on the site and it may be in flux as you browse around. there are things coming. you\u0026rsquo;ll see.\n","date":"2006-09-23","permalink":"http://tateeskew.com/weblog/2006-09-23-tateeskewcom-in-the-works/","summary":"this will be the official page of tate eskew. this site will contain information regarding the music and projects that tate is involved with and it will also showcase the newly built zero art …","tags":["tate eskew","zero art recording studio"],"title":"tateeskew.com in the works…"}]