Week one of new job in Bellevue

I swore I would never work on the other side of 520 again, but the market is tight and I liked the interviewers at Applied Discovery, my new employer. It's a contract gig through March, so there's an easy out if the commute appears to lead to premature death.

The following help make the commute bearable:

• Some minor satisfaction driving a Prius, despite knowing I'm still a single-occupant vehicle.
• December sunrises and sunsets while driving over the lake.
• WFMU podcasts: "7 Second Delay", "Nardwuar the Human Serviette", "Shut Up, Weirdo"
• Tech and brain-empowering podcasts: Ted talks, This American Life, Stack Overflow

Any other podcast or commute suggestions are welcome.

Mark out.

Get Carter

One of my heroes is Jah Wobble. He is frighteningly prolific and the majority of his output is stellar. It's not hard to tell from his simple-yet-groundbreaking bass lines in the early PiL days to his recent Chinese Dub work that the man has an deep seeded passion for his work.

His most recent release returns to the simple and an old-school format: a 10" single in a plain cardboard jacket with two versions of the theme to Get Carter. It's been playing in my house regularly for the past few weeks. Simple, dub, melodic. Done right.

I also finished his autobiography, Memoirs of a Geezer, a few weeks ago, which I highly recommend if you're into the music biography type of thing. It's heartening to find an artist reach his prime, and then some, in middle age.

Here we go...

After parking this blog name over three years ago I've decided to try bringing it to life.

The blog's name came to me while listening to the insanely energetic Japanese psychedelic band Mainliner and realizing how beautiful I found the sound, yet how simple the music is. Turn off all the fuzz and distortion and all that's left is simple strummed guitar, albeit at a rapid pace, that would sound like a pale and sick version of the recorded version. While the word 'distortion' may sound negative, in this case it turns the sparse and plain into a full-blown work of art and energy.