MERRY FUCKING CHRISTMAS

Merry Christmas Shitlords. Its Christmas in South Korea, where I am right now. So I may be a day earlier for all you "Westerners", but whatever check ur priv m8.

To those of you who don't celebrate Christmas, Happy Holidays, good cheer, whatever. Happiness for everyone!

I love you all. Download the new track here.

-x^2

THE RAP ALBUM IS REAL

told ya.

Korg Volca Beats Review

Happy Holidays errebody. I hope you had some good ones, because I know I did.

First off, shoutouts to Homestuck, clppng., The Stanley Parable, FreeMusicSoftware.org, and SynthEdit. All these things have made my winter break far more interesting then it would've been otherwise. I would've just spent all my time being bored as fuck and not having sex but now I can not have sex but at least not be bored all the time. 

The other thing that has made my winter break awesome is the Korg Volca Beats. I got this bad boy for christmas yesterday and I spent the rest of the day playing with it and ignoring my family. When I first heard that Korg was releasing the Volca Series,  I was like "oh fuck, analogue hardware for less than 200 hundred bucks?" I decided that I would fixate on the Volca Beats because my setup was missing a hardware drum machine. 

As you can see from that blurry ass photo, (sorry about that btw but you know that the legitimacy of a review is directly proportional to the number of photos it has) the Beats is about 1 by 1.5 fx pedals in area. Its about like an inch tall. Idk exactly. The point is, its tiny AF. The unit is portable as a motherfucker. It also has excellent battery life. I left the unit on for at least six hours yesterday and then some and today it shows no signs of slowing down. That's off of six double A batteries that came prepackaged, mind you. The piece of shit digitech pedal in that picture can't even go four hours off of equivalent voltage. Together with the compact size, this unit can be taken literally anywhere. I even went outside in the freezing ass weather yesterday and jammed in the cornfield behind my house. It is absolutely possible to take this thing everywhere with you and make all your friends hate you. But if you wanna be lame and shovel out the cash there is a DC adapter plug that can be purchased. I'm sure if you found some kind of portable generator or were some kind of electricity god you could still rave on the metro. 

As for the sound, it sounds pretty vintage and whatnot. It got six analogue sounds and four PCM sounds (thats pulse control modulation you uneducated fuck), for a total of ten sounds that came straight out of the 80s. They claim that it really is an analogue drum machine, and I'm not smart enough to dispute that, but it sounds really good. The knobs allow for a fair amount of customization, and with enough tweaking you could definitely make a beat that wouldn't be out of place in today's music. I don't think its as rich of a sound as the MicroKorg (shit barely needs any mastering), but it was only 150 dollars. I also somewhat get the sense that Korg didn't design this as a super professional piece of equipment. That said, it wouldn't be out of place in your two person retro lo-fi indie house band, and I'm certainly gonna use it on some songs at some point. I will certainly be making use of it in a live set-up however, because the thing is super easy and super fun to play. 

Theres a normal Step Mode for constructing beats part by part but there is also a straight up live recording mode (which records and quantizes parts real time) and a step jump mode which is hella cool. It basically lets you retrigger the sequence (the whole thing, all the parts) from any step, and if you hold down multiple steps itll just play those steps over and over, skipping steps between them. However, it quantizes the jump, so you can only hit it as fast as a sixteenth note in whatever tempo your at, and also the touch sensor is bit janky. 

You can also record automation, but only on the Stutter Time, Stutter Depth, and PCM speed knob, and the automation can only last one cycle of sixteen steps. The fact that you can only use those three knobs seems like a missed opportunity. Also, automation recording isn't on by default, so if you forgot to turn it on before you started jamming you'll be hella plexed. That said, whats nice is that PCM Speed knob will only apply to the part you have selected, and you can choose whether the Stutter effect will apply globally or just to the part. The Beats also handles automation prioritizing really well. You can record some Stutter automation on a single part, then enable the stutter globally, fuck around, and when you turn turn the depth knob back to zero your automation on that individual part will still be there. However, There is no good way to delete automation without clearing the part. Recording more automation over it doesn't really work because you'll have to move the knob someway in order to get it to actually record what your doing, and it'll have to go for the whole bar too, otherwise it will default back to whatever other automation you had recorded at the parts where it didn't detect any movement. While clearing the part is easy in the studio, in a live setting its a huge boner. A delete automation button would've useful AF. 

The other that would've been useful (or at least cool as shit) is a global pitch bend. The stutter effect is cool as balls but its only good for one thing. A global pitch bend would've just eliminated the need for circuit breaking all together. That and a distortion button. It wouldve been so easy. Luckily, there are all sorts of pedals and VST Plugins that do one or both of those things (LIKE THIS ONE) so it should be no problem to rectify this mistake. Heres a picture of me doing just that:

The Volca Beats running through FL 10 (Shoutout to ASIO) running through The Madshifta and my personal VST. Using a Novation SL Compact to control the pitch bend and also play this chill as fuck 3xOsc. Check below to listen. 

      

All in all, I am hella satisfied with the Volca Beats. For 150 bucks it is an absolute steal and while its not perfect (really, only a 3.5 mm out, how can you call this analogue?), you should give Korg your money anyway or at least write them nice letters to show them you support this kind of thing. The Volca Beats is pretty self sufficient in a live performance context (unlike the Kaoss Pad, which doesn't open up in a live setting until you get like five) and you don't get the feeling you need more than one. While not particularly robust on its own, when paired with other instruments (LIKE THE REST OF THE VOLCA SERIES BETTER GET OUT YOUR CREDIT CARD) it is a great addition and fun as fuck. 8.5 aphex twins out of 10. Or something like that. Here's a pros and cons list for you lazy fucks who can't read. 

PROS: great interface, easy to use, compact as shit, sounds good, pretty versatile for 150 bucks, memory features saves all the parts and automation, good automation features, stutter is cool, excellent battery life.

CONS: only output jack is a 3.5 mm (are we in kindergarten?), stutter is cool but limited, can't delete automation without clearing part, quantization is a little janky which is a problem in step jump mode (but i might just have no sense of rhythm so WHO KNOWS), can only automate three knobs (in which case why are there six white knobs and six black knobs what was the point of that if the only difference is that white ones light up? seems discriminatory if you ask me. I know japan isn't big on africans but damn...)  

If you're still here, go check out the mash-up, and download my vst plugins, which are at the bottom of the music page. happy holidays again, and a merry new year to all yall. 

Why you should go see Spring Breakers

So I figure the college admission counselors have already made their decision by now, Hence I'm resuming the blog. I hope everyone enjoyed the new ep that came out on Monday. The summer LP is well on its way, and if you all are super lucky you may even get a new ep in april (been listening to some MBV). Honestly this time of year is kind of the worst because I have so many new ideas but i still haven't finished the summer LP so i have to focus on that. This is what happened with TYGFAC last year. In all honesty the last track wasn't finished until about a day before if was put up. Not to mention theres this other LP i'm working on too and it's like Oh my god brain hush I need to rap.

But anyway, enough about me, I'm here to talk about why Spring Breakers is really good and why you should do see it. Thanks to it's obnoxiously competent VICE marketing campaign, it sold itself too well as a stupid movie and now no one is going to see it. This is a shame because the movie is not at all stupid and really good. Harmony Korine is a seriously talented director and he deserves all your money and since I pirated Julian Donkey Boy I was more then happy to give him my money for this.

First off, the movie is shot excellently. It looks really, really nice. There's all these flashing lights and upside down camera angles and it's honestly really beautiful. Secondly, despite being all big and mainstream, it is a still a Harmony Korine movie. He didn't sell out, he didn't water himself down, nothing like that. It's just the right amount of Harmony Korine weirdness to make this movie fuck with people in just the right way. When I went to see it there was like 2 people in the theater and that made me sad because seriously this is not at all a stupid movie and really needs to trip everyone's nut. Had I not already known who Harmony Korine was, my head would've exploded. It's a classic Harmony Korine subversion that manages to deconstruct your expectations without being self referential and pretentious. It manages to blow your mind, but instead of going "oooh look at that i just blew your mind" it just lets your mind actually get blown. It's brilliant.

So to all the smart people: this is a stunning movie from a very talented director who is gonna kick your mind in the ass.
To all the dumb people: Holy shit this movie has so many tits and beer and dubstep holy fuck I got so hard in the theater go see it bro!

Go see this fucking movie.

Oh twitter

It is this kind of beautiful juxtaposition that makes the internet wonderful.

Listen to me rap.

I have a blog

It makes me sad that no one reads my blog because I think that my blog is a good blog. That said, there sn't actually a fair amount of blogging on it. I shall attempt to correct this.

One time, when I was six, I did something that my mother consistently and constantly refers to at every  cocktail mixer she goes to in a pathetic attempt to pretend she is a relevant person as "star shopping." Obviously, everybody failed to realize my real estate genius (when Mark Zuckerburg takes over the world he will need off world mines to make us all slave for him, but if I own the off world mines, then he would have to buy them from me and I would make quite literally a metric anus ton of money) because everyone in my family tells the story as though it was some kind of "silly" thing that I did as a kid but when the cyborgs enslave us all I will be the one with all the prime space real  estate property and none of those fuckers will be allowed to go on any of them. 

Anyway, this story ends with me falling off the roof and busting my face on a railing and crying a bunch. Those were the days.

Anyway, so this Daniel Tosh rape joke thing is like old news I guess but fuck it I just heard about it and I wanna bring up a point that I don't think has been brought up because I haven't bothered to look to see if anyone brought it up.

You do not fucking interrupt a comedian. Don't fucking do it. Ever. You will not get anything out of it except guilt and shame. 

Comedians are supposed to make jokes. When you heckle them, they start making jokes about you. They will all be nasty.

I really hate it when people from the audience heckle, because it's fucking dumb. At that point, you are just trying to make the artist feel bad and that's mean and obnoxious and if you were worth anything you would be up on that stage but no you aren't you are sitting in the crowd getting shitfaced and eating and consuming without making any attempt to contribute something positive to society. Everyone else was laughing and was happy so Daniel still made some people feel good and thats what he was trying to do. But don't be a self righteous prick and insert yourself into someone else because you think their wrong and want to take control of their art. 

BANDCAMP

I got a bandcamp. From now on, the albums will be hosted there, and you can download them there (the singles will still be on mediafire). All the albums are right now at name your own price, and if you wanna enter zero you can, but hopefully I'll be able to trick a few people who can't read into giving me money.

The bandcamp is here. As of right now, only Abestos and Weakly Closed (because those are the ones I like best) are up there, but the rest will be up by the end of the day hopefully.

Badly Drawn re initiated

I was washing desert bus and Ash kept talking about Megacynics and that made me want to restart badly drawn. So I did. And because I've been reading things my cat hates it's been restarted on this tumblr so go to that. The blogspot of it still exists and i think i will keep it as a relic for the ages.

anyway there is a new comic up so go read.

ERROR: I MESSED SOMETHING UP

So guys and girls, because I am a genius, the song "661" on the album prime numbers is not actually the version of the song that I wanted you all to hear, but is actually a work in progress. As such, I have reuploaded the Prime numbers .rar file with the new version and have included a link beneath it that allows people to do download just the new version of 661.

If you downloaded Prime Numbers before today (aka 7/11/2011) you do not have the correct version of 661 and should click this link now.

I have a sound cloud

http://soundcloud.com/xsquared