Musings from the basement...

Enjoy my video interview on Jason and the Argonauts, the Ray Harryhausen classic

I was pleased to join Dan Schneider not too long ago for his Cosmoetica show to discuss Ray Harryhausen’s best film, and one of the best damned fantasy adventure movies of all time, Jason and the Argonauts. Enjoy! And for some previous thoughts on Harryhausen’s work, check out my thoughts on The 7th Voyage of Sinbad.  

I may have fallen in love with the Hexplore It board game series

I Need a Solo RPG! I’ve been on a quest to find the perfect solo tabletop RPG for myself. I have a specific itch, but most games can’t scratch it. There are many out there, but with a few exceptions none have seemed quite right. I have no interest in the many journaling-style games out there, which are really just collections of writing prompts with a game built around them. (The conceit of Colostle, for example, looks amazing, but I just have no interest in making up a story as I go for the sake of a game. When I want to do that, I write.) Others are more purely skirmish games, focused on fighting. Not interested. I want exploring and stuff to do outside…
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Broken Staircases, a new post-rock sonic experiment for your listening pleasure

This one has been in gestation for a while, much of it pre-Covid, from the time I was recording Empty Nest. Took a while for it to come into shape in my head, to realize what the record was trying to be, but I think it got there. This is an instrumental post-rock record, largely improvised, with a greater focus on electronic drums than I usually have. It’s meant to be a journey; a series of rises and falls and lulls and crescendos. It’s about looking back for so long, you forget to look forward until it’s too late. Recommended if you like Ride (but instrumental), Explosions in the Sky, Godspeed You Black Emperor, etc., though I don’t claim for a moment it actually sounds…
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BLOGGERS BEWARE: Lovefreund, Benjamin Jorgensen, and the photo credit scam

Back in late 2020, I came across a scam whereby a scammer trying to generate links to their site falsely claimed credit for a photo I used, and asked for the photo credit to be switched to one that pointed to their site. Turns out it was a scam that ran pretty deep on Wikimedia Commons. The story ended up getting picked up by a bunch of tech blogs. Well, it’s happened again. This time the scam originates from a sex toy affiliate site in Germany. I will name them, but won’t link them directly. After all, that’s what they want! It began when I received the below email. I’m posting it in full in case others try to Google the text of emails they’ve…
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Finally finishing a music project feels great! (m2 – Passageways to the Ever)

It feels like forever since I finished a music project. That’s because it’s been since pre-pandemic since I finished anything, and pandemic time has been an eternity. I do music because it gets something out of my system. If I go too long without creating some sounds, I get antsy. So I’m glad to have finally finished something. Granted, all of this material was recorded pre-Covid. It just took me that long to put it all together — not because it was difficult, but because my head just wasn’t in it. Such has been Covid life. But it’s finished, and I’m happy with it. These are guitar soundscapes and ambient drones, meant for the background or, if you just want to clear your head, for…
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