no oddcast, no sellout

Q: Gee, Nick, whatever happened to the oddcasts?

A: I’ve had a sort of technological meltdown, at home... basically my roommate’s mac is no longer around, and it really hard to do ANYthing on a pc, never mind edit mp3s and upload large files to Lickety Split’s off-shore servers... I was using a lot of found sounds in the oddcasts of late, and those were all downloaded from various sources... wikipedia, strange plain html websites... its still a big place out there, full of great stuff... I don’t even have the internet at home. I’m stealing some from the neighbourhood... maybe the library around the corner. I feel like—wham!—I’m a technological refugee. I’ve grabbed my files and split, but the infrastructure is gone, it’s left behind and it’s only forward now.

Q: what? Technological refugee? That’s a little extreem...

A: That’s how it feels. I like it though. I’m close to a facebook suicide and i remember to call my friends more often, i use the phone a little more than i was. But seriously: the amount of time i spent on the computer has suddenly been dropped into my lap, and so i have the same urges and impulses and interests, all of which need COMPUTING, so to speak... but i don’t have the right tools to accomplish the things i used to do, and its liberating and scary too.

Q: How is it scary?

A: Well, the oddcasts, that’s a good example. It was a thing i enjoyed doing, and it served multiple purposes, it kept me plugged into things, it hyped l/s, it amused some people, perhaps... it was really fulfilling, to make a mess of things, to make a joke of content, to mock the guest-star. It wasn’t ironic, it was playful, really hilarious sometimes. To me, at least. I would say without a doubt i was the biggest fan of the oddcasts, which is how it should be.

So its a little scary when all of a sudden i’m unable to articulate this stuff, this tension i have with music... when the will and interest is still there but i can’t complete because of some fucking computer? What if the lights go out, what could i still enjoy in the dark?

Q: You sound a little mad.

A: I’m just surprised... disappointed, i guess, to have allowed myself to so heavily rely on the computer as the tool of expression, and communication. Not ‘a’ tool, THE tool. And not “the” computer, the APPLE. Now, without it, i’m like a cave-man, stumbling around, trying to steal internet signals and hoping they last. No photoshop, no qwark, no audacity... no oddcasts, no cover art... the pc is still great for wordprocessing and surfing but as a machine of magnifying creative imputs it’s lame, lame, lame.

Q: How is it liberating?
A: Well, its made me look for other ways of getting things done, less brand-specific or technologically exclusive. Like the shadow puppets, its just card-board and a digital camera, and $0.49 and BAM an hour later i have prints. I was passing around samples of shadowpuppet porn at my house and my good friend smash commented on how its been since he’s held a photograph... they’re kinda heavy, sticky, they smell like something. Its fun to re-connect with things.

Q: So how are you going to go on with the oddcasts? Or are you?

A: Yeah, i want to keep doing them. I have some unfinished mixes which i’ll use to get through the launch hype, and i bet i could even re-release some of the early ones which no one listened to.

Q: does that bother you, that you’re not heralded?

A: not really. I make them for myself, really, and i brand them so obtusely that i can see how people will have a hard time finding an access-point, a point of entry. Instead everything is weird and perhaps, meaningless to them and so CLICK, NEXT... this is the internet, buddy... there’s no room for slowpokes here. Either you grab someone’s attention or you don’t, and you’ve got a better chance to do that if they’re sympathetic to you, if they want to be like you or think you want to be like them, that’s even better. but the oddcast is so purely ME, so about me that i can’t make that extention, that plea of similarity and familiarness or even friendliness... the oddcast is very alienating, very lonely, almost haunted... i couldn’t expect everyone to get into that. Even my close friends don’t listen to it.

Q: Um, isn’t it supposed to hype our fine smut zine? Is it at all related to smut?

A: no, i guess not. But it is a very personal project, and ambs has defended it as being “passionate, and that’s all that matters,” which is very kind of her. Really, i could have been making a 4/4 dance-mix every week and would that be Sexier, or Smutier? Well, maybe... people at night clubs like to fuck... i guess the oddcast is far more emotional than a dance mix, even when i did a dance mix, there was a big backstory about ODing at a nightclub and dying on the way to the hospital while dancing on the inside, dancing to death... all very melancholy and unspoken, sonically hinted at but not really crucial to enjoying the music. The oddcasts are like little sounds tracks—even maybe the incidental music and sometimes the dialogue—of little movies, generally silent films, i guess... dialogueless films... in that regard, they ape the cinematicaness of the zine, no neccesarily on purpose, but as a result of like-minds congregating. So they’re not smut, per se, but i don’t think for a second they’re out of place here. i don’t know where else i would be able to find something like this. I guess that’s why i made ‘em.

Q: so, are you going to continue?

A: oh, yes, yes of course. There is a little man inside of me who needs to make oddcasts. Getting over the technical challenges i’m presently facing is part of the fun, i guess. I need to find an old mixer board, i have a new set of tools... the first series of oddcasts were all done in the lab, except for three done live with no overdubs. Live is a different beast, and i’d like to get into that more. I took the show on the road to casa for a few nights with interesting results, and i think i have a recording of one of those. But really, i’d like to turn my library at home into a sound lab, where i have the cable TV signal and a phonograph player and a cassette deck and maybe the shortwave radio all plugged into a minidisk. And then we can listen to bill clinton speaking over suicide tracks and all be healed. Again.