R. K. Thornwell - R. K. Thornwell

Song: “Fake Your Own Death”

rkthornwell — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 00:59:58 +0000

Hi Everyone,

So I promised myself I would do this. I promised myself I would release the new “Fascist Cat Fancier” single tonight. But then I got distracted. I got a call. I had dinner. I watched Anderson Cooper. I fell asleep. Now, today, many days — at least a week — after having been recorded I’m finally releasing it. Here it is in all its glory. It’s called “Fake your own death.”

MP3: Fascist Cat Fancier - Fake Your Own Death (192kbps)

Lots,
R. K.

“see what i see”

rkthornwell — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 18:00:11 +0000

Hey Everyone,

So all is good. Last week (maybe it’s two weeks ago now?), we went to see the Homosexuals play at the AS220 which was amazing. Met Bruno Wizard (frontman) who was crazy/entertaining and bought their/his new Love Guns EP which is quite good. He says he’s working on a full length with his original guitarist in London so I can’t wait for that to come out. I asked him for a band name to use and he said Mongolian Milkman which is okay, I guess. Last night we went to the RISD Museum for one their regular Music Fridays. The music was, eh, a covers band, but we both really liked the Dale Chihuly glass exhibit. Here’s some photos:

Dale Chihuly at RISD Museum #1

Dale Chihuly at RISD Museum #2

We missed the David Macaulay show so we’ll have to go back. It was great finally getting to see the Chace Center now that it’s done. I’ve been listening to the excellent new Deerhunter alot this week (”Microcastle”). I really love Bradford Cox’s voice. Also been listening to Gang Gang Dance’s, “Saint Dymphna” and Von Südenfed’s, “Tromatic Reflexxions,” both of which I love. So anyway, the web is just filled with great stuff this week. I thought I would share some of the things I came across.

The New York Times Magazine Design and Living 2008 issue came out last week along with a sweet website. Highlights are:
- “A Home For New Chinese Art” - Photos of a gorgeous modernist house in upstate New York.
- “Artful Lodgers” - Wealthy artists photographed in their lovely houses. Particularly of note: Fia Blackstrom’s very awesome and uncomfortable looking seat.
- “Beijing Modern” - A profile of the artist Shao Fand
On election day, the New York Times featured a piece of web art that allowed users to type in one word that described how they felt. The word was then added to what they were calling a “word train.” Very cool. I wish they would keep it up permanently.
Also, this cool image by David Huffman.

Okay, that’s all that comes to mind right now. There will be more.

Best,
R.K.

“Teenage Royalty”

rkthornwell — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 02:07:57 +0000

Providence is beautiful and it feels like fall. The air is crisp and it bites at my fingers when I go down to take out the trash. I bought some Lillies as well as a few Mums–a Rhode Island falltime favorite–and their sweet fragrance fills the entire apartment (something I notice especially each time I emerge from the bedroom after having been in there working on music with the door closed). I spent the late evening going through old unfinished songs, splitting them up into folders with names like “bridges and choruses, etc.”

“Aunt Anxiety”

rkthornwell — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 15:53:47 +0000

As I sit here, cloaked in my comforts — a navy blue “Los Angeles” sweatshirt wrapped tightly around my body, my dirty blond strands almost invisible, tucked up into a promotional trucker hat, my huge, oversized headphones snugly encasing my ears, craving a day off, requesting one, but being asked to postpone it for some distant and less desirable time, I yawn. Today marks the one year anniversary of my grandmother’s death. I still haven’t dealt with her ashes. I want to take them to Vermont. I want to take them to Vermont to scatter them at an artist’s colony there. An artist’s colony where she spent a few week in the late 1980’s. I maintain a fiction that this was that happiest part of her life, although I have no evidence to prove it.

From Flickr: “interni_03″

rkthornwell — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 19:54:38 +0000

interni_03, originally uploaded by masha_k_sh.

very cool. don’t know what this is but i like it. i like scale models of things.

Song: “Rock Song”

rkthornwell — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 02:16:54 +0000

Here is a new song. It’s not quite done.

MP3: “Rock Song” by fastPOLICE

Mirror Mirror

rkthornwell — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 00:31:01 +0000

The other night we tried to get out of the house to go see a show. I checked lots of noise and it turned out there was this band, Mirror Mirror, that was going to be playing in Olneyville. Well, we went to the show–it was in this old junky loft/factory space that we had actually been to a few years before (to go see DMBQ)–but when we got there the place was totally empty. There were a few people there — people who lived there and then one or two people who were I guess going to be performing. We took pictures of eachother in the pitch black and cavernous space that had been used for the DMBQ show and then went downstairs. This show was set to start at 10pm; we stood around, ambling from one disastrous room to another until finally, at like eleven, we just left. Which is kind of a pity. I’ve been listening to this band, Mirror Mirror, for the last two days (since our failed attempt to see them live) and I’ve really liked it. Apparently, they have a full-length coming out in September, too…which I will be purchasing. O.K. That’s all. Later, R.K.

Monday morning…

rkthornwell — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 17:04:48 +0000

So it’s Monday morning and here in my cluttered, remote office I’m battling back a tidal wave of infrastructure catastrophies, customer support requests, and a backlog of unfinished work and unresponded to emails from last week. There are files that need parsing; parsers that need fixing. But things are not so bad. I have Atlas Sound to listen to. I have my coffee from Blue State. And I just discovered this awesome, awesome skate video.

I’m not so much into this skate porn genre necessarily but I am a sometime camera fetishist. This video was shot with a “Red” which is apparently some sort of high frame rate video beast. I don’t know exactly how they intend to depict a 120fps movie on a computer screen which can only hope to refresh 60fps max and I think the top actual frame rate for Flash is 30fps.

Okay, more later.

Dustin Long…

rkthornwell — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 20:17:43 +0000

Excerpt from an interview with Dustin Long, author of Icelanders:

What tips would you give to aspiring writers?

This has been true for me, at least: If you want to write novels, write novels. By this I mean two things.

Don’t concentrate on writing short stories, thinking you’ll build up to a novel. They’re completely different animals. I still can’t write short stories very well, and I don’t feel that writing one has ever taught me much about the craft of writing a novel.

Actually write a whole novel. Don’t begin a novel, decide it’s bad, and then begin another one. Finishing a novel, however bad, taught me much more about novel-writing than beginning a novel ever did.

Taken from an 8/31/06 interview at Notes of a Defeatist.

Flash music composer

rkthornwell — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 15:44:00 +0000

composer.extrajetzt.de screenshot

Check this shit out. Awesome.

http://composer.extrajetzt.de/