AFFINITY PHOTO 2

At the end of March I needed to process a bunch of photos I’d taken on a short trip to Kyoto, so I fired up my four year-old copy of Capture One Pro, my software of choice, and….crap, it didn’t work! Then I realised that the version I had wasn’t compatible with the new Mac I bought last November.

No problem, I thought, and hopped over to the Capture One website to see - what? $330 for a licence for the latest version?? (This is even worse than it seems, given the current weak exchange rate for the Japanese yen, the currency I use). Of course, they want to push you towards a subscription, which is maybe fine for a professional photographer, but for me, no thanks. The subscription was $120 a year. I don’t think so.

What to do? Then I remembered Affinity Photo 2, a PhotoShop alternative that I sometimes used for additional work on my pics. Why not update that to the newest version and just use that? For $45 it’s a bargain, with free updates and no fucking subscriptions!!

So I got it and dived in to the rather steep learning curve. The usual thing - lots of trial and error, use of great and not-so-great YouTube tutorials, some features better than Capture One Pro, some worse. 

Actually, I’ve rather enjoyed learning the intricacies of Affinity Photo 2 - it’s like solving a difficult jigsaw puzzle, albeit one in which a couple of fairly important pieces are missing. It’s is not perfect, but the price certainly was.

And so I’ve just got used to it and can make reasonably good edits of my photos and then suddenly - would you believe it - Affinity has been bought up by some larger corporation whose software has - yep - a subscription model!! FFS.

The buyer quickly releases a statement to reassure existing Affinity users, mostly refugees from the pricey subscription-only Adobe Photoshop, to the effect that there will always be a non-subscription version available (translation - we’ll introduce a subscription model and make the individual licence fee so ludicrously expensive you will have to go the subscription route in the end - just like Capture One Pro, Adobe and all the greedy corporations out there).

Very annoying, but I should be safe for at least a couple of years before I’m forced into finding and learning yet another photo editing software that isn’t a complete rip-off.

THE MYSTERY OF MY FATHER

My Dad was a seemingly humble bloke of working class origins who left school at sixteen. After a stint in the navy as part of his national service, he worked as a photographer at RAF Farnborough some time in the 1950s, then later as a cameraman for the BBC in London, which is where he met my mum. He ended up in the audio-visual department of Bath University while getting a degree through the Open University.

OK, nothing strange about any of that, but let’s fast forward to the early 80s, when a teenage me started listening to shortwave radio as a nerdy hobby. Shortwave radio was the only medium which reached around the world in those pre-internet days. Many countries broadcast programs in English for a global audience, so you could learn about them, and in addition, you could file a reception report with them, detailing on what frequency and when you heard them, and what the signal was like. In return, the radio station would send you a card with their logo on it, and these were fun to collect. Again, nothing unusual here, but then the legendary ‘numbers stations’ began to make their presence felt on my radio.

Perhaps you’re not familiar with numbers stations, although they have become something of a cult favourite and legend in certain quarters. I discovered them by accident while scanning the radio dial for my usual stations such as Radio Moscow, NHK Tokyo and so on. Between the registered radio bands I sometimes came across these bizarre broadcasts which consisted of strange, vaguely sinister, synthesised voices repeating strings of numbers in various languages. Prior to the broadcast there would be a short melodic phrase as a call sign. The creepiest of them all was a child’s voice doing the numerical sequences. You got the eerie impression of some poor might held hostage in a basement, doing these broadcasts at gunpoint. The whole thing was baffling and creepy. There was definitely something dodgy about these stations, since they were broadcasting illegally in frequency bands where they were not supposed to be.

And this is where my dad comes in. One day I mentioned to him about these strange broadcasts, and played him the recordings to tape I had made. I asked him what he thought they were. Without hesitation or any surprise, he immediately told me that they were spy stations run by various governments to send encrypted messages to their operatives abroad. He even told me in detail how it worked. He said that the operatives had a ‘one time pad’ with the cypher key, which, as the name suggests, changed for every broadcast. After decryption, the spy would memorise the message and destroy the relevant sheet on the pad.

I just accepted this answer from my dad at face value, and being young, didn’t think to ask him the obvious question - how the hell did he know all of this? (Remember folks, this is pre-Internet).

Years later, I’d forgotten about the whole thing, and in the 2010s as I got interested in scepticism and debunking pseudo-science, I started listening to Brian Dunning’s Skeptoid podcast in which each week a particular conspiracy theory, urban myth or quack medical treatment would be investigated in with rigorous scientific methodology.

One week, to my great surprise, he tackled the number stations, and my memories of it all came flooding back. I was expecting Dunning to show that it was all nonsense, but astonishingly, after describing exactly the one-time pad system my dad had mentioned, he then concluded after going through all the evidence, that this was one case where the favoured fan theory was most likely to be correct. As far as I know, this is the only time in ten years of shows that this has happened. Occam’s razor applied here leaves us firmly with the idea that governments have or do use this very method to contact operatives in the field.

I mentioned that regular shortwave radio stations used to send out cards to listeners who reported on reception. One time I got a card from an Eastern European station. My dad, as he handed me the letter, casually informed me that it had been steamed open and then reglued. He said that MI5 were most likely responsible. Again, he said this with some authority. On closer inspection, it was pretty obvious that it really had been glued down again.

So was my father more than just a humble photographer at RAF Farnborough? It is known that this base was where experimental aircraft were tested - were other activities of a more clandestine nature going on there too? Perhaps people just talked, and that’s how he had information about these matters. However, the concision, veracity and detailed nature of his explanations to me would seem to suggest something else. Unfortunately, since he is long gone, we will never know.

ON BEING A CONTRARIAN

I’ve always been a contrarian. It’s not a conscious choice, I’m not being deliberately elitist when I go against the masses, although I’ll admit that I do sometimes enjoy standing aloof and turning my nose up at those who go for the Lowest Common Denominator.

In the 90s I started to grow a beard, a nice goatee type, described rather charmingly by a Japanese acquaintance as a ‘circle beard.’ At that time absolutely nobody had one. I was a trailblazer! Then, fast forward a couple of decades, and suddenly everyone and their grandmother has some kind of hairy facial decoration.

Now, those of you who know me might say, “but Andy, you, as a self-proclaimed contrarian are leaving yourself open to charges of rank hypocracy as you are still sporting a beard - shouldn’t you be setting a razor to that mangy-looking thing?” Well, I would if I could, because heaven knows I don’t want to be seen as a bandwagoneer, when it was actually me who was streets ahead of the lumpenproletariat in the first place. But, damn it, I have a skin allergy, and any attempt to eradicate the fuzz with a shaver just results in excoriation and suppurating boils, so I’m stuck with it.

Even among cultural niches of unorthodoxy I manage to find myself…unorthodox. A case in point would be music. Most folks who like The Fall opine, in a sickening Orwellian lockstep, that the best album is “Hex Enduction Hour.” I say bollocks. It’s clearly “Grotesque.” People go doolally over the track “Eat Y’Self Fitter” on 1983’s “Perverted by Language,” a track which apparently made DJ John Peel faint the first time he heard it. Me, I hate it! It’s shite!! Six and a half minutes of a two-note riff that a child could have written. Pah!! The best song from that album by far is “Garden,” and of course I’m the only one who thinks this.

American punk / alt rock - I’m a huge fan of your Hüsker Dü, Black Flag, Circle Jerks, Flipper, Minutemen and a bit later Nirvana…..but those who adhere to the Holy Canon all sycophantically swoon over two bands in particular, Sonic Youth and The Pixies, who I find to be utter crap. The mIndless experimental tuning bollocks of the first and the squeaky histrionics of the second leave me cold.

Books too! Everyone’s favourite Brontë novel is always ‘Wuthering Heights” Guess which is the only one I don’t like? Yep. Modern literature: Haruki Murakami? Fuck off! (I’ll be writing a post about this fellow in due course…)

I could go on, but you get the point.

It can all get a bit draining at times, but somebody has to do it. Somebody has to stand up and cast their critical eye over the flood of received wisdom and platitudinous drivel we are all drowning in.

[I should note here that my wife has an alternate term to denote my stance: according to her, I’m just a grumpy old man.]

TWO MORATORIA

The title of this post sounds like the beginning of a joke : “Two moratoria walked into a bar…” Which in turn reminds me of the hilarious particle physics joke “Two neutrinos walked through a bar.” Lol.

Anyway, a moratorium is the temporary secessation of something, as I’m sure you know. In my case, I have two running for 2024. Two addictions capped. Two financial sinkholes filled in. Two avenues of depressive buying curtailed.

The first is books. Actually I started my non-buying of tomes in April last year, so I’m already nearly a year in. Books are a good thing, but I have a tendency to over-buy, and although there are many more worse addictions to have, I thought I needed to take a break and actually read the large stock of books I have lying around.

I get through about 40 books a year, and I need another 32 for 2024. I think I’ve just got enough, even though it may force me to read things I’ve been avoiding, or even reread a couple more things. And that’s probably for the good!

Can I hold out? Who knows, but I’m slightly concerned that at the end of it I’m just going to go out on a massive book splurge, but we’ll see.

The other moratorium is for music production software. I use Apple’s Logic Pro to make my music, but there is a massive market for third-party plugins, usually effects, which you can open within Logic to process your music. At this point I have everything I need, but the temptation to keep buying, keep collecting is quite overwhelming. Basically, in music production you only need to use a few types of effects : EQ (boosting or cutting high, mid or low frequencies), compression (reducing the dynamic range of the sound), distortion, modulation (chorus or tremelo type effects), reverb and delay (echo). Then there are instruments, usually synthesisers, often emulations of vintage gear.

To illustrate clearly why I’m not buying any more for 2024, let me show you how many of each of the above types of software I’ve accumulated:

• EQ - 24

• Compressor - 37

• Distortion - 11

• Modulation - 18

• Reverb - 16

• Delay - 12

• Synthesisors - 88

And then there a ton of other types of processors, probably as many as 50.

Do I really need 37 different compressors, a tool which simply makes the quieter parts of a sound louder, and the louder parts quieter? The gear fetishists will say, yes, of course, because each compressor imparts a certain characteristic sound to your music, but in reality, no real people can actually hear the difference. But the URGE TO COLLECT is incredibly strong!

At least books are tangible things that you can actually pick up and touch. When you buy music production software, it’s just a bunch of 0s and 1s in the shape of code - nothing physical whatsover.

OK, I will stay strong. I will endure. These twin sirens will not move me from my stoic course.

For now….

NEW SINGLE RELEASED

A new single has been unleashed! And yes, as previously reported, the cover artwork is A.I. generated. Pretty creepy looking, huh?

“Get ready to embark on an auditory rollercoaster with the latest Easter Islanders mantelpiece! This track has more drops than a clumsy chef, beats so infectious they make handshakes jealous, and a bassline so deep it's considering a career in philosophy. If you're not instantly  grooving in an ungainly manner to this, then you’d better bugger off and take you and your Steely Dan albums elsewhere”. 

The above “jokes” were supplied by ChatGPT, because as the artwork is A.I., the blurb might as well be too.

Warning: Not suitable for young people with long beards, anime lovers, wearers of checked shirts, people whose first names are surnames, small yappy dog owners and folks whose coats don’t have sleeves.

TIPS FOR READING CLASSIC LITERATURE

If you’re at all interested in reading, you’ve probably wondered whether it’s worth your while to tackle the ‘classics’ at some point. Perhaps you were put off by them at school, but there’s a voice in the back of your head telling you that if you work your way through one of those ‘50 Greatest Novels’ lists you’ll end up being a better educated person, won’t feel left out in intellectual conversations, and wil be able to feel superior to your work colleagues whose sole literary diets consist of ‘airport books.’

First, we’d better define what exactly we mean by ‘classic literature.’ For me, there are three categories, temporally speaking.

• Modern Classics - anything written from around 1900 to the 1970s.

• Classics - nineteenth century and earlier : think the Brontë sisters, Jane Austen, Shakespeare.

• Ancient Classics - from the birth of writing until the early middle ages : Greek and Roman stuff.

Now this is just my personal definition, but the main point to bear in mind here is that a book cannot become a classic until it has stood the test of time. So, despite very recent books creeping onto the ‘Greatest Books of all Time‘ lists recently, I don’t think any tome can be regarded as classic until at least fifty years have passed.

So here are my tips for tackling classic literature:

• Classic literature is not all intellectual and heavy - it’s fun and entertaining too.

• Not all classics are overly long, but also there is no need to be intimidated by long books. Short books that can be read quickly do not generally stay with you as long reads do - you really begin to live in a tale that takes several weeks to read.

• Just because a book is on a classics list, it doesn’t mean that you have to read it or like it : some are just not going to appeal to everyone and it’s a waste of time to force yourself to read them. Find out about the themes and style of a book (while avoiding spoilers) before you commit.

• The 30 page rule : if a book isn’t entertaining or educating you within the first thirty pages or so, ditch it. There’s no need to struggle through something that just isn’t for you.

• If you’re reading a non-English language classic, choose your translation well! This is very important. Don’t be tempted by cheap or free e-books which often have out-dated, bad or censored translations. Research online to find out which translations are most favoured, and go with one of those.

• Don’t write notes, look up words or check references while reading - it just disrupts the flow of the book. If you must journal, do it after your day’s reading is over. Notes and references can be checked at the end of a chapter or other suitable break.

• Don’t get hung up on unknown or difficult words. Yes, older books contain a larger and sometimes less familiar vocabulary, but you have the human brain on your side. Context is king, and with your general understanding of the topic or scene at hand you can make lightning-fast educated guesses at the meaning of unfamiliar words. This is exactly what you do when you talk to someome : you don’t analyse their every syllable, you just focus on the key words and general context in order to comprehend and reply. With reading it should be just the same. If you really must look up a word in a dictionary, just quickly undeline it and check it later after you’ve finished your session.

• Don’t read introductions : they mostly contain plot-spoilers. I don’t even read the blurb on the back cover - I want to come at each book without foreknowledge. Save the introduction for afterwards, it makes much more sense that way.

• Don’t read other people’s opinions about a book before you begin. It should be a voyage of discovery in which you form your own opinions, rather than a journey whose points have been predetermined by someone else.

• Don’t be intimidated by unusual styles of writing such as stream of consciousness, the deployment of made-up language, or other forms of non-conventional story-telling (such as non-linearity, cut and paste, etc). Once again, your brain can handle it - you just need to get acclimatised. If after some time you don’t, discard the book - it wasn’t for you.

• Don’t restrict yourself to the usual suspects : most classics lists are Anglo-centric, but there are many many more gems out there from the non-English speaking world which are up there with the greats. A good place to look is New York Review Books, who publish mostly foreign-language classics that have fallen by the wayside. As an example, everyone knows Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, but you’re missing out if you haven’t tried two twentieth-century Russian writers who rival thier predecessors : Andrei Platanov (‘Soul’) and Vasily Grossman (‘Life and Fate’).

To conclude : reading classics is a worthwhile pursuit if you want to break out of the ‘flavour of the month’ school of reading. You will educate yourself, challenge yourself, and it will be rewarding, and above all, fun, particularly if you follow some (or all) of my tips.

A.I. ALBUM ART

I released a new single a couple of days ago, and only after I’d uploaded it to the distributor did I realise that the artwork was crap.

As a photographer, I have a large archive of pictures that I can draw upon for designing album covers, but I was in a hurry this time, and the photo I’d chosen wasn’t the best, and the colour editing I’d done didn’t improve things. I quickly lo went to the distributor’s website and found that it is possible to upload new artwork, even after release, so I had a chance to create a replacement.

It was then that I suddenly thought of A.I. Last year I’d played around with a site that could produce pretty impressive images from text prompts and I’d thought that this might be the way to go in the future, but at that time the resolution offered wasn’t high enough to make it possible.

Would it be feasible now? I found Google’s ImageFX, and discovered that their pictures are both free and of a good enough quality for my needs.

A few quick experiments and I was totally blown away with the results. The images are staggering, with a wide range of stylistic choices available. And with that, I’ve changed over to A.I. for the album covers of my future music releases.

The pictures on this page were all quickly generated with just a simple sentence describing the scene I wanted. It’s both wonderful and also scary in its implications.

I mean, let’s be honest, the game is up for graphic artists, illustrators, designers and photographers. Thank Dog that I’m just a hobbyist and I don’t mind only getting a few pennies from my photo and music sales. Imagine if you have to earn a living from this!

In terms of images, A.I. is already good enough for many commercial needs. Video is on the way. Music isn’t there yet, as it can only come up with some pretty poor elevator muzak at the moment, but it won’t be long.

Universal Basic Income is really going to be needed in the not very distant future if things continue developing at this pace on the articificial intelligence front.

LAZY MUSICIANS

You know how it usually goes with rock bands: in their formative years, lean and hungry, they release an album a year, but then it starts to tail off. Ten years later and they’ve committed the cardinal sin of introducing a horn section and new releases are down to about one every four years. When middle age kicks in, if they haven’t already sunk from view entirely, you’re lucky to get an album a decade.

Why? Songwriting is something that is an integral part of you: once it’s there, it doesn’t go away. The urge to express yourself musically is a lifelong and quintessential component. I’m reminded of Robyn Hitchcock who once stopped making music for a year or so, but remarked that suddenly when he was bending down to pick something up, a song just started to bubble up. There was no stopping it. Few musicians just stop creating, with perhaps the exception of the Finnish composer Sibelius, who didn’t write anything in the last thirty years of his life.

Let’s take a look at a band like New Order. They emerged from the ashes of Joy Division in 1980 and are still regularly performing, still very much a going concern. Let’s take a look at their album discography:

1. Movement (1981)

2. Power, Corruption & Lies (1983)

3. Low-Life (1985)

4. Brotherhood (1986)

5. Technique (1989)

6. Republic (1993)

7. Get Ready (2001)

8. Waiting for the Siren’s Call (2005)

9. Lost Sirens (2013)

10. Music Complete (2015)

Ten albums in forty-three years. Not very impressive. It’s even less impressive when we understand that Lost Sirens was just a bunch of offcuts from the preceding album, so it’s nine, really. OK, so in some of these long gaps between releases members were doing side projects such as Bernard Sumner’s Electronic and Peter Hook’s Revenge and Monaco. It’s still a piss-poor work rate.

But I ask you this: since their last album in 2015, what they hell have they been doing? Touring sometimes, yes - but why no new songs in nine years? These are people who have their own recording studios and don’t have any other job - how are they NOT writing any new songs? Are they writing but not releasing? Why? Afraid of ruining their legacy? Just lazy perfectionists like Kraftwerk?

I, on the other hand, work full time, but in the last few years I’ve managed to release TWO full albums each year. Now, I know what you’re thinking :he’s a bloke who makes music on his computer in his bedroom, so his songs must be sonically substandard compared to “real” releases. Well, these days, such is the power of technology, people can and do make top quality music in just this way. Huge fancy studios are no longer needed. OK, if you’re paying famous producers and engineers to polish up your tunes at Abbey Road, then yes, they will sound better than what I come up with on my MacMini. But not much better. You’d be surprised. The average punter wouldn’t be able to tell the difference these days.

And in terms of compositional quality, my stuff is far more complex than most of the efforts that Spotify is full of. I’m constantly amazed how simplistic and underdeveloped other people’s music is, and I’m not just talking about amateurs. OK, enough of the bragging, and while we can’t solve the mystery of the lazy musicians, let’s finish on a positive note.

Some ageing rockers totally go against this trend. The best example is Robert Pollard, the insanely prolific songwriter behind Guided by Voices. Now this guy regularly puts out three albums a year, as well as other side-project material. And people often say that he puts out too much and doesn’t edit enough, but I have to disagree. His signal to noise ratio is just as good as those bands who only release one album every seven years.