There’s a band that’s out of Chicago doing a thing where if you buy a CD you’re entered into a raffle to win the guitarist’s old cheap guitar.  Pretty brilliant idea.  I’m thinking about doing the same thing with some of my old pedals.  Anyone in the USA placing a ten dollar order is entered in a raffle to win one of my old pedals or something like that.  I mean, I don’t have the heart to sell my old Digitech octave pedal that I used from 1995-2002, but I could give it away for someone else to sell or throw away.

Last Night’s Dreams:
Instead of moving my grandmother down to North Carolina to take care of her, I move in with her in Pennsylvania to take care of her.  I’m talking to Nathan Amundson (Rivulets) on the phone while getting ready for work on my third shift job & I hear my grandmother moving around in the living room & I hang up the phone & rush in.  Usually she’s in bed by now, but she’s stayed up watching a movie.  Everything’s fine, she asks me to get her a tapioca pudding & I do.  In the kitchen on the floor I have four sheets of newspaper laid out on the floor & I paint on them an explanation of why I hung up the phone & send a picture of it to Nathan.

There’s a little girl who I don’t recognize in my kitchen.  She grabs my cigar cutter off the counter & starts spinning it around her finger.  I say, “Don’t do that, people get their fingers cut off with those things!”  She stops & her finger is bleeding & she starts to cry when she sees the blood.  I set her on the counter & wash the cut clean in the sink.

I’m working at the airport loading the planes for the first flights of the day, sitting in a bin waiting for some luggage to load.  I’m staring out at the other aircraft across the way & I see it start to roll forward, which shouldn’t be happening.  It means the brakes are disengaged & all three wheels are unchocked.   I watch as it rolls through a fence & into a pond that holds runoff water from the tarmac.  Everybody is running around freaking out & I’m just waiting for the luggage to come so I can start working on my own job.

XO comes out of retirement as a vigilante instead of a hitman to kill a child molester let off on a technicality.

So this past Saturday I finished up things for the hiatus.  Put up the final (for now) issue of QRD, sent out a Silber newsletter announcing the hiatus, & got out the last of the promo emails for the new EPs.  So Monday, the fact that I didn’t have anything I needed to do hit me really hard.  I’d gotten an email from my friend Patricia about how when you take away the thing that was at the center of your definition of self you’re left with a hole; but that over time something will naturally fill it, which is surely true.  But I guess it will take a while at least.  Also, interestingly I got three people in touch with me about wanting me to do releases presumably as a result of announcing the hiatus.  So I may end up lifting things sooner than I thought.  Or maybe those three will be a good stopping point.  Who knows.

Small Bed (flash fiction)
The last time I slept in this bed you were lying beside me.  I thought you’d always be next to me, a reassurance that the world is good whenever I woke up in the night.  The bed is too small to honestly say it’s cold or lonely without you.  There’s no need for you in it, just a want for you in it.  I want you to be my property & me to be your property.  I want the ring that I carry as a weight on my right hand to be on your left hand marking you as my bride.   To have a marriage that ends with you plunging a knife in my chest in my sleep.  But instead, I suppose, I will never see you again.

Last Night’s Dreams:
It’s after some sort of simulacrum event & people are selling there likenesses & memories to be made to create robots & drones.  Intentionally developing their lives to be more lucrative to be purchased for such uses.  Every life choice calculated & in a certain way dishonest.

I’m playing Connect Four with Karla & I ask her if she wants to be red or black & she says, “You know that I want to be red.”  After she drops in her second piece she says, “I don’t want to play this anymore.  This sucks.”  & I say, “Look, I am just trying to build some pleasant memories,  I don’t want to have nothing to remember fondly.”

I got in the artwork for Star #3 from Kurt Dinse.  Hoping to get it laid out & printed in the next day or two.

I did a thing with Joe Kendrick for his Lingua Musica program (I don’t even know what to call the thing… thirty minute interviews with people via Google Hangouts… is that a podcast or what is it?).  I discussed the hiatus & christianity (during which I come across as a crazy person) & bunch of other stuff.  Here it is….

Last Night’s Dream:
I’m cleaning my room & I find a gun.  It’s a nickel plated pistol.  Is this thing mine?  Why do I have it?  They always seem so much bigger in real life looking at them than they do on TV.  In my hand this one just feels at home, like an extension of my arm.  Or maybe like my arm & body are an extension of it.

I’m trying to get the straggler interviews for QRD ready for a catch all interview.  It might go up in just a couple hours.  We’ll see what happens.

Continuing to try to wrap up things here so I can take some time off.  Here’s a couple more five minute EPs….

Small Life Form – We Shall Be One MP3 EP 2012 | Silber 145 5 tracks, 5 minutes $1 download Small Life Form returns with a feedback driven quest for sleep & the destruction of self. : Press Release : Digital Booklet : Reviews Track Listing: you sound like you have something to say stay out of my head i am not sure we speak the same language now i understand all the things that you mean we shall be one

Tony Whitlock – Secret Keepers MP3 EP 2012 | Silber 144 5 tracks, 5 minutes $1 download Tony Whitlock joins Silber with a drone soundtrack to an unmade film. : Press Release : Digital Booklet : Reviews Track Listing: Eleven A Three Ten One Eleven B

Last Night’s Dreams:
I’m at a convention displaying my comics & some guy lets his kid pull down my display & break it.  The he says it’s no big deal, his kid does stuff like this all the time & he’ll give me $50 to fix it.  I tell him I don’t need his money, I need him & his kid do the 100 hours of work it took to build the damn thing.

I’m helping clean my grandmother after she’s crapped her pants & she’s trying to help & I’m just trying to keep her from putting her hands in her own shit.

Muscle Mass is minimalist aggressive synth pop. I never quite figured out what chillwave is, but maybe it sounds like this?

: Press Release
: Digital Booklet
: Reviews

Track Listing:
Dream Riff
4 Beat
Love Money
Sambanthem
Undeniable

Ms. is Shane De Leon of Miss Massive Snowflake (& formerly Rllrbll) making fun indie pop music on tour with friends.

: Press Release
: Digital Booklet
: Reviews

Track Listing:
Sparklers
Samie Jith
Tangled Up
Hunter/Gatherer
Distance is Space (The Next Generation)

Dan West came to us through his collaborations with Azalia Snail under the name LoveyDove. On Expression Compression he combines 1980s noise rock with Sun Ra styled jazz.

: Press Release
: Digital Booklet
: Reviews

Track Listing:
Foot Loose And Fancy Free
Stupid Jerk
It’s Life
Ay
The World Has Ended Parts 1 and 2

The Infant Cycle has been slogging out their own brand of music blending drone, ambient, noise, & music concrete for nearly 20 years. The Complete Infant Cycle represents all the current things The Infant Cycle currently does distilled down into just five minutes

: Press Release
: Digital Booklet
: Reviews

Track Listing:
C no. 2
Pope
Hulls Gently Ebb And Collide
C no. 3
Auntie, You’re Carrying The Biggest One Yet

Top Five Most Read Silber Digital Comics in May
1. Lost Kisses #24
2. Lost Kisses #5
3. Poit – WTF?
4. Lost Kisses #4
5. Just A Man #1

Top Five Most Read About Silber Releases in May
1. Zlata Sandor | Shaun Sandor – Band on the Moon
2. Lycia – Cold
3. Electric Bird Noise – Desert Jelly
4. Rllrbll – The White Biscuit
5. Goddakk – III

Top Ten Silber Album Downloads in May
1. Firetail – Learning to Cheat
2. Plumerai – Marco Polo
3. Zlata Sandor | Shaun Sandor – Band on the Moon
4. Feel No Other – Five Minute EP
5. Electric Bird Noise – Desert Jelly
6. Ben Link Collins – Five Memories
7. Rllrbll – The White Biscuit
8. Various Artists – 30 Seconds of Time
9. Baptizer – Untitled
10. Nik Furious – Super Wet

Top Five Most Read QRD Interviews in May
1. Erin O’Brien (issue 29 (2005))
2. Tom Lugo (issue 63 – Guitarist Interviews IX (2013))
3. Alan Sparhawk (issue 46 – Guitarist Interviews IV (2010))
4. Xavier Watkins (issue 63 – Guitarist Interviews IX (2013))
5. Jeff Gibbons (issue 62 – Indie Comics VI (2013))

So this week looks like it’s going to be a big week with a bunch of things going on.  I got the audio mastering & MP3 conversion done for seven releases for the five minute EP series, the artwork done for six of them, & then the press releases & webpages done for two of them (see below).  I’m hoping to get more of them ready to go each day & maybe even record a Small Life Form one this week.  I also got in an interview from Alan Sparhawk (Low) that will be in the QRD catch-all issue whenever I have time to make that happen.

Here’s a short interview I did about drone music with local art zine Au Courant.  I was in a pretty negative space when I did the interview, but I think I came across okay.

Bryce Eiman – Perfect Fifths MP3 EP 2012 | Silber 139 5 tracks, 5 minutes $1 download Bryce Eiman is the heart & soul of the 919 Noise scene.  On Perfect Fifths he weaves a tale of debauchery & destruction leading to calm & peace in 5 minutes of noise & dubbed out death disco. : Press Release : Digital Booklet : Reviews Track Listing: 3ws04 (69BPM) Ophir (56BPM) Madness of the Middle Child (64BPM) Isotrope 05 (78BPM) Caresse (96BPM)

Andrew Weathers – They Turned the Heat On MP3 EP 2012 | Silber 138 5 tracks, 5 minutes $1 download A collection of banjo improvisations from the man with Silber blood in his veins, Andrew Weathers.  Does studying the craft side of music create new possibilities or stifle creativity? : Press Release : Digital Booklet : Reviews Track Listing: Most Days It’s Sunny and Warm, In Oakland At Least But, You Know, I Still Wear My Sweaters, It Gets Cold Here Sometimes So I Was Glad When My Building Manager Turned On The Heat Summer Lasts Until October The Weather In California Is Nice

Last Night’s Dream:
I’m wandering around an industrial complex in the middle of the night looking for lemon popsicles that were supposed to be delivered & left along the fenceline.  I keep finding single cherry ones.  I finally find a lemon one & then I spot a box with a dozen orange ones inside.  This delivery system is fucked.  They’re all going to be melted by the time anyone else finds them.