Appleseed(S) | Recovery

 

MUSIC+COMIC on another artist picking up the APPLESEED world and characters with 3 volumes of manga many years later in 2011.

The music used in this is in the Assorted Bits3 album on Bandcamp.

I had bought the English GHOST IN THE SHELL manga around 1995 and was amazed. All the tech foot notes! I had watched the Japanese language ANIME many times before that, but I could never catch all that was being said. Didn't matter a whole lot.  

It wasn't till we moved back to Sydney in 2002, and I had a 6 month contract working at Town Hall and discovered the 4 volume APPLESEED manga at the nearby KINOKUNIYA BOOKSTORE, that I found out about APPLESEED.  I had seen the main characters, especially the Cyborg with the bunny ears antenna earlier but hadn't made the connection. 

The 3D animated films look great, but aren't. The second is particularly dull. Even if the action directed by John Woo. 

Other Things

A week and a half since surgery today and the wound isn’t weeping any more. Had the stitches out yesterday, and that is so much better.  They hurt coming out though!  A relief, even if not 100% yet. Didn't sleep well last night though. Even though the area wasn't painful, there was enough discomfort.

Had hoped to be back to normal after 7 days, but that didn’t happen.  Still had a weeping wound, probably from the ointment applied daily. Not painful, but sensitive, and when you moved and walked, the stitches could pull.  Made a small improvement daily though.  Great to not have to schedule going back to the clinic and can now get onto other things.  

Such a better experience than 9 years ago, as FB reminds me today, that was going to last 4 months and really take a year to get over.

Sometimes I set out to make a piece of music and think “this will be VERY METAL”, and end up finding a cool synth patch in the Zebra VST synthesizer that takes me somewhere else.  I may even start with a series of heavily distorted Guitar riffs, that would be metal on their own, but when I add pop-ish elements the result isn’t.  At least I don't think so.

I enjoy making the music I do, but you don’t have to be good at something to enjoy it. It is all simple and unsophisticated riff and sequence pattern based stuff, but that is fine.  I aren’t a “composer” and make my stuff by improvising a bunch of things, then editing them together, that then suggests something else that I overdub on top.  All made in my REAPER Digital Audio Workstation, which is like a word processor for sound and music. Never had any interest of being a performing musician or be in a band, just creating music and sound in a studio alone. It is just like drawing and painting to me which are both solo activities. My early technical career was about designing and building such studio music production systems.

I see other people I know repairing and renovating old music electronics or synthesizers. Some I designed a long time ago! That is something I was "good at", but have NO INTEREST in doing now in retirement! That was a job! Even if it didn’t start that way for me.  I am not that person now.  

Hay Fever is really bad around here now. Eyes stinging and nose running. Every morning have blood caked inside my nose. Even the cat is sneezing. And the amazing thing is, the troublesome trees where planted by the Japanese government decades ago.  They just didn't select a tree without a nasty side effect. 

Visited HANDS (used to be Tokyu Hands) just around the corner from the clinic in Kyoto Shijo yesterday for the first time after my visit to the clinic. 4F is my stop with stationary and art supplies.  Found and bought 2 A5 20 page clear files I use for printing my manga that aren't available any more at my usual ARC OASIS. 

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology  KYOTO JAPAN