Hi, Satin! It's already been a year, geez
I was very lucky last year and my Satan truly blew it out of the water, inasmuch that I've refrained from much of anything new gear-wise (except the Pest Tattern & an Idiotbox Static Fuzz), save the few fixer-uppers that usually get snagged and returned into the wild of eBay for a better life.
My set-up is pretty much the same (Yamaha FB-01 > 2 Minis / Pretty Years / AB Synth / PS-3 / 2 DOD 201's / 90's EHX Memory Man or DD-6), and I run most of the same chain through an old Boss BX mixer for Volca FM/0-Coast things (along with an SP-202 & SQ-1), or a Squier + a green big muff for guitar, ye olde Peavey fretless & a comp for bass. Most volumes are pretty low these days, as I've been living since lockdown with family, and it's usually run into a Fender Champion 600 & another tiny solid state for stereo, and a Peavey Minx for bass (which also works better with the 0-Coast, but only sometimes).
I've always loved modulation (BOSS era, ring mods of all sorts) and boosts (DIRGE eras) and fuzz (all things Fuzzhugger, especially the defunct era weirdos), though most distortions don't get extreme enough for my tastes, at least on their own :/
Halfway through the year I also weaned myself off sugar, for the most part, as I was having health issues amid all the stress eating, gained 25lbs, was becoming pre-diabetic and had sleep apnea. Excercise and a fairer diet have saved me (as has learning to really cook for myself), though I'm still more or less a 2XL (or a generous XL), which kind of bit into my hypebeast phase of hunting for cheap Big Bud Press clothes second hand, but I still do, anyway. I buy a lot of cheap old cookbooks, which my Dad also is a fan of, and we usually will compare notes and try to come up with low salt/low carb/low sugar variations as time allows (he had bypass surgery a year ago, so we are both in kind of the same less-is-more boat). I am a fan of Third Mountain sriracha (yellow is the best), dark chocolate, fancy sardines and all manners of iced teas. I do wish someone would make a diet Dr. Brown's Cel-Ray, though.
CDs are wonderful, and despite not having a working record player and still too many records, I'll buy the occasional LP or cassette w/ a download, especially during all the Bandcamp Fridays this year. Some recent highlights: Chris Cohen's
S/T, Carl Stone's
Stolen Car, all things from Jim O'Rourke's Steamroom, most things Editions Mego, RVNG, etc., but I probably spent alot of time this year listening to teenage era things or the like (Andrew W.K.'s
I Get Wet, Fucked Up's
Dose Your Dreams, Steely Dan, etc.) or all of the Gnostic Trio albums. The same probably goes for movies, as I've reached for the ones that bring me some sort of comfort (Haneke's
The Piano Teacher, Bresson's
Au Hasard Balthazar, PTA's
The Master/
Inherent Vice, Douglas Sirk movies &
Eating Raoul), as with TV series (
True Detective (closing in on my third go round of all seasons),
What We Do In The Shadows,
Jaime's Ultimate Veg, etc.). I amassed so many blu-rays over the past year that I've been hard pressed to buy anything new, so I've been selling most of what I can't live without (with apologies to that Gwar Box Set, not so much to some of those Vinegar Syndrome titles, but I'll always keep a
Putney Swope or
Liquid Sky if it reveals itself as such).
We! love! books! and I probably don't finish many but have even more, somehow. They are multiplying and sometimes disappear and come back without warning. Lots of poetry books (the slimmer the better), how-to, songwriter/filmmaker bios, pulpy sci-fi, cookbooks (the Political Palate series, Dana Crumb's
Eat It!,
A Good Heart & A Light Hand by Ruth L. Gaskins are some faves), Clowes/Crumb/Blomerth style comix and whatever Nicholson Baker seems to be doing this year that isn't updating wikipedia entries (I wish we knew).
Things that are hot that I have not touched (yet): Nord Drum module, CBA Spectre, any of the Bastl/Peter Edwards collabs, Make Noise CTRL, and whatever lives between the space of the Korg Nubass (emphasis on the nub) and the Behringer RD-6 (real answer: Behringer RD-8).
Things that are equally as hot but thin on the ground and deserve a touch (someday): Kawai K1M, Roland D-05, Yamaha TG-33. All of this synth talk is really just shorthand for an eventual move into a Korg Wavestate & call it a day on my part, so thank you for humoring me, nonetheless!
I have no pets
I want to hear your music if I haven't already
and love local flavor of any kind
Well, that's about it, so thanks for reading, Satin!
