Explaining a joke is the best way to kill it, so don’t expect it here. If you don’t get it, no problem, it is a relatively private joke and very far from the year’s most hilarious gag. I would rather just muse about why I did it and how. Simply to share. Simply because I want to.

For quite a while I have been amazed at the industrial scene degradation. The never-ending who’s loudest contest with gas masks and military boots basking in the ultraviolet glow of its own ridicule.

But the point is not a rant. I am done with rants for a while now. The point is that music is musician’s means of expression. So, when a musician has something to say, it is only normal that they do it with music.

Most of my music deals with serious matters, whether in light fashion or not. Ever since I began making music, I loved the ability to express anything I had within through this powerful medium. Having fun through music was one of my extra-curricular activities. Indeed, during my years at the sound school, I used to make relatively popular moment songs. The moment song concept was that of making a short nonsensical piece of music using only the tools available at the MIDI Studio classroom and that during the lunch break. These songs ended up being very short, built on library loops and riddled with lecture samples. The latter are hours of endless fun in sound school — microphone placement examples, some student reciting a poem to later display the dynamic processing effects on voice recording, mind-boggling passages from the psycho acoustics lectures, and so on…

But I digress. The Pain That Hurts is my modern day moment song made to get things off my mind. Things inspired by the modern dark electronic music scene. I set the rules similar to the ones I had during sound school lunch breaks, had the gear ready and had some good time.

The song was recorded using the tools visible in the above picture, it took two hours from conception to completion, the lyrics were improvised, and everything was done on one take. It did take me much longer than expected to encode it and post it to SoundCloud, but those were the technicalities.

So, this Saint Valentine’s Day I don’t have an album to release, I don’t conduct a giveaway, but I give you something to, hopefully, cheer you up. Whether you’ve heard it already or not, ladies and gentlemen, I give to you The Pain That Hurts.

Everyone was praising the change to the wretched music industry. The fall of the vile music labels ripping off the artists, killing creativity, releasing inferior quality music and dictating what should or should not be listened to. The end of the music television and the arrival of the Internet videos. Legally free music downloads and pay-what-you-want purchases. Myriad of social networks providing worldwide billboards and means to communicate directly with the public. The people didn’t want to be told what to listen to, where and how. The people wanted the power. The people have spoken. The power is theirs now. The musicians and the public are no longer what they used to be. The musicians have become agents, distribution specialists, social networking gurus, commercial strategists and risk managers. Such is the price of liberty. Freed from the label oppression we became free from the massive teams of trained promotion experts. Yet, all things considered, the trade-off seems fair. After all, before the business, music is art, and it feels better out of financier’s control. The musician’s role has changed, so has the listener’s.

The public was given reins it couldn’t have dreamt of before, but oddly enough, it seems reluctant to steer. For decades the music consumer was just that – a consumer. All they had to do was wait for the DJ to choose the next big thing and then rush to the store to get the record and practice singing along for the upcoming show. Nothing wrong with that. What is wrong, though, is that the public has done everything in their power to make the new entertainment model possible. Praising it on every occasion, clamoring the freedom for the musicians, the end of the evil mastodons, and massively opposing the later’s attempts to regain the firm grip on the industry. Now, having finally reached their goals, the public is waiting for the DJ to choose the next big thing and then rush to the store to get the record and practice singing along for the upcoming show. What happened to power to the people? Was it all just words, and the power is that of freely following the same thought leader as always? Vox populi is silent in the DIY department where it is most needed. Enjoying the music as a listener is a rather laid-back and passive task. In this new system, however, an audiophile is expected to walk that extra mile that comes with the absolute freedom.

The public has to act; you have to act. We, the musicians, have thrown away our preconceived notions of the financial model in music. We have accepted that we are no longer are an inspired artist, head in the clouds, waiting for the manager to do their dirty work for them. We have embraced the new music technology, we have learnt the sound skills*, read Music Business 101 cover to cover. We learnt our way around Web 2.0. We bend over backwards not just to survive in this ruthless new world, but also to reach you in the way you want it. We make deals with heaps of online distribution platforms, cater to the most ludicrous retailers, all to let you acquire the ridiculously priced fruit of our labour without ruffling your feathers. We have accounts on every living or dead social network just to let you read our ramblings in your way. We adapt, we step over our principles, our pride, our ego, everything we have, because such is the price of freedom.

What is the price you are paying? You suffer an occasional “spread the word” cry for help, a promo link here-and-there and a few other tricks up our beggar’s sleeve. You are being given free music on every occasion, you get to speak with every artist in person, your names are known to us, you are being treated like royals (being called “maggots” and “minions” does not invalidate my point in the industrial world). None of it is wrong. We love the personal contact, we love our public and we love to make you comfortable. What is not too agreeable is witnessing your respect we somehow lost by doing the very thing that we were told would gain it in the first place. What is saddening is seeing your time and efforts being devoted to the well established artists backed by the very major labels you despise so much. Telling your friends you like Gary Numan defines you as a person more the Dragonfly Lingo? Quite possibly. Is it just because Gary Numan is way more talented, or is it also because none of your friends ever heard of Dragonfly Lingo? How about You Shriek? How about Cellmod? Now that he is signed to Metropolis Records, you feel that Caustic is valid and barely start including him in the list when asked? What have you done for the unsigned artists who are doing way more than they bargained for to be heard? Have you done anything besides downloading the free album and, if you are truly generous, paying $10 which don’t even begin to cover the fees that went into making the album? A tweet? A “Like?” Do you go away with a sense of accomplished duty? Does it feel like your effort is on par with what you got in exchange?

Here is the thing: if you do not become an active promoter of the independent music you enjoy, there will be no more of it in the foreseeable future. If your position is “no matter, there are tons of other artists out there,” then you are listening to all the wrong music for all the wrong reasons. Disposable music you only download because it is free is not what this revolution was about. If you put Dragonfly Lingo in the “disposable” category, you may have the right judgement, but you are on the wrong website. Stop this catatonic consumerism. Be active. Show the world that you are alive. You wanted it your way, now you have it. By all means, do something with it. The industry is in your hands. We are in your hands. Do you like what we do? Does it sound good alongside Nine Inch Nails, Chemical Brothers and Orbital? Do you want this something hopefully original and probably fresh? Do you want this new blood to keep flowing? Then, please, do something. Tell the names of your unknown entertainers to the world, loud and clear. Convince your like-minded friends that this music is what they need. Convince them that just because we are no Grammy winners we aren’t any worse than the signed and promoted superstars. Convince the world. Truly, genuinely, spread the word. Be the promoter. Keep the music alive. Hold the wheel and drive.
__________
*I am saying it for fairness sake, but as a trained sound professional, I know that what is learnt is not nearly sufficient. The DIY sound in most of the cases is, for all intents and purposes, dreadful.

The end of the year is a good opportunity to look at the year gone by and see how much has been done, how much accomplished. Remembering where we have been and where we are now helps to better see where we are going.

For me, 2011 was not a bad year. It saw Dragonfly Lingo release a very personal EP born from a collaboration with a visual artist Leroy Roper — Flux.

The concept album that was at the very start of Dragonfly Lingo, Offscreen, saw the day in June 2011. That alone is an immense accomplishment to me, enough to call it a good year. For nearly a decade the idea of such an album was in the back of my head. To see it come to life is both satisfying and intimidating. The response to the album has been better than I could expect and that, too, is something I am taking with me from 2011.

The second single from the “music meets film” album, which met with a few complications on its way out, is also among the highlights of Dragonfly Lingo’s year. Graced by remixes from the talented artists Common Man Down, Digiflesh, Cellmod and Attack Sustain, All Right is a stylish bow to the Offscreen chapter.

I have also tried my hand at remixing as Dragonfly Lingo. I made versions of Royal for Cellmod and Destroy Me for Razorwire Halo. Not entirely my cup of tea at first, the experience tuned out very interesting. Hopefully, the artists and the public are pleased with the results.

Looking back at all these musical achievements, it appears that all that is left to do is go forward, persist, improve, and create. Some of the upcoming Dragonfly Lingo musical endeavours are already under way.

All in all, 2011 was hard, complicated and exhausting, but it was also edifying, inspiring and brilliant. It was much better than 2010, I want to say. Actually, I want to say that about each passing year, that it was better than the one before it. We all want things to keep getting better all the time, and there is no reason why they shouldn’t. No matter the bumps on the road, we keep moving forward.

Thank you for being there for me!

Happy new year!

After The Beginning of the End, The End of Music and The End of Art, we are here. Actually, where is “here?” What has changed in almost a year since The End began? Where are we now? The financial crisis is still raging, so we are buying 3D Smart TVs in bulk. The record labels are out of business, so 30 Seconds to Mars and Depeche Mode are filling our fighting-for-independents shelves. The cinema industry needs to hear our protest, so we are flocking to the third remake of the last year’s commercial success. Western society as we know it is about to collapse, so we are tweeting from our tents waiting for a trending hashtag to free us from the Wall Street oppression.

So, what seems to have been a year full of turmoil is coming to an end and the radical changes we were hoping it would bring are nowhere to be found. Perhaps next year. Perhaps in 2012. Perhaps the Mayan end of the world will change the world we have grown so displeased of. At least, we hope.

While we wait for the next revolution around the Sun to change our lives, passive-aggressively accusing everyone we can in everything that feels wrong, silently mumbling insults and bobbing our heads to the fellow plaintiff’s confidences with the world through social media, the revolution follows its orbit. The well televised revolution that cares not for us, the one that has been there unfathomably long before we came about, this revolution will continue just as long after we are perished leaving no trace of our seven billion souls. Do we care? Do we take every end-of-the-world warning as a chance to ponder on what we might be doing wrong? What may be twisted with our priorities? What is truly important? What do we want our lives to be about?

We are firmly certain that we do. Yet, we are willing to kick and punch anyone to get the tickets to the world première of the latest flick about people being kind to each-another. If not, we are sending a message to the film studios by getting it in a Torrent. They surely get the message. We are in control. Yet, we can’t suppress the burning desire to acquire the latest iteration of a tablet PC with unbelievable capabilities and 4G-3D-WiFi-gyroscopic-GPS support taking Angry Birds to a whole new level. We are tired of our kids and let VoD babysit – all the education they need is there, nobody cancelled Discovery Channel and Tom & Jerry taught our parents well enough. That is if we are willing to subdue to the dreadful society pressure to have kids. We can think for ourselves, we don’t want kids, we are looking for a real meaning of life, which just can’t be the life itself – we are a superior living being, we are no animals. We think for ourselves, all the same thing, but all independently. We feel religion is just a story, yet we can’t shake its millennia stigma burnt into our minds. Or we don’t. We love it, for it gives us comfort of convenient explanations of the things that trouble and scare us the most. We know how we came to be, we know why and we know what happens after the end. We still can’t stand anyone calling for our god using a different name, let alone not calling for him/her/it at all. For unity we call, but only as long as it is unity among ours. Unity for who? For what? Perhaps, unity against?

So, more connected than ever, as divided as always, we follow our thought leaders, whether known by their name or hidden behind a fashionable Guy Fawkes mask. We are doing it out of free will, for we are not that other country. We have our unique view on things, which we just might share on an Internet forum where anyone is free to disagree and be insulted for doing so. We have expert opinions on everything, for we are all connected to the Wire that never lies, since it belongs to the people, and people is us, unless it is someone else.

Thus, we keep spinning around the sun, with the pop culture dancing like it’s the last night of its life, while the dear dark alternative is stomping off faces, melting ears and blasting everything insulting politicians and consumerism. All to help us relax from the mindless job of working for the man we detest and do merely to survive (get a new 3D Smart TV). But, perhaps, after spending a day performing mind-numbing monotonous tasks it would be better to actually have our heads do some thinking for a change? That, rather than beating it down into a continuous coma-like state. Tired and depressed, we drift away into something that does not require our full attention, since we are multitasking. We watch the telly, while complaining on the loathed data-mining social networks with something blasting into the headphones to cheer up the spirit that “just can’t live without music.”

We need to relax. We need a rest from thinking the second-hand nonsense that floods the airwaves and the brainwaves. We are too tired to be bothered by a neighbour in need of a loan, we have done our share by giving those who are really in need. Who is to decide which one of our peers qualifies for help is of no concern to us, let them decide, we are too darn tired. Moreover, helping a neighbour does not come with a pretty bumper sticker. We are tired. We need books that read themselves and, please, oh please, entertain us. We need something new, we have seen it all — death, gore, sex, suffering, mutilation, ridicule, disgrace, repulsion, everything, and we have seen it in 3D. We need to be tickled. Our brains are too big, we are too smart, we have completed Brain Age 2 in one day. Our IQ is off the scale. No matter if we can’t figure out how to end bot the male and female sexism, we are scientifically brilliant. We are on a roll, a few more years and we shall vanquish poverty, elect the government that will be transparent without leaking and will save the planet. Yes, save the planet, no less. We are so superior to everything that we are actually saving a planet from an all-powerful menace that is us, humans. More powerful than asteroids, comets, gamma rays, red giants, neutron stars and black holes. We shall save our planet, then we shall save the universe. Then we will have to relax.

What if we were to stop relaxing? What if we were to stop being so passive? What if we were to stop being passengers in our life? What if we were to start thinking, really thinking for ourselves? What if we were to question everything and not only what we were told to question? What if we were to start standing up for our true convictions? What if we were to make up our own convictions? I guess, if we were to do all that, we would not be us any longer and it would truly be the end of the world…

Having been on a work trip to the North America, I could not find the time to properly announce this release. So here is the overdue introduction to Dragonfly Lingo’s latest remix EP All Right.

Originally, the idea of making a track based on the surreal telephone conversation scene from Shinya Tsukamoto’s cult sci-fi flick Tetsuo: The Iron Man came to be in 2003, when together with One June’s guitarist, we were making a mocking concept album. Its concept was that any track could not take more than two days of work start to finish: day one to compose, program and record the digital parts; day two to compose and record the guitars. Also, everything had to be recorded on the first take, no re-recording, no punching in, no fixing.

While most of this Yves Klein-esque project was for internal consumption, being more mockery than music per se, the deliciously absurd and perfectly rhythmic “moshi moshi” sample left me willing to do something more accomplished with it. So, when Dragonfly Lingo’s album built around motion picture sound excerpts came about, I knew that I had to bring the Tetsuo track back.

Driven away from the industrial theme, so as to offer a different take on the film, the piece was destined to be lightweight. Thus the dance floor-friendly format came naturally. Certain that I wanted to chop the royalty-free vintage drum breaks collection I had, not as much whether I wanted it to feature guitars, I shared my doubt on Twitter and in two days time I was mixing in the driven guitars graciously offered by Michael Pallante.

Come the time to consider a second single from Offscreen, All Right seemed like the best candidate, being as upbeat and club-ready as Morningside. With the big beat piece on my hands, I thought that it would be interesting to see it go from there back to the motion picture’s original industrial realm. For this mise en abîme of sorts, I have approached the artists whom I thought to be, aside from very talented, best fit for such a stunt. Thus, All Right came to be a from-industrial–to-big-beat–to-industrial experience, spanning different flavours of this broad genre.

On the freely available under Creative Commons license EP, you will find the electronic industrial mix by Common Man Down, an EBM version by Digiflesh, a trip-hop glitch rendition by Cellmod, and a living hardware-breathing dark ambient conclusion by Attack Sustain.

So, do not linger in hesitation, download this free EP from Dragonfly Lingo’s Bandcamp Store in any format you might dream of.

Download and share it – Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license highly encourages it!

If Torrent is your game, download and share simultaneously through the torrent brought to you by Mininova.

Don’t forget to scrobble, love, tag and share your listening experience on Last.fm, too.

Turn it up, enjoy the sound, spread the Lingo! Everything will be all right…

I always thought the art of remix had two possible ways: either explore the original track’s direction, taking the initial concept as far as it goes and beyond; or bend it to the extreme by taking it into the polar opposite “what-if.” Razorwire Halo’s song Destroy Me is rather brutal guitar-driven industrial rock, and, given my current state of mind and conjuncture, I went the what-if way. While Razorwire Halo express their desperate anger at the world that has destroyed them, I wanted to explore what would be the outlook of a person who is past the anger stage and whose acceptance is serene and the soul appeased.

I encourage you to download Armed to the Teeth and listen to all nine remixes. You have nothing to lose as it is free.

Alternatively, you may download the Minimum Destruction remix from Dragonfly Lingo’s ReverbNation page (mind the auto-play).

I have also been solicited by Cellmod (for reasons soon to be revealed [hint-hint]), with a remix proposition for Royal, from his album Adevolve.

With this remix I also went the opposite direction from the original. Not as much in terms of emotion, but rather in the nearly palpable sonic realm. Cellmod’s track is surgically precise, ethereal, cold and void of colour, much like we see the outer space. I decided to keep nearly none of the original recording and re-played the parts by hand, having crafted the most living and dirty sounds I thought fit for the piece. Thus, I have attempted taking the spatially unreachable royal appearance to the earthly look from within.

Re|Evolved will soon be available through most digital retailers. Until then – enjoy the teaser trailer I made at Komorebi Studios.

The following review is a result of my submission of The Vortex to a Music Xray opportunity.

“Tread the unexplored corridors in the hope of finding, ultimately, the final solution.” – Dr. Channard, (Hellbound: Hellraiser 2)

Electronic industrial artist Dragonfly Lingo has undertaken an ambitious project with “Offscreen”, his brand new album that seamlessly blends a passion for film with a gift for translating this passion into music. The film inspirations are mainly based in the horror genre, and I must state that I am not familiar with most of the films listed in the album credits/story. However, the composer behind the project, Mitia Wexler, has certainly succeeded in his overarching goal because I found the music fascinating and engaging in and of itself. This is music with a profound meaning to the composer and a back story. It’s real art.

“The Vortex” is a compelling piece. Inspired by Tony Randel’s “Hellbound: Hellraiser 2″, the song is surprisingly calm and hypnotic. Wexler chose to feature Doctor Channard’s psychiatric talk as the samples of choice, and it suits perfectly. The beat starts off sounding sparse like something you would hear on Nine inch Nail’s “The Fragile”, and with the excess of glitchy electronica available today, it’s nice to see an artist who takes the time to choose the right pieces for the puzzle. The production is excellent throughout. The instrumentation is ethereal and atmospheric – soothing even, and you definitely get the sense. Doctor Channard’s words could strangely fit almost any seeker on any path, except of course, non-thinkers, who probably won’t be coming across this music anyway.

The main groove of the song ends with the quote “We have to see. We have to know.” From here the track lifts off to an edgier industrial landscape, yet the transition is seamless. I’m impressed by Dragonfly Lingo’s incredibly strong sense of both dynamic and melody. This is highly recommended music for any fans of electronic music. Period.

James Moore
(Your Band Is a Virus)

The art… Among other things, the art has been the way for the humans to express their emotions, ideas and feelings. It has been an outlet for anybody, regardless of skills. It has always been beyond the daily routine, even when the latter was the subject. Peaceful in its essence, it has been in the centre of countless conflicts and the object of desire for all with the ruling ambitions. It has no single incarnation, it is anything our mind makes it to be. Art is probably the only human creation to truly fight our omnipotent arch nemesis — the time.

Yet the art has its own arch nemesis, and one with an agenda hard to fathom — the humanity. The very humanity that has created this outlet for the by-products of its cerebral mezzanine. Omnipotent by the fact that the art only exists as long as we exist either to create or admire it, we are mistreating this gift, taking it for granted.

We have come full circle, in a way. Once leaving the emotions command our body for a short while and led by imagination set the earthly concerns aside and create something out of nothing. Now, we are trying to control these emotions and imagination in order to best adapt them to the aforementioned concerns. Once driven by the inspiration alone, now all forms of art seem to become invaded by the hit potential, public appeal, niche, format, style, and target audience. While it is undoubtedly inevitable in the society as we know it, the extent to which these factors have taken importance seems disproportionate. Of course, all artists want their work to be appreciated by as many people as possible, but actually crafting the artworks for this purpose alone goes beyond artistic integrity and the whole essence of artistic expression.

The scientific research found that the public want more action in films? Well, let us drop the exposition altogether and cut straight to the chase, saving on opening credits too. The survey shows that the majority loves witless dance tunes? Let us fire all acts that offer anything other than the Friday night blow-off-steam bonanza. The in-depth art sales analysis states that abstract art is what appeals the most? Why, let us fill the galleries with these number one sellers and take the rest out to save valuable space. The sorcerer stories are fashionable again? Time to publish those fifteen mediocre novels we have in stock. And so on, and so forth…

It may look not as bad, being an obvious exaggeration, but where does it leave us in reality? It feels like a world with a limited choice, where the tastes are governed by the sales managers and commerce secretaries. A world where advance is all but encouraged and the experimentation has more road blocks than escalators on its way. Certainly, there are “bastions of artistic freedom, expression and innovation,” but in the end, those too are following established norms from which none is ready to stray. The films have to be dead slow, the music atonal and the paintings repulsive. The alternative culture has become a parody of itself, too.

Once intended to express, educate, provoke and stimulate, the art has become a service. A lowly service, at that; the one that has to adapt to the taste and has no say. A service that no one respects. A service so superfluous that in this world of pauper’s financial opulence the consumer no longer feels the need to pay for it.

Who is to blame? I guess all of us. The artists who let the studio bosses dictate the directions, the at-the-top ones who let the commercial clerks make the artistic choices, the public who let this trio adrift carry it along into the whirlpool of self-indulgence, and the vox populi orators who point fingers in all the wrong directions. Art is our handiwork (albeit as an atom – too powerful to rest well in our hands), it is up to us alone to model this wonderful invention.

Though, what if instead of snubbing and attacking the declining mainstream we fought our best to raise the bar of what is à la mode? What if we realised that the way to do it is not by closing down in an elitist niche that requires special auspices to enter? This segmentation leads to the niche becoming stagnant without the fresh influx of ideas, and eventually, it ends up a slump as the mainstream it once left. What if we, as artists, were to try and look at ourselves with a little more objectivity and be a little more modest? By being modest I mean really modest and not “modest unlike that other group of artists.” What if we were to work our best to improve our art and let the others’ work influence us throughout our life? What if the “elite” art were to drop its passive-aggressive behaviour and the “people’s art” were to respect itself a little more? What if we were all to drop the chase for immediate satisfaction and look at the bigger picture once in a while?

What if we were to stop trying to bring the end of art? For what we really are ending is ourselves.

The effort at the very origin of Lingo, Offscreen is more than just a concept album, it is a manifesto, if you like, an endeavour that defines the whole musical concept in a way. This project is all about cinematic music, and be it with film samples, purely instrumental, or downright vocal, the soundtrack vibe is here to stay, for it is the Lingo way of making music.

Both the digital and the limited edition CD flavours of the LP come with extensive liner notes, so I won’t delve into lengthy descriptions of what Offscreen is and what it stands for. You may also read the text on the album, as well as each track‘s individual pages.

I would like to mention the films that have inspired Offscreen:

• William Friedkin’s The Exorcist
• Shinya Tsukamoto’s Tetsuo: The Iron Man
• Phil Alden Robinson’s Sneakers
• Alan Parker’s Midnight Express
• Don Coscarelli’s Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead
• David Cronenberg’s Videodrome
• Tony Randel’s Hellbound: Hellraiser II
• Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation
• Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind
• Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris

Other detail, albeit technical, but still the one I find worth mentioning is the pitch. All cinema made on film, be it 35 or 16 mm, is filmed at 24 frames-per-second. That is well-known. What is less known, is that the home video transfer for Europe and other PAL system (i.e. 25 frames-per-second) regions is made without a complex conversion, but rather a simple one fps speed-up. The four percent speed difference that is hardly perceivable in image and dialogue, slightly more so in music, is negligible. However, to create as authentic an experience as possible, I have brought the sound bites originating from the DVDs to their original film pitch. Thus, all the dialogue and other film bits you will experience sound as close to the way they did during their theatrical release as it gets.

I hope you will enjoy this sound excursion into the seventh art realm!

The latter shall be released on the 23rd of June 2011, preceded by proper announcements and the usual inside stories. This post is rather to reassure those who were following the philosophical musings on the complexities of the modern world — The End series will return once the main activity of Dragonfly Lingo, which is recording and releasing music, calms down a notch.

In the mean time, feel free to read, agree, disagree, boil, nod and comment the first two chapters of The End: The Beginning of the End and The End of Music.