Who Are The Mysterines? 30Jun20

The Mysterines don’t have a full debut album yet but they’ll likely produce many albums - this will really be a band to watch. They are a Liverpool band combining punk-grunge rock with punchy bass lines and relentless drum beats. They are fronted by Lia Metcalfe, sometimes on lead and always singing. Bass licks are from George Favager wailing on his Rickenbacker and drum underpinnings are from Chrissy Moore. Dark and unhinged but with quite some polish, passion and poise, Metcalfe is fusing genres, writing angst and singing lead vocals, appearing all the while an accomplished rock star. The Mysterines are backed by a lot of practice; it all works very well here. I can't find the 2018 recordings or footage.

They have a 4-song self-published EP from 2019 called Take Control but are dropping new music and videos swiftly in 2020. "Not many" people are listening or watching, but they’re gonna explode. They need a lead guitarist I sense, and I've seen footage and heard songs with and without. There is some wicked stuff as a trio but as a full guitar band they are better - sometimes not tight enough but whatever.

The Mysterines covered Arctic Monkeys well but sound more like Led Zeppelin, and they seem to be managing their 18 month rollout well with strong "Official Vids" channel and several well-produced videos, tons of cam footage and some good pro-media-produced live songs. Folks are raving about the live shows in the UK. The recent videos are pretty edgy and good. Here are just some live YouTube samples; they are chronological and the best recordings (media-pro) with video are 1 (BTW, this is just the opening number so watch the others on BBC Intro too), 4 and 6.

1. Introducing/BBC Feb19 - https://youtu.be/ipc60OHfM7c
2. Liverpool Arts Club Feb19 - https://youtu.be/QSxnIfRZb0U
3. Manchester Deaf Institute Feb19 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKlYctlm57g
4. Tenement TV 31Mar20 - https://youtu.be/_vHScM6vAiY
5. OMEARA Aug19 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SC9ryV9I1qM
6. Reading + Leeds/BBC Sep20 - https://youtu.be/8o_YMAOEsfg

I am already a fan and own the excellent album. They even have a great band name.

Angler Mtn Above Silverthorne 28Jun20

Kala and I usually hike into the Gore but today we crossed the street! We climbed through many amazing varieties of wildflowers, some thoughtfully marked, up Angler Mtn near the residences on the east side of Rt 9 above Silverthorne. It provided us a great quick 4.5mi/1200ft hike which afforded spectacular views of Summit Co stuff like the Dillon Rez, 10 Mile Range, Gore Range, Copper Mtn, Breckenridge, Mt Quandry and more. We got a great look our our hometown of Silverthorne basically from directly across from DD's place. We weren't sure about this hike, and the climb just reached the Ptarmigan trail, not the top ridgeline (without another 1200ft climb full bushwhacking), but the views and the flowers were awesome. Recommended.

 

Nest Theater Part Twelve - Acoustic Wall Treatments 28Jun20

Today I installed acoustic wall treatments in the Nest Theater. Ok, they are cheap Amazon rugs hung on cheap Amazon rods - but they do what I need which is to reduce aural reflections (for such a small space) and deaden the room a bit. To do this I measured a bunch of stuff carefully and purchased then hanged black out curtain rods in the places intended for the carpets. The front wall was a snug fit to a potential TV so I double checked measurements and installed the rods. To hang the carpeting from the rods I fashioned a long block of wood with a 45° cut on one side and stapled that to the top of the carpet from the face of the carpet. I added a smidge of tape to assure the carpets stayed in place. Then, duh, I hung all the carpets and shimmed where they were not hanging straight. In the end it looks and sounds good to me.

UPDATE: My hanging design above failed; it put too much torque on the rod and would ultimately rotate the rod and fall off. Hmmm... I redesigned to a loop (made of ribbon) and block hanger and the rugs are all stable and continue to hang.

The wall treatments help tame the room a bit and then I remeasured and re-EQed the Nest Theater. The light blue-green line is that after EQ and is very close to the my ideal room curve. It is a bit painful but right now I am having to attenuate the 7dB "shout" from 1K-3KHz range with DSP - I am still searching for a way to do this with an alternative method but everyone using this driver seems to have this issue in the raw and no one I've found have done tweaks to the driver itself which tame it. My next steps are to dampening the interior of the BLHs some more.

Here's evidence that the "shout" exists from use of the driver, not my cabinet or system... it's someone else's freq SPL curve for a different speaker which employs the Fostex 168E∑ driver. The same "shout" is evident. It is heartening though that my bass & sub-base, as well as my high-end, are better.

Nest Theater Part Eleven - Stain & Finish 27Jun20

With the warmer weather I escaped the FR and came to Summit to finish the DIY speakers & audio shelving for the Nest theater. The first step was to thoroughly sand every exposed surface - I used the orbital and took the surfaces from 100 grit down to 220 grit and then used a brush and a tack cloth to wrangle all the dust; this took a full day.

The seconds step was to prep the surfaces with a pre-stain solvent. This is done to assure an even absorption of stain into the plywood - edges vs field is tricky otherwise. I then jumped to staining with black/ebony. Never again. While I think everything came out fine the black staining process is very finicky and very messy. After wiping on the stain I needed to get it all off the surface after 15 minutes. This also took a day as I could really only manage one or 2 surfaces at a time to meet the timing and get a consistent look. Whew. I made a jig to handle the round shelving legs. Plus, each day I was moving stuff into the garage to avoid the PM storms. It was a big third step.

I let the stain dry for an extra day before moving to the fourth step: polyurethane coatings. Poly is best done in warmer weather, check. Poly is best done in multiple thin coatings with finish (600 grit) sanding in between, check; finalized with a steel wool sanding and then a final thin finish coat, check. I chose to air spray the first couple of coats to save time - it worked fine with a thinned ~15% with lacquer thinner and 25psi on the regulated compressor. The final coat was done from a new can of poly with a foam brush. They came out nice.

Plus, vendors finally shipped my N95 filters for my respirator - I ran out at exactly the wrong time.

After another day of drying, the final step was reinstallation. I rebuilt the shelving and reinstalled the Nest Theater audio gear. Kala & I then moved the finished DRC BLHs into the Nest and I reassembled them and dialed it all in again. Finishing is a big job but worth it... the black on Baltic birch is beautiful.

Scoring More FLAC 25Jun20

A friend who'd flipped back to LPs sold me ~400 CDs. I just finished ripping them to FLAC and our tastes (as our age) overlap closely - a preponderance of lady voices. This did precipitate a cleansing of my database of tunes however - the duplicates where I owned "only" mp3 (a dark moment in my music acquisition past) and I bought a CD variant from them (see how I did that?) prompted me to eliminate the mp3 file in favor of flac. I scripted finding the duplicates (at least in Album+Artist+Track+Time) and deleted all the MP3 files in favor of FLAC files as shown below with Natalie Merchant. Woohoo. Now I have 900 CDs of which I have no intention using, or losing - as I need the right to play, even though I don't play the CD. Recent acquisition tech is more aware - I buy 24bit wide with 96KHz sampling when I can)... CDs just deliver 16bit/44.1KHz, which is cool for sure.