Well that was interesting. NAMM. 
What a FusterCluck! The din is unimaginable and carrying on an intelligent conversation is practically impossible at times. I was pleased to meet and speak with Michelle Moog Kousa and Marc Doty with the Bob Moog Foundation, Tod Barton at the Buchla booth, Eric Barbour from Metasonix and many others. It was almost more notable for the great number of people that I wanted to meet, but never managed to find (Tara, Maf, Muff, Matrix and more). Yet somehow I managed to encounter Jordan Rudess on 5 separate occasions over two days time! How is this possible?

Thanks go out to Suit and Tie Guy and the folks at Analogue Haven for making it possible for me to have a pass. Also to Cannonball Musical Instruments for inviting me to a show where most of their major jazz players performed. That was an evening!

I am going to put up a pile of photos below without any explanation. You can find much more information on everything pictured at Matrixsynth, SonicState or elsewhere on the web. I am too tired and lazy to try and write anything intelligent.

The weather here in God's Country has turned nasty. After shoveling the drive three times in a day and half the snow blew over, the sky cleared, and the temperature dropped. 

Today it was 10F/-12C when I got up and the daytime high is sitting at 24F/-4C. I am thankful during times like these for my Command Center. All of those tubes and blinky lights keep the room nice and toasty warm.

Today I am doing some experiments with a theremin running through every ring modulator that I own. Which is three, not counting the one on the EMW-200.

I am living in interesting times. There is the track on the IFAR compilation mentioned below and another that I just submitted for the album with the theme "Found". I am in the process of working on another track for a third IFAR Musique Concrete album with  he theme "Time Lapse". 

IFAR.
That is the Institute For Alien Research which is run by a mysterious figure who goes by the name of Shaun Robert. He is curating a series of compilation albums dedicated to the ethos of Musique Concrete. If you are unfamiliar with the term let me spare you my thoughts on the subject and suggest that you search it on the internet. 

Shaun explained it this way via e-mail...
"... it's a series of compilations dedicated to Music Concrete, searching for what that can be... I plan to do 40 volumes, each with 15 4'33" tracks..."
That is 40 albums. All of them will be available on BandCamp as free downloads although at the time of the initial release they are streaming only for the first few weeks. There is one Atomic Shadow track on the album dedicated to Pierre Schaffer, an artist who was the founder of Musique Concrete. I was happy to be in the company of such a diverse group of artists who contributed to this album. The Atomic Shadow track was inspired by Pierre's 1948 composition Étude aux chemins de fer . More information about Pierre Schaeffer can be found on Wikipedia.

In the weeks ahead I hope to get more information from Shaun about what inspired this mad idea. in the meantime you may listen/download the series here...

Here is the Atomic Shadow track...

Well now. Obviously the world did not end on the 21st of December. Here we are in 2013 with no more Twilight movies to menace my sanity and the fiscal cliff averted. It's almost like a new world.

Almost.

For those of you who may have missed it in the holiday hubbub, here is a rerun of the 2012 Apocalypse Not! video. This was a collaboration with Jeff Gustafson who also did the video for the July piece from Twelve Full Moons. As usual I shot the improvisation with various pieces of equipment live. Jeff cut it all together. He had the terrific idea to run the bomb footage backwards. Mrs. Shadow thought that somehow made it seem even more creepy.

People of a certain age will remember some of the stock footage from various civil defense films that they saw in school.