Introduction from a not-so-new member

Portland is a good place.
This is a Strange place as I am sure you know. Welcome? sort of?

Portland is a good place.

I've seen how strange this forum can be, and I remain unafraid. Thanks for the sort of welcome!

I listen to some ambient.. what kind of stuff are you into, Mike?

Yeah, ambient is a pretty broad term.... Tell us more about this, please.

welcome not so new lurker/member dude

we're going to need some "lurking cred." Can you list off some of the things you've seen from lurking that stood out?
also, have you seen that show Portlandia yet?

Is Portland a strange place for a cat?

a Cat? Put a bird on it!

I'm into all kinds of ambient and electronica but my own involvement is more in beatless and abstract ambient. Stuff like Brian Eno, Robert Rich, Steve Roach, Vidna Obmana. That's primarily (but not entirely) what my own label releases.

Of course, many people use the term "ambient" to cover everything from psytrance to low-key techno, but I personally don't consider Moby or Shpongle or BT to be ambient music.

I've seen people getting more passionately worked-up over debates about comics, video games and sci-fi movie sequels, than about politics, religion or sex.

I remember a bunch of male forumites posting body shots, hoping to convince female forumites "come on, it's cool, we're all doing it, let's see yours." Not that anyone actually said that but the focus of the topic was pretty clearly "we've shown you our man-tits, now please you must show us your girl-tits." Mostly I'd like to forget about that one.

There are also lots of interesting "now listening" and "now watching" and "now playing" topics with a zillion posts, but those are popular on any forum. On my own web forum (less popular than the Cult forums), and the most popular topic is always "now listening."

My favorite topic I ever read here (at least I think it was here -- I'll have to dig for it) was comic-related. It was something along the lines of choosing a comic artist to illustrate your own life, and showing examples of the artists chosen. I found some amazing stuff in there, not only artists I'd never seen before, but artists I'd heard of but never recognized what was so cool about them until they were presented in that context. If anyone knows which topic I'm talking about, let me know where to find it.

Have not seen it, but 99.5% of my non-Portland friends have asked me "have you seen that show Portlandia yet?" so I suppose I'll have to check it out.

Thank you! I can now say I've seen Portlandia (at least 90 seconds worth).

All my non-Portland friends who ask me about Portlandia seem to feel everyone here would be very insulted by it, but it seems pretty affectionate to me.

OK Lurker complete the following sentence

Cujo is a

A Turtle
B Cat
C Dog?

If you ask everyone who introduces themselves here this question, most of them will see the answer in earlier posts in this forum section.

Answer is B.

You're awesome for being such a good sport.

You're going to enjoy the hell out of the class!

Any opinion on the Taco Bell lawsuit?

Welcome.

Answer is D Cujo is Cujo.

But welcome Honky.

I'm not being a good sport. I'm storing up rage which I will unleash upon all of you at some as-yet-undefined future time.

Well, booh.

Is this the thread you mentioned: Comic the Cult

That's not the one I remember, mirka, but it looks interesting. Thanks for the link.

Here it is, I found it buried not too deep... page 2 of the comics section.

http://chuckpalahniuk.net/forum/1000170/you-must-choose-one-artist

My cats seem to enjoy it. There is plenty of stuff to scratch, shit on, rub against and eat.

As for Portlandia its decent, not terrible. But being that I work for a calbe company all i do is hear about it and it makes me want to gouge my eyes out with my cats paws.
But O few of my friends have parts in it. And my one mate made most of the prosthetic for the show.
But back to the lurker.
if you were an anthropomorphic animal. What kind would you be?

I would be Hello Kitty as long as I could still be 6-1 in height.

Why do they think people should be insulted? The world would be a much better place if everyone learned to laugh at themselves.

Really!

We're a bunch of pretentious douche bags who are better than everyone else and we only laugh at others for the same things we ourselves do. I think the show is great becuase we do take ourselves to seriously. Every one of those skits I can relate to someone I know in this town.
Irony is wasted around here.

I do love this Town though.
Saturday Market starts up in about a month and that means beer at the waterfront.

I don't think it's so bad. All the jokes and whatnot they do seems to come from a place of great affection for the city, at least it doesn't feel hateful towards it.
I'm guessing they filmed it there too.
Anyways, it's one of the few tv shows I've set my DVR for but I got bummed out today when I saw it's just going to be 6 episodes.

It's a fun show, and yup it's all in Portland.

i didnt remember that thread at all, but i KNEW nate started it. clearly

I agree. It never occurred to me for a second that Portlanders should be insulted by Portlandia, until a couple of friends from outside the area said they figured that kind of teasing must REALLY sting.

To me it's an affectionate teasing, probably enjoyed more by people from here than by anyone else. It's not at all like, for example, the way Baltimore is portrayed negatively in The Wire, which bothers some of the people there. It's not serious criticism in any real way.

Great stuff -- post more!

That's cool, I wouldn't really term Moby or any of those guys ambient either. I like stuff like Eno, Rafael Anton Irisarri, Level, The Stranger.. some of Fabio Orsi's stuff..

also A Broken Consort, though that's not necessarily strictly 'ambient' either, I guess.. more just instrumental? James Blackshaw and Hauschka on that tip too. And guys like Gas and Fennesz on the more electronic end of the spectrum.

If you have any recommendations, please let me know! I for one will always welcome any new discussion in the music forum.

The Million Dollar Hotel soundtrack has a bunch of those folks on it. I don't think i'd really call it ambient music but it's still pretty good.

You seem to be pretty knowledgable, _kit. Most often when I bump into people and they say "oh yeah, I like some ambient," they mean Moby or Aphex Twin or BT.

Eno is my all-time ambient hero, and the remains one of my big influences I haven't had a chance to work with.

I know of Rafael Anton Irissari (had to look him up to remember where I knew the name) from his Room40 release. I have to admit I don't know Level or The Stranger! Fabio Orsi's Wintereisse has been getting a bit of discussion on the Hypnos Forum but I haven't heard it yet.

Most of the stuff you mention is what I'd consider the newer generation of ambient, incorporating "real" instruments and field recordings, as compared to more traditional "layers of synth drones" ambient, which has become increasingly played out. Our newest release on Hypnos might appeal to you. It's by an Italian trio called Herion and incorporates digital/glitch components, "real" piano and strings, and location recordings. You can preview that entire album here (with intrusive talking by me in between tracks) here if you like:
http://www.hypnos.com/audio/h.podcast.02_20101209_Herion.mp3

As far as other recommendations, everyone seems to be hyper-crazy about Celer lately, and of course Steve Roach is always worth exploring if you're not already familiar with him.

Everybody loves Gas and Fennesz!

What I know of that soundtrack leads me to guess it's the U2 guys heavily under Eno's ambient influence (and also Lanois's which is sort of the same) -- not a bad thing at all. Lots of "pop" artists can make great ambient music when they try, and many of those who have done so were under Eno's influence. I'm thinking Bowie, Talking Heads, David Sylvian.

I'm tempted to buy that soundtrack CD just because I love Milla Jovovich so much. I want to hear her version of "Satellite of Love!"