Michael U

jet@cloudisland.nz

I chat about quiet instrumental music, music-making (Bitwig - my solo music is as Jet Jaguar, my most active collaboration is a duo, Tonkyn Pearson), linguistics, movies, cooking...My day job is helping mostly public sector organisations to improve how they manage their information. I doubt I'll write much about that, but very open to conversation about it.Profile pic is from a 1953 Peanuts, Charlie Brown listening to a detuned radio. Header a photo of a cat next to a disco ball & sun rays.

Posts

Post #4426143
K*Saba and HoneBeGood - Bird of Paradise A couple of the lesser known affiliates of the whole Young Gifted & Broke crew (most famously Homebrew, @Peace, etc.). Wellington producer / Auckland MC. Not that much hip-hop wanders off into looping acoustic instruments and such. K*Saba has done a bunch of theatre work and it shows (in a good way). #JukeboxFridayNight #Birds #NZMusic https://ksaba.bandcamp.com/track/bird-of-paradise
Post #4426036
Gulls - Edith's Waltz One for fans of Talk Talk and such, a solo artist from Dunedin who's received zero attention AFAIK... choosing this for the artist's name, rather than the theme of the music, but hey. https://gullsorgulls.bandcamp.com/track/ediths-waltz #JukeboxFridayNight #Birds #NZMusic
Post #4425964
Anthonie Tonnon - Bird Brains https://anthonietonnon.bandcamp.com/track/bird-brains #JukeboxFridayNight #Birds
Post #4400098
@TwoClownsEating@beige.party @distinctdipole@tech.lgbt side note: I like that the story involves queueing so we know it’s in the UK
Post #4389741
The trailer for 2003 flop Tiptoes really looks like a parody. Matthew McConaughey and Kate Beckinsale … with Gary Oldman playing someone with dwarfism by kneeling all the time - and even if the movie were somehow good, the flavour of the trailer is just horrifyingly like “things were great until this *terrible revelation* that her bf’s family all have dwarfism!” https://youtu.be/O3qGGk5ymQ4 I would love a documentary on the making of. The director massively denounced what became of it, swearin...
Post #4384792
Huh, a friend told me today that DJ Krush's 2001 album 'Zen' is not named after the Buddhist tradition. It's an obscure homophone meaning "gradually" or "bit by bit", more commonly said "susumu" in Japanese. Krush seems to be into word play / fucking with people, heh. If you can read Japanese or Chinese you'd presumably this up straight away from the album cover. I find logograms super interesting in this respect, how they disambiguate homopho...
Post #4383075
A nice interview with the guy behind Topdown Dialectic and all of the music on the False Aralia label https://futurismrestated.substack.com/p/fr-183-topdown-dialectic-is-real #ElectronicMusic #DubTechno #ExperimentalMusic #Dub
Post #4382926
@TwoClownsEating@beige.party Ha, now singing to myself "Underground, overground, Mongoling free"
Post #4213983
Connected to what I just boosted about having a personal website, I’m happy to lease a domain in order to have a consistent email address that is not connected to an email provider. I’ve switched providers multiple times over decades and never had to tell people to use a different address to reach me.
Post #4159960
If you know J Dilla's album Donuts, the amount he *didn't* mess with the samples he took from this track for 'workinonit' is kind of eye opening. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sraKulMHZw
Post #4149233
Been mildly amazed by this original version of ‘Bette Davis Eyes’, as covered much more famously by Kim Carnes. So, so different! https://youtu.be/FAQsOJbs-yo
Post #4078187
I decided to buy this audio plugin Aava today which is the fanciest kind of convolution "reverb", where you can throw in 4 different sounds (impulse responses) and blend your input signal through all of them. Plus you can change the size / pitch of the impulse responses in real time without the whole thing falling silent, which is something I've not seen any other convolution tool handle. I was pretty much sold by that audio demo "Turn your drums into a bassline" on the...
Post #4010527
I learnt today that techno-ish producer The Field has a day job as the cook for a series of kindergartens. I kind of love it.
Post #3970299
Make pop songs less definitive Mostly What I Wanna Do Is Have Some Fun Hardly Ever Gonna Give You Up Many People Were Kung Fu Fighting Few Things Are Gonna Stop Us Now ...
Post #3970177
Very nice! "Gardens 1-3 consists of three live sessions recorded in the summer of 2025, in a small cottage garden in the middle of Malmö. Friends, family, and aquaintances were invited to a couple of cozy hours among the foliage. People were chatting, leaves were rustling, birds were singing, and when the time felt right we began to play. The recordings do not capture the sounds of the audience or nature. We recommend adding those elements yourself." https://s01system.bandcamp.com/...
Post #3872336
I’ve only got time for 20% of Take Five today, sorry I actually genuinely enjoy this, it just doesn’t feel worked through enough because of its length https://youtu.be/-8hRuvCwvTM?si=xElZ6gwmuejqSKGG
Post #3846081
I keep Screenshots of Despair in my feed reader and it consistently makes me laugh https://screenshotsofdespair.tumblr.com
Post #3821513
@stephen@ephemera.vital.org.nz yeah seriously. I partly wrote this to say "out loud" it's only been two days. I know it gets easier, but all so vivid right now.
Post #3821392
We said goodbye to a cat of 15 years two days ago and this is my first day working at home... really missing how _around_ he was, keep expecting him in every room and around every corner. We used to say he was running puppy software, he loved following people about and being near them. We have another cat, but he's a much more trad, aloof guy.
Post #3817157
TIL an older English name for “penguin” was “arsefoot”. Also that penguin is Welsh.
Post #3727894
A good little write up on New Zealand techno from this century, including touching on how Mu happily went there even if people don’t think of Fat Freddy’s Drop that way. https://selectedworks.substack.com/p/exploring-the-sounds-of-2020s-techno #techno #NZ #NZMusic #ElectronicMusic
Post #3665785
Huh, I just realised it's very easy to create a wet-only (delta) version of an fx plugin's output in #Bitwig, if the plugin doesn't do it natively. Put the plugin into an FX Container. Add a Tool to the container as well, and invert both channels. That's it. I hope this is helpful, might be something a lot of people figured out a long time ago. :) I am using it to create a spectral vocoder out of Trackspacer - it would work with Soothe too, if you have that. There's also...
Post #3637506
Peak Guardian. A friend quipped “Charli’s first appearance in the coveted Lyme disease section”.
Post #3637502
Peak Guardian. A friend quipped “Charli’s first appearance in the coveted Lyme disease section”.
Post #3502149
A decent round up of initiatives to create new music purchasing marketplaces, imo. One of the things I really like about @mirlo@musician.social is how their contributors are open like this. When people do move away from #Bandcamp I don’t think the best answer would be another hegemonic platform. Obviously I’m not “the people”, but… 🤞 https://www.reddit.com/r/BandCamp/comments/1uj68me/comment/ouokv9j/
Post #3457600
I don’t reckon it should be legal to say I’m buying some digital thing if my only access to it can be removed by the supposed vendor. It’s a license to access the thing, with an open-ended (not infinite) term, and probably some other obvious constraints (access it through the defined mechanism, etc.)
Post #3442422
I still like this website, Is AI Profitable Yet? https://isaiprofitable.com
Post #3414649
Moving to a 4-day work week. 🎉 Going with a Wednesday is feeling pretty damn good. Not only do I never have more than 2 work days ahead, I'll get the lion's share of public holidays (almost always a Monday or a Friday in NZ). AND whenever there is 1 holiday I can add 1 day of leave and get 5 days in a row off! Doesn't matter what day the holiday is (except Wednesday, duh). Magic!
Post #3154148
Took a long distance flight and was surprised to find Sirāt available to watch. Did so. Hoooo boy. 😅
Post #3120818
Came across a music site yesterday that is most definitely just synthetic text generated from specific articles on other music sites. Easy searches identify a slight reheating of other people&#39;s interviews, etc. It really sucks to not be surprised and to feel so apathetic (in the &quot;what&#39;s the fucking point sense?&quot;).