House Tour and Kaossilator Demo

Since Kat came last weekend and gave me some great advice on how to arrange my little apartment, it finally feels like home. I took some photos and made a folder on Picasa for anybody who's interested in seeing how it came together. The older I get, the more fussy my living arrangements, and I love it. I can't believe I lived with other people for so long. There are still some things to fix up here and there but it's great to finally have a livable space again.

From Boise Apartment Photos

Of all my finds over the past couple of years, one of my favorites by far is my map of the southeast US from the Alameda antiques fair. I got an amazing deal on it and I love how it looks perfect in my living area. I also couldn't wait to share this:

From Boise Apartment Photos

This is my new toy, the KORG Kaossilator dynamic phrase synthesizer. It's basically a touchpad-controlled loop generator, and it is the most awesome purchase I've made in a long, long time. It's got a ton of voices/sound effects/drum hits/preset drum patterns, and it gives you complete control of BPM and loop length (anywhere from 1/32 of a beat to 8 full beats), as well as 31 different scales, 49 different gate arpeggiators that sound the selected sample at different intervals of the beat, and the ability to record loops and layer them. I've had so much fun with it the past couple of weeks that I figured I would post some quick (~20 second) samples to give you an idea of how easy it is to lose hours playing with this thing.



Starting out with the 'flap' lead running through gate arpeggiator 09. 'Egyptian' scale, 145 bpm.


Adding a BD/SD3 drum hit to each downbeat.


Layering on the 'auto techno' drum pattern using one of the more basic presets.


Testing out the trance chord before adding it to the other fixed layers.


Fixed the trance chord with a surge in the cutoff during the second bar. At this point I was set. I played around with this backing track for at least half an hour.


Playing with the low-frequency oscillation on a sweep sound effect.

From Boise Apartment Photos

The Astro-Sound of Magnificence, or my first post where I actually blog about my life

This is my friend from Clemson, Clay.

Clay.
We met, of course, through Clemson's student-run radio station, WSBF. I met all of my best friends from college through the radio station one way or another. One of the unexpected benefits of going to such a backwoods, yee-haw cow college was that the weird people congregated pretty quickly. To give you an idea of what we had to work with, we always made it a point to attend one of the cultural highlights of year: Spittoono, a self-described redneck festival held at the National Guard Armory. After the spittin' contest and mud dancing, we would go to the lake for a midnight swim.

Probably my favorite picture from my college days.
If co-opting Spittoono was our tradition, the frat boys at Clemson held the tradition of dressing up in their finery for the Clemson home football games, when the population of Clemson quadrupled and the campus became a parking lot for tailgaiters. I love beer and nice clothes as much as the next man, and needless to say the frat boys at Clemson were first-order douchebags, so we made our own tradition wherein we too could dress pretty and get drunk. That tradition was the Red Eye Society, where we would get up early on MLK Jr. Day (8ish), put on red ties, and drink all day long.

This was the year before we had an adventure in an abandoned school.
We may have not have been the most normal people by Clemson's standards, but Clay was way out there. The first time we hung out, he brought a crate of CDs to my freshman dorm. Lush, Momus, Pulp, etc. -- he'd been listening to a lot of really good music for a really long time, and none of it was Jack Johnson. In person, Clay is totally unassuming, but like Popeye with a mouthful of spinach, in the presence of music he becomes another person entirely. Some of my favorite memories of college were the WSBF house shows where the no-talent local bands (term of endearment) would play badly and too loud. For a blessed couple of years, Clay would fill in between bands at these house shows as Karaoke Klay. Once he had set up his equipment and pressed play, he was no longer Clay. I don't know if I've ever seen someone commit to something as completely as Clay did to becoming Karaoke Klay. The images of a house full of drunk outcasts from a Greek life/Fellowship of Christian Atheletes/Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management (Party Right Through May)-major college like Clemson, singing along with KK to Mr. Roboto and of Clay humping the floor during the breakdown of "Hungry Like the Wolf" will be forever burned into my mind.

The Karaoke Klay stance.
Clay doesn't have a traditionally "good" voice, but he knows and loves too much good music not to know how he sounds. And I think it's awesome. He's been making his own music for years, and he recently made an album called "The Monkey of Love". You can hear it on his myspace page. He's made me a few mix CDs over the years too, and while unpacking my place in Boise a couple weeks ago I pulled out this gem:

The Astro-Sound of Magnificence
It's a compilation of exotica/lounge/orchestral pop he made me a couple of years ago, and for whatever reason, it really grabbed me. I've been listening to it a ton the past couple of weeks. I don't have much of this sort of thing in my music library, but there are some fun, catchy songs on here. If you hate kitsch or groovy female vocals stay away, but if not, I invite you to take a peek into the mind of a very unique guy.

Honey-Lavender Biscotti

This was my first attempt at biscotti, so I of course turned to my Baking Illustrated cookbook. Turns out I really like big chunks of almonds/hazelnuts/etc. in my biscotti, so these guys weren't my favorite. Interesting to be sure, but the flavor is very subtle. I think that they would have been much more interesting with a more assertive honey, like a spicy clover honey. The run-of-the-mill honey I used just faded into the background. I have to say, however, that the aroma that filled my apartment while these were baking was out of this world -- creamy, buttery tones with heady citrus and lavender notes floating overhead. Words don't suffice.

I used the lessons I learned in making these for the chocolate almond biscotti below, specifically the tricks with the wax paper and keeping my hands good and floured. The "cylinders" I was able to form with this dough were hideous. Still, a good learning experience, and like I said, the aroma. Wow.

Ingredients
• 2 1/4 c (11 1/4 oz) all-purpose flour
  
• 1 tsp baking powder
  
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
  
• 1/4 tsp salt
  
• 2/3 c (4 2/3 oz) sugar
  
• 3 large eggs
  
• 3 Tbsp honey
  
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
  
• 2 Tbsp minced zest from 1 orange
  
• 1 Tbsp dried lavender blossoms

Directions
1. Adjust an oven rack to the middle position and heat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in medium bowl, set aside.
   
2. Whisk the sugar and eggs in a large bowl to a light lemon color; stir in the honey, vanilla, orange zest, and lavender. Sprinkle the dry ingredients over the egg mixture, then fold in until just combined.
   
3. Divide the dough in half and place one portion on a work surface covered with floured wax paper or parchment paper. With floured hands, pat it into a cylinder about 2 inches in diameter and 12 to 15 inches long. Repeat with the second half of the dough. Cut the parchment paper and, using the paper as a sling, roll the dough into a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Repeat with the remaining dough.
   
4. Place in the oven and bake about 35 minutes, rotating halfway through, until firm to the touch. Transfer to a cutting board, let cool for 5 minutes, then cut on an angle into slices one-half-inch thick. Return the slices to the baking sheet, laying them on their cut sides, and return them to the oven. Bake another 15 minutes, turning over each cookie halfway through, until they are crisp and golden brown on each side. Allow to cool completely before storing or serving.

Chocolate Almond (Cherry) Biscotti

Over the holidays, somebody's mom made me some killer biscotti, and I got to wondering why I had never made any at home before. This dreamy chocolate biscotti recipe was altered from a recipe I found on smitten kitchen, with some tweaks. The obvious ones for me were to substitute hazelnuts for almonds and fit some dark chocolate chunks in there. My less inspired inspiration was to put some chopped dried cherries in the dough. In my effort to make these biscotti tooth-chippingly hard, I reduced the cherries to, more or less, char, which definitely didn't help the flavor. I guess there's a reason people don't put dried fruit in biscotti.

As far as technique goes, wax paper or parchment paper really does wonders for making sure you don't get biscotti dough club hands when trying to work the dough into a cylinder. I formed each half on a large piece of wax paper, cut the paper down the middle, and used each sling to transfer the dough to the baking sheet. Easy as cake. Once my personal effects finally show up here in Boise (tomorrow!), I will definitely be making these guys again. Stay tuned for another, completely different batch of biscotti I made earlier this month, which I'll post here soon.

Ingredients

• 3/4 cup toasted, blanched almonds
  
• 3/4 cup dark chocolate chips
  
• 2 1/2 cups flour, plus flour for work surface
  
• 1/2 cup Dutch-style cocoa powder
  
• 1 tablespoon espresso powder
  
• Pinch of salt
  
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  
• 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
  
• 4 large eggs
  
• 1 1/3 cups sugar

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spread hazelnuts on baking sheet and toast about 10 minutes, until lightly browned. If hazelnuts are not blanched, toast them until the skins begin to crack, then remove them from oven and wrap them in clean linen or cotton towel (not terrycloth). Rub hot nuts to remove most of the skin. Set toasted nuts aside.
   
2. Sift the flour, cocoa, espresso powder, salt, baking soda and baking powder together and set aside.
   
3. Beat eggs lightly, just until blended, in mixing bowl with whisk or in electric mixer. Remove two tablespoons of egg mixture to small dish and set aside. Beat sugar into remaining eggs until blended. Stir in flour mixture to form soft dough. Stir in chocolate chips and chopped almonds.
   
4. Divide the dough in half and place one portion on a work surface covered with floured wax paper or parchment paper. With floured hands, pat it into a cylinder about 2 inches in diameter and 12 to 15 inches long. Repeat with the second half of the dough. Cut the parchment paper and, using the paper as a sling, roll the dough into a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Repeat with the remaining dough. Brush the tops of both rolls with the reserved egg.
   
5. Place in the oven and bake about 20 minutes, until firm to the touch. Transfer to a cutting board, let cool for 5 minutes, then cut on an angle into slices one-half-inch thick. Return the slices to the baking sheet, laying them on their cut sides, and return them to the oven. Bake another 25 minutes, until they are crisp and dry. Allow to cool completely before storing or serving.