The Spiral Staircase

Week 2 - The Spiral Staircase

I'm currently reading "House of Leaves" by Mark Z. Danielewski.

This image is inspired by the staircase in the story. I will provide no explanation, as I don't want to give any of the story away.


In other news - I'm listening to the new Radiohead album, 'King of Limbs', for the first time right now. It's really different. It always takes me a while to get into their albums. That's how I know it's new art (more on that later)...

Radiohead is one of the few bands whose songwriting ability blows my god damn head off. Not so fast, asshole, I don't like them for the same reason you do. Saying 'I listen to Radiohead' is like saying 'I listen to music.' But honestly, Radiohead's fame is purely coincidental to that point that they are one of the more talented bands in operation - and that is because they are one of the few artists that write with zero regards to format, genre, and even instrumentation. They could write a song with a sample of a fart and it would be gold. My point is this - There's nothing easier than starting a band with 3 guitarists and writing rock/heavy music - and there's nothing harder than starting a band whose instrumentation is almost limitless. Their writing process eludes my understanding so much.. Take for example, their song 'All I Need'. A timeless song with no guitars in sight. Just sequenced drums and a handful of organ, rhodes, and piano parts. How do you write like that! Genius. They even experiment with a lot of odd meters..

Okay. I'll stop before I get too far into this maze - might I discover the minotaur.

Actually, one more note on odd meters; I assembled this the other day. It's a three-meter polyrhythm. A tri-rhythm? I don't think that's it.. Anyway, it's 4/4 + 3/16 + 7/8. It takes something like 30 seconds to recycle because of how long it takes for all of the meters to line up. Figuring out how long it takes to line up was a long equation. I had to figure out the meter of every polyrhythm individually, (there are 3; 4/4 + 3/16, 4/4 + 7/8, and 3/16 + 7/8) in 8th notes, (4/4 + 3/16 = 48/8; 4/4 + 7/8 = 112/8; and 3/16 + 7 = 21/8) and then find the lowest common denominator of all three, which was 672. It takes 672 8th notes for the beat to recycle. Dork shit.