Digital Rabbit's Music Blog

     Yesterday, July 11, 2025, my cat, Kačka, died. I woke up to find her body in the kitchen. It still feels surreal to think that she is gone. Twelve years of her goofiness, cuddly-ness, and presence. This is a music blog, so I will include some music: my own. From my album  Untitled No. 2 (West Texas Fantasies)  which was recorded between winter 2020 and summer 2021 and, as it is apt to happen when recording ambient sounds in a house with a cat, has a sample of Kačka in the final track, "Just drips in an empty sink".   Untitled No. 2 (West Texas Fantasy) by Justin Houser      Kačka came into my life with a bit of a scare. In late July 2013, I was working as a TA in the School of Music at Texas Tech getting the computer lab I taught out of ready for classes when I received a text from my mother that just read "We need to talk." Anyone will recognize the concern of "what have I done" or "what horrible thing has happened" that ran throug...

 My ex once posed the question to me “how much have you thought about how we get to true utopia?”  It is an interesting thought experiment because it forces one to think not just about the basic elements of society but also all the aspects of humanity that can undermine that desired goal. This all came to mind recently at a concert. The performance was noise music performed by Warren Realrider & Mateo Galindo. In my opinion, as a person who regularly consumes noise music, it was amazing!  Cloud Bundles EP by Warren Realrider x Mateo Galindo After I opened up and prepared the performance space, I found myself reading an anarchist article referencing the search for utopia and the issues that arise. As can be expected, a focus on the abandonment of currency, economy, and government were significantly present, but little was present regarding the actual human response to these changes.  Cloud Bundles EP by Warren Realrider x Mateo Galindo This human reaction ...

 “Words are inherently ineffective and language is, at its deepest level, meaningless.” This is how my friend Bill greeted me when we met for lunch one day before he moved off to a much more interesting job. We dug into this concept with me taking the position that there is, to some societal degree, an objective understanding of language and verbiage while Bill held to his statement regarding the subjective nature of all communication. This debate went on for a few minutes before another individual, a student in their first philosophy class, decided they had to join us because of how interesting the conversation was. To say we disassembled every element of this poor interloping interlocutors ideas of existence need not be further described, but the look of surprise on their face as we acknowledged our non-faculty positions was near priceless! While I still enjoy a good debate on the objective/subjective aspect of language, I found myself pondering much more deeply the concept of wh...

I believe I first happened upon the work of Aksatzul while in a deep dive into YouTube, but I cannot currently find the original. However it happened I was immediately entranced by the dark, ambient, black metal-esque nature of this Finnish musician. It was difficult for me to choose between Mirrorsphere  and their other album Noneverse (linked below) when I was preparing for this blog post. Both albums are spectacular. Noneverse  encompasses more of the ambient-noise-music feel on which I normally focus while Mirrorsphere  drifts closer to the industrial and black-metal genres. Overall, I tend to describe the music of Aksatzul as akin to being back stage at a concert and listening to the glorious haze of music drifting in through the walls.  Mirrorsphere by Aksatzul Mirrorsphere has a sense throughout that the standard timbres of a metal band (guitars, bass, drums and perhaps keyboards) are all present but go through significant levels of distortion, to points ...

Jason Adams, performing under the name Rumori developed Deviance from live performances and has really made some amazing music in this album. In the description of the album on BandCamp, the composition of the pieces is described where "Each piece of music works to create its own unique environment, minimal melodies laying a foundation for complex textures and exploration." Each movement follows this structure incredibly well, but they all are so much more complex than the description implies. Pieces like "Shrouded" and "Deviance" emphasize this minimal melody creating significantly more complexity through the polyphonic behaviors of the music. The use of effects also expands on the depth of complexity by allowing expansion into sonic realms the cello cannot reach on its own.  Deviance by Rumori "Tarantula" leads the album though deep floating lines with heavy use of delay to allow the cello to build a sense of deep foreboding. The first section ...

 Here in the U.S. we recently "celebrated" the one year anniversary of the COVID-19 shutdown. This past year, has been the most ... I don't even have a word to describe what I would like to express. While the past 12 months have simultaneously been horrible for the families of over 500,000 people, disastrous for so many whose very livelihoods have been pushed towards utter annihilation if not put them at significant risk (many of whom are friends of mine, more on that below), and completely bewildering for so many others; this period has also seen societal push for racial justice, LGBTQIA+ equality, and a drive for the rights of humanity like access to healthcare, a living wage, and support during times of extreme crisis ... While I personally have not suffered much during this year, I know so many who have. We can make this world better, but we must fight for that everyday. But I digress. Just over a year ago I attended what would be the last in-person concert I would go...