I posted my real-world opinion on generative AI music (really, art in general) on Threads, and boy, did I ever get engagement. Plenty of likes, some basic comments, a bunch of AI bros telling me things like I'm "acting like a child" and whatnot. I posted a second response to it, and got even more engagement!

Talk about it being the 25th anniversary of my angel on fire album "panic is : love", and....almost nothing.

AI-generated music is one symptom of a massive problem for artists--the grinding down of artistic ventures to being almost valueless to the artist. Facebook was the original offender--endless content creation for free that they could make money off of. Spotify is literally trying to destroy the experience of listening to music.

Maybe there's a larger argument we should all be making, because I certainly didn't see any real strokes of brilliance coming out of my anti-AI argument.

It's funny--my last album was released February 12, 2025. I have not recorded a note since that time, due to having to sell off my synthesizers post-COVID and having lent most of the rest of my gear to my daughter so she can work on her album.

It's been a while.

I've been tempted to just pull out the 4-track from its dust-covered bag and go back to basics, like in 2001-2002 when I recorded angel on fire's "panic is : love" with nothing but a guitar, a bass, various percussion and a single guitar pedal-based multi-FX box. Or maybe crack open the MT8X (8-track on cassette!) and see what's bugging the controls.

I saw someone post on Threads that they are on a hiatus because they haven't done anything in a week. I used to be more prolific, but I've never subscribed to this grand idea that we have to be pumping out content on a constant basis in order to play the industry game. Most of my favourite artists aren't even releasing an album a year. Maybe that's where I'm at, at my age--cooling the jets down and releasing music whenever it happens, if it takes two, three, four, 23 years (in the case of shoegaze band Slowdive). Maybe that is what makes the music better--a longer gestation period instead of feeding some (cough Spotify cough) machine.

As far as promoting anything on social media, I've stopped bothering, even on Bandcamp Fridays. One giant pool of artists being throttled for dollars. At the very least, I still talk to friends via social media and I can't stand the thought of spamming the ever living hell out of socials. I'm just...here, and when people stumble across my music that's a good feeling. I recently joined Subvert....and we'll see how that goes.

As for retiring from music completely, which I considered, it's probably never going to happen. I'm just waiting to be jazzed by an idea, or a sound, or some riff I came up with on a keyboard. Besides, most of my friends tell me I'm not allowed to, or that I simply wouldn't be able to. So, I'll be around here, but there's nothing to report. Hopefully I can rig something up soon--I still have ideas waiting in the wings....

I'm listening to a mixtape. On cassette. My friend in Akron, OH and I spent many years before, starting in 1991, and we've traded an average of 50 tapes between then and now (I'm a little behind).

It dawns on me that music consumption has changed so much in the time we've been trading tapes that this kind of musical friendship doesn't really exist anymore, or at the very least isn't encouraged. You can't just hand a friend a playlist you made--do they even have the same streaming service? I can tell you that I never would have heard anything from the Dunedin, NZ scene without getting a few tapes in the mid 1990's from a friend there--music wasn't spread across the internet back then, so being able to hear stuff from Europe and NZ was almost a privilege (I guess, depending on your tastes! :)

The sense of crafting something for someone else, from the music down to the unique cover art designs, is missing now. I'm glad my friend and I decided to resurrect the idea, and....well, the infusion of new music is pretty damned good. :)

.....so far.....

Uploading 30+ years of catalogue is, well, tedious. ;)

so, I set my project angel on fire's "the diamond silence" as pay-what-you-want for bandcamp friday--if you want to check out some of what I do, feel free to grab a copy! :) https://angel-on-fire-transnova.bandcamp.com/album/the-diamond-silence

I don't know what it is, but there's just something about an album that sounds like it was recorded live in somebody's basement on a Yamaha MT8X 8-track cassette recorder. Guess I'm just a sucker for dirty-sounding music. :)

Well, it looks like I have a working title for the next angel on fire release, whenever I'm able to record again: "in the absence of roses". :)

So if you want to hear all four corners of my music brain, I put up a couple tracks from each project I've worked on over the years and a smattering of earlier unreleased stuff. It's at

and goes through:

jason m norwood - mostly Berlin-school electronic music with a few guitar-based bits;
angel on fire - weird twisted post-rock shoegazer stuff
code 000 - rhythmic noise/industrial
black chairs - old-school industrial
cyphier - electropunk
minutes after - screwing around with techno

plus an early her violent siren track (precursor to angel on fire).

So Vinnie Vincent apparently has a solution to get "paid fairly" for his work. Ex-guitarist for KISS, so the extreme off-putting arrogance makes perfect sense. $200 per song https://www.syracuse.com/entertainment/2026/01/rock-guitarist-refuses-to-release-greatest-album-of-all-time-unless-fans-pay-200-per-song.html

So, it's 2026. After a difficult Christmas season we slide into the new year. Thing is, I don't have anything fancy to state or announce. I only managed to release one album by jason m norwood in 2025, which is an unusual situation for me as I'm usually prolific across three or four projects. I've been experiencing a disconnection from music--listening to it or making it. Although I can still dig through old playlists and listen to stuff I haven't heard in a while. It's confusing, and I'm working it out--I'm _hoping_ to have a new angel on fire EP this year. Sometimes the music neurons still fire....