Caesar Augustus from Colorado makes, for me, a very beautiful blend of several hardcore punk subgenres, so the mini-album The Ides of March is almost an ideal and almost ideally exciting record in which post-hardcore, screamo, mathcore, and thrashgrind exist in perfect balance. This is expressive, emotional, and at the same time slightly distanced and formalized through high technical quality and the exploration of the effect of dissonance and consistent repetition on the listener.
Moreover, the sound is lively, dynamic, the playing is OUTSTANDING, and the vocals are perfect. If this band doesn’t become big — at least within the underground scene it belongs to — it will be a cosmic injustice.
The Ides of March traces its origins back to 2016, when my band Julius Caesar was still active. We started the band in high school and had been together for a decade, doing sporadic runs of shows. In 2016, most of us lived in Olympia, WA, and the band was performing regularly. One night, while I was on tour with my other band A God or an Other, Julius Caesar’s guitarist Gavin vanished, not to be heard from for many years. We were pretty bummed.
Once I got home from tour I picked up my guitar and wrote these songs – they appeared nearly fully formed. They were clearly influenced by Julius Caesar but had their own distinct style. Capturing and transcribing them was a cathartic experience. For a few months I attempted to find other musicians to form a new band that would play this material. Eventually I realized that between the very busy schedules of A God or an Other and the other band I was in at the time, The Lunch, I just didn’t have the time or energy to make a third band happen.
When my wife and I decided to move to Colorado to start our family in 2018, I was worried that I might not be able to record loud music in my new home as freely as I had been able to in Olympia. So before we moved, I decided to record drums for a few loud projects that had been on the backburner, just in case. This was one of them (along with 2023’s Therewolf).
The Ides of March sat in a drums-only state until mid-pandemic, when I finally recorded the guitar parts. Originally, it was intended to be a solo release, but when I started thinking about vocals, I found that I had a creative block. It reminded me a lot of when I was working on Destiny Theft – with that EP, every time I listened to the instrumentals, I imagined Buddy Hale’s voice. This time, though, it was JC vocalist (and 55YT MQRT guitarist) Neal’s voice I was hearing. So I eventually asked Neal if he wanted to do lead vocals for the EP. I was thrilled when he agreed. It still needed bass, so we then invited JC bassist Steve to fill that role.
We recorded vocals over the next few years. Neal, who now lives in Iowa, would visit about every six months to track some of his parts. Meanwhile, Steve recorded his bass contributions remotely in California. I think this part of our ‘about-the-band’ blurb satisfactorily sums up the thematic focus our lyrics took on:
Caesar Augustus is a reckoning with the oppressive forces of modern society and the relentless difficulty of the human condition... Their debut EP, “The Ides of March,” serves as a commemoration of their past and a herald of new beginnings. It is a rallying cry against fascism and authoritarianism and a scathing critique of our broken political system. Additionally, Caesar Augustus takes on the invisible demons that haunt the modern psyche, grappling with conditions such as ADHD, OCD, anxiety, and depression, laying bare the complexities of existence in a world rife with chaos and uncertainty.
“The Ides of March” is a reflection on the past, a confrontation with the present, and a contemplation of the unknown realms of the future. It is a testament to resilience, friendship, and the unwavering pursuit of artistic expression in the face of existential dread.
This project is obviously closely tied to Julius Caesar, but without Gavin, it’s a different entity. Because of the connection between the projects and the timeline, we decided to name it after JC’s successor: Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus. We titled the release after the pivotal day that marked the transition between the two dictators. And really, what better day to put it out than the Ides of March itself?
Album art by TJ Giovannio. Band logo by Nathan Kwon.
jontools is a collection of various coding projects I’ve built that serve practical, experimental, or fun purposes. Each tool came about either from facing a problem where no existing solution quite fit my needs or simply because I thought it would be interesting to create.
Version 1.0 features two tools: a MIDI inverter and a MIDI transformer.
MIDI Inverter
Description: Invert the pitches of MIDI files while maintaining the original register.
Key Capabilities:
Transforms each MIDI note to its mirror image.
Preserves the overall musical structure, including key changes and modal interchange, except inverted.
Includes an octave-matching function to maintain track registers.
MIDI Transformer
Description: Apply custom transformations to MIDI files, allowing for complex musical alterations.
Key Capabilities:
Supports a wide range of modal transformations based on user-defined parameters.
Facilitates both automatic and manual transformation selection for precise control.
This project started while I spent half of January in the hospital dealing with the worst ulcerative colitis flare I’ve experienced since getting diagnosed with that obnoxious disease a year ago. While there, I decided to work on a project I nearly finished in 2020: ripping every sample, soundfont, and MIDI file from every N64 game. Once the last bits of that were done, I thought “it would be nice to have all the MIDI files inverted since I want to eventually continue my N64 Tonal Inversion series.” So I wrote the code for the inversion process, wrote some additional code that looped through all of the game folders, and ran the inverter on every file.
I then got released and went home for a few days, but my symptoms immediately came back, so I ended up getting readmitted to the hospital. During my second stint I took a Docker course. I’ve worked with Docker at my job for years, but felt like I would benefit from gaining a more thorough understanding of it. When I was finished with the Docker course, I realized a perfect learning opportunity would be add a frontend to the MIDI inverter I had just built and to containerize the whole project. So I did that. In my spare time over the next few weeks I added the MIDI transformer functionality, which is something that I’ve imagined for a long time, and then figured out how to deploy the application on an AWS Lightsail VPS.
I will be adding more functionality to this site over time. I have many small projects from over the years that could have their own pages here and many ideas for other interesting tools to create.
If you're in the mood to discover some beautiful and unique psychedelic rock — very dramatic, with many stylistic twists (ranging from math rock, space rock, stoner rock, instrumental progressive rock, post-rock, ambient, and more...) — I invite you to check out the self-titled album of a band with a strange name... This is the work of a Yank duo — drums and guitar — led by a certain Jon Lervold, a philosopher, programmer, musician, and who knows how many other things, in a truly fascinating piece of work that oozes quality, despite the limited number of instruments involved... The name of this band might seem like a license plate number, but their sound is anything but ordinary... These Yanks play a broad cosmic variety of psychedelic and progressive rock, generally on the heavier side. The sonic landscapes are vast and immense, and everything carries a huge amount of weight behind it.
This band’s name might look like a license plate number, but their sound isn’t nearly that ordinary. They play a vast, cosmic variety of heavy psych and prog, and the album art of an astronaut traveling through an ancient temple is weirdly fitting. The soundscapes are vast and huge, and everything has a massive amount of weight behind it. Even though this album is a bit on the long side, it works. This is the sort of music where stretching out benefits the band.
55YT MQRT was formed in Redwood City, CA way back in 2006. At that point in time, my friend Neal Jensen and I were high schoolers deep diving into the world of psychedelic and progressive rock, our favorites being The Mars Volta, Pink Floyd, and King Crimson. We had just left our post-hardcore outfit Ending Reason and we very much wanted to explore some more experimental sonic territory ourselves.
We originally formed under the name Hellships. For reasons unknown to me now, we ended up dropping that name and instead chose to go by 55YT MQRT. Something about progressive rock that has always made us laugh is how often people complain that bands within the genre are “pretentious,” so we chose a name that we found maximally pretentious as a way to poke fun at the people who make such complaints. (Neal later ended up properly forming Hellships in Olympia, WA with Robin Flowers and Alex Freilich. I produced their two studio albums, Leaden Hum and Doom Organs in 2012 and 2015 respectively. I consider Hellships and 55YT MQRT to be sibling projects… Hellships is a bit more of an unhinged and “off the grid” fellow, whereas 55YT MQRT is an equally strange individual who somehow manages to hold down an office job.)
We developed the band’s compositional approach in the early days. We would do long improv sessions that were then edited down in Pro Tools into seamless songs. From there we would add elements, cut parts, and rearrange things until the songs felt complete. We released our early tracks on MySpace.
Within a year of forming the band, Neal moved to Olympia, leaving our project with an uncertain future. In 2010 I ended up deciding to move there as well. We became roommates and revived 55YT. We assembled an untitled album consisting mostly of ambient noise tracks. When we moved from our apartment into a house where we could make loud music, we started properly practicing again. Over the next roughly 4 years we would occasionally work on 55YT material, but during that time we did not properly record anything due to focusing on other projects (Hellships, A God or an Other, Bird Surgeon, The Lunch).
Neal eventually decided to move to Montana to pursue a master’s degree, and again this left the band with an unknown future. In January 2016, before he left, we decided to properly document what we had been working on, again following the edited improv approach of our early works. We quickly had solid recorded versions of our songs that represented what we had been doing live during that time: Neal playing a single guitar accompanied by myself on the drums. The lone overdub was bass for fullness. Neal then left for Montana. This version sounded complete to me, but not to Neal. He wanted to overdub some additional parts he had been imagining.
He came to visit Olympia and we recorded his extra ideas. Now that there were additional elements on certain scattered parts, the parts with no overdubs sounded empty to me! And thus, a nearly 8 year process began. Parts were added and edits were made in short bursts, usually when Neal would come to visit for a few days here and there. Sometimes the session sat for literally years without being opened. Finally, in November 2023… we knew it was complete.
It shocks me when I think of how different my personal world and even the world in general was when we began working on this album. I was pursuing music full time living in Washington state. Donald Trump was just beginning his first run and the idea of him becoming president was ludicrous. Since then, I moved halfway across the country, had a son and a daughter, worked as a cable technician for 4 years, and made my jump into software development as a career. And the whole pandemic thing happened.
This is my longest-running recording project to date. I don’t know how many people will connect with this album but this is one of my personal favorite releases I’ve ever put out. We had been envisioning creating something like this since high school. The vision is finally fulfilled.
Over the last couple of years Neal has regularly been coming from Iowa, where he currently resides, to visit our family in Colorado. During those visits we have been recording new tracks which will be the basis for the next 55YT MQRT album. If the pattern holds, we’ll release the next album somewhere around 2031. We’ll see!
Album art by Garrett Botkins.
Tapes available through Big Name Records or the Bandcamp. BNR2400
Gapless w/ Lyrics on YouTube:
Stream or Download/Purchase (name-your-price) on Bandcamp:
It’s always frightening when a promising group goes silent for an extended spell, especially when that group does so in the midst of COVID, which wound up taking many many projects from us. So it was with tremendous relief that I saw Bull of Apis announce they had a new record in the can, and then exceeding delight when I finally heard it and found it to be better than the previous in every metric...
So fun to say name this band. Feel like cast magic spell! Like summon ancient spirits! Grug love that cover and lyrics add to feel important. If no listen this yet Grug think you listen with read lyrics must! Words make poem. Flow so nice. Make think. Not just about evil or sads. Important for society. Spoken word feel so good!
Guitar sound stunning. So big! Big snow storm mountain soaring tremolo! So many times grug feel guitar pierce into mind! Some parts make go "heck yeah" some parts give Grug goosebumps! Parts calling back to other songs make song family. Grug adore guitar feedback. It big player in album. Happen on most songs. Like secret man peek behind curtain. Come on stage for big moments! Know something important happen when guitar feedback sounds come! Grug love how express vocals from talk to sad to shout to fire. Hear and feel what being said. Work so great as extra instrument and as cling to words.
