This evening I sent out all of the e-mails to those I've received packages from for patients. But there are a few people who did not include an e-mail in their trade. I will still mail you the CD, but I have no way to let you know I received your trade. But I will be mailing the bulk of all the discs tomorrow and Friday, and will take care of the final run next week.

Side note: my brother shot some pictures of the CD making process, so I figured I'd post them. The only free night I had to make these was pretty damn cold for Florida (it got down into the 20s), so we had to build a fire to stay warm while spray painting all the covers and discs. Made for better photos, though.

More soon. I hope everyone is well.

Just a quick update.

I threw my back out last weekend. Not as bad as I did in December (this is a recurring thing with me), but enough to leave me pretty useless for a while. Last time I threw it out while doing squats at the gym, so it was pretty obvious what went wrong. I'm not really sure what I did this time. Anywho, the Patients stuff got backed up and I have not sent out a lot of the confirmation e-mails. But if you sent your stuff before this week, then it likely arrived fine. I will be sending out the confirmations today and tomorrow, and mailing out a lot of CDs on Thursday. You should hear from me soon, if you haven't already.

I apologize for the delays. Everything should be on track again soon. But a preemptive "thank you" for everyone who has participated in this. I'll save the details for the final write up, but it's been really great. Better than I'd hoped for, really.

Related note: there aren't many CDs left, so I will be taking the address down this weekend.

More soon.

Well, I hope everyone had a nice holiday and new year.

I'm still catching up. I always forget how tough it is to get any work done once everyone comes into town, and festivities are boiling every night. A lot of the plans I had got knocked back a week at least. But I'm not complaining. It was a good time. And I probably gained 10 pounds.

That being said, Patients is now complete. I have all the materials for the covers, the stencils cut, the spray paint ready, the inserts together. The songs are all mixed and ghetto-mastered (I just made sure the loudest points were even, but that was about it ... not much of a mastering job), and in track order. I have the PO box has been set up, and I built a page for the project. All of the rules for exactly how this will work are there (I'll be putting up the address for you to mail to on tuesday, once I'm sure it's all cleared), as well as info on the songs themselves, lyrics, and one of the tracks is avilable for download (it's the 5th song down, titled "Mind Ur Manners"). For any info or questions pertaining to the project, please head over there.

I have more to post, but I'm hungry and need a shower. I smell like a trashbag.

More soon.

Okie doke. Another revision to this Patients project. It's never as simple as it seems in my head, once I get it all down on paper. But I think I've worked out all the last kinks. Fingers crossed.

The project will launch in the middle of January. I'll be opening a P.O. Box though Fedex for people to mail their trades to. I've ordered all the materials to make the discs, and they should arrive fairly soon (waiting until the holidays to do this probably wasn't the best move, eh?). Once they get here, it shouldn't take me longer than a week to assemble them all. I really have no idea how many people are going to participate in this, but I only have the money to make and mail a hundred total (it adds up fast). That might be way too many, but if I don't get that many people who're willing to do this, I'll use the leftovers as merch. If I get more than that, it'll be first come first serve, and I'll have to send out any past a hundred digitally, via e-mail. Should that occur, I'll try to do something cool with the digital package that I can't do with the physical. Maybe make a video or something. Also, international mailing is not only fine, but encouraged, for those who were concerned about it.

But the upside to this taking a lot longer than I thought it would is that the disc has grown. It's now going to have 10 tracks instead of 6, and will almost be a full-length of random stuff (though, two of the tracks have been posted here in this news section previously).

That being said, I've been wrapping up new songs for some upcoming Morr Music compilations, Clone is still moving along (the first twenty minutes of the record are fully-structured and mostly tracked now), and the new Radical Face material is coming out better than I'd even hoped. Also, Alex and I should be wrapping up all the instrument work on the Sleep Well B-sides over the next two weeks. A bit of vocals after that, and they'll be done. So a lot is forthcoming. It's just a lot to juggle. I tend to bite off more than I can chew. Bad habit. But there will be a whole lot of new material next year, which will be fun. Perhaps four records, if all goes as planned.

Side note: I recently realized that I had a spam filter on my music-at-radicalface address. I don't know why it deems certain messages spam. It seems to have a mind of it's own, and not a very sound one. The folder had a good number of messages that didn't once offer me an extra mortgage, or pills that will make my crotch more impressive. So I'm writing those people back now with an apology attached. I really suck at e-mails for some reason. They aren't complicated, but I have a knack for making them so.

Anywho, I hope everyone is having a nice holiday. More soon.

First off, I don't know what I did to break the little flash players on my news page. I'm still tinkering with it. But I'm aware that all the players disappeared, and will fix them as soon as I know what I did wrong.

That being said ...

Japan was a ton of fun. I'm really glad I went. The food was awesome, the people were extremely nice and accomodating, I played tons of Street Fighter 3 and 4 (I stopped in nearly every arcade I passed), the bands I opened for (I Am Robot and Proud, and Group Inou) were sweethearts, and outside of being allergic to something over there and turning into a human rash, I have nothing to complain about. Someone at the Tokyo show even crafted me a gift. Sadly, I didn't get to meet them in person, but whoever you are, thank you. Oh, and the shows weren't terrible. I wouldn't call them great either, but I didn't end each night feeling like I'd butchered all my songs and made and ass of myself, which is a step in the right direction. I'd definitely like to return to the country sometime, if they'd have me. It was probably the most fun I've had on tour. Thanks again to everyone who came out, and to everyone who gave us a place to sleep, and to Minoru and Koji, and way too many other people to name.

Here are a few photos from the trip (shot by Jim and Koji):

In other news, I'm officially working on a million projects. Or five. Whatever. But currently in progress are the Sleep Well B-Sides, my next Radical Face record, Clone, the first Patients disc, and it appears I have enough side material for a Radical Face EP. So I'm going to be recording my arse off from here until the end of the year, looks like. Probably longer. But the weather is finally nice again, so I'm happy to be working this much again. I've also done a few remixes recently. If it's cool with the artists I remixed, I'll post them up somewhere. I've never done a great deal of remixing, so it's been fun. But I'll wait to hear back from them first.

Oh, and I attempted to start another myspace page for Electric President. I'm not really sure why. But I guess it'll be cool to have another page where I respond to people two months late because I suck about keeping up with my messages. But I've tried this a few times before, and my pages always get shut down for some unkown reason. We'll see how attempt number three goes. Here's the link, if you wanna add us: poop.

Oh, and I'm (yet again) pretty behind on e-mails. If I haven't responded to you yet, I'm not trying to be a shit head. I'm just playing catch up again. Sorry for being such a turd burgler.

And now I'm going to eat my twice-baked potato. More news soon. And I'm finally going to update the music section of this site, and get all my ducks in a row. I am a bucket of motivation.

Well, for the first time in a long while, it looks like I'm gonna do some live shows. I wasn't really planning on it, to be honest. I've been trying to put a band/rehearsal space together for many months now, but I can't seem to manage it. It's either too expensive, or too hard to get a good schedule together, or I'm just an idiot. So I returned to my usual mentality when I hit the live show roadblock:Fuck this, I'm just gonna make another record.

But I got an offer to play some solo shows in Japan. I have always wanted to see Japan. It's way up there on my "I hope to visit that place one day" list. Perhaps at the top. So I agreed to do it. Which was probably stupid of me. It means I have about 2 weeks to put a show together. And it'll be solo. The problem with playing solo is that a lot of what I write does not boil down to just me and a guitar very well. I have a tendency to get carried away with arrangements in recording, so when I try to pull it all back to just a one man operation, it's missing something. Or a lot of somethings. With three or four people to play with, I can just rearrange everything and get something different but solid. Not so much alone.

So for these shows, I'm only going to play what works with just me, or me and a laptop, from any of the records. That means about two songs from Ghost (maybe three), a few songs from Sleep Well, a few from S/T, a few news ones, maybe some covers. It won't be a coherent show. It'll just be what I can play without any help. Now the real question with that is: will it be a show anyone will sit through? I don't really know. But I guess I will find out. The dates for these shows are as follows:

October 4th: Asagiri Festival

October 5th: Osaka Tower Records

October 6th: Osaka Sunsui

October 7th: Nagoya Huck Finn

October 8th: Tokyo Unit

And I'd like to apologize in advance, in case these shows are total shit. But hey. Japan! And if for some reason these shows go well, I'm gonna consider doing some more of them, perhaps around the states, or wherever I can find people who will book me. But that's putting the cart before the mule. I'm not holding my breath on these going terribly well.

But I also realize I never posted the links to the last of the videos I shot with Mark Hubbard. Here are the quicktime links:

Scrapbook 1

It's An Ugly Life

Scrapbook 2

And for youtube links, all of them are up on the Morr Music youtube channel.

Lastly, I did a remix for the Sole and the Skyrider band recently. They're releasing a remix album of their self-titled LP, and I handled the track "Nothing Is Free". I haven't done a great deal of remixing in my time, but it was fun. I don't know when or how it will be released, but I'm sure they'll post about it on their myspace page.

That's it for now. I hope everyone is well.

Well, it's been a little while. I kinda dropped off the face of the earth. I had all these plans in order, and they all went to shit. But not so much in a bad way.

I'd planned on spending my Summer wrapping up the b-sides from Sleep Well, finishing up all the incomplete songs I have lying around, maybe penning a short story or two, going to the beach, playing too many video games ... you know, Summer things. The one thing that was not on the agenda was beginning another record. But that's what happened.

I've been attempting to teach myself a bit of music theory in my spare time. I've always had a shorthand for writing music that's of no use to anyone but me, but I've been learning to read and write the proper way (albeit very slowly). The purpose is not so much for transcribing music, but so I can better understand the things I read on composition. I enjoy reading about composition in general, always have, but I've been doing a lot more of it lately. It's given me a ton of ideas – new ways to approach music, ideas for pairing chords and instruments together, other ways to tackle arrangements, etc.

Largely in response to that, I've started my next solo record (the follow up to Ghost) in full. I'd already recorded 4 songs for it before it, but I'm only keeping one of those. The others need to be reworked, or left aside. They don't fit the approach I'm taking now. But I'm really excited about how everything is going. I've been demoing all the ideas I've had for about a month and a half now to see which ones translate well and which ones don't, and I've been revising all the material I already had together for the record. I've been more successful with these demos than I'd even hoped, which is heartening. And it's forcing me to improve at piano, which I'm always meaning to do, so that's been a plus. I'm not a total hack anymore (just a partial one).

I don't have an official title for the record yet, but I've been calling it We all hang from our family trees. Seems to sum up the theme of the record. But I can never really say what it will be until I'm done.

Beyond that, Rick and I have been working on Clone. We took three weeks off due to a lack of time, but picked up recording again this week. We're approaching a halfway point. It looks like the record going to be five tracks long, each one ranging from 7 to 10 minutes in length. The songs are “movement” based, in that they don't repeat themselves. The hope is to be done within the next couple months, but it all depends on how often we can get together to work on it. Two of the songs are very solid at this point, and the third is on its way. We now have the overall arc/story for the record as well. It's about a clone that wakes up on a table in a deserted laboratory. He's a fully formed being, in that all of him is functioning, but he has no context or knowledge. The story follows Clone as he wanders out into the world with no guidance, and what happens to him because of it.

We still don't know what we'll do with the record when we're done, but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.

I guess I'll go ahead and mention my other upcoming project (experiment), though I don't know when I'll be able to put it in motion. I've had this project in mind for a while now, but have not had time to officially start it. But I'll go ahead and get the explanation out of the way ...

The project is called Patients. The idea for it, musically speaking, is the exact opposite of how I make records. I'm very specific about albums. I don't just take the ten catchiest, most upbeat songs I've written and put them on a disc. Not to imply that there's anything wrong with that, but it isn't what I'm into. I view albums as a larger piece, where all the components work together to form a mood, or a story – something larger than just a collection of songs. I think some of this stems from the way I personally listen to music. I don't often skip around when I listen to records. I mostly put them on and listen from one end to the other. I realize that I'm in the minority with this (lots of people I know only grab the two songs they like right off and never really listen to the rest), but it's how I like to do it. So when making records, I'm really particular about how things flow from one end to the other. I intentionally want slow sections, and quiet areas, even parts bordering on boring. If it's all flash, it can kinda ruins things for me. Like a movie that's only action, it might be fun at first, but it rarely keeps me interested for the entire film. And even in the rare cases that it does, it's probably not something I'll revisit very often.

But the reason I mention this is because I often cut songs from a record because they don't quite fit the pace, or arc, or whatever thing I've decided is the overall goal for the album. But that doesn't mean I don't like the songs. If anything, they usually stand on their own without context. So in the place of a record, they're just oddballs that don't play along well with the other tracks, but they do just fine as a random track. Usually these wind up as b-sides, but sometimes they're too far removed for me to feel like it's even a b-side.

Patients is going to be a dumping grounds for those kind of songs. Or maybe an orphanage, if I want to be all Dickens about it. But the project is basically this: random songs without context. It doesn't matter what they're about, how they're tracked, what “genre” they land in, and whether they play nice together. Some will be one-off collaborations with friends (I would like to write for other people's voices, for example), some will be instrumental, some will be things tracked with a hand recorder outdoors, and so on. It will likely come off more like a mix-tape than a record, and that's the point. Songs for songs' sake, nothing more and nothing less. As much as I like building records the way I do, it's fucking exhausting and takes me a long time to work out. It's nice to just write something and be done with it from time to time.

So that's the idea musically. But I have some ideas for the “business end” as well. I really want to play with ways to release this stuff. I would like getting music to people to be a bit more fun, and since this isn't going to be an “official” project (in that it will be released by a label and needs support), I want to deliver each collection of songs more like an experiment. For example ...

This first collection of songs, once I'm done with it, will not be sold. I'd like to do it as “barter only”. In that, if you'd like a copy, you have to trade me something. What you decide to trade is entirely up to you. It doesn't have to cost anything. It could be a book, something you make, something you find, a mixtape, an odd photo, cool looking leaf that you pressed into a plastic baggie ... whatever you like. Part of the fun would be seeing what people would deem a worthy trade, or what they saw value in. But basically you'd just mail me something, and I'd use the envelope to send you back a CD (which I will either order a very small run of, or just make myself by hand). After the run is over, I'd use the Patients page to list what everyone sent.

The collections will likely be about EP length (5 to 8 songs), and each one would be sent out in a different way. But as I said, I'm not even done with the first collection. I got side-tracked with this new Radical Face record. But I will likely have it together soon. If you are interested in this, check back. I should have the Patients page active soon (as well as finally updating the Electric President page).

Beyond that, we will likely be starting up Mother's Basement again within a month or two. And this time, as some people have suggested we do, we will post the assignment rules before we begin in case anyone else wants to give it a try. We won't be able to host anyone else's attempts, but we welcome people to start up their own pages, which we would happily link to. More info on all that as we get it together. Oh, and I will try to add an RSS feed to both my site and the Mother's Basement page soon. I've had a number of requests for that, and I looked up how to do it. It's really easy, so I will add that when I get the time. Hopefully this week.

Sorry for the lengthy post here. I have a lot of catching up to do. I got kinda lost in everything this summer (not to mention playing the Warhammer Beta more than I should have ... computer games have a way of screwing my time up). Oh, and if you sent me an e-mail sometime over the past few months and I never got back to you, please send it again. I reformatted my computer without backing up my Thunderbird files, and I lost a lot of messages. I thought I was nice an thorough with this last reformatting, but I missed even more than usual. I suck.

And I guess that's it. I hope everyone's well.

Rickolus and I had our first recording session for the"Clone" project this week. It went really well. Both of us were really pleased with the outcome and feel pretty confident that our ideas for project are going to work well, so it looks like it should be pretty fun. I'm not sure what we'll do with the music once we're done, but we'll figure something out. I'll post updates whenever I have them.

I still haven't had a chance to get my other new project in a presentable form, but hopefully next week. Still some coding, recording and mixing to get together first. Step at a time.

And the second video in this series of Sleep Well clips is done and uploaded. It's the first of the "live" videos, and it's for the track "Monsters". I got the idea for this while watching videos of David Bowie on youtube. I particularly liked the BBC clips from him, where he played slightly different versions of the songs. I figured we could do something similar, but track them in more visually interesting locations.

This first one was shot in my shed, along with 17 desk lamps from the thrift store. The video and audio were recorded simultanously. So when it cuts to us playing other instruments, we're recording it with mics as well as cameras. Kinda like live multi-tracking, I guess. My brother, Emeral, was kind enough to play the piano with us, and Mark, who did all the fimling, joined in on the handclaps. Links below.

quicktime

youtube

More videos soon. And hopefully I will get this new project posted. I don't mean to keep pushing it back like this, but I haven't had much time lately.

Been awhile since I've updated. Everything always takes me longer than I think it will. I am a terrible judge of time. I have a bunch of new stuff to put up, random bits of news, and a number of downloads, but I'm gonna have to break it into multiple updates. Some of these require me to make changes to the site, and I'm slow with code. Or lazy about it. Probably the latter.

But I am nearly finished with this little project that has taken up all of my waking hours for the past three weeks. I've been working with a local film maker on some videos for Sleep Well. His name is Mark Hubbard, and I've known him since I was 7 years old.

We've put together five short films: one that explains the record and how it was made, two that are live performances of songs from the record (with different arrangements), and two that are solely visual. I've been building sets in my backyard, setting lots of things on fire and other fun stuff like that, but video is insanely time consuming. It's kinda like recording, only the set up and break down takes a lot longer. We've been pulling a lot of sleepless nights from it.

I also wrecked my ankle getting one of the shots, which really slowed me down (literally, I guess). We were shooting some shots at this nearby playground, and I thought it'd be a good idea to get some slow motion shots of us jumping out of swings. I also thought it would look cool if we were wearing masks. Long story short, I jumped out of a swing wearing a polar bear mask at 2:00 in the morning (all the footage is being shot after dark). As you can probably guess, I had limited visibility. I landed on my ankle at a bad angle, and the pop! was audible. My brother just laughed at me, saying, "Holy shit! I totally heard that!" I can't blame him. I'd have probably done the same were our roles reversed.

But yeah. It was one of those things that didn't strike me as stupid until it was too late. But I didn't break it. Or I don't think I did. I was on crutches for a few days, then had to use a cane for about a week. I've now upgraded to a mere limp (mandatory pimp walk). Hopefully another week will have me back to normal.

Anyway, once I am done with these videos, I can get back to working on these new music projects. I'll go ahead and let the word out on one of them ...

Rickolus and I have been talking about working together for a while now. As long as we've known each other, we've never really worked on music together. Or not seriously. We did the Headache and Pearl Harbor thing as teenagers, but all that material was half a joke. And then there was this song, back from 2003 or so:

I made the music, and then we got together and put words on it. But we've never really collaborated. Not with any thoroughness, or where we both apart of the entire process (guest vocalists aren't quite the kind of involvement I'm talking about here). So we've decided to do something together this Summer.

The project is called "Clone." I can't say what the music will be like, or what we'll do with it when we're done. We'll cross that bridge when we get there. But we're going to start working on it next week and just see where things lead.

I also have another new project together, but I'll hold off on that a little longer. I want to wait until I have the first two or three songs mixed and available before I say much more about it.

More soon. I hope everyone is well.

I never posted the second part of that last update. It was intentional. I was jumping the gun. I'm going to be announcing my new projects soon, but I'd like to finish some of the recordings first. More on that soon.

But I'd like to take a moment to mention a record that a friend of mine just finished. His name is Richard Colado, his project is called Rickolus, and his record is called "Winter's Daughter". I've known him since I was about four years old and we currently live three houses away from each other. But that isn't why I'm writing this. I'm not doing this as a favor to Rick. I just think his new record is really cool, and as a general fan of music I think people should hear it. That's it.

He's not releasing the album traditionally as of now. He's decided to put it up for free on his website, and just let people donate if they like it enough and wish to support. I'm going to be handling my next project in the same fashion. This is something we've been talking about for years now, and we're finally implementing it.

Here's the first track from the album:

Beyond that, Alex and I have been taking press photos for this new record these past few weeks. Instead of doing something serious (a.k.a. boring), we just had fun with the shots. They don't relate to the record in any way. We think they're pretty hilarious. A few examples:

This was a really lengthy update, all typed out, so I split it in two. I'll post the next part soon.

That being said ...

Sleep Well has been mastered, the artwork is finished, and everything is in order. There is now a release date. June 6th for Europe, June 25th for the US. By that time I will likely be knee deep in a new set of recordings, but that's always the case. I always swear I'm gonna take a big break after I finish a record, and I never do. But I'm excited to put this record out. It's certainly different from the last, but I think it's a much more interesting album. It'll be fun to see what others think.

With the help of a guy named Alex Sexton, I now have a functioning "photo" section. Click on the page up above to check it out. There are not many photos loaded, but I will scrape some more together soon. And thanks again to Alex. Had he not offered to set this up for me, that section would have likely remained "coming soon" forever.

In other news, my brother and I got a new (used) piano. It's a Baldwin from sometime during the 80s, and it sounds lovely. We can now record piano without sneaking into the college practice rooms in the middle of the night (the bottom two octaves work!), which means we may finally get more of these Iron Orchestra pieces laid down. Here's a picture of it:

I'd forgotten what it was like to play a piano that was properly tuned and all the keys functioned. I'd grown accustomed to not using certain notes, because they didn't function on the old one.

More coming soon. Weee.

Done!

The new Electric President record is finished. It's called Sleep Well, it's twelve tracks long, it features songs about boogie men and creatures living beneath your floorboards and the inevitable robot takeover we're bound to experience in the near future. Thirteen months is a long time to work on the same material. I'm pretty damn sick of these songs. But I'm very glad the album's done. I've been celebrating by getting some sleep, and eating too much.

I still don't have any idea when this record will actually be released. I'll post about it as soon as I know. But it'll likely be out sometime around Summer, which sort of sucks. It's very much a winter/nighttime kind of record. Oh well. Can't win them all.

But something kind of funny happened with this record ... the b-sides, if we complete them all, add up to more run-time than the record itself -- over an hour's worth of songs. Whoops. I don't know what we will do with all ofthese. It's a bit early to say, considering most of them aren't even totally finished, and actual album isn't even out. But once they're done, I'll find some way to make them available. Step at a time, step at a time.

Alex and I also tracked a cover song recently, and I figured I'd put it up for download. We've covered this song before, but the first time we did it over a course of a couple hours. It sounded pretty half-assed. So we retracked it a couple weeks ago, since there was no more work to do on the record. It still sounds sort of half-assed, but in a better way. The song is called "Time After Time." The original was by a woman named Cyndi Lauper. Link below.

More news soon. And I hope everyone is well.

First post of the new year. Pretty late, I know. It's been a hectic month. And I really need to start sleeping again. The bags under my eyes are looking pretty intense.

First: I added 12 new songs to the downloads page. Descriptions and links can be found there.

Second: I finished mixing one of the new Iron Orchestra pieces, and I've posted it on the respective page. I've got anothernew one nearly completed, and soon we'll start on another set of these. We've been mostly tracking the more "manageable" songs, as in the ones where we already have access to the instruments. I'm hoping we can get to some of the more involved pieces in the coming months, though. We'll see.

Third: This Electric President album is more or less tracked. In fact, I would be saying it's totallytracked, but I've had a head cold for about three days now and haven't been able to sing. Once it clears, I have maybe another night or two of vocals and then it'll be finished. Well, not mixing, but all the recording will be done. I think I'm happy with it, but it gets hard to say after working on the same set of songs for over a year. It's tough for anything to remain fresh for that long.

Side note: I may be mixing this record in an actual studio, as I got an offer to do so and it seems foolish to pass up that kind of thing. I'm still seeing if I will have everything together in time, but it's fun to think about either way. And some better monitors would probably make a big difference on this record. There are a lot of tracks on these songs, and the bass kinda got out of control on some of them. I could manage at home, but it would likely go a lot faster in a treated room with a proper desk. But I'll see what happens

Fourth: The next Mother's Basement assignment will be underway soon. We took some time off, as Rick, myself and Jeremiah are all trying to wrap up our individual records. But this new assingment will be about scoring the audio for some footage. A film maker is supplying us with three minutes of video that we'll have to write the music for. None of us know what the content will be, and the challenge will be to write some music that goes with the footage and gives it more "mood." This assignment should be underway soon. I'm excited about it.

Fifth: I've compiled a list of books I most enjoyed this year. I'm not sure if anyone cares, but I like books a lot and I'm always buying them for people, so I'm gonna post a best-of-2007 list on my next update and try to spread the word on some good authors.

Sixth: No Country For Old Men was an awesome movie. I love the Coen Brothers.

Seventh: I finished two more songs for my next Radical Face record. It will likely be quite some time before that comes out, and I have no idea if these songs will make the cut, but I've been in "turbo recording super awesome" mode these past couple months, so I went ahead and tracked a few them. They worked out suprisingly quickly, especially for me.

I guess that's a good place to stop. I'll post another update soon. I hope everyone is well.

Just a quick update. I will write a longer one soon, when I have more time.

First -- we, the Mother's-Basement-Boys, will be playing a Christmas show here in Jacksonville. It was requested that we reform "Gotham by Voices" and play a show for the Gothic Christmas Bash at Eclipse, Christmas night. We've agreed, so there will actually be a second appearance of this train wreck. Weird. If you're in town, come see us make asses of ourselves. In make up and ripped clothing and sadness.

Second -- I contributed a song to Hue Records (a label out of Japan) for one of their compilations. The compilation is called "Once a Hue, Always a Hue", and some other folks I know are apart of it, including Astronautalis. But the disc will likely be tough to hunt down outside of Japan, so I figured I'd throw up a flash version of the song I contributed. It's titled "If You Come Back to Haunt Me", and it's basically a b-side from Ghost. I wrote it around the same time, but it didn't fit the album so I didn't finish it until a while after. Click on the player below if you'd like to hear it.

Just wanted to mention: If you wrote me and e-mail and I never got back to you, I likely lost it. I really didn't have things backed up properly, and I use Thunderbird so the messages are actually downloaded to my harddrive. And are therefore gone. But that's only part of things. I'm behind on all this stuff for other reasons as well, most of which are because I suck at life.

So if you wrote and never got a response, I'm not ignoring you. At least not intentionally. Feel free to write me back, if you still care to. And if not, I understand. I wouldn't write me either.

Beyond that, I'm thinking about compiling some lists this year. Probably not about music. I've heard almost nothing from 07, and have been listening to 80% classical music and movie soundtracks again. Whoops. But I was thinking of compiling a "best of" list for books, and perhaps one for movies-that-were-so-awful-they-were-hilarious-and-wonderful. I'm not sure why. The one thing the world does not need more of are lists. But I like books a lot, and often force them on people I know. So why not try to push them on people who accidently stumble to this site?

Okay. I've finally got my external hard in order (well ... relatively speaking) and can finish updating the site this week. So more crap will be posted in the downloads section, and maybe a photo section will be added before the month is out. Or at least that's the plan. These things usually slip away from me. I blame Team Fortress 2 still. But in fairness to myself, I've been recording nearly every night for months now. I'm determined to get all this material completely tracked before the year's up and I've been at it non-stop.

Anywho, I thought I'd do a post on what this new Electric President record is about.

The record will likely be called "Sleep Well." That's been the working title for nearly five months, and it still fits, so it'll likely stay. Musically, it's pretty different from the last record. Or at least I think so. I have no idea what other people will think of it, but I'm not terribly worried either way. I'm sure some people are really going to hate it, but that's okay. I'm fine with that. I'm an asshole that way. I'm pretty sure Alex couldn't care less.

Lyrically speaking, a lot of the record is about bad dreams. Whenever I dream it's usually of somethng of odd or unnerving, or stressful, or outright fucked up. I don't know why. I'm sure there's some Freudian reason behind it all, and it all boils down to a random event in my childhood and some sexual hang-up I didn't even realize I had (oh, the wonders of the mind). But I started to record what some of these dreams were about, for no real reason at first, and later decided to turn these scraps into lyrics. Not every song on the record is about dreams, but a healthy chunk of it is. Or to be more accurate, that's where a lot of the lyrics began. They have a way of wandering off on their own once things get rolling.

But around the time of writing down a lot of these dreams, I was reading a lot of cyberpunk -- China Meiville, William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, and so forth. So a lot of that bled into things. Which boils down to more songs about robots, and giant machines made out of old microwaves and toasters and radiators becoming monarchs, floating around in outer space and waiting for your oxygen to run out, and other such nonsense. Again, not every song is like this, but more than a couple are. But don't quote me here. I can never quite say what the end product will be until it's over and done with.

I thought it would be fun to post some of the words beforehand. Lyrics without the context of the song have a way of reading like really awful poetry, but I'll risk it. I'm an asshole that way, too.

(currently untitled song)

In through your window the sky will fall. You'll trap the stars in jars and line them along your walls. As the moonlight fills the veins beneath your skin, You'll hear us knocking, oh, but you won't let us in.

Because you have no friends, And you have no heartbeat. Your insides are rotten now. So there's nothing to fix.

But you said it often, before you were lost, That it's only a day. That it's only a day. But now you're a monster, and you're backbone is soft. Because you threw it away. Because you threw it away.

You called me out; I shrugged you off. I don't have the time to watch you bash in all their skulls. There's a new boss in town, his heart is black, and his hands can reach through anything. Stick your head in the ground. You just might dodge the guns.

But I'm not your friend. And I will not fix you. My insides are rotten now. So you're all on your own.

But I said it often, before we were lost. That it's only a day. That it's only a day. But now I'm a monster, and my blood all runs cold. Because I threw it away. Because I threw it away.

But now we've forgotten. And we've sold our blue skies. And there's nothing to say. We'll be gone in a day. And yeah, you can't take it with you. But I can sure as hell try. Now there's nothing to say. I'll be gone in a day.

I don't really know when this record will come out, but hopefully first quarter next year. We'll see.

Okay. A real update, like I've been promising. First, there is now a downloads section. So far I've only uploaded one record to it; an old project between me, Alex Kane and Corey Loop called Unkle Stiltskin. But I will add more to the page as I get things organized again.

Secondly, we now have a finished Iron Orchestra track up. And it's only - what? - six months late. But both of us are proud of it (which is a large part of why it takes so long ... we can be some picky bastards, both of us). Head over the page if you'd like to hear it.

The Electric President record is starting to wrap up. A lot of the songs are getting to the "final version" stage. Most of the songs just need some vocals and a bit of manipulation and mixing. But I think we're gonna continue tracking until the end of the year, and from the looks of it we'll have both a new album and a new e.p. recorded by then. We're also planning to make some alternate versions of some of the songs, but I'll get to that idea a bit later. It'd probably be best to wait until the original versions are done before I get too caught up in anything new.

I've also finished a few tracks for the next Radical Face album. Kinda jumped the gun on that one, but the weather has been so nice that I've been excited about recording again, and I've been doing tons of it. It also helped that my computer exploded and I couldn't play Team Fortress for a while. That game is evil.

Next on the list - we had a Mother's Basement live project a couple months ago that I forgot to post about, and will do so now. A friend of ours asked us all to play a show at a club here Jacksonville. We agreed to do it, but instead of doing three individual sets as requested, we thought it would be more fun to form a temporary goth band and play "goth versions" of our songs instead. Oh, and to wear torn up clothes and make-up. The show was probably terrible and gut-wrenching to watch, which was the plan. I think we succeeded. We named the one-night band "Gotham By Voices", we covered the Batman theme song, and then closed the show with a cover of "Closer" by Nine Inch Nails, which Alex Kane was kind enough to provide the bassline for (he knows it by heart, as he should). The pics below, shot by Rachel Bess, are our proof of this. Rick (Rickolus) looks very genuine. I was very impressed with his transformation. Jeremiah (Wudun) looked pretty gross. I looked even more filthy and homeless than I normally do.

And that's good for today. I still need to add the photo section to the site, and I've got some other tidbits to post about, but all in due time.

Alright. It's been a long time since I last updated. But this time I have a good excuse -- my computer exploded. I was uploading an ubnoxiously large file in photoshop when the power for the house cut off. The computer was plugged into a regular power strip, not a surge protector, and the power surge basically fried everything. The motherboard, the ram, the processor ... even the damn keyboard. Sadly, the computer in question is where I store pretty much everything, and most of it wasn't backed up. Total bummer.

But I finally got some new parts, rebuilt the damn thing, and I'm up and running again. Tomorrow I will do a nice big update, which should include new photos, new recordings, new info, new parts of the webpage, and whatever else I can tack "new" onto.

And a word of advice: back your work up. Constantly. Be paranoid about it. If it saves you even once, it'll be worth it.

For the past couple of months, I've been going to the library one day a week to write. I haven't written fiction for a long time now. When I was fresh out of highschool, I was determined to become a writer. That was my "career choice." In fact, it was in only losing the majority of what I'd written (almost a book and half) in a random harddrive crash that I started playing music again. Not to imply the things I'd typed up were any good (they weren't), but it's tough to lose a year of work in one fell swoop. I needed something else to fill my time, and music fit the bill. And here I am, seven years later, still at it.

Anyway. I've been writing again. Not full-steam, but with some semblance of regularity. I recently finished my first short since starting up again, and decided to quit being a chicken shit about it and make it public. So I'm posting it here. I don't expect anyone to read it. It's not short (over 25k words), likely needs more editing and might be terribly uninteresting. But there's something about making it available to strangers that helps it feel finished. For me, at least.

Green Thumbs: Part One Green Thumbs: Part Two

Beyond that, I have the new sections for the website sort of built. Meaning, I still need to work out some bugs, but they are almost done. And the Electric President record is still underway. New songs keep getting added, and though we're already have plenty for one record, we're going to keep tracking for a while longer. The shed isn't quite so hot now, so recording isn't nearly as miserable. I'm actually optimistic about it again.

Fall, I love you.

Holy hell, I am late with this update. Everything always takes longer than I think it will. Always and forever. But the new Mother's Basement assignment has finally been posted. Head on over to the website if you'd like to check it out.

I will make a much more thorough update when I wake up tomorrow.

Alrighty. The new Mother's Basement assignment is done. Only this one has a new person involved: Mitch, of Greenness and Sick Room Records, is contributing a piece as well. And since he's an amazing guitarist, he's going to make the rest of us look like idiots. Sweet! Anyway, we'll be meeting this coming week to show each other what we've done, then Jeremiah and I will update the website and make the results public. I'll post about the update here when that happens.

Beyond that, more recording (as always), and I've finished a few more flyers. One of these days, I will update my art page instead of just dumping the new stuff on here. But not today. Click below if you'd like to check them out.

one two

Lastly, the Iron Orchestra page will have some finished material on it soon. And I plan on making some overall additions to the site (photos, downloads, etc) as soon I can find the time. Hopefully this week.

This new Mother's Basement assignment is tough. I still don't have anything I'm entirely happy with, but I inch closer with each attempt. And I'm also reminded of a little equation that always shows up around this time of year:

Florida + Summer = Kill Me

The shed I record in is beyond hot. It's an oven, and since I can't use fans while recording, there's no respite. My recording output always gets cut in half during July and August because of it. I'm sure it's a funny site, though: me, sitting in my underwear, sweating in the middle of the night and nearly losing my mind when I repeatedly screw up on takes because my hands are slick. Fall, hurry up and get here.

But for some good news, me and my brother are going over to the local college to record some pianos for Iron Orchestra tonight. Finally. If all goes as planned, we should have two pieces posted by the end of the week. It's been a long time coming, but I'm still excited about them, and there's something to be said for that. And the Electric President recordings are still plowing along. We already have enough material for the record (minus the vocals), but I think we'll continue tracking until we've laid down everything we've written, since we have the free time right now.

We've been tracking a bunch for the new Electric President record, and it looks like we'll have most of the music recorded within a month or so. After that, I'll get all the lyrics laid out and recorded, then spend a paranoid month mixing everything. Hoorah.

And though it's been slow going, I think I've got my Mother's Basement assignment written out now. I still need to record it, and until I do I won't be able to tell if this will end up as a coherent piece of music, but I'm optimistic. I have to get my guitar playing back in shape, though. I can't play all of it yet. I need to practice guitar more often, but I'm still pecking away at piano. Oh well.

Other than that, I've been doing a lot of visual art lately. Below are the links to some flyers and such (minus the words), if you'd like to see them.

one two three

I've got a few more on the way, and eventually I will add all of these to my lazyeye website, but it's easier to plop them here for now, and I'm being lazy.

I'm already not updating things as quickly as I'd hoped to. But I'm not going to give up. A nice fellow named Alex sent me a cool, freeware flash-based photo gallery which I should be implementing soon, And I hope to add a "downloads" section to the site, and I've got some new recordings nearing completion --some associated with new records, others just for shits and giggles.

Beyond that stuff, I have a book recommendation. I spend a lot of my free time reading fiction; I usually go through a book or two a week. Occasionally I'll stumble on a wonderful book that not a lot of people have read for whatever reason, and I'll start nagging people to check it out. The most recent one of these was "The Facts Of Life" by Graham Joyce. Some books are tough to sell because they require people to already be interested in the topic, but this one is just a good, creative, funny, odd, charming story, and I think just about anyone would get something out of it. So if you find yourself wanting to read something but you aren't sure what, hunt this one down. It's short, and it's excellent. It's my top book of the year so far. And if you happen to not enjoy it ... well, that's what you get for taking advice from a stranger on the internet.

Alex and I have made more progress on the new record. And here are a couple of pictures from last week, when we were tracking some electric guitars over at his house. I'm the grumpy one, Alex is the artsy one:

Progress report:

Me and Alex have been working on the new Electric President record since late January. We've got seven of the expected eleven songs tracked. Well, mostly. Until everything's closer to being finished, it's hard to say whether any songs are really done, or if they'll even be on the record. But it's coming along nicely.

My brother and I should be laying out some Iron Orchestra pieces this week. We have plans to track pianos for two of them this coming Wednesday. If we can get a good enough sound, we should have some finished tracks posted on the Iron Orchestra page in the coming weeks. If not, we'll have to keep searching. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. This stuff has already been dragged out for way too long.

I've also started another solo project. It's called "Patients." I don't know what I'm going to do with it at this point, so it's probably way to early to even mention it, but hey. Internet. And I could post a description about what it's going to sound like, but I'd rather wait until I have something more finished.

And I guess this would be a good time to explain something:

Yes, I realize that I work under a lot of different names. But there's a reasoning behind it. I decided a while ago to tack names onto projects instead of developing some kind of a stage name. Since most of these "bands" are really built with recording in mind, I'm more or less naming the idea behind them. As such, I will likely only use a name for a couple of records. If down the road I get enough ideas for a former project to drag it back out, I will, but that may never happen. I know this makes no sense in terms of marketing or people ever figuring out who the hell you are, but I like it better. Who knows, though. I may wake up tomorrow, decide this is a thoroughly ridiculous idea and abandon everything I just said. Stranger things have happened. But for now, that's how I'm going about it.