June 15th, 2008:
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.
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.
June 4th, 2008:
Still haven't finished coding and updating all the necessary pages, but it's underway. I have the first of the videos uploaded, though.
As I mentioned in the last post, I have been filming and editing a series of Sleep Well related videos for the past month with Mark Hubbard, a film maker/childhood friend of mine. There's no real budget for these. I set aside $200 for props and such, and we've been working predominantly with things I've picked up from thrift stores using that budget. It's been a ton of work, but we're both really happy with how they're all coming out.
This first one explains the basic ideas behind the record, and how/where it was made. First is the quicktime link (higher-res, looks much better), and after is the embeddable version:
I'll throw up a youtube link once I have one. And I'll be posting more of these as we get them uploaded. And once I stop playing Age of Conan instead of sleeping. Computer games have a way of ruining me.
More soon. I hope everyone is well.
May 27th, 2008:
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.
April 15th, 2008:
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: maryn. If you like it, head on over to his website and listen to/download the rest of the record (it's on the front page). If you find you enjoy it, write him and tell him so, or donate, or tell a friend about it, or whatever. It's up to you.
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:
More news to come soon. I hope everyone is well.
March 23rd, 2008:
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.
February 19th, 2008:
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.
January 23rd, 2008:
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 totally tracked, 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.
December 23rd, 2007:
I like the holidays. I've done nothing but record for almost two weeks now, and I'm about ready to stab something or beat my face against a wall and I haven't had a solid night of sleep in who knows how long, but there's still something about this time of year that I like. Perhaps it's just nostalgia, but I'm not gonna pick it apart.
But a couple weeks ago, something lame happened -- my piano died. I've had this piano for about two years. It cost me nothing. There was an ad in the local paper saying "Free Piano If You Are Willing to Pick it Up and Move It Yourself." It was an old flat top wurlitzer upright, and it sounded like a haunted house. The people just wanted it out of their living room. I was happy to oblige.
Now, even when first bringing it home, this thing was on it's last leg. Most of the keys were chipped and dirty, and it was scuffed and scratched and creaky. The bottom otcave was completely shot. Not just off, but the keys just made a dull thunk when you hit them. No notes. When I had it tuned, the technician said that the piano could not be tuned again once he was done. It was basically rotten, and any more work on it and the thing was going to fall apart. It stayed in relative tune for almost two years, and I thought maybe the technician was exagerrating a little. But the other week it finally keeled over. Four of the hammers are entirely broken, and about 5 more get stuck at random. Below is a picture of the old gal (notice the recessed keys ... those don't come back up anymore), and then a picture of me giving it a final salute, because I'm a cheesy bastard.
And I figure I'll go ahead and post the last song I recorded with the thingbefore it died. I've been doing these experiments with layering rhythyms over each other, but with instruments instead of drums. I've been enjoying it, and eventually want to shape these experiments into more traditional songs. But this is the last one I did. It doesn't have a name.
That being said, I guess my midi keyboard decided it couldn't go on without the piano in its life, because one week later it fucking died on me too. I'm much less forgiving about that one. It was a piece of junk anyway, and half the knobs didn't work from the get-go, but still. Midi keyboard, you can go suck it.
Beyond that, lots of progress has been made on this new Electric President record. Most of the songs are completed now. There's a couple left that need some tweaking, and a few that need a bit of retracking, and all of them need mixing, but it's sounding pretty finished. I don't know if I will meet my goal of having everything entirely tracked by the end of next week, but I will be close. I'm looking forward to being done with it.
Also, I have a new Iron Orchestra track nearly finished (just needs mixing), and I'm currently uploading some more old material to the "downloads" section of the site. But according to the queue, it will be another three hours before they're up. My modem is a piece of garbage, and it often likes to take its sweet time. But I will post up the songs once they're uploaded.
Lastly, I hope everyone has a lovely holiday.
December 17th, 2007:
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.
November 30th, 2007:
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?
November 28th, 2007:
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.
November 17th, 2007:
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.
November 16th, 2007:
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.
October 4th, 2007:
I think Team Fortress 2 might be ruining my life.
October 2nd, 2007:
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.
October 1st, 2007:
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.
August 31st, 2007:
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.
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.
August 17th, 2007:
Holy crap, we actually got some pianos recorded. And the session went well. It's probably the best sounding piano I've ever personally recorded, so on an engineering level, I'm excited about that. Anyway, once the accompaniment is in place, we'll have a few Iron Orchestra pieces actually finished. And it only took, what?, a year and a half?. The two we tracked were simpler -- mostly piano, voices, some computer trickery -- to ensure that we can finish them. It's not a dent in what we've written for the project, but it's a start. And hopefully it'll move along a little more quickly now that we've got the ball rolling.
Beyond that, still plugging away at the EP record, and we'll be recording Biowulf next week (ha). Oh, and I got a nod as "artist of the day" for Radical Face on Spin Magazine's website. Go to www.spin.com if you'd like to check it out.
Finally, I'm behind on e-mails again because I'm an idiot. But I'll catch back up this weekend. Promise.
August 13th, 2007:
Been a little while since I've updated this.
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.
July 29th, 2007:
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.
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.
July 22nd, 2007:
I figured I'd post a random song on this update. This track was recorded a couple years ago, but not for a specific project or album. It's a depressing little number called "Sad Business", and it's about a boy watching his father being hung. The recording is pretty barebones. Just a guitar and some vocals. Click on the player below if you'd like to hear it:
July 21st:
Today I recieved a junk e-mail that told me not to be impotent, which I felt was pretty good advice.
July 10th, 2007:
We've decided on what the next Mother's Basement assignment is going to be. We each have to write a composition for 3 acoustic guitars. We are not allowed to use any effects or editing, and we must only use 3 tracks for the recording. It needs to be something that three people with acoustic guitars can play at once. The idea is to remove production and words from the songwriting process, to get rid of all the "tricks" you can sometimes use to make a song more interesting. It's all gotta be how well you can write for the three instruments, and how well you can make them work together. Having worked on this a bit, it's pretty damn tough. We'll see how the end results go, once we're all finished.
Also, I am very behind on my e-mails right now. I'm pecking away at them little by little, but I've been juggling a lot of stuff lately and doing a pretty piss-poor job of things. But if it's been a really long time and I still haven't gotten back to you, feel free to send me the message again. I promise I'll get to it. Please bear with me.
And I still haven't gotten the "photo" or "downloads" section added to the site. I suck.
July 5th, 2007:
I figured I'd spend this next little update showing some of the outtakes from Ghost. I'll start with one of the songs that didn't make the cut. This instrumental track, titled "The Lighthouse", didn't fit on the album no matter where I stuck it. I liked the song (even though, as you can tell from hearing it, I'm not the most adept pianist), but the record was pretty slow paced to begin with and this one just put it over the edge on the "dreary" meter. Hit play on the flash thingy if you'd like to hear it:
I also have some photos that I took for the record, which almost got me arrested. I was wearing this get up (seen below) in a small town in south florida to shoot some photos near some of the run-down houses near the highway. I figured it would go well with the theme of the record. Well, apparently a passerby called the local police station and left the following message: "I just saw two men just got out of their car on the highway! One of them pulled a sack over his head, got a shovel out of his trunk, and marched up to one of the houses!"
The police, figuring they had a serial killer on their hands, rushed out of the station to hunt us down. Me and my brother (who was the photographer) were oblivious to all of this until we were pulled over a few miles down the road. When we got out of the car, figuring it was a speeding ticket or a busted light, the officer had his hand on his gun and was yelling at us to stay back and keep our hands where he could see them. My brother looked at me with a "What the hell?" expression on his face. The officer then asked whether we had a sack and a shovel in the car. We said we did. He asked why, and we said we were shooting some photos with them. He asked what for, and we told him it was for some album artwork, and then let him see the photos on the digital camera's lcd screen. He was visibly relieved -- his shoulders actually slumped -- and radioed the station, saying it was a false alarm, call off the hounds. He then informed us that he'd sent half his force to the chunk of highway where we'd shot the pictures to search for bodies, and that they'd even sent out a helicopter. And sure as shit, a helicopter flew overhead and circled us until he was called off.
Long story short, I am not allowed to wear my mask in public anymore. Not that I would. Burlap is itchy as hell. Now, in hindsight, I can see where this would have caused some problems, but I genuinely believed that the camera would be enough to disarm people. But the best part of all this is, I didn't even use the pictures. Whoops.
June 22nd, 2007:
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.
June 10th, 2007:
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:
June 5th, 2007:
Assignment two for the Mother's Basement project has been posted. Head on over to the website if you'd like to check it out.
June 3rd, 2007:
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.
June 1st, 2007:
So I've finished my new webpage. Webdesign has this magical way of taking so much longer than you ever think it will. Each time I start out with some statement like, "No, no, no ... this new one will be simple! It can't take longer than a week or two to get together." Months later, and here we are. One could argue that my slipshod understanding of code is the problem, and they'd be right. But I don't like code enough to get good at it. I'd rather resent it.
But that's the beauty of this new page. I know enough to be able to maintain this one, so I will actually update it. My last webpage was obnoxious to make any changes to. I didn't plan ahead with it. And since updating it was a pain, I mostly opted to not do it. With this new one, I have less excuses. We'll see what happens.