(the first image that shows up when you search google for "gomorrah")
Every now and then, I’ll load up the ipod with stuff i haven’t heard and go walk in the park. I don’t do it enough, and every time I actually get around to doing it, I try to remind myself that I need to do this more, beause it is amazing, and recharging, and world-re-orienting. The last time I did it, I was working on a mix my friend AD, and auditioning a bunch of Transglobal Underground tracks to see if any would be good enough. I like Transglobal Underground, but their tracks tend to be really hit or miss, so I don’t listen to them that much.
Then I hit this one and my eyes popped open. The song tells a story, so I’d definitely wait to hear it until you can pay close attention, maybe use headphones, maybe go for a walk in the park. It’s a blast…
If you’re going to talk dead celebrities, I have to say I think I was more surprised by Heath Ledger than MJ. Even then, I don’t think I could say "moved" or "effected" by the death, but surprised, and maybe a bit bummed ‘cuz I thought he’d probably do some great stuff at some point.
A while ago, MT and I went to this place in WBurg (Brooklyn) that was funded by Heath Ledger and some of his friends. If you didn’t know, you’d never be able to tell it was a celebri-joint, it was nicely understated, the food was fantastic, and the service was warm. It was a great brunch experience. Also, they were playing 12" records that were really great. Some re-issue of a deep Jamaican dub release, and something by this band called Beirut, which sounded like old stuff, all accordian-y and the cover of the record was great. It looked like this:
Did a bit of reading about them, and discovered they’re a modern band. One of the songs was unbelievable, I’ll have to track it down. But in the meantime, I recently came across this mashup where they took the instrumental from a Beirut song (obscure, weird) and mashed it up with a vocal by Ghostface (dope, fresh). It works well…
I know, 3 posts in one day might be a bit much, but these are things I’ve been wanting to post for a while and haven’t had time…
I won’t write some big thing about MJ, but it is amazing that because of the new digital world, it’s likely that he’ll always have the top-selling album of all time. Here’s a tribute…DJ this one late in the party when everyone’s on the dance floor and you’ll have a riot on your hands…
The music is Mark E Smith and Mouse from Mars, von Sudenfeld. The real video for this song is pretty odd, but this one is a blast. They all look like they’re having so much fun.
This is why I still have Discobelle on my newsreader. For some reason I
love seeing what the underground European club kids are into at the moment. And this one is a blast — it’s full of everything reminding you what it’s like to be young, angry at everything for no reason, in love with life, full of so much energy you’ll almost explode, almost a parody of Youth Kulture. The chorus is kind of a joke, "we came, we saw, we killed the crowd" reflecting some of the antagonism that a performer feels for his audience, as well as being a chant-along anthem for the kids.
Plus, the song is called "Hooligans" for crying out loud!!
Part of our Musicwood doc is going to be musicians performing on acoustic guitars. We’ll use this to weave the music through the film, and to remind you exactly what it is these guys are fighting for, you know? So we’ve been approaching pr folks for Sting, Neil Young, Glen Hansard, etc. But Maxine came across this great unsigned artist named Sergius Gregory, and it turns out he’s based in Alaska! So when we flew out there to shoot, we flew him down to where we were and arranged to spend a day filming him in various (fantastic) locations:
in the rainforest, in a Native American Clan House, on a dock…
Here’s a cut of his performance in the forest…we won’t use the whole thing in the film, but we wanted to put it together because there was such an amazing feeling when he played this in the forest…I get chills just thinking of it…
hopefully some of that comes through…
UPDATE – Sergius is about to release a record (or something) so he’s asked me to take this down temporarily…seek his record out! Buy it! Support the music!!!!
I love that they bleeped them, so B&E still seem sort of nice…I love how well the mouth movements are synced up…I love the nods and looks they give each other…it’s great…
"There is something growing behind the modern day corporate life, something weird. Break-cutted-mashup-video-core: The videofocuses on the frontlines of modern day life, on work and leisure, art and powerpoint"
The content’s a bit simplistic, right, but the form, wow. Crank it up, it delivers the goods. It’s apparently a mash of 15 different artists on the Cock Rock Disco label (great name for a label). Solid stuff.
Sometimes something is so geeked out fantabulous that you almost can’t even tell what’s going on. Case in point: this is Bohemian Rhapsody done on hardware machines. The machines make noises of different pitches when they do different things (the scanner scanning, disk drive reading disk, etc.) and these have somehow been programmed to make their specific pitched sounds in time to create Bohemian Rhapsody. Whoa. Get past the intro and it really starts to rock.
The name of the song is "Thank You Mario But Our Princess is in Another Castle". It’s a great song, made greater by the concept (sung from the perspective of the character at the end of the Super Mario levels), made even greater by the 8-bit video. I never thought of the characters as real before, or that they could get sad or have wants and needs. Good stuff.
The Promoe is back with a brand new track! His beard dreadlocks are more fierce than ever, and sometimes his delivery sounds a bit like Kanye. I wonder what he’s rapping about…
This one was recorded by my old suite-mate Pat & I, no clue why or how, but I do remember him doing the lip-flap and thinking it was funny…still do, it sounds like avant-garde idiocy…
This is one of the piano tracks I recorded myself. When you recod with a 4-track, it records stereo right and left, and then essentially the stereo right and left of the other side of the tape. That’s where the 4 tracks come from, get it? So if you’re recording 4-track onto an old tape that already has music on it, you have to record over every track, otherwise you can get weird leftover stuff that plays backwards because it’s coming from the other side of the tape. I know, it’s confusing to explain, you kind of have to experience it. I’m only explaining it so you can get a sense of what’s going on in this track. This is a (kind of long) improvisation I recorded (in D minor?) in a practice room. I’m pretty sure it was meant to be straight, with no overdubs or anything, much like that first track I posted last week. But when it came time to mix it down, I was on acid.
I remember at the time I was really impressed with myself, I thought it sounded like some kind of heavenly choir, or other-worldly voices were mixed in there and I was sort of amazed that this is what I had recorded. That night, still on acid, I played it for Jack’s roomate and his friend (who were both on acid as well) and it blew their minds. They couldn’t believe I had made this. Hell, I couldn’t believe it either. It was confusing.
The next day I realized what I had done. My piano bit is in there, and then some kind of sped up overdub coming from a stray track that eventually turns into some backwards Led Zeppelin that I was trying to record over on the other side. Also Jack’s 4-track had this built-in reverb which I had cranked up so it does indeed sound otherworldly and odd. It’s almost 6 minutes long, and all kind of clashes together and sounds a bit like a mess to me now. But I bet if you took acid it would sound amazing.
This last one I can’t stand, but Jack requested it. I think it’s maybe the second thing I ever wrote with lyrics, and I’m trying to do this spoken word thing, and the lyrics make me cringe terribly and sound very immature to me now. Yuck.
I knew I was going to save this one for Friday. So last semester of my senior year of college I had electives open and I took an Audio Production class. The teacher wasn’t that good, but I got a lot out of it and it was a blast. The projects the prof gave us were good, he just wasn’t very good at explaining things…i.e. performing the role of the teacher. Ask Dan R., he took the class with me. The good thing the prof did though, was make us learn all the analog ways of doing things before bringing us into the digital world. So we were splicing tape with razor blades, making tape loops that were held in place with pencils and so on. It was great. I have this experimental tape loop piece but it’s only on reel-to-reel 1/4 inch tape, so I’ll have to transfer that later.
Even once we made the move to digital, the system was so crash prone that you couldn’t do a very long piece, you’d have to stitch several short ones together. We used the system to "master" the first Raygun Theatre album (also on cassette) and I can remember it was a glitch-plagued nightmare, increasing Jack’s every distrust of the digital world.
But what I have for you is my final project for that Audio Production class. I can’t remember what other people did for their final projects, but here’s mine. It’s an 8-minute acoustic guitar rock opera of the story of Samson and Delilah.
My favorite part is the bit in their duet where they start singing at the same time. She’s going "Samson" and he’s going "Delilah, aww I love ya" — I’m still proud of that bit. Delilah was sung by Molly, the girlfriend (now wife) of my pal Pat H. She knocked it out of the park, the piece really comes alive when she enters. She even nails the absurdist ending that I tacked onto the story, she was great.
For some reason I think my sister is going to love this track.
It’s been so fun posting these, maybe I’ll continue a little into next week…
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