I’m playing a solo, acoustic set on Sunday at the Innipúkkin festival outside of Sódóma and Venue on Tryggvagata/Naustin. I’m slated to go on at 6PM.
There are a lot of really great bands playing the festival, especially on Sunday night. If I were you (and had some form of income), I’d say it’s totally worth the entrance. Here’s the facebook event page: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=140078769353029
In other news, I’m putting the final touches on a full-length album to be released on Brak Hljómpötur. It will be released in Iceland in August.
I recently found I’d gotten an email from my dad with only one line, “are you still alive?” which poses the question, if a tree falls in a forest and it’s not on facebook, did it make a sound?
I played a magical show last week shared with Linus, “Markus and the Diversion Sessions,” and with a reading from Vignir from his book Allir Litir Regnbogans. It took place in a low attic in 105 and was not promoted on the internet. I played a lot of new songs, arranged for ukulele and voice, which went well, so I may start playing more shows.
I also recorded a new song last week. I’m releasing it exclusively as a selective email release. Get in touch with your email address if you’re interested in getting emailed a copy.
I have a Thinkpad T43 that I bought off a friend when she got a new netbook. I think that generally Thinkpads are pretty good laptops. But apparently this specific model has a flaw where after years of the case flexing, the solder on the GPu or southbridge comes loose and so if that connection gets broken everything freezes up until you push on the right place on the keyboard and the connection on the circuit board is loosely reestablished. Also, when it freezes up all the uSB dies (mouse and external harddrive) until it is rebooted. So basically my computer is more for looking at than touching. If you touch it too hard or if it isn’t sitting perfectly flat everything goes to hell. I forget where I was going with this. It may have had something to do with the fact that the Q and U bttons don’t really work consistently on my keyboard either, bt I’m not sre.
Anyways, a couple years ago we were working on a James Rabbit album and practicing for shows and Tyler announced that everybody was to go to their rooms and come back with a James Rabbit song. I went to my room and came up with the basic idea for this song, but it was very clearly not at all a James Rabbit song. So instead, this song became one of the early tracks I was working on for the Just Another Snake Cult project. I started recording it while I still lived at the Crystal Palace. Got frustrated and gave up on it twice. First I thought the recording wasn’t coming along well.. bad tone, sloppy playing, uninspired arrangement, lacking in style. But then I came back to it again and when I’d forgotten the heights it deserved to reach and was more or less content with what it was. Then I got stock with the lyrics and could never finish them, as was the case with a whole bunch of the early songs for this project. Again, the case of having hopes and expectation grander than my abilities. But a couple days ago I felt the urge to tackle it again and plowed through it. Again, being removed enough from the grand heights I saw as the song’s potential and being content with it being what it was, I was able to move forward. (I want to return to and finish all those early unfinished recordings, as they embody the intended spirit of this project a lot better than a lot of the totally random stuff I’ve been doing lately)
Here’s a song I’ve been playing around with. A dreary waltz of sorts, romantic and cynical. I just got a melodica, so I was anxious to try it out. Listening back I think my whole recent “SM-57 on everything” approach should be re-evaluated. It’s just laziness. I’d imagine the melodica would sound significantly better with the deeper bass and crisper highs of a condenser mic.
I’ve always had trouble writing lyrics that aren’t true – partly because it’s hard to pull things from out of thin air, and partly because I don’t feel comfortable lying. I also have a strong dislike for nonsensical, psuedo-poetic lyrics (ala the kind I grew up on: Nirvana, REM, Radiohead), mostly also for the latter reason–it’s hard to say something nonsensical with conviction or emotion. It feels dishonest, let alone really goofy.
But this can also be very limiting. What’s that leave us with? Retelling of past events, inward states, and essays? Doesn’t necessarily make for very interesting music. (And actually, to be accurate the statement needs no qualifier — “I’ve always had trouble writing lyrics period.”)
So I’ve been trying to figure out how to create characters and tell stories that are true, despite being fabricated. That appeals to me. Creation without lying. I’m sure this is what a lot of great lyricists do well, and that’s why I can sing along to a great song without feeling like an idiot. The narrator isn’t me. The narrator isn’t necessarily anybody. The events didn’t necessarily happen. Yet it rings true. But where exactly does that leave us? In the realm of inner truth? Or the realm of pure ideology and manipulation? Perhaps it depends on how skeptical you are. Or maybe you’re ready to admit they’re goofy ways of saying the same thing, and maybe you’re ok with that and it doesn’t matter.
Linus let me borrow a book called Songwriting By Songwriters, or something like that, which is a series of interviews with notable songwriters about songwriting. I started leafing through it today. Turns out Paul Simon generally does things that he finds funny and has a distinct distaste for (his) youth. Bob Dylan puts on his usual defense mechanism of speaking nonsensically. Brian Wilson’s insights parrot his therapist — and this being the ’80s, are pretty far gone. Pete Seeger is nice enough.. But so far I haven’t yet found a single thing elucidating. It’s more of a “yeah, this thing we do is weird.” Peter Seeger says you should borrow and steal and change existing songs, which is the most I’ve gotten out of it. Bob Dylan says there are already enough songs, we don’t need any more, which is a bizarre way to think, as if a song were a commodity. Whatshisname who wrote songs for Sinatra and others talks about occasionally straying from 32-bar melodies, and this one crazy time he wrote a 9-bar bridge instead of 8-bar. Some other guy has a natural talent for rhyming and coming up with lyrics really fast.
Not particularily helpful, especially if you don’t have a natural talent for rhyming, or lyrics, or melody retention, or harmony, or even pitch. Rather it’s frustrating! To be cursed with a love of and need for something which comes so easily to some other people. (Which isn’t to say I haven’t got any natural musical talents — I’m quite proud of my ability to hear and analyze tambres / tone textures, which is useful in emulating synthesizer patches or nailing a particular sound on a recording.)
I’ve hit another one of those moments where I completely lose sight of whatever musical vision I was chasing after and am sort of just free floating. Though perhaps every song I’ve recorded in the past year is drastically different from one another, for each one I’ve known exactly what I was doing, and it fit into the context of things I know and love. Acoustic viking adventure with jazz-influenced singing and arpeggiated synthesizers, anti-civ undertones. Joe Meek inspired freakbeat with mellotrons, Rachel plays one of the characters. Repetitive beach grunge with weird sampled sounds and subtly stretching my boundaries of discordance. Film music piano piece ala Michael Andrews. Short and simple ’60s pop theme repeated through different treatments, withcynicallyrics ala Magnetic Fields. All these songs participated in something I was grounded in, all self-coherent with my world.
I have a handful of songs that really fit my vision (before I lost it) but that I just couldn’t finish. Couldn’t get them to live up to what they needed to be. Even Dionysian Season didn’t turn out near as good as it should have. The singing too ambitious beyond my ability, as with the lyric writing — I clumsily failed at accomplishing what I intended, with the effect that could have been accomplished with those melodies and that backing track. And Rachel didn’t even finish singing it — I had to cut and paste her together at the end and fill it in with my own voice! HA! Nobody has said anything about that, maybe they’ve thought the effect is deliberate. Perhaps that vision was too ambitious (perhaps not ambitious enough).
It’s hard to figure out what to do. I have a song on a comp and think to myself, damn my track isn’t nowhere near as lo-fi and raw as the rest of these, has nowhere near the character. I’m doing a split with James Rabbit, and for once his songs aren’t amazingly catchy concise pop songs, they’re quite experiemental, and I think my music isn’t nearly as fun or creative. And it’s not as moving as … And not as deep or poetic as … And the textures and production aren’t as interesting as … And it’s completely insane! Of course I want my music to have character and be fun and have energy and be interesting, moving, poetic, catchy, etc. But you can’t embody everything. It’s unfair to yourself. Of course none of those other songs stand up to each other on the same criteria! So it’s silly to hold yourself up to all of everything.
It’s the classic Nietzschean delema. God is dead. So where do I get my values from? My songvision is dead. I remember it, but I don’t see it — it’s not on my horizon any more. So what comes next? I have vague tinglings of doing something unlistenable to, something very uncommercial. But I’m hoping that will pass, as I think the desire to musically connect with a listener and the desire to alienate cannot be compatible. Using music to alienate is misguided. Using communication to declare that you don’t want to communicate. Skip a step! Don’t communicate.
Perhaps my old songvision will re-emerge. I think it was a good one, one I’d spent a lot of time carving out, and there was not any reason for it to disappear. (Just as there was no reason for me to leave Santa Cruz.) But these things must be felt. Though I can think about the songvision–the triumph, the beats, the arpeggiated synthesizers, the mellotrons, the philosophical and personal depths, the basslines, the jangles–until I feel it I cannot follow it.
We’ll see how it clears up.
I’ve also been thinking about the internet as a medium. In the sense that recorded music is truly enjoyed as sound vibrations reproduced from a set of speakers (issues of warmth and resolution aside), the music files over the internet are not inferior to previous mediums — you get your sound waves moving through air. The advantages are that it can be free. Non-comerciality is tricky in a society where perceived value or importance follows commercial viability or value. Do people consume physical and paid for things differently than free, vaprous things? I prefer the idea of non-physicality and non-commerciality. But with internet downloads you’re stuck with computers, which are a higher overhead costwise and environmentally than a walkman+CD, for instance. I never really thought of that until I stopped using computers and the internet so much and my main computer is mostly broken and I’m thinking about not replacing it any time soon. That digital music collection isn’t so unphysical as I made-believe. But I think for the ordinary person these days a computer and internet is assumed.
Also thinking further about the internet as a medium, specifically websites… I’m starting to think this page should be something different than a blog. Just Another Snake Cult should have a more interesting presence than the ramblings of myself. But when start to think about design I just want to smash things. I mean a strong physical urge to take a hammer to a CRT television set.
I’ve been thinking about architecture too. I like that OMD named their 3rd album Architecture and Morality. I wish it was actually a concept album on that topic, though Joan of Arc is fine as well. Architecture and design have such a profound impact on the way we live. Most obviously socially. Really obviously ideologically. A room laid out with a place for a flatscreen TV. Bam! A house that separates private property and priving living from the public sphere. Bam! No wonder we think and act the way we do. As creatures of our environment, we become unconcious of these things, they become natural. Design and architecture is really nasty stuff. Really dubious. And as a designer or architect, there is such an inclination to follow the herritage in some manner (or else be groundless and directionless, nihilistic noise), and then the gag reflex — the urge to smash the whole institution, especially TVs.
It’s the same urge with music, with design, with architecture. But it’s important to remember it’s not just crap or nothing. With some thought and creativity new ingenious things can be thought up. Structures can be designed to be off-the-grid (both technically and ideologically), that encourage other ways of living, of interacting, of thinking. Music need not be commercial nor alienating. The creative process and its results can be reflections of our own aspirations. Communicative and inspiring.
This song isn’t going to be for anything – just an exercise. I guess this is what happens when you start to record a song before you have any ideas for it. It kind of came out all wrong, but I’m pretty stoked on the keyboard solo. And I guess by “solo” I mean note-for-note melody.
It’s a little free there at the end. The laziness exemplified by the fact that it was all recorded with a single SM57 lying on my desk comes through throughout.
Yesterday I recorded a song in the style of something I might have tried to write in high school, which is when I got into a phase that lasted a long time of listening to way too much Magnetic Fields, oldies, and oldies-influenced bands like Neutral Milk Hotel and early Shins and Of Montreal. Lets hope this is the last self-deprecating love song I ever write. Or, eh, I donno – get a sense of humor.
In high school I also listened to way too much surf rock. And before that, way too much Nirvana. Both of which I still love but contributed to my stinted understanding of arrangement and production. Verse, chorus, verse, maybe a bridge, chorus, chorus. Bascially just two, maybe three, parts; loop it a few times; and you’ve got a song. That’s all I knew, and it’s a box I’ve been trying to break free from since. That’s basically the structure of every Monsters From Mars song I wrote. But in the past years I’ve been influenced by all sorts of more dynamic music – everything from obsessing over Smile-era Beach Boys to playing music with my friends Tyler (James Rabbit) and Dylan (Antarctica Takes It), inspired by their transparently complex and dynamic, yet concisely pop songwriting. For myself atleast, there’s always first this extended phase where all you can do is clumsily emulate aspects of something you appreciate, before it really sinks in and you absorb its essence. I’ve been in that middle period for a long while – it’s taken some time, but I’m feeling myself starting to emerge. A butterfly. A beautiful butterfly.
The nihilist-sunshine-pop EP is sloooowly coming along. I have two or three songs for it pretty much finished, and a couple more I want to see if I can get in shape for it. Rachel just sent me her vocal contributions for one of the songs, and so I’ve put together a rough mix.
Rachel also sent me some back-up vocals to another track, “Heavensent, or A Valkyrie Brings the Seed of Revolution,” that you’ll also be able to hear on the EP. I’ve been thinking the original release of the EP will be available in two mediums – 1) a CD-R with linocut print envelope, and 2) a linocut print poster with download code on the back. I want to try to make the inks out of discarded vegetables, such as beats and red cabbage. I guess more on that as it develops.
In other news I rode my bike out to the music store the other day and rode home with a $65 acoustic guitar, so maybe I’ll play some solo shows soon.
Recent Comments