Just Another Snake Cult

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)

Still probably a demo, but it’s good to have something done so I can give it some space and take a removed look at it after a bit.

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.

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.

So the EP might be becoming a full-length and I’m working on it more.

For now, download the first single from the upcoming album:
http://www.mediafire.com/?tyuiim2eebm

Or if you’re in a nordic country, you can get it on gogoyoko as well.
http://www.gogoyoko.com/album/Heavensent__bw_Dionysian_Season/

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.

This just came out of me. Lets hope it’s the last nihilist electro-druid beach-grunge that I record.

I’ve been sitting on this little, somewhat discordant, piano theme that I thought created an interesting mood when played over and over, but didn’t have any idea what to do with it. Doomed to sit in my fragment pile. So today recorded this as an exercise in giving a fragment life.

I just found out about the Wizards of the Ghost surf compilation tape yesterday.  If there’s one thing I can do, it’s play and write surf music.  So I spent the afternoon today writing and recording a song to submit, and this is the result:

A few months ago, before I moved away from Santa Cruz, my friend Rachel and I worked on recording some of her songs. Rachel is the amazingly talented musician and singer behind Birds Fled From Me.

We recorded four songs in total, a mix of old and new — the impetus being that she needed to record a track for Jono Schaferkotter’s short Spaceman, she had a lot of really good unrecorded material, and I wanted to create a new music video using the techniques I was messing with for the Monsters From Mars – Defenders of Atlantis music video.

For the video we recorded a new version of her River Song, which appears on her first album, Deeper Lurking, and which is the only previously recorded song that we took up. In addition to Rachel, the track features Erin Copp on cello and myself on melodica, xylophone, and casio.  The mix is still a little rough.

We shot all the footage for the video in one day during that same week, but the post-production has been put on indefinite hold as I’ve been too transitory and working too much to juggle it.  This photo is from the shooting of that video.  We hung green fabric sheets from a thriftshop along my wall to achieve the green screen effect.  The video will happen, and it will be magical.