This page lists all the music and downloads on this site from all projects. You can use the drop down menu at the top if you want to only see music from a specific project. There are brief descriptions of the projects on those pages.
I have a lot of material, and since I am not releasing it, I might as well post it all here for people to ponder. There is enough variety in style (and quality. . ) that you might love one thing, but hate the next.
I must say that some of these tracks really lose their bass when compressed to MP3. Sorry about that, but they were mixed and mastered to be released on CD.
I’m sure you already know that if you want to download a track, ctrl click on the top of the media player.
Here are some tracks by Babylon Rising – my electronic dub project. I recorded some drum tracks, and added some synth. I then take these bare bones ideas and do a live improv on top of them, where I add other elements by playing into a looper (Electrix Repeater), and of course playing with lots of effects. I recently bought a melodica, so I’ve been playing that into the looper for some nice hazy melodies.
These two improvs are a good indication of the Babylon Rising sound.
If you downloaded or listened to these tracks before Feb 11th, those were screwed up versions. There was something wrong with the files, that I just corrected today.
If you don’t hear any bass on your tiny computer speakers, just download the songs and listen to them on your iPod – there is bass!
Posted in Music, Sick Signal on December 5th, 2009 by admin-Comments Off
Here are some excerpts from Sick Signal live. The actual pieces are really long, so I just pulled out the best bits as examples of what Sick Signal can be.
I wanted to do something where the words came first and the music second. This idea was really appealing because I find that so many lyrics out there are just afterthoughts. Most of my own songs start as music, with the hopes that some of my existing lyrics will fit, but they almost never do, so I write new lyrics, which takes weeks because I want them to be able to stand on their own.
This brings me to the second seductive idea – I wanted faster results. I wanted to do a project that would be quick and easy, that I would be able to finish in a few weeks. I was sick of spending months on one song, which is my normal rate of output. I wanted to take a break from my usual working methods and do a quick project, just for my ears, that would provide instant gratification.
It would be faster to use existing lyrics, so I dug into the boxes of stuff that I had written over the years. However, the writing that I found most interesting was not all lyrical in nature. There were transcriptions of dreams, diary type rough notes, observational stuff. So, I figured I would make a spoken word album. What could be faster than that? Compose some interesting ambient music and read this stuff over top of it. I also recognized that much of this writing had a theme to it, and that I could, with very little editing, make that theme more concrete. So the writing came from various points in my past, the introduction was a piece written around 1993, and the rest was written between then and now. Some of the writing that I felt would work in this project was rough and unfinished, so I took the time to finish it. Sketches from 1995 were now deemed complete in 2009.
The nature of self observational writing, is that it makes for self indulgent art, something I try to steer clear of. However this was only going to be for my ears, a break, a vanity project to clear my mind, so I wasn’t worried about it being too self centered. In fact, seeing how far I could elaborate on my inner most quirks made the whole thing humorously interesting for me. It’s all sincere, but you have to laugh at a song about snot dripping down the back of your throat!
In the end, the project consumed a year of my life. So, the idea of instant gratification clearly got lost somewhere along the way. Also lost, was was the idea of the project being entirely spoken word. Songs evolved in various forms, some more traditional than others. But one idea did last throughout the entire project. In every case, the words were the first and foremost starting point, and the reason for these songs to exist.
This project was completed in August of 2009. As a CD the tracks all flow into each other seamlessly, something these MP3’s won’t do. This makes me want to post a disk image or something that will allow people to hear this music as it was meant to be heard.
This is a project that never quite made it to where I wanted it to go.
These songs were recorded on and off over a period of 10 years with the idea that I would eventually have a full set of “Acid Lounge” music – most of which would have vocals. I had envisioned lots of xylophones with space echo and me in a red sequined jacket crooning over dub beats. Some of that happened, but I think this might still be a work in progress.
For obvious reasons, thanks are due to Dave Howard for the positive influence he has on my music.
A Bitter Harvest track appeared on the Nice + Smooth compilation “Slonice” which was released in 2004. I had intended to do a third album in this dubby minimal style but got severely sidetracked. Any minimal dubby stuff I do now will more than likely be released under the name “Babylon Rising”, to distinguish it from the more ‘ethnic’ sounding Bitter Harvest material.
