Archive for the ‘ccmixter’ Category

 

… and my sister’s birthday. I blame the porn. Happy Birthday M., even though I know you don’t even read this!

So yes, September 4th was the one year anniversary of “Will Anyone Hear This?” I can safely answer the question now.

Yes.

People have heard.

So what’s the plan for this next year?

I will be released on a record in December probably ( vocals, a dance record, very talented producer/DJ, I will keep you abreast). I added two new links to my blogroll.

Ummm. That may be it. I may be up-grading some of my software. I am thinking about Logic. I will be making my own little studio, in the basement of our new suburban homestead. I may want a better microphone. Then of course, now we’re broke,  so I think votive candles and a rug is all I am going to get.

I need a new tag-line. “the sounds coming from apartment #3B” will no longer apply. I was thinking about “there’s a new sheriff in town and she doesn’t use chemlawn” but I am not really sure that conveys any musical inclinations.

My music has involved a lot of animals lately (geese, now foxes). I am fascinated by the nature that thrives in this dense dirty city. I am shocked they survive with the prevalence of chemlawn . I love watching the sneaky little paws in the night, or smelling the far away must of some terrible little skunk. Skokie, the place to which we are moving, was once a vast, rich, peaty marsh, dripping with life. What glowing, nocturnal eyes outside await us!

With that, here is my newest mix. Samples used were from Neurowaxx (yes, again), Father Scrouge, antonov & themfish. The inspiration for the mix was partially culled from a video I had seen many months ago, a family in Psadena, CA., that does sustenance farming on 1/5 of an acre. Here is a video of the Dervaes , and what they do.

Permaculture Disconnect (Babyland Mix)

The Sunset

Photo of Kaer Trouz by Ewan

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photo credit: Sebastian Fritzon

Oh Sebastian, what a cool photo. And, ever since I entitled one of my posts Porny Porn Porn, I have been getting tons of traffic! Thank you google analytics, for allowing me to see how I can better ’sell’ my product by isolating my most active demographic, apparently a bunch of music loving perverts! Yeah!!!! So Porn may appear gratuitously in every title from now on. But if porn isn’t gratuitous, than what is? I ask you.

When I plugged the search word ‘miss’ into the Word Press Creative Commons photo search tool, I got a lot of sad, forlorn looking dogs and this disembodied arm from Sebastian Fritzon. It’s 4am and (according to the caption underneath the photo) he’s stayed up all night playing the organ, remembering Nick Cave and Tool. I think the photo is sexy, if a finger could express ‘come hither’ this one definitely does.

I also think tino’s new mix of “Miss Miss Kiss Kiss” sexy and come hithery. Many of the mixers focused on the line …’until my eyes die baby, until me eyes die baby’. I thought it was a bit of a toss away line, but it stuck with the boys anyway.

Tino tillmyeyesdie ft Me

 

Lastly, a raunchy rocker that I almost didn’t post, but then everyone seemed to like. I found a little ‘bed’ (this is what we called an unfinished but fleshed out sample) by a favorite guitar player, Pitx , a seriously raunched out garage rocker. I stuck a house beat behind it, and some tambourine at the end, and some really raw lyrics and voila- 1995 all over again!

Moors In The City of Light (Drunken Housewife Mix) ft Pitx

 

 

Oh, and Sebastian, next time you are on the floor tired from your nocturnal organ frenzy, give me a call. (Sorry Zach, I am just trying to drive traffic here, due to my whoreish ways and porny mind, an amazing, porny girl mind).

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This is what happens when clueless city folks such as myself try to ‘go green’. Yeah yeah, the intentions were terrific; Mrs. Farmers Market here gets her lazy ass out of bed early every Tuesday to chat up the farmers and chicken slaughterers of the world. This damned chicken cost $16 and it’s disgusting, bloodied pale and mooning face freaked me out enough that, ouch, I threw it away. I know how terrible that sounds but my son took one look and refused to eat it and honestly the crackly, terrible sound of my decapitating it with my not-so-sharp kitchen knife would have haunted my ears for years to come.

Summer is hard too, for terrible chickens with their heads NOT CUT OFF but also a terrible time for me. Musically, emotionally, in every way shape, form. My stomach hurts, I am anxious, too much alcohol is consumed and I find myself a stranger in my own life. Nothing is easy, or fun or smooth or works. For instance, our air-conditioner, which looks like the robot from Lost in Space, which is set to 62 degrees and on ‘turbo’ mode- yet the apartment is still ninety degrees. I have left the refrigerator open and seem to be getting cooled down more from this than “danger danger will robinson” which is sitting right next to me. Also, those light bulbs you are supposed to buy, the coiled ones that reduce carbon footprints, I call them Al Gore light bulbs, you know them? Well I replaced all the bulbs in the house with them and honestly, now you can’t see anything at night., Every lamp in the house has to be on or we fall. And here my son again, has banned those light bulbs from his room so he can read at night, without needing a flashlight. I bought a five year supply at least, from IKEA. We’ll be squinting around for years, falling over stuff and not being able to read magazines.

Miss Miss Kiss Kiss, Whirling Dervish Mix (you can access my remix on the sidebar to the right there) ended up having a super cool a capella that has already been remixed 10 times! The most successful, in my eyes anyway came from the indefatigable Loveshadow and the massively talented Lasswell.

Laswell’s Dig Deep Mix (ft Forensic and Me)

Loveshadow’s Till I My Eyes Die (ft Me)

 

 

Lastly joyful and peaceful, a little duet with the gentle and empathic Anchor Mejans. This for a moment in my tattered head, made me happy and calm.

Where Do Feelings Come From (Cookie & Milk Mix ft Me & Radiotimes)

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If you could call your sub-prime mortgage broker and get this as the ‘on-hold’ music, would your interest rate go up or down?

photo credit: desi.italy

Old Dog- More Than A Little Dirty (ft Me as phone sex operator lady)

 

My Remix (Less Porny Ft Jus, Nurykabe & Duckett) A Little Dirty (Mr. Duckett Mix)

 

I found this amazing little movie utilizing the Falls Through Walls Outro Piano Delay. One of my favorite mixers, although I hear less music from him than I would wish, has made some amazing things using my voice this which was made into a beautiful video at the Munich Airport (I seriously cannot keep up with these vids) and who had some encouraging things to say about my productivity. Recently he has mixed me in with Calendar Girl the girl who started it all, for me anyway.

Vo1k1 Hollywood Picture Book (Ft Calendar Girl & Kaer Trouz)

This incredibly clever woman wanted to sing, and she wanted the world to hear her sing, so she invited the world to remix her, every month, for a year. She laid down a thoughtful a capella every month, with her wistful, airy voice, I think sometimes expressing a lonely, sometimes joyful year of pure song. 300 remixes later she has made an album, with a collective of eager mixers, 12 featured on her JUST RELEASED record (which you should buy just for the fuck Jimmy Iovine and all those louts anyway) sake of it, and all the rest streaming on her website. What a brilliant idea- I wish I had thought of it first, but I am glad she did and I wish her the best of success. She has created an interesting model for open source artistry as well, most of the tracks on the album have been born from little home studios like mine (I know at least June’s track was made in an apartment smaller than mine, in a suburb of Paris, with one working monitor speaker). All her profits will be shared 50/50 with each re-mixer. I sincerely believe Calendar Girl will be cited years from now as a pioneer in creating avenues for musicians (much like myself) whose paths had previously been closed- there are ways around record deals, contracts, touring busses and shitty drummers- you just need to think carefully about how you go about it.

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More Music this week. The sad, and thusly well-received

Big Sky (Abandoned Mix) ft Neurowaxx & DJ Chronos

Finding yet another beautiful guitar piece in the rich archives of ccmixter’s sample pool, this one from Neurowaxx, a piece I found very evocative, lonely, and that had that sort of dusty, old Wetsern movie type of feel.

 

 

And also the discovery of a new musician (Paul, aka ambtax1)employing the lyrics for Pscionic Daydream in a cool new way. This guy is a ‘tracker’, a term that is new to me, but not to the world. He is using older, coder technology to produce his tracks, instead of wave patterns he works with numeric chains, sequencers and his tracks are laid in monophonic channels. All in all, it is a much more technological type of music interfacing than Ableton, but we all end up with musical pieces in the end. Just the approach that is different.

Ambtax1 Beautiful (ft Kaer Trouz)

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Artistically, I disagree with computerized pitch and timing correction. Really, if you are going to make a craft of singing, why would one want the easy way out? I have recently become aware of a product called Melodyne which is a plug-in you can buy to do just this- and more. Certainly this is nothing new to the technically proficient and ultra-geared-out Djs and remixers out there in the world but I have to say I approve of the following:

Spinmeister Unforgiven (ft The Joe & Kaer Trouz)

 

This is a Melodyne shift pitched version of Love Kaer Shadow Trouz Jericho vs Unforgiven.
which Spinmeister artfully manipulated in order to make some of the more minor resolutions in the orgininal work within the tonal framework of his new, jazzier composition. There is only one tiny place where it doesn’t sound like I would, but I am not telling where- can you guess?

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photo credit: Steven Fernandez

Almost, yes I guess it has. This is the strange time of year for me, the struggle between outside and inside, the first rays of true warm sun upon the face blah blah blah.

I am no longer afraid to fly
photo credit: gloom

so I left this country for most of April, looking at various things in the world and letting my ears lull in the rhythm of incomprehensible languages, their ebbs and flows, clicks and rolls, the music that comes when the brain is not busy firing up semantic synapses.

At times I felt like an alien drifting though worlds, with familiar landscapes (grass, buildings cups, bread) but I wondered if I were really there, with the inability to communicate, people’s alarm at my dark and cluttered accent upon my feeble attempts to capture their language.

Before I left I put this up, a collaboration with the amazing Mr. Lincoln, aka fireproof babies. He too is an unusually sensitive artist, we share some of the same pathology, I wish he lived closer so we could hang out and also so I could find him a girlfriend. He would make an amazing boyfriend.

Falls Through Walls (694 Miles Apart Mix ft fireproof babies & Kaer Trouz, uauaua & jaspertine)

 

 

Then, in a moment of quiet simplicity, I put together a two-track duet with the enviably talented Loveshadow, whose acoustic guitar sample here really made me swoon. It got an an editor’s pick- I was completely shocked. These are quite hard to come by and now I have received two!

Love Kaer Shadow Trouz Jericho Vs. Unforgiven (ft Loveshadow & Kaer Trouz)

 

 

Lastly I was contacted by a duo called Woodman and Theo , who have employed a very popular a capella of mine, My Apocalypse Now (you can use it too!) to make

Woodman’s Mix- Rabbit on Your 6 (ft Kaer Trouz)

 

 

 

 

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Creating Kenavo in 17 days has left me bludgeoned and a bit demured. I want to do more things, but I seemed to have scraped the bottom of my creativity barrel. Plus I still struggle with EQ enough to sound as if I am a 1970s am radio producer. Those of you unsure of a sidebar download, here it is again, free for the taking. There are two swear words and some material may not be appropriate for younger children.

 

Kenavo Get the Record Here. Free.

So tonight I am just posting some remixes, some nice ones, others have done with the a capellas I have loaded onto CCmixter.

Tino (if you just hold on remix)

Liquid Eyes (the clouds are godless mix)

scmixer My Apocalypse Now (dark clouds mix)

Vo1k1 (Rain Lament Pretty Mix ft. Jaspertine)

 

Lastly, a cool video from jaspertine, I believe the footage, or at least some of it, comes from his work trip to Quebec.

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I have babies too. Just like Kristin, from Throwing Muses, some scattered in the heavens, one boy here on earth, and he has something in common with her, a struggle that shall remain unnamed, you can hear it in her words, her voice, which has deepened and become more grave over the years. In him, you can feel it, eyes darken, a puncturing of the soul, deflated hearts abound.

I try to keep this blog limited to music, I feel, yes if you listen closely, you can glean all the personal information you want from the music. But I will not spoon feed it to you.

Kristin (and if you are unfamiliar with the Throwing Muses, you are either too young or too dumb (sorry so sorry) and her band were a staple of mine in the early years (1985-1991), she and her tiny step-sister Tanya Donelly (later of Belly) throwing down difficult, disharmonic, hard and complicated rock in times when the likes of of Eddy Vedder and Chris Cornell were bleating out macho, well-contrived, less difficult stuff.

I threw my singing ego away to create this– it is mainly Kristin and I backed her up a bit (the beauty of remixing- you can if you dare). She probably never wanted hip hop drums behind her but I heard a horse galloping there and wanted that percussion Here ’tis—

Morning Birds (Nearly Mute Trouz Mix ft Kristin Hersh & Jovica)

 

 

On another note, I was able to lay down two vocals for yet another RPM Challenge Project, the one created at Ccmixter, a hodge podge of weirdo musicians. I got an email on February 20th, that read like this:

Hello there. I represent a group of musicians, producers, vocalists and
other troubadour-types from CCMixter who have decided to enter into
the 2008 RPM Challenge. You know the principle behind said challenge, I
assume.

We are currently (urgently) seeking a vocalist/lyricist, and I was told
by forces from on high that you were a skilled singer and a fast
writer. Both of which we need.

If you could spare the time from working on your own project for the
challenge, I would be very grateful if you would do us the honor of
lending us your voice.

 

I said of course. The two tracks that emerged were pretty cool, one in a 6/8 time signature that shifted into 5/8 and another that was sort of trance and chill. I loved the remix of Blind Date, by DJ Rkod, but I preferred my own remix of When I Close My Eyes. You can find all the collaboration/attribution files here .

When I Close My Eyes (Kaer Trouz Mix- Not The Final Mix)

Blind Date

 

Lastly, a photo of me and my earth boy, 12.5 years ago, in a tender moment.

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photo credit: charlesdyer

I made a record in 18 days. I am calling it Kenavo, which means goodbye in Breton. (If you would like to download it, the zip file, with artwork etc., is available now in the side bar.

It’s strange to not be under gun of finishing, but I want to make music- more. So I have two collaboration projects in the works, my third with dittoditto, also a new one born inside ccmixter, with fireproof babies .

I am also now putting the link for all my creative commons work in the sidebar, and from now on only posting originals here.

I am also struggling with the idea of opening a virtual music store, to try and sell some a capellas, and songs, and maybe other musicians’ works I appreciate, but I am not ready to make this a business, yet anyway. Someday soon, maybe. But not today.

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