Archive for the ‘Creative Commons’ Category

…..your skin is a perfect ossuary…

I wish I believed this. But skin often fails, ripples, distorts and is prone to scarring And those lovely chemicals zapping inside your tired, ancient brain, they misfire too.In the last four months, since this last post I have created a few pieces, whose themes dealt with the following:

1) Suffering

2) Osculation, Otters, & Utter Disengagement

3) December, Goodbyes

4) Water Recession in the late Jurassic Era

5)Deflation and Loneliness

photo credit: carolyn.will

There may be a theme emerging.

I still cannot decide whether this move to the suburbs feels like a safe and good sanctuary, or an enclave of complete suffocation. We don’t lock the doors. My new view (and yes I would love to post photos, but the little adapter that takes the memory card from camera to computer, all 5 of them have come up missing) is backyards, over-crowded with the demands of garages, and bicycles revealing themselves as the snow melts down in early early spring.

photo credit: Dominic Hargreaves

…producers are important…

I have been working with a producer in the Netherlands, although he is actually English. Scott Altham, who is easy-going and very talented. He had re-mixed a few of my a cappellas, and then started sending me ’shells’, or unsung mixes he created. His stuff is so different from mine, but it is cool, and he takes great care when I send him flat, naked, un-eq’d me singing, he makes is sound rich and perfect. I trust him.

Deflated & Alone (ft Mart 1001 & shagrugge)

Suffering (ft Bill Ray on drums)

Salty, Nascent, Just For Me [Music written & Produced by Scott Altham, Lyrics and Voice Kaer Trouz)

 

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… 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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Penelope Spheeris (Wayne’s World etc.. see link) produced a little indie film starring Flea (red Hot Chili Peppers- you know him!!!) called Suburbia (1984).This movie was among my favorites, I felt at that tender age, I could really grasp the full tilt of nihilism, disenfranchisement, solipsism, anarchy, and anything else that felt slightly anti-establishment. My favorite song for that summer was Big Black’s Kerosene (1985).

There is an embarrassing story, from many summers ago, about this time, my family & I went up to the ‘burbs’ so far away from my little punk rock middle class life, I was wearing clothes put together with safety pins and dunked into the pool, by a bratty friend of my younger sister. There I was seething, half naked, my clothes sliding off of me, the men looked mortified, mostly my father…

I drove and drove around the endless cul-de-sacs, dead end roads, no people, no souls, the feint smell of charcoal briquettes being lit in the distance, and the damp pallor of those who had thrown in the towel, the ones who wanted out, content to just rot in their rows of houses, being consumed by the endless whir of cicadas, the mindless chirps of crickets, the excitement of one yellow butterfly wavering.

So now here we are, a diaspora of 3, making our way out to suburbia. Will you zoom your camera lens into my lawn, just to find a grisly ransom, a single, human ear covered with ants? (D. Lynch, Blue Velvet, 1986) Or will you find us embracing the soft caress of aging summer winds and well-tended lawns, because we are no longer young, and eventually we must release the most existential of angsts?

Who knows. I have a shit-load of wall paper to steam off.

Blowing The Roof Off (Kaer Trouz ft mr robot & stomacheache)

 

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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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The last time I was alone in a bedroom of a 21 year old boy was:

a) 1919

b) 1987

c)June 12, 2008

If you guessed c, you are correct!!!!! (Thanks out to Eric The Whale).

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Kindergarten-6th grade students on Martin Luther King Day, using their art and wonderful voices to remind the world of what is good. I am honored to be the musical background. Sikeston R6 Public School in Sikeston Missouri.
Watch Mrs. Curry’s Class’ video here.

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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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