Archive for the ‘mental illness’ 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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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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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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Can you, or rather would you write an album in one month? Why? It is a proven and stated fact that albums no longer have any weight, nor matter, and the only thing that counts is one golden nugget of three minutes, a ninety-nine cent single, shuffled into an ipod, individual songs that cause train riders, fast walkers, aimless wanderers to create the ’soundtracks of their lives’. You can shuffle through moods, work-out, get fitter, feel happier, arrange your break-up songs. You no longer need be bothered with the one, out-of-place, dissonant track that somehow ruined an entire album, but in days gone by you had to get off your stoned ass and actually physically MOVE THE RECORD NEEDLE, often causing scratching and high-end sonic irritation, to avoid this disruption of bliss. Now a single thumb will dial, dial, dial, until the right mood hits and brightness is yours again.

RBM offers a yearly challenge to mentally ill musicians ( I mean really who would commit themselves to this???—it’s like the special olympics of home production!!) Make an album in 29 days. There is a little, count-down clock on the site, and much weird youtubeness, the likes of which I am not prepared to share. Check it yourself-my profile here, notice I have nothing up. In order not to clog up their bandwidth I am going to post/blog talk about it here-which makes way more sense.

(Update: This post was originally intended for publishing on Fenruary 8th, when I joined. I now have 35 minutes of music- 8 songs, 1.5 of which is not recorded, 2 of which are not tracked, 5 of which are not mixed, 8 of which have no vocals, and 5 of which do not have lyrics written. All of which are not mastered. Christ.)

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Unfortunately this.

Fractured

drum sample from Nurykabe

 

I wish this:

 

photo from kaneda99

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