Archive for the ‘My Music’ Category

There are some things that arrive to you with more certainty than others- although not always guaranteed. If things remain steady, you will go to your job, and do it, and come home. You will arrive at school and your child will be there waiting, unharmed and armed, perhaps with a tidbit or two about American history that you have forgotten. You might open the fridge, and scrap together a meal (even if all that is in there is apples, yogurt and laughing cow cheese, and half a cucumber).

Music is not this way. At least for me. If I am to produce new work, then there are times when I must absorb other things in order to interpret the new information. Listening, and watching, quietly, without interruption are important parts of being a musician, I am learning. So, I guess what I am trying to convey is, I may have hit a period of dormancy. It frightens me to be dormant, but I now see it as an integral part of my musicianship, a time of rest where ideas, colors, sonic changes and words can gather in a sort of fetal mass, and grow into new works.

Singing is also not this way. In order to sing well, your breathing and sinuses, and throat and diaphragm must all be in perfect condition. But pollen, and dust and years old wallpaper glue made from wheat, and dogwoods, and panic and sadness, and fear, all these things physiologically affect the voice, and it’s qualities. Even the cold, the winter, sometimes can constrict the lungs.

Rehabbing an old house and a non-working furnace do nothing to further the cause.

Ans also, sometimes when your heart aches, for no other reason than feeling the grief of others, it is difficult too.

I have had many dreams lately, of giving birth to new babies, all in startlingly graphic detail. These are just dream babies, they will never really be born, they don’t exist. I am facing the end of a certain type of motherhood, the physically demanding motherhood of small children. It is replaced by a different sort of motherhood, the nebulous, emotionally demanding motherhood of older children.

Shoes get tied and teeth get brushed. Keys and phones are employed deftly. The ability to program the RCN remote, the expression of large abstract concepts (the contagiousness of laughter, discussions about difficult concepts- abortion, assassination, theology and unsolvable math problems).

I miss the physically demanding motherhood- it was tiring, but had resolution. This new stuff, it’s frightening and unclear.

When the music comes back, when my head empties a little and I can start to sort this all out, I wonder what will come of it. It feels like it may be slower and more quiet. I don’t know- we shall see.

Share This

I walked around the new ‘hood here today. Flowers galore.

The trees are crystal, focused, hanging.

They seem to reach to the skies, yes the skies.

I am sneezing a lot, and inhaling dust, the filament of holocaust survivors, skeletons of pictures, black and white photos of post-camp, starved, fallen people. There is an air of despair, paranoia, intolerance even. Strange.

I do not like Sara Palin. But maybe not for the reasons you think. She is a little machine, spitting out folksy, easy-going talk. She is as close to a fascist regime as I have ever felt in this country, she is the opposite of freedom, intellect & hope.

This is Not Your Home (ft grapes & Sabre Truth Crew) 

 

I guess I am a bit angry. And off tune. Cool.

On some lighter notes, I took some new samples from Khidir, a relative newcome to the creative commons and produced this little, guitar oriented number

Rescue Me (Sea & Sand Mix) ft Khidir

 

Then Scott Altham, mixer extraordinaire, tackled the pella from “Permaculture Disconnect”, producing a very distinct and different take on this a capella.

Scott Altham’s Mix, Permaculture Disconnect

 

There were a few more excellent remixes employing my vox made this week . But the Benadryl has taken over and I am going to bed. The flowers outside are swaying and my family is happy. So I guess things are alright.

Share This

 

… 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

Share This

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)

 

Share This

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).

Share This

Damn this guys’ samples rock!!!!!!!

Kaer Trouz Mixes Neurowaxx

 

Lignified (Last Man On Earth Mix)

 

…and got paired with a cool little vid from Japan.

Share This

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).

Share This

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.

Share This

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)

Share This

Here is an interesting documentary, employing the track I made a few weeks ago with Loveshadow’s beautiful guitar sample. It’s an interesting vid- not sure what small town in France Thegibolin is filming, but certainly provides a uniquely global perspective, I too mourn the disappearance of the natural world.

Share This