Archive for the ‘open source music’ Category

I sing in my robe sometimes. Today is the cubs opener, and it is freezing cold, and our heater has gone on the fritz and we are not fixing it.

Lately I have been playing my piano/ wedding ring again. Do you know this story? I am not a wearer of diamonds, and so, instead I have a piano. That’s not much of a story I know but its the best I can do right now. So I wrote this little waltz based upon our recent purchase of two rain barrels. We have some flooding here in the suburbs, and mainly because there shouldn’t be houses here, I think really the land’s original intent was to be a swampy water run off area. But here we are. We also have built, out of discarded lumber and chicken wire, a very rickety raised bed for vegetables. The reason for the chicken wire is to stop rabbits. Rabbits are out of control because the crows are all dead (adult crows are natural enemies of baby rabbits). The crows died because of complications related to West Nile virus. The moral of the story is: please avoid standing pools of water that attract mosquitos if you would like to avoid the ugliness of chicken wire in your garden. Which brings me back to the rain barrels. I now have more than 100 gallons of non potable water outside. If you would like some free water, please stop by with containers. This water is good for stuff, for instance, you can water plants with it, and also, instead of flushing the toilet, you can pour 3 gallons into the toilet and voila! bye bye unpleasant waste matter. Also you can rinse your hands off with it.

Back to the waltz. I posted this weird accapella, not expecting too many mixes and the spirit of light (aka Denis), a French musician, made this beautiful, jazzy piece with it.

download Denis’ mix of Reclamation here

I am disengaged
in the most delightful way
I hear music
I revel in its beauty as it seals off my mind
I’m disappearing from the lawn-scape one blade at a time
I’m collecting rain
drop by drop I will reclaim
the sky’s magic
I’ll weave a little chair out of the clouds
and float around your window without a sound
You expose my heart
you have it down to an art
I scream danger
Why am I always the one left inside the yard
Mr Young you were wrong
it’s really very hard

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…..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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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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