I’ve made a deliberately lo-fi electronic EP, performed live and recorded straight to a cassette tape! It's available for free streaming on BandCamp or pay-what-you-like downloads. You’ll also be able to stream it on your service of choice on May 3, 2024, and can pre-save using this link.
In the coming weeks, I’ll be posting some photos and thoughts from the recording process. Follow me here to see what went into making this EP.
Looking forward to sharing the fun I had making this!
All things go, if you must get philosophical about it. All things must pass, in the words of the Buddhist maxim. This is none more true of the summer, as warmth and sun give way to these chilly weeks, these spookiest of seasons. But the end of summer needn't mean the end of the festival season, so @allthingsgofestival went and did just that: they hosted a music festival. Just this weekend. In both September and October. It was full of female performers. It was queer as hell. Totally bonkers. It scarcely seems possible. It defies belief.
Well, believe it, and believe it well: all things must pass, and all things will. You, I, sunlight, suffering, the online wastelands themselves. But before they do, why not enjoy a good thing while it's there and get the likes of @lanadelrey, @mothercain, @listentomaggie, and @alvvaysto in one space for a weekend of live music? The place being the Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Maryland, and the place being @allthingsgofestival. We were there. It was the very best of things. And we have some highlights for you—such as this image, one of many, of Lana Del Rey lyrics that decorated backstage.
Dear listener, three months ago I began posting music by recently deceased artists and long-dead bands that were, all of them, exceptional in some way. I haven’t stopped since, and with this post I hereby pronounce my quarter-year long rediscovery of dead bands to be officially complete… and lucky you, I’ve got a plump Maraschino cherry to place on top of this layered ice cream cake. Folks, crank the volume, smash play, and be placed in salivating awe at one of the most influential dead bands of all-time. Imagine a musical act that is completely mediocre in every way; just some shitty, generic modern band the likes of which you hear ad infinitum on Top-40’s radio. Now, add to that same non-specific act a lead lady vocalist that has a voice on par with Billie Holiday. Back that superb voice up with instrumentalists hungry to deliver something that sounds new and exciting to the world, subtract the pretentiousness and insincerity of modern music, and cube the equation with infinite collective creativity and genuine inspiration. What you are left with is the almighty and immortal Portishead. As English as roast beef and hailing from Bristol, this group hasn’t made an album in about fifteen years and only technically lives on through ultra-rare live performances. In just under two decades from the mid-90’s to 2008, this group managed to produce not mere music, but genuine lightning-in-a-bottle magic. The members were all very motivated by old timey film soundtrack LP’s, leaving a lot of their tracks sounding like a tune from a film noire. Whether they liked it or not, they had a major hand in popularizing trip-hop, a highly experimental genre (in the 90’s anyway) which relies heavily on hip hop tempos mixed with soul, jazz, funk, or whatever form of electronic music you want to throw into the fusion. This was also a band that just kind of burned out; despite their notoriety and mega-successful presence in the industry, the members of this collective were just fallible people at the end of the day, and apparently suffered from extreme exhaustion by way of constantly recording and touring. If you spent your time in studios cranking out some of the highest quality music available at the time, you’d be exhausted too. This is Biscuit from 1994’s Dummy, and it is merely one of many, many outstanding works from their contemplative, well-executed and downright industry-changing catalog. Truly quality music (just like any quality entertainment; movies, television, art, etc.) should reveal something true and perhaps tragic about the human condition. Portishead excelled in this area. It doesn’t matter if they were only around for a moment in time. Their music is TIMELESS.
I don’t generally post many ultra-famous acts on this page unless given a motivation. Here’s my motivation; Portishead changed music on the planet Earth forever. They’re more goth than the whole of modern goth music. They’re trippy-er than the entirety of trip-hop. And, if anything you do in your life has 1/10th the positive impact on the globe as this here musical act, you, my friend, have earned my respect for merely existing. Image source: https://www.nme.com/blogs/nme-blogs/the-roots-of-portishead-767977
More music while I polish "CTRL FREAK"! :D This one is just another later song I made, for some reason I got inspired by calling it one of the main character's songs for fun!
Got a lot done in the game itself, but I am very paranoid so I am polishing things a lot still! XD
Little boys see toys and say, "I can take that!"
Oh, you are my little boy
Though honestly sir, all I wanna do
Is get naked in front of you
So you can look me up and down
And tell me, "Well done girl, you're looking good"
I'd like to just take a moment to honor Sinéad O'Connor who passed away this week. I don't particularly care if Ms. O'Connor was nuttier than a squirrel turd. I always try to separate the artist from their work... and this one's work was legendary, folks. She was serious about her craft, she had an incredible vocal tool set, and she helped to change the stage for women in modern music by not only possessing an interesting look, but also a razor-sharp intelligence and a penchant for being something of an edge lady. Here's Fire on Babylon, my very favorite tune by her, from 1994's Universal Mother. Godspeed into immortality Sinéad! Hopefully you and Tina Turner are performing shows together in the ten-for-a-dollar bin we know as the afterlife!
Another lady legend down in 2023 folks! Everything about this woman was untraditional, and that was kind of the whole point. She burned many bridges in her career and was basically ostracized for BEING counterculture. Just goes to show; just because you go against the grain... it doesn't mean you'll go out anything short of iconic in the end. Image source: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/music/story/2023-07-26/sinead-oconnor-dead
It's time to show some of the later made songs for "CTRL FREAK" now that it is coming this month!
1st one is one of the first "newer" songs I made for it, and basically fits the whole "mixtape" feeling I decided to go with, since "CTRL FREAK" just FELT like it had one, you know?