It has been a great summer here - at least most of June and July were scorching hot - but it is obvious that things are winding down and the weather here has been a good indication of that.  Some days are still ok but it's getting noticeably cooler and rainy and you can almost feel autumn in the air.  But for me that's a good thing - even though I enjoy the summer, the autumn has always had a special meaning for me, very sentimental and pensive and heavy - kind of like the way I prefer my art to be.  It is also a time that means no more fooling around, get to work and get ready for a long hard winter and that is just what's been going on here over the past couple of weeks.
It was important for me to get a lot of studio work done, especially recording for the next E.P. and I am relieved to say that all the instruments are in the can which means I can take a short break before doing the vocals, mixing etc.  This short break will take the form of a trip to the homeland for a few weeks of visiting friends and family and enjoying a bit of nature hopefully.
But before that I want to finish off this summer with a bit of an event and the CD Release Show will be that occasion.  Yes, it looks like it is finally happening after all the setbacks of the past few months!  Sept. 4 at Heisse Scheiben Record Store in Berlin.  You can check out the shows page for all the info.
I've also tried to get a few other things a bit more up to date which resulted in a spontaneous photo shoot yesterday.  A bit too spontaneous perhaps as not much came of it but one pic seems alright to me so I think I'll add it to the portfolio.
All for now...time to get some rehearsing in for the release show and see this summer out with a bang!

Things are busy, busy, busy around here right now but I have still found a bit of time to enjoy a few select vids and documentaries so I thought I'd share a couple with you...

More real news coming very soon...In the meantime, enjoy the vids!

P.S. Thanks to the guys at Musformation for the tips on these!

And now for the final entry in the "story behind the song" series, this time of course the final track "Where Earth & Sky Unite".

The inspiration for this one came from a frustrating experience I had on New Year's Eve last year that left me driving like mad through Brandenburg at dusk looking for a gas station to pick up some last minute supplies before everything closed for the holidays - not an easy thing to do.  I was literally in the middle of nowhere with no GPS or other way of orienting myself or getting some directions and not a soul was around.  I passed through tiny village after tiny village, all like ghost towns.  The sunlight was fading fast and at the point just before complete darkness I looked out over a field and managed to find some solace in a beautiful scene of flat land silhouetted against an icy blue sky and that crisp point that created the horizon instantly registered in my mind as the place "where earth & sky unite".

This idea kept running through my mind for weeks into the new year and I considered writing something about the actual experience that had inspired it but somehow I didn't want to dwell on the idea of driving around lost.  Instead I let the idea take its own direction and eventually found myself thinking about the beauty of nature in general and some of the most important places in nature that I have been lucky enough to see and that instilled a bit of hope in me at critical moments.  But while I was thinking about these places it occured to me that some of them don't even exist anymore - one example being the forest near my childhood home where I spent endless hours playing and exploring.  It is now gone and a subdivision has taken its place.  Sad.  And not the only place where this is happening.

I started to wonder where it would all end, how long it would be before almost all of nature was either destroyed or manipulated to the point of no return, whether the only thing left would be the memories I have of those places.  It also made me realize that I am not sure how much longer I am willing to live in a big city.  The lure of nature and calm and quiet is getting stronger for me, a fairly normal thing I guess for a small town boy who grew up next to a real forest and wetlands.

The only question is, when I am ready to get out of here, will there be anywhere left to go?

Was sorting through some pics I took while on a little getaway to the wilds of Brandenburg a couple of weeks ago and came across this, a monster of an organ in a church in Templin that dates back to the turn of the last century (circa 1908 I think).  Unfortunately it is no longer functional otherwise I might have actually had the guts to ask if I could try it out.  It even had Sub-Bass!!!  Man, they don't make 'em like that anymore...

Stay tuned!  The final installment of the "story behind the song" series is coming later this week...

Time for another installment in the "story behind the song" series, this time for track 5 "Everywhere (Except Here)". 

And what can I really say about this one?  It is a fairly basic idea lyrically and came about while I was listening to the music I had composed.  I was listening and trying to figure out a vocal melody and some words based on the feeling I got from listening to the composition and noticed that my mind kept wandering off to different things.  I gave up several times that day until I realized that the idea was right in front of me all along.  "My mind is everywhere, everywhere except here"!

The song is based on my personal experience but I think a lot of people can relate to this.  I've always been a bit of a daydreamer but as I get older I notice that I don't "dream" as much as get lost in thoughts about real concerns that don't really have any bearing on my present situation which leads people to think that I am daydreaming.  Unfortunately the days of true daydreaming seem to be over for me and I rarely find myself lost in thoughts of some adventure or other fanciful situation.  I really miss that.

I decided to keep the lyrics pretty simple and just explored other ideas with the "except" dynamic.  Other than that there is not much more to tell other than it has been one of the more difficult songs to adapt to a live performance but I think I have worked most of the kinks out and look forward to playing it live in the next show.

Part 4 of the "story behind the song" series is of course about track 4 from the debut E.P.  The reason for the name and the theme of the lyrics was taken from the general feeling I got when listening to the music which had been composed during an early experiment.  As the music came together and all the acoustic elements were added I began to sense a feeling of something very intense yet secretive, something lurking but still out of sight and ready to pounce at any moment.

This led  me to start working on some lyric ideas based on this theme and it quickly became clear in my mind that only one word could describe what I was envisioning when I heard this and that word was "stealth". 

The lyrics don't refer to any particular thing or situation but instead are abstract generalizations about things that you aren't aware of that sneak up on you and turn your life upside down and also about my own situation - which is probably not that different than that of a lot of people - where I sometimes feel that I am a bit "invisible" and existing "under the radar" whether I want to or not. 

I get a bit of a sentimental feeling for 80's synth scores in TV and film when I hear it but I think the vocal part takes it to a different level and kind of "mondernizes" it.  The retro feel wasn't really intentional but I guess it just shows how my influences from that period are sneaking through into this music.

The inspiration for this one came from observations of online activity that I have made over the past couple of years.  I am an avid reader of music and music-related blogs and although I read many different kinds, I started to notice a pattern.  This should be an age when the technology of "Web 2.0" allows for what I consider to be true freedom of the press, i.e. anyone can start a blog or news site and publish whatever they want as long as it is factual and not slanderous.  So after years of mags like Rolling Stone, Billboard, NME etc. basically monopolizing the music press we should be optimistic that this new age will allow a "level playing field" and bands, stories, music etc. that once would have been ignored (most likely because they don't have enough marketing money behind them) can now get the word out to this new form of alternative press and get some kind of attention at least. 

After all, do we really need another Pitchfork Media?  Or any of these other big "alternative music" blogs that really only handle the "mainstream alternative"?  Of course the obvious anwser is NO.  But upon closer inspection of what is actually going on online you quickly find out that there are actually very few bloggers out there who are actually thinking for themselves and developing their own opinions.  Almost everywhere you look it's the same old thing, same bands, same hype same opinions give or take a few choice adjectives.  Actually a pretty sad situation considering the opportunity that is there.

The "flock" in this case is not a flock of birds, but a flock of sheep (see picture above).  Kind of an obvious choice when referring to the "follower" mentality but I looked at it a bit more closely and I am actually describing a particular kind of sheep that considers itself above the rest even though it is equally susceptible to being led and herded but more by external forces, i.e. the shepherd a.k.a. expensive marketing strategies and pr people.

An interesting little anecdote about the lyrics comes from a spelling error I made while writing out a verse with the word "bleet" - I actually meant to write "bleat" which is the word for the sound a sheep makes.  I actually wasn't sure of the correct spelling, probably because it is not a word I use very often (if at all) so I did a quick web search for the spelling "bleet" and came across a very interesting coincidence.  As it turns out, the word "bleet" is a newly formed word for an online entry that is longer than a "tweet" but shorter than a normal blog entry.  Fantastic!  Without even knowing it I had actually found the exact word I was looking for!  I guess it was just meant to be...

So the "story behind the song" series continues with track 2, Dream Of A Gentle Apocalypse.  What can I really say about this one?  It is literally based on a dream I had - at least the vague recollections I had of it the next day.  I obviously was in a bit of a strange mood when I fell asleep for my mind to come up with this kind of imagery but the strange thing about it was that it was by no means a nightmare.  I remember waking up the next morning feeling somewhat disoriented by it but it had not been frightening, just strange and very surreal.  I also remember all the images passing by very slowly and quietly, not the chaos you would expect from an apocalypse and that's where the idea of the "gentle" apocalypse came in.  I wasn't inspired to write anything down initially but after a few days of thinking about it a couple of verses came to mind.

I was almost going to leave it at only two verses but a while after the initial dream I had another one that was a bit similar and had a "judgement day" feel to it.  I have a feeling this one was inspired by the book I was reading at the time, "Riven Rock" by T.C. Boyle which is based on the life of Stanley McCormick (quite an irony but no relation to me as far as I know) who had suffered from schizophrenia and had been tormented by "the judges" his entire adult life.  And so the third verse was conceived as the final reckoning for all of this chaos and ended the song in a more logical way I think.

And that's pretty much it.  I had already sketched out some of the music during an earlier experiment and adapted it a bit to fit the verses etc.  I think this is one of the strangest pieces I have ever created and reflects heavily on the influence of film scores in my music.  Perhaps there will be more like it to come in the future!

This is the first in a series of posts I will be doing about the songs on the debut E.P.  Track number one is of course the title track "Shock & Awe" and the inspiration for it came after hearing about music being used in torture sessions in Guantanamo Bay without the consent of the musicians who made it.  When this became public, most of the musicians whose music had been used were, as to be expected, pretty damned pissed off and rightfully so.  If you're not familiar with the story you can read more about it here:

Performers Angry About Music Used In Gitmo

But the song isn't specifically about this situation even though it was the initial thing that got me thinking in this direction.  As I was reading about this I remembered hearing something about how music blasted out of loudspeakers on helicopters had been used to scare the enemy in Vietnam and then some other movie images of soldiers getting "pumped up" by certain kinds of heavy, aggressive music came to mind.  In general I started thinking about how music can be used in what I consider to be negative ways.  The title itself is taken from a fairly recently coined military term for going into a battle with so much firepower and force that the enemy is basically shocked into submission.  Quick and relatively painless is the idea.  Except for the innocent civilians who tend to get in the way...but that's a whole other tangent.

Anyway, I had this riff that seemed almost like something that could have been turned into one of these songs that the military likes to use so I thought, hell, why not?  Except this one will have twist and turn it back on itself!  So after the verses which seem like something a bunch of grunts would get a real rush from, the whole thing turns against them in the final refrain, basically saying "Hey you suckers!  Gotcha!  This song is not what you thought it was and maybe you should think again!"

I wouldn't call it an "anti-war" song as such, but more of a statement against aggression of any kind especially when it is so uncontrolled that it results in the death of innocent bystanders.

The fact that the vocals went into a kind of rap or spoken word form was really just a spontaneous experiment that I ended up really liking.  Hope you do too.  All for now.

So after a bit of a delay the big day is finally here and the debut release "Shock & Awe" is offical and a free download will be available until the release show on June 26.  Yes, the entire EP will be FREE for a limited time which seems to be the way everyone is going these days so why swim against the current?  And how do I really feel about this free music future?  I have to admit that I have very mixed feelings but I have also decided not to waste too much time and energy worrying about the financial aspects of what I am doing.  I'm having a lot of fun making this stuff and there appear to be some people out there who are digging it so why complicate things?  The last gig was also really fun even though there was only a small crowd.  The sound was fantastic and the staff at Madame Claude were great so what more can you ask for...

Anyway, on to the point.  The EP is done and released and I am quite pleased with how it turned out, at least for a first attempt with this new production strategy.  I chose the title based on the track I thought had the catchiest name, "Shock & Awe" and I will explain what the song is about in the next post.  After that I will write a post about each of the 6 songs every few days to give a bit more background and hopefully make some sense of it all.

Speaking of album titles, I probably could have called this EP "Delayed" not only because the release date was delayed but now the release show date has been re-scheduled for a week later as well!  No big deal, a few unexpected things came up this week and in the end it was decided that June 26 would be better and a live big-screen broadcast of the World Cup will be part of the festivities.  If you can't beat 'em, join 'em!!!