MXR Phase 90

For some reason the other day, I had a moment where I completely remembered the sensation of being transported out of the normal world by one of the first guitar effects pedals I had/borrowed, an MXR Phase 90. I can't remember if I actually owned it or if I just borrowed it from my friend Thadd, but the weird swooshing sound it made, which I can't really imagine even using now, was at the time completely captivating. God only knows where that pedal ended up, but I hope it is still swooshing away somewhere; it is also probably worth $600 now, with my luck.

New EP: Full Sun

Back from Germany and the Netherlands. Awesome to spend time in the Ruhrgebiet, where there appears to be actual appreciation for the cultural landscape of the industrial sublime. I now have enough photos for approximately 5 years of bandcamp EPs.

So I recorded this to start working my way through them.

New EP: Gentle Blood Waves

Off to Bochum and Leiden for a week and a half, so I figured I'd should get this out first. Hopefully more pictures of the industrial sublime, and also some fun.

New EP: Meditations on "Here Comes The Rain Again"

Traveling a lot, so not as much recording, but I busted out this EP this morning since it is yet another rainy day. And what brightens up a rainy day more than prepared guitar?

Speaking of prepared guitar, if you go to bandcamp and search for everything tagged "prepared guitar", I am alternately the first or second most popular there. My pride in this achievement is tempered only slightly by the knowledge that, if my statistics are anything to go by, literally nobody must ever visit the pages of the other six or seven prepared guitar guys. Still, number one! Number one!

New EP: Wild Budgets

After a few weeks off due to traveling and a melted hard drive, back on schedule with a new EP called Wild Budgets that I think is frankly one of the best things I've done in weeks. It also has a bonus track from some recording I did a few days earlier to get things up and running again.
Here's the "cover".



In the interim, Chris Deaner and I also recorded a version of one of our songs from The Solitary Cyclist which will hopefully end up being the theme music for Saveur.com's Ask The Test Kitchen. I was disappointed that the fact that we were involved meant that there was no money to pay the legal fees for a version of R. Kelly's "Test In The Kitchen", but that's how it goes.

New EP "Platinum Cadavers"

Once again, a few weeks have elapsed. New EP up on bandcamp: Platinum Cadavers. Recorded in the morning before I went to do some recording with old friend and bandleader Heather McIntosh for a soundtrack she's working on; nice to play (even if at a distance) with some of the dispersed members of the NYC version of The Instruments.

This EP features, as almost always, the Digitech PDS-8000, an 8 second delay I bought in 1988 for $150 from a horrible, now-defunct music store in the DC suburbs. They were the classic place that refused to even look at you if you didn't walk in carrying a roll of money; they were so disdainful of me that the guy ringing me up couldn't even be bothered to gouge me correctly, and charged me for the cheaper 2 second model. One awesome thing about this delay is that, in its old age, the speed and depth of the delay modulation are now almost completely random. I'm not really into gear, or sentimental about it, but I could be sentimental about this guy.

New EPs Impressionsism, Meditations on "Abacab"

Two weeks since the last post=two new EPs. Meditations on "Abacab" is part of my Meditations series, where I engage with a pop song on a micro level, exploring a small part of it at a time; the titles obviously refer to where in the song that moment I'm working with is. My old way of engaging with pop songs that I loved was to write my own pop song that ripped them off, so I guess this is kind of the same, but without all the overhead. Impressionsism was the result of an unexpectedly abbreviated recording period, so I had to suddenly do whatever I was going to do in less than 20 minutes; always a good way to get the blood moving.