Monday, April 20, 2009

Deadlines, Bless Them

I find this hard to fathom, but it's been about ten months since I last posted a new song here. I've been working hard the entire time, but since last June or so my focus has been on figuring out the P^3 and getting Days Away out the door. I've developed a sizable backlog of unfinished work during that time, some of which is "almost there," but I've largely succumbed to the desire to generate new material instead of sweating out the details to finish any of what I've started. Enter The Deadline.

A few months ago I read about the Tra la la blip project on the Ableton discussion forums. In their own words:

tra la la blip is an artist collective based on the far north coast of new south wales. (...) our first release is titled "soundbeam sessions volume 1" We did 100 copies, each 1 individually stamped by the musicians/artists. (...) soundbeam sessions is a compilation CD, all artist[s] on the CD have some form of intellectual and or physical disability. all the songs were created live during jam sessions at Multi Task human resource foundation in Lismore nsw. It is loop based electronic music created using multiple midi controllers and instruments like the tenori-on, soundbeam, kaossilator, microkorg, a macbook running ableton live software and a microphone.

While the concept alone strongly appeals to me, the best thing about TLLB is that their music is fantastic: sometimes playful, sometimes moody, melodic, and dare I say "deep." Thus, when artistic director and organizer Randolf Reimann posted an open invitation for remixes, I decided to get involved. And getting involved meant actually finishing something for the first time in almost a year.

I'm proud to present my finished remix of Indigo Caroline by Tra la la blip. The original TLLB track is somewhat unique in that it consists of just three components: a vocal track (participant Gaye singing Neil Diamond's "Sweet Caroline") over Monolake's song "Indigo" layered with an original synth line. The result is haunting and atmospheric and right up my alley. My remix takes things in a very different direction, but (hopefully) without losing the spirit of the original. I hope you like it!

P.S. I'm trying out Soundcloud streaming for the first time with this song. I'm going to hold off on making it downloadable until I get clearance from Randolf, as the track will be making its way onto the Tra la la blip remix CD to be released later this year.

2 comments:

houlette said...

Nice and creepy.

Bring on the new music! Days Away and its earlier incarnations (and the live show) have been on heavy rotation in my office for the past several months. We could use some new Nonagon.

scooter mcbro said...

Like it. Comfortably invasive and catchy... like a healthy virus.