Where It Goes From Here

It's been just about forever hasn't it? My friend and upstairs neighbor Eric mentioned to me today that this weog has basically become a new track announcement board of late, and in retrospect he's pretty much dead on. I'm a little sad that I never really committed myself to writing about my experiences this past year (or perhaps I committed myself then failed to follow through), but I suppose I didn't take a year off to be a writer after all =). In recent weeks and months I've had things I wanted to write about, but they always seemed to come at the wrong time, never while I happened to be sitting around at a computer with nothing else to do. I'm probably not the first to have that problem. Regardless, I'm happy to have had this little forum for those rare moments when I was in the right place at the right time, and, for the anxious among you, fear not- it will continue to exist indefinitely, albeit likely without significant changes to update frequency. And that's all I have to say about that!

So, in other news- it's 2008! My magical year of job-free limbo is coming to a close, and a new chapter is (hopefully) about to begin. As Kyle mentioned in comments somewhere below, my "collected works from 2007" came to a surprisingly appropriate 74 total minutes (give or take), which leads me to believe that the pagan Gods of optical storage meant for me to put them all on one CD and call it an album. As I'm hoping to avoid a technological plague (rains of blu-ray diodes and the shower flowing black with sharpie ink) I have no choice but to comply. No title yet, but I'll come up with one before long and then... well, then I guess I'll probably mail them out to whoever the hell wants one! Or I'll pull a Radiohead / Saul Williams or something, I don't know. We'll let it be a surprise.

In more financially "lucrative" news, my tracks were accepted into the Pump Audio catalogue that I mentioned a couple of months ago, which means they're now technically available for licensing to TV/film/ad projects. I'm not holding my breath for any sort of financial windfall from that, but it was a nice ego boost to know that my work was at least up to snuff by some measure. Fingers crossed that "It's Come To This" makes it into the next Ovaltine Hot ad! Good lord.

I'm also finally sending demo CDs out to a few actual labels. I chose four tracks to represent me: Undelayed By Reflection, It's Come To This, From A Platform Above, and South Without A Candle. Once I finish the CD label design (very bare-bones, nothing particularly flashy) they'll be in the mail to:

• Morr Music


• XL Recordings


• Shadow Records


• Planet Mu


• Hefty Records


• Myutopia


• Thermal Recordings


• Ninja Tune

...and maybe a couple of others. I honestly can't imagine any of them picking me up, but that could just be the rampant self-doubt talking. Or the realistic-doubt. Anyway, it can't hurt to try, and I owe it to myself to at least make the effort. See you in the big leagues, baby!

Looking towards the future, I'm doing my best to start this new year with a clean slate- I learned a lot in 2007, but now I need to focus that knowledge into something coherent. The truth is I still have very little idea what "my sound" is, and until I figure that out every track is going to be a struggle. So I'm taking the time now to think hard about where I want to go with the music I make. I know the answer is in there somewhere (hell, there might be a few), so I'm going to take my time and make sure I find it. With any luck 2008 could be the biggest adventure yet.

Care For Another?

It's that time of year again- the days are getting shorter, the skies are getting cloudier, and weoggers everywhere are releasing their latest songs onto the internet. I've never been one to buck a trend, so hopefully this'll be good enough to keep me in the club:

It's Come To This

This track is the most recent step in my continuing struggle to define "my sound." The goal is to combine the elements I like most from my favorite genres into something new- or at least newish. Specifically, I'm trying to blend:

• The atmosphere and aggression of Drum 'n Bass


• the sub from Dub Step


• the technical attention to detail of IDM, and


• the melodic and harmonic sensibilities of plain old "good music."

I'm also trying to develop an interplay between half-time tempos and more frenetic double-time rhythms, for what it's worth. The result this time falls into the same category as my older track "Process of Illumination," but hopefully takes the ideas in an interesting new direction. Or maybe I completely failed! Either way, there are a lot of things I like (and a few I'm not so sure about, as usual) in this one, and I'd love to hear any feedback or criticism you might have. As long as it's positively glowing, of course ;).

In other news, I submitted a CD of my tracks-up-to-this-point to the licensing company Pump Audio, so we'll see if they think my work is appropriate for the next big Colgate ad or something.

Until next time!

P.S. Most of my songs (but this one in particular) really need decent speakers to be heard properly- there's a lot going on in the sub-100Hz frequencies that smaller speakers just can't reproduce. Just so ya know.