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| 1- To hear two rough cuts from the upcoming album "Beating Cold Like a Heart" click on the icons below. 2- Check with the alter ego to hear a recently finished electronica cut entitled "till we have voices". 3- Have yourself a smile and listen to the songs recorded for fellow folkie Jason Lee at Mark's homespun Last Man on Earth studios. Rachel's Eyes If She Would Died Too Soon Sand 4- You may also find pleasure in this week's temporary Audio Archive featuring rarities like old demos, live tracks, new songs, and remixes. |
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| The options are endless... |
| Beating Cold Like a Heart |
| Audio Archive |
| Installment #7 - May 23, 2005 I have always enjoyed making mix tapes. Over the years they have been a form of therapy and a form of intense interaction with the art of other people. I believe that somewhere along the line tampering with other people's art in certain ways becomes an art of itself. I would rank mix tapes up there with Collage (which, we all know, is the 'greatest of all the arts'). One day last winter I was thinking back to how I first got started making mix tapes (by recording songs, commercials, etc off the radio on my boombox) and bemoaning how the advance from tape to cd had negatively affected the art of mix tapes. All of a sudden I realized the great world of options that could be used with all of the technology at our fingertips. So, a new type of mix project was started. Everything that's Wrong with the World (aka me) was a 16 song, 80 minute cd mix created for a friend using Acid Pro 4.0 and a variety of effects pedals. It is equal parts rough and nifty. The next couple installments will feature some of the more nifty tracks from the mix. Here are two for starters: Radiohead - You And Whose Army (pop and splay mix) John Hermanson - Time Capsule (all tesh'd up mix) Installment #6 - April 13, 2005 40 Versions of Goodbye (apropos mix) - Here's a tweaked version of a song I recorded early this winter and was offered in installment #3. Lately, I've found no interest in working on the finishing touches to Beating Cold Like a Heart so I'm keeping myself busy with other little projects. Look for a cover of Bill Mallonee's That Little Something sometime next month. I've been working on this one for a tribute cd that's supposed to be released sometime in 2005. Love of all Loves - This is a demo of a new song that some kids and I are performing in church in April. I wanted to have a somewhat fleshed out recording for them to use when practicing on their own so this little beast came into being. You can probably tell that I didn't spend much time on the programming, but it still works. This song is the first song that I have ever written with a congregation in mind. Hopefully, it works well as a song that people can learn quickly and participate through. Installment #5 - March 12, 2005 Prolouge - I spent countless weeks trying to write the perfect song to begin my new album, Beating Cold Like A Heart. My first solution was an instrumental piece, ladden with lo-fi delayed acoutic, and sprinkled with samples from a variety of sources. The idea was to set the stage, to sum up the environment in which these songs were created. So naturally, the song was a political and psychological rant choke full of paranonia and hopelessness. In the end, this work turned out too drastic, too claustrophobic, for the average listener. It wouldn't be an invitation to enter into the rest of the album so much as a warning. I really didn't want it to have the affect of a 'No Tresspassing' or 'Private Propetry' sign. Plus, the song that eventually showed up turned out to be more than perfect. A gentle little weeper that lulls and confronts... but, you'll have to wait for that one. Stained Glass (null & void mix) - Here a remix I did on one of Jason Lee's songs from his Slide Rule Sundays disc. I've got to warn to that it is a little sonically unstable. In a pure moment of thrift and technical un-ingenuity I put it through a couple of different effects peddles and then combined the results. It also has an added e-bow part that is not part of the original recording. The result is something that, for all of its faults, has a very lush, unpredictable, quality to it. Installment #4 - November 13, 2004 Sometime early last summer Sherry Steinhoff and I collaborated on some distintively non-Falling Further material. Our attempt was to see if traditional folk music and art songs could traverse ridgid genre boundaries while remaining true to their inherent nature as created songs. We formed Falling Feather that night as an electronica side project in the vein of Massive Attack, Portishead, and Gioacchino Antonio Rossini. For the purpose of this discussion, I did most of the programing and Sherry did damn near all of the vocals. Hear are the first fruits of our labors: Falling Feather - Motherless Chile Falling Feather - Caro Mio Bien Falling Feather - The Water Is Wide Falling Feather - Caro Mio Bien (ultimatium mix) Installment #3 - September 13, 2004 4o Versions of Goodbye - I probably have about 3 demo recordings of this song and 20 live versions from various Falling Further shows. This is the first one to hint at capturing what might be the valuable parts of the song's essence. Maybe the art of recording is just skimming off all of that shit which doesn't let the song work. Not so much adding sounds/instruments until the things sounds full. This version features 4 hours of my remedial piano work and (at times) 4 different tracks of 'treated piano'. Stay tuned for more on this song... I've got some nasty ideas... Nina (choir version) - Here's an early experiment from an early recording. Ten bucks for anyone who can figure our what that choral sample is... For more on this song read the description in installment #1. Installment #2 - August 29, 2004 Under Cover of Darkness - This past weekend a friend and I were talking about depression... how it's caused, how to deal, why our nation is so overwhelmingly depressed. Our discussion reminded me of this song from a terribly hard period in my life. It's arguably the darkest song I've ever written (especially one with such a large nod to faith). This is the b-side version from Blueprints. Hope for the hopeless y'all... A Lie That's True - In many ways, this song is the goodie-goodie twin to Under Cover... Faith and depression are still the plate de jour but they're seen through the eyes of hope and stubborn resistance. This is a basement demo from '03. Props to Niall Munson and his Bottle of Blue. Installment #1 - August 6, 2004 Trampled - The first song I ever finished. This is an old demo version recorded at Augustana College in Rock Island, IL by the honorable and technological Chris Tracy back in the summer of '99. Nina - A b-side from the Blueprints recording sessions. I think that it was left out of the final product because I couldn't find a place where it would fit nicely. The words in the 2nd chorus-variation are from an Italian art song I was singing my sophomore year of college. The song was an outcry trying to wake the singer's dead lover from her sleep in the grave. I was singing it for vocal juries the same day I heard that my old friend Nina from high school had been killed by a drunk driver. The art song was called Nina. |
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