Here is the “finished” entry for the Ixil Triangle contest. I’ve retooled the intro and outro and have tried to unclutter the percussion in parts, though I felt it was needing some sort of shaker action near the end. I made some micro-shakers by taping some silica gel capsules together. They’re exceptionally quiet so I had to do some serious close miking.
Here’s a mostly unmixed demo of the Ixil Triangle-themed contest entry I’m working on. Any constructive criticism would be appreciated.
5-18
Moongarden – “My Darkside”
Anathema – “Leave No Trace”
Conception – “Flow”
Kamelot – “The Human Stain (Live From Belgrade)”
King’s X – “Repeating Myself”
Fish – “The Company”
After Forever – “Evoke”
Airbag – “Speed Of Light”
Muse – “Butterflies and Hurricanes (Live at Wembley Stadium)”
Jethro Tull – “Songs From The Wood (Live)”
Zero Hour – “Dark Deceiver”
Amorphis – “Black River”
Gentle Giant – “Cogs In Cogs”
5-25
Zappa Plays Zappa – “Cosmic Debris”
The Future Kings of England – “Mustard Men”
Rocket Scientists – “Copernicus”
Port Mahadia – “Distant Shores”
3 – “Alien Angel”
Opeth – “Porcelain Heart (edit)”
Dream Theater – “The Mirror”
Pure Reason Revolution – “Nimos & Tambos”
Genesis – “Counting Out Time (Live at the Shrine)”
Star One – “Spaced Out”
Starofash – “Blood Bones & A Skull”
Nightingale – “Hideaway”
I’m still waiting on the replacement hard drive to get here, so my computer building has screeched to a halt.
On the music front, I’m working on two songs. The first one was based on a little keyboard etude I was working on to try and get myself back playing piano. It started to take a turn towards the chiptune so we’ll see how that comes out. In the midst of that track, a SA forums contest came up to write an original song based on a random Wikipedia entry. Quizzically enough, the theme ended up being the Ixil Triangle region of Guatemala. I’m mostly done with this track but there are a couple of rough transitions and I’d like to find some South-American flute sounds that would fit with the track.
The parts for my new computer have arrived. There was a nice big gash in the shipping box that looks suspiciously like someone tried to punt it.
There was a shit-ton of packing peanuts inside the box, so hopefully everything will be intact when it comes time to power the thing up.
Tomorrow shall be the day of building.
You may notice a couple of new links on the sidebar. I’ve added a page for the Eleventh Hour as well as an archive of some of the interviews that I’ve done for the show in the last year. I’ve just finished transcribing a chat I had with drummer Pieter van Hoorn of a very cool symphonic prog band from the Netherlands called Knight Area.
Invisigoth – “Dark Highway Part 1 – Transmission”
Kansas – “Paradox”
Jon Oliva’s Pain – “Look At The World”
Ayreon – “E=mc² (Acoustic)”
Dream Theater – “Another Day”
Dominici – “Liquid Lightning”
Paatos – “Tea”
Retrospective – “Pink Elephant Missed”
Threshold – “Exposed (Radio Edit)”
Rush – “Natural Science”
Cynic – “Textures”
I’ve gone through and updated my Soundclick page to fix some URLs. It looks like they’ve added a bunch of cool features since I’ve been there last, including this handy player widget.
The older songs are near the bottom, quite a few of which are probably painful to listen to.
When I first started making music, I was sick and tired of boom-tsk techno megamixes that all sounded the same, so I went out of my way to make odd drum patterns and jarring arrangements as a sort of protest. I called the resulting songs ream-mixes, and founded the microgenre of anti-dance, which I suppose was my attempt at starting an electronica-type RIO movement. Big surprise that it didn’t catch on.
I just made it to level three on thesixtyone and have uploaded two more songs: The Socket Men and Facepunch Variations. About two minutes after I had uploaded the second song, someone had already bumped it. I know it takes a minute worth of listening before you bump, so it looks like someone has been F5ing to get the first bump bonuses. That works for me!
Demians – “Sapphire (edit)”
Deluge Grander – “Inaugural Bash (excerpt)”
Emerson, Lake & Palmer – “The Curse of Baba Yaga/The Hut of Baba Yaga”
Symphony X – “The Serpent’s Kiss”
Damon Shulman – “While We’re In Flight”
Gordian Knot – “Singularity”
Magenta – “Prekestolen”
Opeth – “Porcelain Heart (edit)”
Spock’s Beard – “Mouth Of Madness (Live)”
Zero Hour – “Lies”
Marillion – “Afraid of Sunlight”
Novembre – “Nascence”
