Here are some psychedelic electronic sound paintings pulsing with the auditory ambiance of Japan. I've been pretty fixated on playing the guitar as of late, and most of the recent original music at the Psychedelic Garage has been rock n' roll with Glaze of Cathexis. Still, there's been some tripped out electronica simmering on the back burner.
The majority of these tracks feature field recordings by Scott Atkinson. The man loves to travel and we hooked him up with a cassette tape recorder early last year (the goal was for a giant Vietnam-era analog recorder, but it's hard to track that kind of thing down). Most of the tracks congealed on recordings made in Kyoto, the busy streets of Tokyo, or, uh, the zoo. On my end, I tried to focus more on the vibrations and atmosphere of the tracks than slathering on brazen melodies as I'm often apt to do.
A few tunes here date a little further back. "Echoes of Infinity" and "Raynbow Sunryse No. 16" are tracks that I totally dig, but never really sequenced well on the last few Damaged Tape albums. I think they flow rather nicely here. "The Laboratory of Dr. Humpinstein" receives its odd nomenclature from my occasional film scoring activities. The track served for the laboratory backgrounds in the 2011 Gonzoriffic film "The Erotik Castle of Dr. Humpinstein." The name only should be enough info for if you want to watch it or not.
I always love to discover when folks share our music around on the internet. Please do so if you feel the flow:
I must admit that I've been completely focused on rocking out on my Glaze of Cathexis recordings so far this year - I haven't delved into the electronic world of Damaged Tape for months now (but I feel it's coming on). I didn't really get around to compiling my recordings into albums until late 2007, so a fair number of tracks ended up getting shoved straight under the rug. These are eight of the better ones that began showing up after 2005's 'Futara' (2005) on through to outtakes from the 'Stone God' (2007). It a different, and more digital approach than the one I take these days, but there's a shimmering psychedelic glare that still comes through nicely. At this point, I was still going completely maverick with my music and everything you see and hear on this release can be traced back to myself. Fortunately, I can still groove to the sounds I created here, and I hope that you will as well. I still dig the compressed electro-pop vibe I was aiming for on "Olympus Mons" and "Slaarg" as well as the duality of more epic tracks like "Building the New Machine" and "(Re)Creation." My only real regret is that I didn't have the vacumn tubes to toss the sounds through at the time (you'll see the 2006-2007 recording setup in the in
sert photo). I've even come to piece with my strange 'Duran Duran' moments in "Entoptic." Have a gander at these tracks and download them over at Bandcamp:
The world will end after you play this on December 21st. You may have to wait a few billion years, but it will end.
These electronic sounds began early this year during the sessions for "The Floating Existence." "Interstellar Tropics" was actually the first tune recorded for that album, but I held on to that song and "B.A.D.D.," thinking I'd save them for a fake soundtrack. This album isn't quite a fake soundtrack, but the music is still supposed to flow like a mid-80's action/adventure show. I guess it would have been set by the beach with all of the oceanic white noise I added with the Moog. There's plenty of hints of surf guitar as well. "B.A.D.D." was supposed to stand for something, like the cartoon "M.A.S.K.," but nothing ever came of it. Once Scott got to work on the album, things veered into a more trippy spiritual direction as tends to happen with him. Anyway, I'm hoping that everything ends as it should, and this set is the proper hybrid of our visions. As with the last album, I continue to dabble in the ocean of vocal synth-pop on "Spectrum of Realities" and "Nectar of the Lotus." Those along with "Dragons of the Moonrise" are my personal favorites here. Hmmm, we've got an awful lot of "_____ of ______" on this collection. Were betting on numerology, though, by releasing this on all twelves.
There's no particular concept to this album, it's really just a set of psychedelic musings. Pretty much all of the music here spilled out rather effortlessly over the past few months. Making music for me never feels too much like work, but this one was even more fun and games. I think it helps that everything here is analog hardware (with the sole exception of the robotic voice on the first track), so I didn't have to endure any programming cyber-headaches. There's also more guitar present than on other Damaged Tape records - I honestly can't really play keyboard that well, but I can rock it funky on guitar. I've also included a few tracks with lead vocals, which is a first for Damaged Tape. If my music evolves, I'm happy, and I think this one has a somewhat different vibe from other sets I've done for the Damaged Tape project. Here's some track-by-track notes for your perusal:
1. Shadows of the Future - Probably the closest we get to this dance floor on this set. The opening sample is from Alan Watt's brain-blowing "Om" from "The Sound of Hinduism," which you'll find elsewhere on the blog. My image for the second half of the track is of a bunch of robots blasting you with lasers while pontificating on their robot philosophy.
2. Craters of the Sun - I sit around playing Tetris and listening to classical Indian music a lot. Of course, many of you know that I have a sitar obsession. Unfortunately, I don't have a sitar, so my electric guitar will have to do for this faux-raga.
3. Melted Into Angel Form - Here's another second solar track in a sort of mini-suite of hymns toward the sun. I was trying to get my Eno on a little more than usual for this one. If you can figure out what movie I based the lyrics on, then you may have ESP.
4. The Solar Petroglyphs - I guess this really makes more sense as a Glaze of Cathexis tune, but the track did start with the percolating synths and I like it here. The lyrics are a mixture of good and bad advice. It's up to you to parse out which is which.
5. Sharkfasting of the Wyld - It's a shojam! This one has kind of a weird swing that I don't think shows up in electronic music too much. You'll have to ask Scott what he's talking about on the track.
6. Bohemian Astronaut - Not quite a hippy in space - a little sharper than that. We'll dedicate this one to Harrison Schmitt, the only scientist who made it to the Moon during the Apollo program. Maybe that made him seem a touch bohemian amongst all the navy and air force dudes.
7. Tara Poets and Edo Priests - Or maybe it's the other way around as the file name says. Honestly, I sort of forgot. Hell, both ways are fine with me. Until Scott made his contribution, I had an unfortunate urge to name this track "The Hippy Revolution," but it has to be an exploitation revolution like you can see in the double feature DVD "Wild in the Streets/Gas-s-s-s"
8. Conversations With the Psychedelic Wyzard - All of these tracks started off with the file name "cheecream," but this one really earns its title. We've got a question posed by the lead synthesizer, and answer from the lead guitar, and another response from the synth over the course of the track. You can decide which one of these voices is the psychedelic, uh, wyzard.
9. Magnetic Vulcanology - The initial tune made me think of a synthesized communist anthem or something, and then I decided to do the Cookie Monster for the vocals. I don't think I can touch Tom Waits Cookie Monster impression, but I am a big fan of both of those iconic figures.
10. A Dedication of the Deserts - I may need to get Scott to post a bit about the intentions of his words. Although it is ostensibly about the deserts, I keep feeling that it's more of a peace, love, and tantric sex thing. I don't know, the artist is typically the worst person that you can ask, "So, what does it mean?"
11. Tribal Physics - I think I figured out how to make my Roland Juno 60 sound reasonably like a Fender-Rhodes electric piano - at least that's what I was going for. Something deep inside of me thought about naming this album "The Happy Bongo" as well. This track is further support for that idea.
As always, I'd love to hear your comments, and if you dig the sounds, you're welcome to repost. Let me know if you do.
While we're on the topic of collaboration, here's a new set of recordings that I worked on with Andrew Bland. This is the first time we've shared space on a record since 'Paper Fences' in 2006. From what I understand, Andrew spent 2007-2010 working on his "Field Pictures of Echoes" album (which you'll find at his website http://andrewbland.net/. I took a bunch of bits and pieces that didn't end up on the album and worked them into finished tracks. I sort of assumed that we'd be working with a rustic groove (as you'll hear on his 'Cosmic Relief' album), but I guess that he'd been infected with the synth bug at the time, so I ended up adding a lot of percussion and guitar to the soundscapes in order to get them nice and warm.
I enlisted Scott Atkinson to add a bit of spoken word, and he came up with most of the song titles while flipping through a biography of Chairman Mao. I didn't touch Andrew's track for 'Sailing on the Mekong,' while 'Riptydes of Existence' is actually an outtake from the Damaged Tape album 'Ambiguous Reality.' It didn't make the cut for that one as the completed album was a little too ambient for the tune.
I do hope that you dig spending a little time in our miniature sonic worlds. I welcome any comments and if you're running another blog and like this, I'd be happy for you to repost.
This is the soundtrack for a film that doesn't exist. I made these tracks for Gonzoriffic Productions ringleader (and Glaze of Cathexis drummer) Andrew Shearer. He was on his way to a filmmaking vacation in Hollywood, and I made these with the intention of providing him with some Michael Mann sleaze for his endevours. Somewhere along the line, he had a dream about making a film called 'Nude Witchcraft.' While he didn't make the film, he did come up with a trailer and I couldn't pass up the opportunity to make a tune for that as well.
The tunes are very much focused through the analog early 80's. In fact, except for a vocoder on the title track, everything here is 100% analog electronics. I applied a bit of Scott Atkinson's poetry to 'Light's Passage.' Meanwhile, 'Harp of the Triple Goddess' comes from some tracks I've been working on with Andrew Bland, whom I worked with several years ago on the 'Paper Tigers' LP (the rest of the tracks will appear soon). None of the original track remains, but I did recreate some of his melodic contributions for this cut.
I considered putting these with some other tracks for an LP, but they work so well together and are so much cut of the same cloth that I decided to keep them as a shorter length collection. I hope you dig what you hear.
I'm always trying to keep from stagnating in my own music, and I think this new set of Damaged Tape recordings takes a step in a notably different direction. The first Damaged Tape album, "Electronic Ocean," was recorded with a very different set up than I have now, and I've been trying to return to the hazy, moody atmospheres of that album ever since unsuccessfully. I think I've finally managed to do so here. There is very little drum programming, and many tracks are based on arpaggiator riffs from my various synthesizers. I often start to make an ambient type track, but eventually find myself drifting in a different, more elaborate direction, yet much of this music makes for what I think is very groovy, shapeshifting psychedelic wallpaper. I had also been listening to a lot of 70's Vangelis during these sessions, and I think "Mathematics of the Genome" and "Sandcastles of Paraguay" hit upon that vibe quite nicely. I've also accepted that I play guitar a lot better than synthesizer, and I tried to mix in plenty of guitar work with the electronics - in fact, "Wheels of Vishnu" barely has a synthesizer in it. I've also been trying to live up to the Damaged Tape monkier a bit more, and have been trying to record with a little more warped sound and grit. While I'm still happy with albums like "Futara" and "Stone God," they sound a little more sterile and polished than I really wanted.
While I do the instrumental heavy lifting, this music would not be the same without the contributions of Scott Atkinson. I always dig his cosmic poetry, and his guidance as I'm recording is invaluable. He's also the fellow who comes up with the song titles (except for the last one), which I think gives the recordings their identity.
A couple of these tracks were recorded with my old roommate Devin Carlen in a late night, wasted recording session. I gave them a listen recently, and a few had a very freaky experimental edge that I still found entertaining six years later. Just as a warning, if you listen to "Waiting in a Time Capsule Trapped in Outer Space" on headphones, it may actually drive you insane - that or make you vomit from disorientation. Either way - you have been warned.
Ah yes, and the fellow you almost see on the cover is Mark Malek, a good friend of mind who I've played in bands with over the years and made a few entertaining Glaze of Cathexis remixes that I'll need to post eventually. We were in downtown Atlanta on our way to Mai Tai night at Trader Vic's when that was taken.
Anyway, here's a track listing for "Ambiguous Reality." I'd love to hear your comments about the songs:
1. The Fluorescent Darkness (2:19)
2. Pilgrimage of the Cosmic Warrior (4:32)
3. Victorian Era Phantoms of the Ganges (2:00)
4. Wheels of Vishnu (5:42)
5. Dance of the Stained-Glass Shamen (4:32)
6. The Tryps to Saturn (2:19)
7. Mathematics of the Genome (3:24)
8. Sandcastles of Paraguay (4:17)
9. The Tropical Glacier (4:07)
10. Ambiguous Reality (8:57)
11. Waiting in a Time Capsule Trapped in Outer Space (4:20)
These electronic tunes had a nice, long gestation period, and I'm pretty happy with the final results. I wanted to get away from the 'four-on-the-floor' house sort of beats that I used a lot on Psychedelic Anthropology and focus more on the 'sonic sculpture' concept that I had back with Electric Ocean. Of course, with a completely different set of instruments and recording equipment, this music is hopefully its own entity. Although several of these tracks were quick and painless, several of these tracks (especially the instrumental ones) were originally intended to be part of a collaboration and intentionally left half-finished. But after more than a year and a few shifts in perspective, I finished them up mostly with the help of my Juno 60 synthesizer.
The concept for this album originally involved Scott's (the other feller in Damaged Tape) exploration of Japan's Izu peninsula. Unfortunately, I didn't necessarily get around to finishing all the tracks that involved those ideas, plus the cover to Glaze of Cathexis' The Golden Konbanwa already sort of got that idea down visually. This means that Scott is far better equipped to talk about the conceptual nature of these recordings. Here's what he has to say:
Inspiration for this spoken word came from free-associative thoughts in quiet times of
the night and day, and the only necessity was to just listen and be receptive to
our innate intuition.
Of this I feel-
delving into the collective subconscious is like descending into a deep well within a well,
accessing information from those shimmering purple-black waters reflecting
the glints of diamond-chip stars endlessly beyond. In this journey of metamorphosis
and transcendence, the wisdom and insight gained belongs to all, as this wisdom
and insight, shrouded in profound, sacred mystery, is an innate and inseparable part of us.
Anyway, I'd love to hear your comments concerning these songs (good or bad), and if you want to repost, please let me know! It always makes my day.
Track List:
1. Dimensions Untold Of (5:12)
2. Bamboo Hollow (4:08)
3. Amphibians of Time (4:03)
4. Lexicography of the Universe (2:41)
5. Crystal Forge (4:15)
6. Conflux of Reality (3:53)
7. Infinity's Quest (5:14)
8. Mind if the Vortex (2:28)
9. Endless Ocean (4:48)
10. A Desert of Cobalt (5:19)
11. The Cosmic Election (2:35)
I occasionally do soundtracks for independent films makers, most often for my childhood friend Andrew Shearer who writes, directs, and produces films under the Gonzoriffic Films label. These two are probably the ones that I put the most work into (as opposed to Andrew simply using tracks from my albums). I'll write a bit about them separately.
"The Erotic Couch" is Andrew's most recent directoral effort. The idea was to model it after a sexploitation movie from the late 60's. There is no actual nipple footage in the film, distinguishing it from p*rn, but it is of course a sexy affair. Andrew's instructions for me were to make some pre-disco exploitation music. That said, "The Ravishing Recliner" and "The Lecherous Love Seat" have some serious dub leanings, and "The F**kin' Chair" and "Chair F**k" are based off of "Call of the Cosmic Tribe" from the Glaze of Cathexis disc, "The Golden Konbanwa" (although "Chair F**k" no longer contains any of the original track). I'll also note that "The Lecherous Love Seat" is a 'work-in-progress' preview of an upcoming Damaged Tape LP. You'll notice that I've added Moog noise to all of the tracks to approximate a crackly vinyl sound. This was done to match the intentional film defects of the movie itself.
"Cannibal Sisters" is loosely based on a criminal case in Atlanta from about 15 years ago. Since the movie is mostly based in an urban setting (er..., apartment), I tried to contrast it with as many tribal sorts of rhythms as I could. "Boneyard," which also appears on Damaged Tape's "Ship of Lights," was recorded earlier and served as my basic template for the soundtrack along with 70's Italian horror soundtracks (any Goblin fans out there?). I paid close attention to the drum programming, and I felt like the production of this soundtrack significantly improved my drum programming abilities.
To delve deeper into the world of Gonzoriffic, head on over to http://www.gonzoriffic.com. I'm sure Andrew has some DVDs he can set you up with. Check out "Psychovixens" for a glimpse of my own terrible acting as Oscar (the soundtrack for that one is on Damaged Tape's "Electric Ocean"). As a side note, I don't rate my own music, but most of this is probably not very high on the Trip-O-Meter. I think I back off on the psychedelia a bit when soundtracking films.
This music dates back to my first stint in Japan. You could see the back of the Futara Shrine in the city of Utsunomiya from my apartment, hence the name of this collection. This music was recorded from January to May 2005, which is the same period of time that I recorded the Glaze of Cathexis "Tokyo Rainbow Bridge" tracks. Although I was still at the beginning of the learning curve of laptop recording, and I only had a MicroKorg and Reason to work with, I'm still pretty happy with these tracks. For a while I had considered rerecording "Jakarta" and "The Flower of Darkness," but I doubt I'll get to that anytime soon, so the originals are here. You'll note that "Before the Flood" has a sample of Neville Chamberlain ranting about public heath. Being that I recorded it in 2005, this track is not meant as any commentary on the U.S. health care debate - I used the sample as it seemed absurd that this was Chamberlain's priority in 1939 as the Nazis were about to provoke World War II. "Chonk" and "Kung Fu Glue" reflect my bad habit of making up stupid file names so I can save my mixes, and then never renaming them (I also have songs like "Nork" and "Floob" hanging out on my hard drive). Musically, the band Air was certainly still at the forefront of my influences, as were Moby's more ambient tracks from the 1990's. I consider 'side two' of the album to have some sort of concept, although you'll have to work that one out on your own (although I did read Simon Winchester's book about Krakatoa while making the album). Enjoy and feel free to repost elsewhere.
Track List:
1. The Flower of Darkness
2. March to the Moon
3. Temple of Zoul
4. Titan
5. Kung Fu Glue
6. Chonk
7. Martian Cowboy
8. Before the Flood
9. Jakarta
10. Nightmare
11. Volcano Ballroom
12. A Meeting of Minds
13. Last Night
If you would allow me, I'd like to take you on a trip through mythological history. Using state-of-the-art-technology, Damaged Tape has electronically recreated some of the sounds that once graced lands such as Atlantis, Shangri-La, and the holy kingdom of Priester John.
I've spent the fall working on this collection of music, and possibly sacrificed a bit of my sanity making it. The tracks here are heavily layered and include things such as ghost melodies hanging just underneath the surface while rhythms cross each other in a uneasy alliance. The main focus here was on analog synthetic pomp, but you'll find things like curiously haunted guitars and acid-house beats lurking around in the mix too.
My collaborator on the other side of the world for this one was Scott Atkinson, my pal from down under. Both of us are history dorks, avid connoisseurs of things psychedelic, and we were more or less on the same trip for this one. Beyond his very tripped-out artwork for Psychedelic Anthropology, he has contributed some haunted spoken-word beat poetry on the first and last tracks to fill in the thematic blanks. If you dig his contributions, more of his work can be found here: www.redbubble.com/people/floatingworld
As usual, I'd love to hear your thoughts and comments and I hope you dig the tunes.
I've been abusing my analog synthesizers as of late, and these are the results. Maybe I haven't been looking so much to the future as the late 1970's, but I'll let you be the judge of that. There's a pretty liberal sprinkling of Moog here, so if you have a soft spot for those sounds, then you might like what I've done here. You'll also hear a bit of the very groovy TB-303 recreation that Future Retro produces. I would definitely give that piece of equipment a thumbs-up for any of you electronic-minded musicians out there. With the first track, you'll get a sample of the incredible Criswell, whose amazing predictions have yet to become true. The rest of the first half of the album is sort of my attempt at Neptunian disco, while I give in to my strange obsessions with Mayan history on the second half. That concept is that from 'Boneyard' on, we hear the warriors and captives enter the city, and the king makes a bloodletting offering that takes his mind on a psychedelic trip to meet the gods and see the fabled ballgame at the core of Mayan mythology. Two tracks here, "Boneyard" and "Lords of Xilbalba" are about three years old. I really dig the tracks, I just never really had a proper home for them until now. It's not that there aren't more recent tracks, the older ones just edged them out. As always, please share the music, leave some comments for me here, and repost elsewhere. Thanks for listening!
Tracklisting:
1. A Push Button World (5:20)
2. Wet Candy (5:17)
3. Hot Dog Jets (8:03)
4. Tell Me Your Secret (5:01)
5. Boneyard (2:25)
6. Offering (3:50)
7. The Crystal Sphere (3:03)
8. Thin Air (6:15)
9. Lords of Xilbalba (4:24)
10. Hunahpu and Xbalanque (5:22)
Total Time: (48:55)
89.9 MB
After all that Subotnick, I thought I'd throw a little more of my electronica your way. These recordings are actually my first serious attempts at electronic music, and I'm still very happy with them for the most part. They have a groovy dirty analog sound that I dig, and I've never been able to make music quite so Air-like (as in the French band) since I made this stuff. My only real qualms as the musician is that the sound quality is a touch dirtier than I'm typically happy with, and there are a few rhythmic inconsistencies since I was recording directly onto tape without anything but simple synth sequences to guide me. At least I can brag that there are absolutely no recording tricks here. Anyway, I hope you enjoy and please leave some comments! As always, other blogmasters are more than welcome to repost this; it puts a smile on my face.
Track Listing 1. Europa (2:42) 2. Charley Acid (4:12) 3. Planetary Roulette (2:29) 4. Collide (0:57) 5. Tortoise Highway (1:02) 6. Space-Time Tear (1:31) 7. Communist Dirge 2048 (3:22) 8. Emerald Twilight (1:44) 9. Mars Patrol (1:13) 10. Lost in the Woods (2:19) 11. Lunar Disco (1:35) 12. Trapped Under Glass (2:17) 13. Marble Raincloud (4:54) Total Time: 30:14 55.7 MB
Judging by the download statistics, a fair amount of this blog's readers at least took a passing interest in the Glaze Of Cathexis recordings. Hopefully you dug it. Here's the other side of the coin. When I'm not in the mood to sing or write lyrics, I delve into the more electronic side of music making. Many of the Damaged Tape tracks I make are used in the microbudget Gonzoriffic films, whose link you'll find further down this page. I use this outlet to work out my Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, Air, Underworld mojo. There's a few accidental David Gilmour impressions in the latter half of the album (or side B if you'll indulge me). The recordings for this album were all made in my little apartment out in Ueda, Japan from October 2006 up until December 2007.
The photos in the artwork are from an October voyage to a stone god in the middle of a rice field in Suwa, Nagano, Japan. It's several hundred years old, but has some very Aztec/Mayan looking carvings on it, which is pretty mysterious. Apparently there was an incident where the thing started bleeding from the back after someone tried to quarry a bit of stone from the back of it. Freaky! The best photo from the trip was a double exposure with the god and my Australian buddy Scott. It's so cool that I thought of passing him off as me in the insert, but I decided that would be far too lame.
As always, I'd be very happy if some of you other bloggers would be interested in reposting this (I'd like to know about it too, if possible), and I'm happy to hear everyone's comments. If this stuff isn't your bag, the next Glaze Of Gathexis album is a good 60% finished and will show up in a couple of months. And of course we'll continue to hear about plenty of albums here that are not by me.
