The madness continues.

Rebels Without an Effect

we’re out of gas
halfway to the liberation
we can’t afford to cross that line today
they’ll let us pass
as long as we don’t tell nobody
the silent treatment is just what the doctor ordered

we came across something
we’d never seen before
the final resting place of
the last one out of there
they sold off all the valuables that she had on her
who ever thought she’d be so pristine in death

My name is Eric, and I’m a recordaholic.

Hi, Eric.

Seriously, until a few months ago I didn’t know AA (not American Airlines; also not AAA) was “spiritually-themed”… learn something new every day. Like what a ‘ewer’ is. I always tacitly assumed that a ewer was a male sheep, in the same vein as ‘widow’ and ‘widower’. In retrospect, that was kind of a silly assumption, but hey, English is a silly nuanced language.

Also, I learn things from the cryptic, which I’m getting better at. I do about half of it entirely on my own, then resort to an online crossword dictionary I found (input strings of wildcards and letters: F**K, for example, and it outputs all possible words), teamed with occasional dictionary.com lookups. I can complete the crossword this way. I find that solving the harder clues amounts to brainstorming synonyms for the ‘clue’ word, filtering them for word length and letters I already have (this is where that online tool comes in handy), then seeing how they could fit the cryptic clue. Yesterday I dicovered that a ‘thwart’ is a type of canoe, and the words ‘effete’ and ‘lambent’ are, in fact, words and not the little bundles of ridiculousness nuance they seem to be.

So yeah, The Warmth. Good Incubus song. Enjoy Incubus. Make Yourself Enjoy Incubus like a Morning View of A Crow Left of the MurderrrrrrFungus Amungus! Sorry. I tried to fit that last one in there somehow… must’ve been too nuanced.

p.s. the word I was thinking of in my example above, of course, was fork.

There was so much goodness surrounding my trip to the west coast that I wouldn’t know where to start… so I recorded another song instead.

The River.

Another very quick songwriting process, fairly standard-sounding pop-rock song which takes a lot of influence from the new Billy Talent album. I think it’s pretty catchy. The lyrics are sort of morbid, but that just depends on how you interpret the ending, I guess.

Enjoy!

p.s. The new Mars Volta album, Amputechture, has leaked and it is REALLY REALLY GOOD. Quite a bit better than the last one; I’ve been listening to it non-stop lately.

the river flows
to let her know
when its almost time
she hesitates
she’s far too slow
and suddenly it consumes her

the river flows
did she suppose
that it would take her life then?
familiar faces
all in a row
in a room that’s brightly lit

My lovely day included a flash of inspiration which materialized quickly into a new song called Pavement. It’s a short song, barely squeezing past three minutes with a little intro in there too.

I feel like I’ve settled into my own style, especially since I’ve decided upon a particular recording setup that I’m going to try to stick with for the next few songs. This way I’ll have a canvas that is truly my own, and the boundaries that it sets for me will hopefully force me to be more creative with my riffs and hooks. I’ve been noticing that I favour certain structural patterns and chords and they keep showing up in a lot of my songs. This is something I told myself I wouldn’t do, but I’m getting comfortable with it… we’ll see where it goes from here.

The lyrics, again, are about nothing in particular, take what you will from them. I feel like my technique, and in turn, my confidence on the guitar is improving, which may allow for some more complex ideas. For those intensely scrutinizing my repertoire, Pavement starts out in 3/4, then goes to 4/4 for the middle section, and back again. Compare with Subdued, which had a similar time signature flip-flop. I enjoy that. I hope you will too.

P.S.: The word ‘pyre’ was in a crossword we did on Saturday. Don’t judge.

put out the fire
starve it of oxygen
drown out the pyre
take in the smoke and then

time has blessed you
with a scenic route through
all the paths that lead to
your own destruction

A while ago I mentioned singing for Peter. This is our first (hopefully of many more)
original collaboration of this sort.

The Agony of Victory

Peter composed and arranged it, I wrote the vocal line and lyrics. I was instantly drawn by the dark NIN feel peter had going, as well as the structural simplicity of it all. Peter let his texturing and sound effects speak for themselves, so I did my best to take a back seat and let it all breathe. Great build-up towards the end.

It’s a little different. Enjoy.