Wednesday, October 30, 2013

you lost me at "proggy workout"

sometimes i read record reviews online. actually i do it almost every day. i like discovering new music i might be into. you never know, today could be the day that you discover the song that will change your life forever or at least get you pumped when you walk the dog. there are days, weeks, months and years that go by when i feel like i can't relate to anything. nothing sounds good and i never get past the opening blurb. after a while, it's funny rather than a bummer.
for a couple weeks i collected some phrases from a popular music website that i thought illustrated the exact moment where i lose interest. is this too negative? let's just concentrate on the funny part.
here you go. you're welcome?
-aching funeral doom to arching classic thrash, from acid-washed electric jazz to acrobatic prog-rock, from ambling stoner rumble to assailant death metal.
-proggy synth-pop record that wants to get treated like a sculpture
 -harp-heavy post-rock
-development of a more nuanced soft side
-a unique take on European funeral doom
-dismantling jazz with the tools that built it
-collects every songs they ever made
-Drum and bass pioneer
-demonstrates a fondness for sparse, repeating figures
-conceptional electro-pop project
-a thematic focus on questions of gender, identity, and power structures
-Prodigy and producer the Alchemist team up
-as raw as you’d expect from an artist just starting to find himself
-If you like cerebral rap music
-document of the band's style-sampling present
-a sound that’s uniquely American in conception but European in execution
-concentrate solely on his murderous bark
-retro-funk bullseye
-a batch of accessible, confident indie rock
-a veteran of many rock sounds
-proggy workout
-lush, warm reverb and palpable bass frequencies.
-teaser
-London dance-pop quartet
-fourth full-length release of 2013
-perfectly situated at the leading edge of rock tastes
-vocal-oriented album from dark ambient pioneer

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Trio

months ago i was invited to do a performance at TEDx Indianapolis, an independently organized TED event that happens here in town. lots of emails and a few months later here we are. the theme of this year's talk was "mix it up" and collaboration was encouraged. i did a song that i wrote a couple years ago called 'nitewalker' accompanied by Time For Three, a trio that has been in residence at the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra for the past 5 years. the symphony played, then time for three played with the symphony and then the symphony bailed and TF3 played with me. we had maybe 5 minutes of rehearsal time but these guys are real professionals (as well as being just really nice people). we talked about just playing around an E all the way through and it felt good. you know in the movie Back To The Future when Marty McFLy turns to the band and is like "it's a blues in E, follow me for the changes..." and then lets it rip? it was like that in a very mellow one-chord non-ego kind of way. i felt like we were able to ride the vibe and discover the vibe as we went and i am thankful for that. playing music feels really good lately.  i will say it was trippy seeing a thousand people in front of me and knowing my parents were out there watching, but luckily i forgot about all that in the moment. the TED event was at the circle theater in downtown indianapolis, a place i've been going to since  i was about 8 years old for the occasional symphony concert with my folks. i am very thankful to all involved for being given this incredible experience and to be able to play this song. and i am also happy to display this bootleg video as filmed by the wonderful katie coles. what a thing!

Friday, October 18, 2013

it's alright


still on the mollusk jamboree comedown three weeks out....
dogs, buds, babies: what could be better?
here's hoping your weekend is a mellow fellow