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2007 was pretty rough, one of the worst years I've had to date. I'm looking forward to 2008, which I hope will be a year I spend in ways I can look back on and be happy about.
Musically:
I've got a He Can Jog record coming out in May on Audiobulb. Nick Sanborn (MadeOfOak) just put the finishing touches on the artwork and I think it looks absolutely great. I've got a little snippit of it up here:
link
I've been working on that record (called "MiddleMarch") for almost four years now. Four years, wow! Two pieces on it I started six years ago -- one was originally the start of the tape portion of a piece for tape and chamber ensemble. You know, back when I wrote my music on paper. The other one has a heavily processed (but still quite recognizable I think!) covert sample of a drunken impromptu a-capella choir doing a 'tag' about a hundred feet away from me. Those vocal choir folks were my fraternity brothers, and I made that recording working late in the office of our fraternity house.
Another song on the record (called "contractors and architects" because that's what Nick named it) I co-wrote with my longtime friend Nick Sanborn during the first winter I ever spent in Milwaukee Wisconsin. At the time I was absolutely convinced I was in the middle of writing a multimedia opera, and as ever I was interested in putting collaboration at the forefront of the thing, so I asked Nick if he would come up with something to sing on the track I'd started. He turned it into a rock solid song and I think that was the end of the opera idea! Later on, we went to his bandmates' house to get a recording of his vocal part on a nice microphone. I remember I thought the version we recorded with the pinhole mic in my laptop sounded great and I didn't really think it needed to be re-recorded. I learned that day while I watched Justin engineer that homebrew protools session that the human voice is a damn hard thing to capture on tape well. I think it's three years later and I'm still in the baby steps of learning to work with the recorded voice as well as Justin did then. That was a lot of fun.
I've also got a DVD audio surround sound EP in the works at the moment, which will be released on a Swiss label sometime later this year. I'm so excited about this as multichannel audio is something I've hoped to whet my lips with, and this seems to be the first step. I won't be doing the surround sound mix, but I hope to learn something from this experience. The piece is called "growing" and it is a generative composition written in Max/MSP. I'll be doing a 25 minute stereo realization which will then be mixed to surround for the DVD.
With the release of both of these I hope to do short tours here in the US. I played more last year I think then ever before, but I really want to start getting on the road in any capacity I can. I like the luxury of being able to prepare an entirely fresh set of music for each show since I only play maybe once a month, but I'd very much like to have the experience of performing something over the course of a week and honing that performance in a public venue.
Yikes, I planned to say something about how excited I am about the way my label LuvSound is expanding, and that I'll soon be moving to Brooklyn, but I already managed to ramble on far too long - I'll save that for another blog!
We've talked a bit about this already, but now that we've all got almost a twelfth of the year under our belts, what are you looking forward to this year?
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01/21/08
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yghartsyrt
i'm really looking forward to your audiobulb-release.
i still can recall the days when you did that track on the mercedes-benz mixtape. (that was something completely different, right – technoish stuff)
dunno about my year. i hope quiting this job and moving back to some place where my friends and missus live.
hopefully üplaying some gigs and finishing some tracks i'm working on.
on that trail, hopefully overcome myself at being stuck, when it comes to writing music. though i guess that overwhelming amount of work i have for now 1,3 years is the reason i can't relax and make some proper music.
good luck on your move to brooklyn. still moving in together with bluermutt?
01/21/08
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ricemutt
congrats
I also had a very shitty year and have a good year coming up, haha
rock and roll...
01/21/08
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frnortnr
i feel like 2008 is gonna be good. i'm glad that it looks like it's going to be amazing for you! looking forward to hearing all the new stuff!!!!
01/21/08
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nicknotis
I look forward to the album in May.
01/21/08
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room
erik - i am sure 2008 will be a good one - it is always nice to harvest what you have grown and middlemarch is a great example of that.... i love your style - your willingness to collaborate and the talent you have across music, design and max-ing
yes - gig - meet people express yourself and explore - from these activities the material for the future he can jog releases will come...
01/21/08
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room
btw - you look cute in that cream colored dress
01/21/08
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bla
my coming year could well be really awful
if i have to sell all my studio stuff for a huge loss itll be the end of bla
and ill be pissed off! - for a long time!
even the local supermarket wont employ me
maybe i should study alchemy...
01/21/08
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Tripnik
agreed...
This next year is going to be really good for you. your sound/approach are really maturing, and I think you're getting ready for something excitingly new.
I also hope that 2008 will be more productive. This last year I've done very little creatively, and would really like to get back to making stuff.
01/21/08
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thehydrax
con-rats on the album, I enjoy your work ...
I'm looking forward to quitting my job (I don't hate it, I've just been here long enough) & doing a lot LESS of everything.
01/21/08
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claudia
congrats erik, i can not wait to hear everything, your work has always been an inspiration to me!!!
j
01/22/08
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Bluermutt
Nils: yeah, we''re moving together, both in NY the 15th of April !!!! And that's gonna be without any doubt the core part of my 2008. For the rest, I've got an album coming out for Nexsound (next month ? ), I'll be done with my post degree in Interactive Design at the be beginning of April and then move to reach our friend Erick. For then I'd like to complete a new album that has been in the works since August and that I'm really happy about.
Looking forward for: Erick's album, doing music in NY, playing an STFU somewhere (I've been missing for a year now... ), playing as many gigs as possible. That's it.
02/04/08
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madeofoak
how did i miss this blog? must have been out of town. i'm a terrible friend. was that seriously the first winter you moved here that we wrote that song? it seems not that long ago. and sorry for singlehandedly ruining your opera. i'm no good with operas.
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