I just completed an album (soon to be on bandcamp) that I made in response to the RPM challenge. I did it!
As always, it didn’t turn out quite like I thought it would, and while I satisfied the requirements of the challenge (I have enough songs), I did not finish all the tracks.
There are two straight forward tracks that I am still developing, and several soundtrack items.
Of particular interest to me are the tracks with readings – I used AI to read some of my decommissioned prose. And my two favorite tracks are The Memory of Somewhere I Have Never Been and Ask for what you want.
Good Morning. Here is a sampling of the week’s audio work, featuring a detuned Ibanez Talman bass and an Ibanez ArtCore semi-hollow body guitar. This is the pedal board set-up that I used for the Animation Adjacent Variety Show.
As part of this year’s Sweaty Eyeballs animation festival, there was an in person physical-space showand a variety show held at the Area 405 gallery on Friday, October 11.
My initial impulse was to perform my piece 7:77. I had envisioned playing drums, bass and guitar while one of my animations projected behind me. My intuition decided this was not the venue for this.
I switched gears and decided to shorten it to maybe 5:55. I worked up a bunch of new animated material, but I still wasn’t sure. I talked with my daughter about it, and she said “Would you like me to do this with you?”
YES!
Since the physical work I have in the gallery relates to The Kybalion, I thought I might make a film connected to Magus Incognito and the physical work. It’s called ESP and other games, and without any intentional effort from me, it ended being 4:44!
Lily and I spent an hour playing on a couple of Sunday afternoons. I assembled a rough cut of the film to see how this could work.
We did two run throughs on Wednesday night at the space.
The night of the show, we arrived at 6:45 and set up for a 7:10 performance.
I had so much fun, and I am so thankful that Lily did this with me. It was a dream come true. The audience seemed to like the film and our audio. I am pleased with what we pulled off, and Lily has agreed to do this again sometime.
I began this whole thing in the pandemic – playing to film – and it feels so good to have done it in public now.
Here I am with Mr. Sweaty Eyeballs himself, my buddy Phil Davis!
And my long time musical collaborator, dear friend and Bazooka Joe bandmate Guppy was in town.
It was a very satisfying night, after several weeks of hard thinking and work. I’m looking forward to doing more of this.
Photos below (and the featured one at the top) by Lena McBean.
