teething

teething

leaving for colorado first thing tomorrow, so a bit of cleaning and packing.. watching some tv and such. also i found a picture of wes and emily (and me) working on the new mexican revolution stuff at an old practice space.. a stinky little closet in NW portland, with no heat.. our new space is pretty much the opposite, i figure.

laundry also. need some clean socks.

grave song

grave song

we chose the key of Ab 'cause we have a little homemade music box instrument (you can hear it at the very end of the song) that uses that key, for some reason.. so we wrote a chord progression and a couple of changes, and started working on it.. it clearly has a lot of emily's input, what with all the big singing and stuff. i kinda wish we could do more of that, but i think we start laughing too much.

i think it was supposed to fade out at some point, also - oh well.. arty ending, ftw.

just another spider bite

just another spider bite

lodge party recovery day, spent most of it lounging around, working on this song and thinking about car commercials.. EAC practice tonite was good, came home and finished this.. just now getting done. just two more to go, i think - and then i'll be off in colorado for three weeks, with family. three weeks. crazy.

aaron

alientated times

alienated times

becker's annual lodge party is tonight.. year five, i think, and it's always a good time. ice sculptures, meat dishes, good liquor and such.. what could be better?

too bad the shitty beatles couldn't play, it would've been perfect. on the other hand, i think camaro island and the new mexican revolution will play.. so that's a lot of time playing at a party.

we're watching documentaries on giant squids.

floating ash

floating ash

F Dmin Bb C

when i turn around
i wanna see the whole thing burning down
nothing left but the sound
of floating ash
i'm gonna laugh
at all the things that couldn't last

they say i've got a streak
some kind of demon inside me
and while mostly he's asleep
i think everyone should be free
a single match is all i need

and i hope you've got one too
i need a pilot, soft and blue
for a mission on the truth
against the sky
no one survives
no one ever gets out alive

wilting roads

wilting roads

today was a pretty good day, if a bit cold.. it hasn't gotten above freezing here for a few days, which isn't much compared to the east half of the country, but it's a pretty big deal for portland. anyhow, emily and i spent most of the day bumming around the apartment, sorta working on music and reading and such.. it's nice to take it easy after all the school work.

patchwork

ha! it's cold in portland, and there's no shortage of jokes (intentional and not) on the local news tonight. in addition, some elementary kid stuck his tongue to a flagpole (funny) and the school called 911 (not funny) and got the fire department to 'save' him.. they poured warm water on his tongue and it came off.

of course it came off. i can't believe no one at the elementary school thought of it. wow.

luckily, they only teach children. ha!

anyhow, here's a song.

patchwork

how do you sing when there's not much to say
the sweater looks better on you anyway
you can do what you want, but i don't wanna be friends
i guess the patches are cute but it's proof that you're wearing thin

it never used to be like this, we were a team
we won by taking risks
but then you settled down, i hear you moved in with him
you guys looked great together - i hope i never see it again

you never believed and i did tell some lies
but you were just like me, you looked us straight in the eye
you said that you want to be free, but now you stick with your friends
crying 'bout the weather's gonna start turning soon and you wanna fit in

it didn't need to be like this
a stormcloud from an open wrist
so as the water comes up know that it's a revenge
i'm gonna laugh and hope all you assholes never learned how to swim

we got a guitar in the mail today (!) from emily's father.. so thanks John! it's a 12 string, which is pretty cool.. i've never spent any time with one before, so once we got it tuned up i got to work, using it on this song, just screwing around.. it's nice, kinda chimey, but i guess that's obvious. ha! we're both done with school now, so i hope to be able to spend some time with it, writing/recording/posting songs.. fingers crossed.

petalstain (花弁しみ)

so despite the lack of any activity on the interweb, i've actually been pretty busy and sorta productive on the musical front..

i was real lucky to work on music for some moving images (!) which is pretty awesome.. providence, i suppose - cause i was really hoping to find some way to doing something/anything in that direction. so i got asked to write a bunch of little major chord acoustic guitar bits for a short promo film for the MESD, and i churned out a lot of stuff trying to make sure i didn't screw up. almost all of it was background stuff, so when i listen to it now it seems a little bit directionless - almost unfinished or something.. it's odd to write 'instrumental background music', perhaps..

anyhow, some of the stuff i've been working on has spun itself into other directions.. stuff that would end up unsuitable for the project but sounds kinda cool, so here's one of 'em..

petalstain (花弁しみ)

this is actually two months old or so.. and only one of many things i've been up to, but i think it's the most suitable to share. for the MESD video, it was all acoustic guitars, real simple and pretty stuff.. once we were done with that, i started to tinker with it and introduce all the static-y guitars at the end and play around the electronica bits.. after the MESD gig, i was able to do music for another video project which had a different role to fill, and i think i'll post that one soon. similar and different stuff was involved. ha!

back in school, benkyoo shimashing the hell out my nihongo. lots of hard work, studying everyday for this PSU japanese program, which uses JSL core conversations and all.. blah blah, it's good and bad, sorta hard and unfamiliar, but i'm doing alright. it's nice to be on PSU campus, lots of hubbub. and it's cool 'cause emily and i are going together on the bus every morning , so we wake up together and stuff. sweet.

morning breath

here you go.

morning breath

bloodtest & trying=failing

bloodtest

trying=failing

emi-chan to aaron-kun wa futatsu atarashii uta o kakimashita

it's sorta butchered, but i think it gets the point across. and the verb is wrong, but i couldn't find "to write songs" anywhere.. so i just went with 'to write".

they're both cool little 'gem of a song' songs, kinda linear in fashion with some neat lyrics and such.
i'm a particular fan of bloodtest, which i had very little to do with.. the lyrics are super awesome, and i think emily might've performed all the bits herself! yee haw desu.

we're about to eat hangover pancakes, which sounds pretty pefect to me. school is going well, nihongo no kurasu wa tanoshii desu ga chotto muzukashii desu yo. emily got an 'A' and 'Oustanding!' on her midterm paper in environmental ethics! yoku dekimashita, emi-chan!

hangover pancake o tabemashoo!

The World Over There

another Thomas Pynchon Fakebook song today!

the world over there

this is a song i put together near the end of our time at the Willis house, maybe the last thing we did there.. it clearly benefits from the live drums and loud guitars. i'm pretty sure i did everything on this one, but as i was working on it i had this vague idea about the horns coming in over the second half, making this big triumphant thing (maybe like William the Arsonist).. but emily and i could never really figure out what to do, so it stands as a sorta noisy guitar celebration.

despite all that, i really like this song.. it reminds me of the early Flaming Lips stuff I fell in love with back in the day, ala Clouds Taste Metallic and such. and it has that neat moment where it's in a big slow six for most of the song and then changes into a punk rock two-feel, sorta.. tough to describe, but i like the effect.

moving on - here in Portland, OR the weather has really taken a turn for the better.. high pressure moving in just in time for the weekend, gonna last all week it seems. i'm pretty happy about all that, no doubt. hooray! emily's been working hard in the lab down at PSU all week, this'll be the end of her first week working full-time, so that's a reason to celebrate. and i've been doing work for Ben, actually making money, so that's good news as well. maybe this weekend we'll go out for dinner or something.. ha!

aaron

vulgar song

Over these last two terms (fall 2008 & spring 2009, i guess) Daniel Couch put together the Thomas Pynchon Fakebook, a project to set the lyrics in Gravity's Rainbow to song.. being a big fan of Pynchon, I agreed to help pretty quickly. i should find the address and set up the links, but i gotta go to work in a bit here.. but i wanted to post a little something before i left, blah blah..

anyhow, it was experimental on a few different levels - obviously working with somebody else's lyrics can be odd, but there was also some collaboration (almost all of it through the internet).. anyhow, emily and i put together 5 songs (i think), and contributed to a few more, neat stuff.

a lot of the lyrics in the book are setup in a jazzy singalong context, and they often have an innate rhythm and form to 'em, we basically just added the most obvious music in most cases.. it was an opportunity to do more show-tunes/jazzy stuff, but this may not be the best example.. on the other hand, it's got Danni doing a lot of funny laugh noises all over it, which is pretty funny.. and emily did a lot of vocal pitch shifting stuff. good times.

Vulgar Song

hmm.. i should also find the lyrics and maybe page numbers (ha!).. . but i gotta run.

oh yeah, and i kinda bombed my japanese quiz yesterday, which made me pretty sad. i guess i was just caught off guard, the quiz was pretty easy (despite the fact that i failed it). oh well.

Saddest Songs

another song from the Black Mesa Songs album.. sorta gets me all choked up, sometimes. gorgeous little song with some excellent words, i wish i had written this. oh well, at least i get to listen to it. ha!

while we were working on the album, there were a couple of songs that seemed like little gems - maybe we shouldn't clutter them up with accordions and trumpets and noisy guitar solos and such.. and while we ended up doing that to most songs, this one was too nice to mess up.

on other notes, emily and i started a japanese conversation class last night, which was pretty cool.. i've been studying japanese for a few terms now, at PCC, but it's sorta exciting to have emily as a conversation partner.

ja mata

Hunger For Thirst

hunger for thirst

The New Mexican Revolution finally released a new album, Black Mesa Songs, and I think it turned out pretty darn good. It's got the reliable mix of americana/country/songwriter-stuff, as well as some Tom Waits-style gypsy punk (ala Gogal Bordello). ha!

that sounds funny to read over, like some mutant press release. it's also pretty early in the morning, 'cause i gotta go to work.. which is awesome, 'cause i need money. i've been reading the Grapes of Wrath lately, on account of all the plane-traveling i've been doing, and it's a bit depressing. apparently you gotta have money. hmmm..

anyways, hunger for thirst might be my favorite song on the album, but it's a tough pick.. it's a country tune with neat poetic lyrics, and it's got a nice solo section and bridge. good stuff. on other parts of the album, their is more noise, more instrumentation, more experimentation, but this one is beautifully basic, i think.

I swore today I’d bite everything I said
Half words full of broken letters
I couldn’t explain away the reasons that I stay
Half sounds are for all the better

And you were at your best when I was at my worst
But I could never remember exactly which came first
Even benign smiles could seem so cursed
As I traded in my hunger for my thirst

Words are like leaves that are free, you can’t put them back on a tree
Each one a life of its own.
They might try to fly, or maybe just fall and die
Or wait like a seed to be sown

Sometimes words move like snow or they’ll settle like broken glass
Sometimes they lie in waiting for the moment to pass
So I try to bite down on them break them into pieces,
Let them settle where they will.

yuki geshou 雪化粧

yuki geshou 雪化粧

this is a little something i was thinking about doing in the big snow storm of portland 2008.. and hopefully it's closely related to an earlier piece called "snow day" on here.. a lot of the same things in the same key, spacey and instrumental and increasingly lethargic, almost.. i think this one could've been longer and more spaced out, especially up front. we'll save that for the live version.. ha!

also - wes shirley has a new blog that's pretty interesting - wes's album-a-day review blog!.. he doesn't seem to be held down by any genre or time period or relevance.. but it's all western pop music so far, i think. we shall see. neat0.