Trip Mosaic 5

Last night I got stoned and did another mix for anyone who cares.
It's a great life for a man of leisure...
Get it here.

Petit

Today I started doing something I've been meaning to do for oh, about 6 years. Way back in 2004CE, I started conceiving a concept album of sorts (what a pretentious wanker, I know. ho hum) The loose concept for the album was going to be the "tribulations of love" (what a corny wanker, I know that as well).
That's right. My pretentious corny self of half a decade ago wanted to devise an album that expressed the concept of love in all its ragged, wonderful and often bizarre glory; love in sex and violence; the psychology behind love and devotion, etc... That album was to be called "Petit Morts".
The semi-title track "Petit" was to kick off the album on a mellow note (I like slow-burning album openers). My initial idea was to actually record a sexual act performed by a passionate but romantic couple who are genuinely in love and thus, making love, not just fucking. It had to have some depth, you had to be able to hear the love in the moans, grunts and their wet kisses. I imagined a similar scenario to that in which Serge Gainsbourg and Brigitte Bardot first recorded "Je T'aime, Moi Non Plus", him making her reach orgasm as the song crescendos toward the end. That version was apparently too sexy for radio, so Serge eventually re-recorded it with Jane Birkin in a more toned-down manner, but still quite sexy. The song became an international hit and many have reported to have conceived their offspring to this piece of music.
This wouldn't be me with my partner as that would be too personal, which I always try and avoid. The work always needs to be taken from a different perspective, as an observer, if you will. I always try to put myself behind the work that I do. It's more interesting that way, but I digress. It would also just make me uncomfortable when listening to it and even more-so when playing it to people. That would almost be like showing them a home made erotic video of one and his partner. And I would also be too shy to ask anyone that I know to perform so I can record it and use it in a piece of music. So I found a porn film on the internet. After much KAK, I found a decent one of a genuine couple, no cheesy soundtrack, copulating passionately. Their performance made me feel like a voyeur, as I recorded the audio onto tape and made the transfer with some processing and mixed it into the track.
Anyway, it would be the start of the record, that which would lay everything on the table, make the concept clear from the start and be explicit about it before the rest of the album comes along and investigates, dissects and analyzes these themes - including all the baggage it comes with and its taboos and grey areas - in the context of an album consisting of music that flows piece by piece, awkward situation by awkward situation in a devotional, dedicated, desperate love and the animal instincts it brings out in oneself.
Or that's my explanation of it, anyway... I guess once this album materialises the listener can take whatever meaning they give to it. For now there's this tune: an economically melodic but minimalist instrumental with a meaning.
So I find myself revisiting an abandoned project to try and save it, track by track. This one's the first I've done. I shall continue to do so at a leisurely pace.
I never meant to just abandon the entire project, I genuinely meant to come back to it and now felt like the right time. The reason it was put on hold in the first place is for two reasons, really:
1. I was also writing and recording material for another album at the same time and I felt more inclined to the vibe of the other one. So I finished said album and carried on like that for a while, sort of forgetting about it at the same time.
2. I didn't feel confident enough to take on a project of that nature at the time.
Anyway, more to come from this, I'm sure. This album will be finished at some point.

Protect Me From Love

Way back in 2005CE Kylie was still hot shit. Since then she's battled cancer and retired from the spotlight a bit. Who can blame her, she's being doing this since I was a lad.
Anyway, I wrote a song back then. I fantasized that I was writing a song for Kylie to sing. She would've done a hell of a better job than my very modest performance. And a hell of a lot sexier! That was the way I imagined it anyway.
The song is still in my catalogue, so if Kylie makes a comeback someday and I'm in the position to get it to her people maybe my dream will one day come true.
Listening to this version performed by yours truly, it's clear that I'm way out of my comfort zone, even for a time when I was still trying to find what my comfort zone was, exactly. It's the probably the poppiest thing I've ever done. Not that there's anything wrong with that, it's just not me really, but then it was never meant to be a song for me to release under my own name.
So why am I coming back to old shit I've done all of a sudden? Well, they come up on my iTunes shuffle every now and then and while I don't personally care much for those works these days, there's still something about them that may be interesting to some people. I know I had good feedback back when I did them, so it'd be a shame to just forget about them completely.
More of this embarassing shit to come, surely.

Hot Lava

Here's a bit of a fun throwaway I recorded in a few hours at some point last year.
It's a little rocker in a faux Cramps stylee. I'm not usually known for bringing out the rock in my music, so this is a bit of an oddity. And it's one of the shortest tunes I've ever done. Hope you like it.

When Doves Cry

When I started recording solo, I had a tendency to record covers and my first two albums had about four songs written by other people which I tried to fit into the album along with my self-penned material. I thought they fit well into the loose concepts of the album, the general feel and more importantly, the running order.
When I did my third album Absolutely, it featured all original material. When I played it for one of my friends he complained that there were no covers on it. The way he saw it was that it was characteristic of my albums to have about four covers sprinkled around the original material. By this time I was having a creative streak and didn't feel like recording other people's songs and I haven't since.
I will start posting these cover versions of mine on here periodically, mainly because they won't let me put them up on myspace (yeah, blame it on them again, you say). This is because I obviously don't own the rights to these songs. But there's no harm in posting them up here so you can download them for free. It's not like I'm making any money off of them. It's not like I'm making any money from the songs I do own the rights to either...
Anyway, so this is one of them. It's "When Doves Cry" by none other than the mighty purple one. It's taken from my second album, Sky High: The Sound of Shy-Fi, which actually featured two songs by Prince. He'd always been a hero of mine and somehow I had the gull to put two of his songs on my album. Then again to give an example, Scott Walker had various Jacques Brel songs on his albums, didn't he? So I'm not alone there.
Anyway, this was recorded about five years ago and I'm not particularly proud of it, but some friends like it, so maybe some other people might.
Expect more old cover versions to pop up here in the future including my other Prince cover.
Memo butchers Prince part 1.

Trip Mosaic 4

So... I know I said last time I made a Trip Mosaic that the next one would follow shortly. I still had that stack of records piling up and only got around to doing it last night. So here it is. This one seems to flow like a hip-hop mixtape of sorts, although I wouldn't categorise it that way at all; it's just the flow of it.
It starts off with some Mesmerizing Eye that continues with what I call the "Valerie Suite": about 10 minutes of the main theme from "Valerie and her Week of Wonders" in different variations, including the Broadcast track of the same name that they aped from the original score, interfered with bursts of Czech numbers stations.
Towards the end you get a bit of what I like to call "New Trip-Hop". That track by Blue Daisy may be what people consider to be chilled dubstep, but I just see this trend as being a modern version of what Massive Attack were doing in the early to mid 90s, although some of that old west country shizzle has aged well, I must say.
The set concludes with an obscure "Remain In Light" outtake. I can see how it didn't make it to the album proper (a classic in every sense, if you haven't got it), but it's still a hypnotic, groovy gem.
Trip Mosaic no. 4

Unfinished Suite

Here's an old one I came across recently. I'd forgotten about it despite all the hard work and all the time it took me when I was recording it a couple of years ago. At the time it was to be my most ambitious work. I think I'd tired of making 4-5 minute "songs" with a discernible structure, so I figured I would make an album with 4 long, sprawling, epic, proggy tracks just as a sort of "fuck you" to everything else I'd done in the past.
I think it was precisely that which put me off ever finishing it, even though it was nearly there (just some vocals, as I seem to recall). I just spent too much time and energy that I got bored of it and moved on to something else. I think now I see why we never got a follow up to "Loveless" and why the Beach Boys' ill-fated "Smile" never saw the light of day until Wilson re-recorded it about 40 years after the fact.
Moral of the story: it's all well and good to be a perfectionist, but there are certain limits. You do need to settle at some point and allow yourself to be more spontaneous.
You may look back at it in the future and say, "Oh, now I wish I'd changed that, or spent a bit more time on that bit", but at least you'd have finished something. And that's good enough for some people. It's certainly better than just abandoning the project.
Anyway, maybe one day I'll finish this. Unfortunately all the files were lost in a devastating computer crash, so there's not much tweaking I can do except maybe record the vocals on top of it. It would be a shame to just leave it in the past, as it is a worthwhile piece of work, in my opinion. It surprised me when I came across it recently, so that must mean something, right? Obviously I've changed a lot in the last couple of years and so much has happened in that time span. It's amazing what a couple of years will do to a man...
So here you have it: a sprawling epic that starts off like something Air might have done, but then gets all proggy, thus pushing my own musical abilities. Then it goes Disco: a bit funky and a wanky guitar solo like it was emanating out of Prince's purple guitar. Then you get some interesting soundscapes and you get all the elements you had heard up to that point being warped into strange new shapes, only to resolve in the last part of the suite: a pretty pop song about near-accidental death from drowning in alcohol in frustration, only to wake up in hospital bed and laughing it off. I'm not sure if it was going to be a concept album of some sort, and since I never recorded vocals for the first part of the suite, I just called it "Unfinished Suite". I never gave it a proper name. I also never came up with a good vocal melody for it, or if I did I just never recorded it and now I've forgotten it, so if anyone out there has any ideas they would be most welcome! Help me finish this and put it out there once and for all!
Another good reason to upload it on here is that it's too long for myspace (wankers!).