As roughly half of you know, I spent much of my free time in February engaging in the RPM Challenge, which is the musical equivalent of National Write A Novel month. Thursday last being the deadline for having the thing postmarked, I burned the 11 songs I recorded in the month in their somewhat raw state, mocked up some liner notes, and dumped the thing in the mail.
I was working off a couple of themes for this project: it's a collection of songs, under my new Nom D'Art The Calculus Affair, that don't really fit my usual musical idiom (for the, you know, four of you out there who know what my usual musical idiom is), and it's also a musical tribute to a guitar: a 1955-ish hollow-body Gibson that I purchased a couple of years ago from Fronesis Père. I also played drums for the first time, which is a) harder than you think it's going to be, and b) way fun.
The official release party for RPM Challenge albums is March 30th, in a variety of locations, and at that time they'll stream all the albums from their website. I, on the other hand, have released the thing, mistakes and rushed mixing and all, here, with cover art/liner notes here. If you're in a singles frame of mind, people so far seem to be liking these:
Alexandr (You Forgot To Be In Time)
The Man Who Used To Hunt Cougars For Bounty
(long song titles are all the rage these days, I hear). I plan to eventually revisit and clean up the songs and post them to my site on MacIdol.com (which is semi-officially how I release music these days), but who knows when that will ever happen. One other small piece of musical news from Calculus Affair central is that Men Of Luggage, the song I posted here a couple of months back, is to be featured on a compilation put out by these folks, an organization that supports Heifer International (a favorite charity of the Gadflies) via music. I have no idea how certain this album is to ever appear in stores near you, but you'll hear about it here first if and when it does. In the meantime, a somewhat improved mix of the song appears from the speaker button on the MacIdol page linked above.
Next: Self-aggrandizement, but less blatant!
1 comment:
So here are my faves and why:
Poor Young Man has a cool, Suzanne Vega-eqsue beat that I like. Also, the singing is very reminiscent of your more traditional(? for lack of a better term) oeuvre, which I already liked.
Love the cleverness of M.H.S. Mind.
The guitar in Crying Again seems somewhat influenced by Hawaiian guitars of the past, so good work.
Blue Venus is just so deliciously retro, you gotta love it.
And verses of the The Man in the song with the very long title about cougars reminded me of you singing Major Tom, for some reason. Same staccato precision in the vocals, I guess.
Overall, lovely and different in a good way. But I want to hear your vocals more prominently next time, please! Thanks!
now turn on that heat, dammit!
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