Monday, August 30, 2010

Beneath An Ice Veil While Re-Inventing The Grocerycore...

I've never been terribly good at painting or drawing and I haven't sewn anything since Home Ec class in Middle School, so in order for me to get any sort of creative juices flowing, I tend to have to go the way of music or written passages. More often than not, you will find me trying to figure out a guitar than with a pen in hand, so this discussion will be in a musical sense. Plus it also goes along with the current theme of the blog, so suck it.

I will be the first to admit that as far as my talents are concerned with any musical instrument, I am amateurish pretty much all around. But my thing has always been to just go forward with what i've got and over time I will pick up pieces here and there and improve. I don't not try to complete something just because I may question my abilities. In the case of my musical endeavours, I enjoy what I do and if anyone else listening actually enjoys what I do, I usually think they're either lying or mentally ill. I don't usually take a compliment and think to myself "Hey, i'm doing great!". No offense to anyone who actually likes something I do in this realm of creativity, but I don't. I play and I write because I enjoy doing it and I enjoy the constructive process of it all, regardless of how simplistic and one dimensional a lot of my material may be seen as being.

It started years back when I would play around with MTV's Music Generator, which I had on my PC. I had a friend who sang songs with no backing music whatsoever and put them on mp3.com (Oh, those were the days!) and I would download the tracks and (unbeknownst to him at the time) make awful sampled beats in the background, merge the tracks and upload them as remixes of his tracks. He was at least amused by them when he found out, but I had very minimal creative control over what I could do in terms of customization, so this was short lived. I will skip inane group projects and jump ahead to Underwater Mourning, which was constructed in early 2007. Sick name, I know, but all the same...this was my first attempts at really trying to put music together on my own. All I had was Fruity Loops, bad samples and a cheap guitar, but I did what I could with my minimal talents and lots of effects and I enjoy listening to it now and again for nostalgia's sake. It ended up becoming an 19 track (35 minutes in length) album that I had available for streaming and download online for anyone foolish enough to come across it. There was a single track out of these sessions which I actually recorded vocals for too, as a dedication of despair towards a female I had fallen for at the time, but somewhere along the lines this version of the song was lost and i've never been able to find it on any data discs i've made. Farewell, stupid dedication to Monica! 2007 says you can suck it!

The next move would be the (I still don't understand how this happened. I think everyone may just be insane. And that would explain it!) fairly popular Doug Shorts Conspiracy. I did everything I could just to be weird and off-beat and it worked to a decent degree. People liked it and the album was given away to over 50 people and downloaded by tons of others. Seriously, what the hell is wrong with you people ? I was always complimented on the humor of the shit I was saying and the way in which I vocalized and the dance-ish back beats. Several songs showed signs of assistance from a friend and former co-worker Piotr, who tried his best to keep up to par with my insanity. As time went on, the songs became a bit more aggressive (Due to the strainful situations I was enduring at work, it showed in the material) and a few months before I would be ultimately terminated from the store, the project was put to rest. I did, however, record one final song directly after my termination, but that was more of a simple 'Fuck you' directed at the people who no longer saw it fit to speak with me after my departure. And a valuable lesson in regards to work friends was learned! But yeah, the Doug Shorts Conspiracy material would end up as a 21 track (34 minute) endeavour that several people use as a drink coaster now (I wish!).

After this period, every small project I tried to create fell to pieces. I couldn't find a proper footing and I would ultimately succumb to my laziness and I made 3 more projects before declaring a long break from musical work. In this time, very few people saw the incredibly short lived projects of Dead Sky Dawning, Black Orbit & Jon Von Supersick's Magical Outerspace Rollercoaster Ride (It doesn't help when you try to reclaim some humor from a former project and end up not recording any vocals for it, heh). I still have the material from those projects and I did end up creating some short, cool ideas, but they (As already mentioned) became covered in dust and the projects would never be given any time or nurturing to actually become something worthwhile.

Move ahead to 2010. I had been working with Jesse for some time on our current musical project (Appropriately named, by him, as The R-Tards. It's a South Park reference, don't worry about it), I found myself with a newfound desire to expand myself musically again. Working with Jesse is fine, but there are far too many restrictions I feel I have placed on me in terms of things that I enjoy doing and want to do musically that he doesn't want done. So (From the Type O Negative song) Suspended In Dusk was born and although it got off to a slow start, I now have an 8 track (Although it is 7 minutes long! I am ultra fucking grim.) selection of songs that are laid down, with tons of ideas still floating around that need to get out. In this situation, I finally made use of the Boss GT-8 effects unit, I made use of post-recording effects via Cool Edit Pro and I made use of the extensive library of Industrial/Electronic samples that I obtained a couple years back and never really looked into much.

Once again, I never expect anyone to take any particular interest in what I do. I am doing everything I do musically for myself and to have an outlet to shove my creative juices out of my system and into something constructive and interesting that I can look back at. So, to push you all (Who is actually reading this ? No one!) to the brink of insanity, here are all 8 Suspended In Dusk tracks that are currently set in order of how I wanted them to be heard.















6 comments:

  1. I like your blogs dude. I dont post much on the forums, rather lurk now, but its interesting to see how far youve come musicly over the last year or so. keep up the good work mang!

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  2. Thank you for the kind words, I do appreciate it. And also thanks for being my first stalker (follower?)! I'm going to assume you're speaking of the Nu Metal Nebula/New Noise forums. If so, what was your username?

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  3. Ohhhh! I don't think I ever knew your real name, so I was confused when you added me. But it's cool to see you still around.

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  4. haha ya i still lurk the forum. But in all seriousness, keep up the good work dude. I sent ya a friend request on FB along time ago and you never accepted me. BASTARD! lol

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  5. I just didn't notice it was you. Resend a request and I will accept it, now that I recognize the name.

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