dead sound

wow, what a rollercoaster i've been on for the last few months- since june specifically. fortunately things have died down considerably and i've gotten a sense of normalcy back into my mental life. that seasonal affective disorder is no joke, folks- please be a bit nicer to those scant few of us who are unfortunate enough to have to suffer through it during the summer when we must be silent. i've actually met a few fellow summer depression sufferers who actually take on the guise of people who enjoy the summer- they've been relieved to find a fellow summer depression sufferer. why am i telling you this? you don't care.
i'm sitting here at the wormhole cafe in wicker park on this, the balmiest day of the summer so far. the dog days are here, folks. this is when i try to imagine that it is already september. don't tell anyone- shhh. i like this coffee shop quite a bit- it's basically laid out like a giant living room and full of 80s posters and toys and whatnot. 80s nostalgia normally really pisses me off, but i feel like i'm in the womb here- who ever put all of this stuff up on display obviously lived through the 80s so all of it takes on the air of comfort rather than irony. there's a 'calvin & hobbes' collection and a mad magazine on the table in front of my leather couch to give you an idea.
what am i going to talk about today?
'field of flowers' is done now. i mixed down the last of the current incarnations of the lagging songs and instantly felt a twinge of post-partum sadness and depression as soon as i started to listen to these mixes. i'm bummed because the songs are all done- there's nothing left to record. while this record does have a bit of a thrown-together feeling (what with being a collection of four 7" singles and whatnot) i was just beginning to enjoy working on it. brandon appears on a few songs. stefanie wasn't able to recreate several of the drum parts that i did on the recordings, which is kind of a drag- she only plays drums on two of the seven songs. so much of it was done before i even knew they would be released. i'd been going through a very creative time- recording a lot, writing some new songs- and now it seems to have petered out. i was trying to record a soulful/gospelly sounding song and it just didn't come out that well. i'm very disappointed with it. i tried to overdub myself into a gospel choir and it just doesn't sound very gospelly- it just sounds like what it is- a 'tyler choir.' i was going to show it to stefanie and maybe i still will. it's probably something i'm going to have to take another crack at.
listening to the dying strains of 'disintegration' right now. there's such a 'long walk home' feeling to 'untitled' that i absolutely love. 'homesick' has the quality of having been up all night drinking and watching the sun coming up and feeling hungover already. 'untitled' has a sense of hope and resignation despite the sad subject matter. i suppose the musical death by drowning metaphor could have something to do with it, but even that seems like a calm, peaceful death on the record.
i've been buying a ton of records again and i've been playing a fair amount of nintendo these days even though it's not doing much to keep me from writing new songs. i wrote a beautiful song called 'summer is too long' that stefanie ended up playing on. not sure what to do with it- maybe put it on 'chinese blue.' there are other finished tracks that are probably going to be on 'chinese blue'- should that eventuality ever actually come to pass. at the moment i'm feeling very cavalier about it- it's going to be an obscenely long time off if it does come out... like 2013 or so. one of the reasons i wanted to do stefanie's idea of a 7" collection is because it would buy me a lot of time and cost about the same as a full-on lp project, but be more compact and song-based. also a vehicle to get some excellent tracks out that have just been laying on a shelf collecting dust.
listening to florence and the machine right now. katelyn, our violinist, recommended it to me at the show that was on my birthday and i finally got around to getting my slimy little mitts on it. i like it a lot for the most part- i think it's a brilliantly inspired approach to pop music. some of it is perhaps a touch too poppy for me, but the production is really beautifully handled and the music is very unique and stands on its own. it reminds me a lot of kate bush in that sense- some kate bush is a bit too poppy for me as well (nothing on 'hounds of love' applies to this statement). 'blinding' is probably my favourite track on the album.
after this i'm off to beans and bagels to meet up with kayla to go to the grafton for some drinks. that'll be a lot of fun. it's nice to be able to go out and get drinks again- i've been trying to pull myself out of the financial funk i've been in since i got back from mike's wedding back in june. it became clear pretty quickly that the month of july would be a bit of a wash-out financially. i'm trying to plan ahead so that the same doesn't happen when i go home for lauren's wedding. still entertaining the idea of doing a show when we go down for that. i'm going to have to get everyone together to determine that one. don't think we're going to be able to bring brandon with us, which might put a damper on whether or not the strings players will come with us. i definitely only want to do it if we can fit a shalloboi show into the visit- i think it would be pretty cool to play a show with them at the record bar for all of our friends back home. i'm also trying to think in terms of the possibility that it won't work out and stefanie and i will just have to go back by ourselves. still might be worthwhile to schedule a shalloboi show. stefanie and i were talking about how there are times when we both miss playing shows as just a two-piece. that last show at ronny's went really well and it was super fun to just crank it up and play really loud and not have to worry about drowning anyone out. plus we never play 'sloba' with the string players- something that i'm thinking of rectifying. i think it could work with them- although they will be spectacularly bored with the parts i've got imagined for them. anyway, that's about it. i think i'm out of stuff to talk about.