The Gypsy Moths new album, Here We Are

Here We Are is the new amazing Gypsy Moths album

It's a double album jammed with tunes!

This album isn't just a tribute to your cool aunt and uncle's record collection, this is a tribute to what the future of music should be all about. Rock and roll that is 

sinewy and has just the right amount of teeth and is looking at the present as well as the past. This is the album the Rolling Stones wish they could write today.

Yes, some of these songs appeared on the Gypsy Moths recent EP, but I don't care. They slot in well with the rest of these songs. 

1. And You Know I Do - Sunshine pop at the finest level. Jumping and bobbing along. 

2. Still I Recall - A breezy joy recalling the beautiful soul songs of the late 60's/ early70s'. Wonderful guitar work.

3. Leave You With This - Singer Steve O'Brien is a vocal chameleon. I didn't even recognise him at points during this song and I think that's great when a musician can surprise you with their skill.

4. Heart To Break - If I had a heart to break... Another fine example of guitarist Chris Conway's skills. 

5. Rubber Dubber -A song about bootleg records!? Yes!!! This is a glorious ode to the maniacs and pirates who would record shows for fun and occasionally for profit.

How amazing to describe the whole thing in a song! A pirate's record shop sets sail!!!! This track is worth the whole album.

6. Fall of Sam Tully (C and Third) - We go from a story of record pirates to a suspected pirate hanging in 1812 in South Boston. Gorgeous keys on this track. 

7. Train Tickets - What is it about trains that make such great songs and stories? If you want the answer to that question listen to this track.

8. Fold Up The Air - A classic example of psych pop. The guitar is killer. Close up the sky. The keys on this one too... just sublime.

9. Last Night at the Pickwick - A song about the collapse of the Pickwick theatre in MA. The Moths excel at giving us charming history songs about tragedies. I don't know if I can ever explain how they do it and do it so well, but here it is regardless. Conway turns in another excellent karate chop of a guitar solo and by that I mean, its quick and hits you just the right way.

10. She Doesn't Love You -Some gorgeous slide guitar work on this one! A... non love song, here to pick us up after the last tune.

11. Better Beware - Nice breathy FX on this track. It's not the end of the world but you can see it from here.... genius! 

12. Like We Used To Do - Jazzy, loungey, this one has got it. Reminds me of Frank Sinatra after having just the right amount of cocktails. A gem! Meant for a nice slow dance.

13. Tell Me She's Alright - Tell me she's in love, so I can go... The last line.... wow. This is such a potent song! Gets me every time. The change at the end too... grand!

14. Cover For Me - Fun! This song is a real good turn around after the heavy vibe of the last one. Ridiculously fun line in this one, "I go home alone with my xylophone!".

15. Go On Forever - Good riff on this track! Nice rock and waltzing feel. Great thick keyboard sound.

16. Invisible Stickball Paint - Love that intro beat. Drink an ocean dry... You can feel this song whenever you stare at your record collection.

17. Maybe You're Dreaming - Nice use of vocal FX track. Good backing vocals too. Reminds me of what the Beach Boys could do so well. There's some tasty jangling guitar here too.

18. All That I Can - A dark juke joint song. The kind that makes the jukebox shake with fear and joy when you play it.

19. He Really Must - Another rocking tune. The keys on this one really shine. Nice keyboard outro. 

20. Washashore - A ballad! Feels like a dream of a song playing late night on a white sand beach even though its the Winter.

21. Ship To Shore - "Clocks run faster than I can" Great lyrics! 

22. Rock-Ola 444 - A song about music and its got a solid dance groove. A nice fun song before the heavy one coming up.

23. Shots And Prayers -A song that shouldn't have to be written but needed to be created. Why the hell are we here? The innocent go underground. This song is the truth. I am so tired of living in the world capital of mass shootings. Thank you Moths for writing this much needed song. Chris Conway's guitar solo is perfectly deft. Get down. Listen!

24. Before The Lights Went Out - A nice refresher after the heaviness of the last tune, but wait it isn't. It's a beautiful song about lost friends. This is the beauty of the Gypsy Moths they make you feel. So much music doesn't have depth or feeling but the Moths push all the emotions to the foreground. This is truly beautiful song.

25. Looking For You - The album closer and a long song! A nice end to this double album. This song stretches out well and doesn't overstay its welcome conclusion.

The production on the whole album is lush and emphasises just what the listener wants to hear at the right moment.

If Massachusetts was an album, this would be it.

Yours in great rock and roll,

Count Robot

Deathstalker (2025)

Earlier this month I caught the remake of Deathstalker.

For those not in the know, the original Deathstalker movie was an 80's Conan knockoff (there are a lot of those). The original was trashy and low budget but fun.

I saw it at the Alamo Drafthouse in Boston. Before the movie they show really weird music videos and clips from movies. Here's a pic of one bizarre music video they showed.

As to the remake itself... better than the original! At least I think so. Lots of fun and unexpected bits.

I dig it. 

The low budget practical fx are just what I wanted.

Yours in flicks,

Count Robot
 

Never After

 Never After

The after party 

for the after party 

for the after life party

is where I want to go

But I can never go

I don't deserve to go

I failed my family and friends alike

I'm way past the third strike

They won't let me go

They won't let me in

I am a sin

I am the din

from which nothing can begin

Yours in moribund words,

Count Robot

The Voice of Space

 You can now hear the Voice of Space.

It's the latest album by Tim Mungenast & Astro Al.

Yes this is another write up about one of our albums.

Here we are, track by track. 

I - this is to denote chapter/side one of the material

1. The Conversation 4:35

The album opens with the spritely instrumental, The Conversation. Three instruments try to talk to each other. Or you could say, an electric guitar, a mandolin, and a Genometer walk into a bar...

It builds and builds then devolves. This one wasn't altered too much from the original jam. Just smoothed and trimmed a bit. 

Tim & DNA Girl were really in synch here, hence the title.

2. Thank You, Sun! 10:27   

Thank You, Sun. This is a lengthy track. Three disconnected stories are narrated. DNA Girl rails about the current state of national affairs, Tim recounts a 

a friendly communique from our nearest solar mass, Count Robot blabs about something. The lines about consuming art are a parody of a ridiculous interview I read that someone had with an over inflated actress who complained about not watching the majority of movies she was in because they weren't her type of art. Real art consumes you, not the other way around.

3. Mia And The Giant Water-Klong 3:03

A guest appearance by our dearly departed black cat Mia. Tim drops in some field recordings of rain water running down a drain. This one is a wild blaze of sound.

Sound is fun to experiment with. Lots of sounds from radio tunings as well. All of it filtered through a wall of varying effects. The thinking here is that the track is a good

break before you dive into the second half of the album.

II -We're now on side two/chapter two

4. The Cheese Witch/Duelling Cheeses 6:59

DNA Girl visits the Cheese Witch. Cheese can be love or strangeness. Floating cheese! This track really needed a spoken word bit. There was a lot of open space in

it that a talking bit really could fill. A bit of a tribute to the Who in the story. I used the Genometer here and there on this track. So you're probably wondering,

Hey, what is a Genometer? It's an old oscillating device designed to send test signals to various machines. I find if you mess with it enough and put the right effects 

on it, you can make some darn spacey weird sounds. Hawkwind probably used something like it back in the day.

5. The Voice of Space 15:08

Ah, here we are. The end of the album, the title track, the longest epic song on the album. Is this our best track? Who knows, but it is my most liked track on this 

album. There is a fifteen minute jam from 2023 which makes the bedrock of the track. While mixing the album, I found an 11 minute jam from 2019 that I thought

would fill out the gaps in the 2023 recording. So they were combined together. Then we threw in a pile of transistor radio recordings. I purposefully left the sounds of

Tim laughing during the jam in, because they were such a joyous sound and I think it helped add to the texture. DNA Girl's woodrow playing is from 2019.

Tim has some tasty serpent guitar playing around the end. Tim gave me some field recordings of birds and cars that slotted in well.

I don't know how many times I've heard this track, and damn, I am not bored with it in the least. I dig it because there's so many sounds and layers.

Who played what:

Tim Mungenast: Danelectro 1457 electric guitar, voice, Zoom Player 2100 multi-effects unit, Amzel Electronics Cheshire Cat distortion, 

Fuzzhugger Algal Bloom Fuzz, Convulso-Suggesto Homeo-Pharge in the Key of Landru, field recordings, transistor radio, the Spring Thing, 

Blasphemodule

Astro Al is:

DNA Girl: Octave mandolin, metal tongue drum, FX, voice, percussion, transistor tomfoolery, cow bell, woodrow

Count Robot: Bass, FX, Genometer, voice, Jamit, transistor radio

I played bass a lot on this album. It was fun.

The jamit toy is a toy sampler. It was given to me by local legend Bill T Miller. Thanks Bill.

Guest vocals by Mia the Cat on Mia and The Giant Water-Klong

Copyright 2025 Tim Mungenast & Astro Al

Compiled and constructed from recordings done in  2025, 2023, 2021, & 2019 in Ballston Spa, NY, Weirdfield, MA, & a rail trail tunnel in Stoneham, MA.

The bulk of these recordings were made from a session done on the rainy night of 10/7/23 following the rainy afternoon recording sessions for the Hemlock Echoes album by our band Amplissima who also put out an album this year. That album, Hemlock Echoes was culled from the rainy afternoon recording. 

Tim had suggested to DNA Girl and I that we should do some jamming when we got back to our house. I was exhausted from the Amplissima recording session and damp as damp the word damp being spoken in the rain in the English countryside. I thought the jam wasn't going to be much of anything, however once we started to play I could feel a new excitement. I think my playing the bass and stumbling around the room helped.

Those few jams we did that night were enough to base the album around. I had to supplement it with some prior recordings we did and some new stuff but those jams we did that night were the bedrock that built an album I am rather pleased with.

It is a true bliss making this music with the talented goat being, Tim Mungenast. Thanks Tim.

Yours in album blabbing,

Count Robot

No Thanks

A hypothetical conversation that hasn't happened yet but someday will.

Some random fool: "Hey why don't you use AI to write a novel?"

Me: "Hey, why don't you punch yourself in the face?"

I could never use AI to work on a novel. Why? There are many reasons.

One very important reason to me, is that a novel is a mystery in my own head. I am trying to solve the problem of writing what is in my head, getting it written out and figuring out what I am trying to say.

Why use something artificial to try to figure out myself?

If I can't solve my own mysteries, what right do I have to share them with anyone else?

Yours in AI should do my laundry,

Count Robot