Amplissima - Hemlock Echoes

Hemlock Echoes is the fifth Amplissima album.

Amplissima is an audio project featuring the following personal:

E Dahlfree (trumpets and a lot more), Tim Mungenast (guitar and a lot more), 

Dobra Jené Ashentree (mandolin and a lot more), and me (Drake Robey in this case).

The album was recorded at Echo Bridge in Newton MA.

It was a very rainy Saturday afternoon album.

All music was improvised with no pre-planning or discussions. Which is usually the case with all Amplissima.

The jams were then cut up, collaged, edited, and in some cases added with various FX.

One jam was deemed too boring to use. Even we have standards.

I am proud of the technical achievement of this album.

There were some issues with the mastering software I use. I contacted the company and they told me to run an update which included some really nice EQ software.

So I was able to do some extra EQ work on the tracks which helped a lot.

Recently I made a choice with my mastering. I had the feeling that I was being far too restrained with what I did. Levelling things off and keeping the meters out of the red had been my main focus with mastering.

During the mastering of the Astro Al album Place Commercial Here my view changed and I was determined to bring everything out and not mind having some meters hit the red.

This album really brings that technique forward.

It will always be a special album to me.

You can hear the rain and the river. They are a part of the texture of this album.

The night after we got back from this recording session tired and dampened though we were the amazing Tim Mungenast encouraged us to record some more. This was a separate recording from Amplissima as E Dahlfree had gone home.

I am glad Tim pushed us because another really pleasing recording grew out of that session. It is called The Voice of Space and will be released later this year.

Right now Hemlock Echoes is out.

Dig the rain and the river.

Yours in sound,

Count Robot (AKA Drake Robey)

Old Concerts

 Some of our old Goatstock concerts are up on the Internet Archive site.

The Goatstock concerts were a series of shows we did to raise money for Heifer International. You can find out more about them on their site.

Here's the first show!

The Astro Al Show

Goodbye Felice

 

Felice

I miss you

I know you can't read this because you’ve gone to wherever we all go at the end of our days, but I miss you.

Your real life stories about your adventures in the 60's were so alive. They gave off energy in the room and took all of us back in time.

You danced with Jim Morrison, you listened to a new band called Cream from less than a few feet away, you created art, and you were a magic person.

You were smarter than you ever realised and you leave an empty space that can't be filled.

Goodbye and good luck.

The bats and I miss you.

Yours in sorrow,

Count Robot

Mute Ant

 

Human wasp shields of the mattress are where they lay

File past the low rent fascist family day dream of code barons who can’t spell fascism under the spell of the decayed dictator

Rise up to the call of the Mute Ant

Change without calculation

Conform with deviation 

Corpses in the corpuscles irradiate muscles in the back alley abortion clinic that they just re-opened with their white goodness

Who are they that long to turn back all the clocks so they can die in imagined times where they were so righteous in their false faces?

Do we cut them away like a cell that has been corrupted or do we heal them with the love that they would deny?

Love is something everyone should know

Yours in anthropomorphic poetry,

Count Robot

Movin with Nancy

Here it is in all its glory and gloriously goofiness. The 60's TV special by Nancy Sinatra, Movin with Nancy.

I have been trying to find this special for many years to watch it. I have the album and it is wonderful.

But I've at last seen the special...

Some Velvet Morning is a straight up pure psychedelic classic.

I'm a fan of Frank and Dino's music so having them in this is a pure bonus.

The dance sequences.... um, they were ridiculously goofy but pure fun.

I really recommend checking this special out.

Yours in TV Watching,

Count Robot

 

Three of Some Other Kind

 

Three of Some Other Kind

A pirate, a monkey, and a junkie walk into a bar

The pirate orders rum

The monkey orders rum

The junkie orders the monkey off his back

Why is it three that I always see?

A goblin, a troll, and a pin up model walk into a bar

Then one of them opens the door

Get it?

They actually all walked right into the wall outside the bar

What a bunch of morons

Who can swim across lagoons or play drum solos on spoons

A plumber, a mathematician, and Dr. Frankenstein, walk into a hotel bar

The name of the hotel is as relevant as the irrelevance of the post

nasal drip condition of a Hawaiian wolf dog's beekeepers local honey farmer

Once the trio sat down, Dr. Frankenstein offered the plumber five thousand clams for his brain, then the doctor offered the mathematician one thousand clams for his brain

The mathematician was shocked, he wanted to know why the doctor offered less for his clean, precise, brain

The doctor explained that plumbing can't be outsourced but math can be 

It's all you, you, and me

Bicycle Man

 If this were a true story, it should have a beginning, middle, and ending.

Instead its more like an idea or a description.

Under the highway overpass there lives a weatherworn man.

In a sense he might be called homeless, but this is home to him.

Its also where he works.

He repairs bicycles. Any kind, any make, it doesn't matter to him.

He takes whatever payment people will give him, a can of soda, a sandwich, a couple of dollars, a thank you, a few kind words, whatever anyone can spare.

He scours the city for parts for his repairs. He fashions whatever he can find into what he needs.

I don't know how he lives with the summer heat, the noise, the exhaust fumes, the punishing pavement, or the winter cold.

He sleeps in a small tent behind his wall of stuff. Discarded and broken material dreams that he builds into new stuff or keeps simply because he feels they must be kept. 

How long will the city let him remain there?

Will he stay there until he chooses to close his repair shop or will some bureaucratic red tape wind its way around his unshaved neck?

Yours in repair,

Count Robot