Ghost Dinosaur Trips- a new album by Astro Al

 

Ghost Dinosaur Trips

This is my favorite Astro Al album thus far.

From the songs, to the performances, to the sounds, its a big beastly thing riddled with static and power mad thoughts.

Lyrically, its a combination of impressionism, mourning for lost hero-villains, trying to understand the incomprehensible, and facing addictions.

Musically it has some of our most heavy playing so far.

There's only one spoken word piece on the album and even that has vocals. All the other tracks are songs.

1 Ghost  Dinosaur Trips  - The thickest sounding recording on the album. I lost count of how many tracks we used in this recording. Oscillators upon oscillator tracks with sequencer tracks layered all over each other. Multi-tracked guitars and vocals. This song took a long time to nail down not just in recording but in mixing. Then again so did the whole album. I think every song was completely re-mixed at least once. Very proud of DNA Girls guitar slinging on this one. This song started off with a sequencer track I created and some lyrics I wrote. Then we built it up from there. Originally, I had thought about singing this one, but DNA Girl got it. I wanted a wall of sound on this one and I think we got it.

2 Are We Clear, Amigo? - Discard ego and release understanding. Inspired by a real incident. Did you ever mishear song lyrics? Did you ever misunderstand your life? This song was tested out once "live" on the radio show, On The Town with Mikey Dee on WMFO. We played around with it a lot and think we got it where we wanted it to go.

3 I Dream of Joe Meek- Joe Meek was an amazing producer, but a very deeply troubled man. This is our ode to him. This was the first song we wrote for the album and we re-wrote it and re-recorded it multiple times. We also played it at a lot of shows to test it out, including the Sonic Rock Festival in England. With this one we sought to emulate Joe Meek's time period of music (50's/60's). DNA Girl's vocals nail the time/style of this song.

4 My Last Dollar, My Last Beer- The last song we recorded for the album. We re-wrote the words to this one a lot and they got better as we threw out everything that we didn't need. There are all kinds of addiction and thinking that you are worse than you are, believing that you have no worth, is probably the worst addiction of all because it leads to self-fulfillment of self-destruction. We discussed adding a lot of tracks to this song, but then felt it was better being sparse, because all the other songs on the album are stacked with layers. We had thought about adding bass and foley style sound effects (sounds of people at a bar, doors opening, etc.) and tossed it all aside. Glad we did. Just vocals, cigar box guitar (with beautiful DNA Girl slides!), and harmonica. With the way the lyrics were originally written, I had thought about singing part of it, but DNA Girl got it better than me so I didn't want my voice messing things up, plus as we tossed more and more of the lyrics it became more female centric.

5 There's Something Behind Me- A horror tune. What is behind you and what does it want from you? To quote my favorite line from Dracula with Bela Lugosi, "There are far worse things awaiting man, than death." A statement I would agree with. What's behind the character in this song is worse than death. Lots of Aztec Death Whistle sounds swirling in the background on this track.

6 The Irish Ballad- A song crafted by the great songwriter Thom Lehrer. He released all of his songs into public domain years ago. This song of his is a favorite of ours because the lyrics are so deliriously, darkly, comedic. We decided to turn it into a pagan acid folk song which I think it lends itself to quite well. The second half of the song is a pure freak out track that could happen in some haunted forest while human sacrifices appease forgotten spirits. We did do a fun short version of this song for a video. Back in the daze when DNA Girl and I used to act in dinner theater murder mysteries, she would often sing this song as part of the show. It never failed to get a big laugh from the crowd. The way we did it here is far removed from the mostly acapella version that she used to sing.

7 Ghost Cries- This a kind of spoken word track, but also not. Part of the vocals for this experimental track were recorded in the dark arch in Fort Warren on George's Island. This room is as black as pitch and so acoustically rich with reverb that it was a joy to record there. We had to set up a couple of flashlights and then go for it. It's hard to get time to record uninterrupted in that space because lots of tours pass through it. A nice spooky way to take you out of the album.

There were a few songs we had planned for this album that we never finished, including a space rock instrumental. Maybe they will wind up elsewhere.

DNA Girl does all the vocals/voices on this album.

She really led this album and I think she did a spectacular job guiding this album to life.

This is the first album she did all the voice stuff on and I'm very proud and pleased with that happening especially because I had done all the voice stuff on Place Commercial Here. That had happened unintentionally. This album started off with plans for me to sing a few of the tracks and backing vocals but DNA Girl just nailed it all and by the end of it, I figured it was best to just leave it all to her.

It was probably our longest gestating album. We started work on it in 2020 and didn't finish until this year (2026).

Now you may wonder a bit about that, because we've had a bunch of other releases come out during that time. The way we work is that we have multiple audio/video projects all being done at once. Each one takes the time they need to take. Some are fast. Others take a lot longer.

As I type this, we have many other albums partially done that someday will be finished.

The wonderful cover art is by Ingrid who was the lead singer for one of my favorite bands, Trance to the Sun. She is a super gifted artist and I am so glad she was kind enough to make this cover for us. Thank you Ingrid!

Yours in another album write up,

Count Robot

An interview with the director of the short movie- Speak

You can watch Speak here.  

Speak is a new movie by first time director Raffi Batalian. Raffi also is the male lead.

Full disclosure, DNA Girl is the co-star, and she and I are on the soundtrack a bit.

Here is an interview that I conducted with Raffi via email.

1. What were the major challenges in realizing the movie?

The whole process was a challenge because I’ve never made a film before. Now that I look back, I did it one step at a time, and there was no deadline pressure. The first hurdle was the hardest and that was the script. Matt Konicki agreeing to help me with it was wonderful because he helped me to shape it which had perplexed me. I had little clumps of script jotted down but hadn’t put any form to it.

2. How did you overcome these challenges?

We took some time and rehearsed everything because it was all new to us. You can be the biggest movie fan in the world, knowing how to go about it doing it was a different matter. I had to learn to direct. Then, I had to learn to ACT. That was challenging. Finally, I had to learn a huge bunch of lines. That was REALLY challenging. I haven’t even mentioned the technical challenges.

3. How did you approach directing this movie?

We did everything by trial and error. I knew what I wanted. We just needed to figure out how to get there. The people that helped realized that I have it worked out and just trusted me to get it done.

4. How much did the movie change during the editing process?

We took enough footage that I was able to find what I needed in there. One of my problems is that I’m not the cleanest most fluent speaker and there is a TON to say. Watching the movie, you’d think I talk effortlessly, and I can assure you, I don’t. I had to find the clearest versions of each line. Believe it or not though, the script is intact. That happened also, I learned to edit a movie.

5. Did you consciously try to channel any directors style? If so, which director(s)?

No, not channel. But there are a few that I’ve had in mind. I didn’t want it to be like other movies. I love Brandon Cronenberg, and Osgood Perkins. I feel like they have a new approach that appeals to me.

6. How would you describe your movie?

I see it as a spiral descent into a fever-dream.

7. What challenges were there in directing yourself?

I hated it. I would’ve preferred just directing, but I couldn’t see anyone else saying those words.

8. How much of your life's philosophy is in your script?

It’s sort of a culmination of my life packaged into 24 minutes. Everything means something or refers to something, which isn’t as obvious on the first viewing.

9. How does it feel to have finished the film?

It’s a relief to get it out. I’m just glad I didn’t die before I finished it.

10. You’ve mentioned the possibility of sequels. Could you talk more about them?

Now that it’s done, I can start concentrating on Act 2 which will be called ‘Hear’. The scope is bigger and picks up her story a couple of years later.

yours in short movies,

Count Robot

Artist Rex

Artist Rex

Artists march as dinosaurs or are dragged as decayed fossils to the swamp to be fed to the underneath of reptilian AI and insect chief executing ogres who swill down their swamp juice feeding off the remains of the artists they feed to the mire and the mire eats away at the ogres instead of truly sustaining them but they won’t notice because their souls (if they ever had one or even knew what one was) rotted out long before they found their path to being misbegotten and truly forgotten as everything they force feed out will become

 

 

Yours in swamp hatred of AI,

Count Robot

Sleepyard-Black Sails

 

Sleepyard -Black Sails

Sometimes you stumble across an album that takes your breathe away with its beauty.

This album is one of those.

On Bandcamp I did a search for Nik Turner. For those who don't know, Nik was a wild musician (primarily sax, flute, and vocals) who blazed his own trail guesting on probably hundreds of albums.

This one... wow.

Dreamy, lush, epic sweeping.

Check it out.

Yours in amazing tunes,

Count Robot

Go to Trip City

 

Trip City is an album with Tim Mungenast (our main partner in musical crime) and Astro Al (that's us).

Here is my write up about it.

A lot of this album was record in 2025.

However, there are some segments that were recorded back in 2019 that we never used. They were too good to go unused forever and they collaged in well with the 2025 session.

1. Trip City Part 1  3:52 -This track was part of the 2025 session. It was a very long track and since we already had two colossal length tracks, we figured why not split this one up. There were a few points where it felt like it could be broken-up into segments, so that's what we did. The title is by Tim. Boosted the guitar a bit and added a touch of reverb and it was good to go.

2. Guitars of Mars 4:19 - Song title by Tim. Percussion by DNA Girl. Slide whistle by me. Guitar godding by Tim. This was a jam from 2025. Tim has always played great since I've known him but now.... wow. My fav of the album.

3. Rusty Robot Dance 10:55 - Song title by DNA Girl. This is not an orphaned rust track. We will of course continue our rust series of albums. Three spoken word pieces. One by each of us. All three were purposefully disconnected. Tim has a call back to one of our older pieces. Let me know if you catch it. My spoken bit is a collection of commercial parodies. This track is an amalgam of a jam from 2025 and one from 2019. Electro-disco-chargo-meter!!!!!!!!!!

4. Trip City Part 2 3:34 - Another visit to the city. More guitar pyrotechnics by Tim. I added a lot of chorus to one of the tracks. Think it helped make the track more expansive. DNA Girl uses  her mando and rainbow fx pedal to give us some deliciously strange sweeps of sound.

5. Al Stewart Wants To Kidnap My Cat 12:10 -DNA Girl & I had just seen Al Stewart (singer of Year of the Cat and more) play the night before this session (sadly Tim couldn't make it). So, Al Stewart was fresh on our minds. It turns out that it was the final tour by Mr. Stewart. I used the Jamit a lot on this track. The Jamit is a toy instrument that Bill T Miller gave me awhile back. It allows you to make short recordings on the fly and manipulate them. 

6. Trip City Part 3  4:14 - Tim's guitar playing on this track shreds! Then again, so does all of his playing on the Trip City segments. Did some collaging with this segment. I think our cat Twink likes this track.

Tim Mungenast: voice, electric guitar (a borrowed Brian May Red Special), Orange Micro Terror amp, Fart Pedal Number Two, Miku Stomp, Behringer Digital Delay

Astro Al is:

DNA Girl: voice, electric 4 string mandolin, octave mandolin, FX, percussion

Count Robot: voice, slide whistle, FX, JamIT, light responsive oscillator, chimes, sonic spring board

Recorded in Weirdfield, MA.

2019 & 2025

Yours in visiting Trip City,

Count Robot

An interview with Jerry Kranitz about the second edition of Cassette Culture

I conducted an email interview with author and amazing person Jerry Kranitz. Jerry used to run the incredible website/zine Aural Innovations  

Jerry has published a second edition of his book on home cassette recording artists of the pre-internet age called Cassette Culture: Homemade Music and the Creative Spirit in the Pre-Internet Age. For anyone who is as fascinated as I am in the creation of art for the sake of creating art, this book is a real treasure.

 What made you decide to publish a second edition of your book?

The book was originally published in an edition of 500 in 2020. It only took a couple years for those to sell out. When I retired in late 2024 it was driving me crazy that this book I had spent ten years researching and writing was no longer available (except at crazy prices on Ebay and Discogs). Having already got my feet wet with self-publishing my Kenmore, New York memoir I decided to publish it myself. Plus, I saw lots of opportunities for updates. I had conducted a lot of interviews for the first edition. But I also quoted a lot of people from the 1980s/90s small press publications and zines I used as research material. I tracked down a lot of those people to get their feedback from a contemporary perspective. Those were the lion’s share of the additions. There were also major updates to the Introduction. Since my book was first published in 2020, three other books about cassettes were published. They approached cassettes from different angles but I brought them into the literature review that’s part of the Introduction.

What would you say are the key differences in the 2nd edition of your book?

As thrilled as I was with the original, it was a deluxe and very expensive hardback and limited to 500 copies. The real driver for the project was getting the darn thing back in print, more widely available, and at a ‘normal’ price. But there are enough updates to justify calling it a second edition. Other than the updates there are no differences. I didn’t want any expansion of my theme. Same book, with updates. 

How much of a challenge was it to re-work for the second edition?

It was more of an update than a re-work. I spent a full year working on it and I’m pleased to say I hit no obstacles. Due to the growth of social media people were easier to find for interview purposes than when I was first researching during 2007 to 2017. There was also a fair bit of ‘clean up’ I came across from an editing standpoint. Grammar, making sentences and even entire paragraphs more concise, stuff like that. I’ll add that being retired and not juggling it with a day job made it SO much easier.

What was the response from the home taping community to the second edition?

People were happy to see it back in print and at the more accessible price point. Also, being the publisher and having ownership of the entire process gives me control over distribution and pounding the pavement trying to get reviews and interviews. People have been great about helping spread the word and sharing my posts whenever I publicize reviews and interviews.

Were you able to track down people you couldn’t reach for the first edition? If so, what insights did they provide that made some changes in the book?

I mentioned having more success tracking down people, but I’ll give you a couple examples of how the book benefitted. Not changes so much as providing more context.

One is a section where I talk about hometapers getting reviews in the old publications and commonly being more interested in trading with others or seemingly not caring about ‘sales’ by not listing a price. I included one example from a 1983 OP magazine review of a cassette that the artist made available for $.01 (a penny). In the first edition I speculated that the artist might be putting a humorous spin on the commerce component of making music available. In this case, I now happened to be acquainted with the artist and asked her what the thought was behind selling it for a penny and what response she got. She described it as a ‘marketing experiment’ and also a bit of a Fluxus joke. I was also curious if she regretted it by getting lots of requests and even overseas requests resulting in a hefty postage bill. She said she made about twenty sales, and none were from overseas. So, that really enhanced the example now that she was able to provide both context and how it turned out.

Another example from the publications was a call to contribute to what would be titled ‘Cheap Noise Cassette Compilation’. I thought the description of “music intended for cheap, noisy cassette tapes” was hysterical. In this case I found the compilation organizer on Facebook who not only explained what led to the project, but he also uploaded a digital version of the cassette for me to hear and comment on in the book along with his explanations.

I could go on, but hopefully this illustrates how getting feedback from the people behind those 1980s reviews and news items I found in the print publications made the examples more meaningful.

What did you find inspiring/surprising about the response to the second edition.

No surprises. But I was inspired by and… ecstatic really… over the response. Several vendors eagerly agreed to stock it. A couple have sold out and re-ordered a couple times. And I still from out of the blue am occasionally contacted by vendors in various countries wanting to stock it.

The first edition of the book included two CDs worth of pieces taken from cassettes. Is there any way for people to get a copy of them?

I’m afraid there is not, unless someone took it upon themselves as people do to digitize them and upload them to YouTube or wherever. Those CDs were Frank Maier’s idea. He runs the Vinyl-on-Demand imprint that published the first edition. I thought it was great. But I’ll be blunt and say I had zero interest in trying to make that happen in the second edition. I wanted the book as history to stand as it is.

The section at the end of the book when you review some tapes is wonderful. It really sparks a desire to listen to them. Are there any resources you could list where people could listen to some of them?

I just did a test where I randomly selected ten albums from that section of the book and did a Google search. Every single one of them came up on either Bandcamp, YouTube, or the Internet Archive. When I was first researching the book years ago I had access to a lot of tapes, but a lot of those reviews are from digital copies I found online. And much of those I found on private blog sites. It’s very different now. Lots are on YouTube and, even better, lots of artists in the years since have been endeavoring to archive their work and make it available on Bandcamp and/or the Internet Archive.

So, to answer your question, just do a search! Chances are better than not that you’ll find it.

With the recent resurgence of cassettes what do you think about the chance of there being another wave of cassette culture?

Cassette Culture, as defined for the purpose of my book, is the network of creation, communication, collaboration, and exchange that arose in the post-punk period. And cassettes + the postal service were the most practical and affordable mechanism by which home recording artists could make their work available. The ‘network’ was key to the ‘culture’.

As for the current popularity of cassettes, it’s very interesting. There are LOTS of artists and labels releasing music on cassettes. I’ll share an observation… at the Cassette Culture Fest held here in Columbus, Ohio this past May there were six people with vendor tables. Five of them were clearly of an age where they would have been very young during the pre-internet era I wrote about. One of the vendors was a veteran of that network and is mentioned in my book a couple times. He was the only one of the vendors not selling cassettes.

At the end of the book you encourage people to contact you. How has the response been so far? Any fun stories to share about it?

Nothing fun, exciting or weird. Several people have contacted me, mostly to tell me how much they enjoyed the book. Some have contacted me asking if I could put them in touch with someone mentioned in the book. And as I mentioned earlier it’s attracted the attention of various small vendors who have contacted me about stocking it.

If the Cassette Culture book has a third printing what do you want to add to it or change about it?

A third printing with additional updates is unlikely. This one will remain in print for as long as I care to keep it available. I spent a year on the updates and am satisfied that I’ve told the story I want to tell. There’s so much more, but anything else expands the scope to the point where it would be an entirely new project.

If someone wants to buy your books, where is the best place to get them from?

My website has a list of vendors with clickable links and indicates which country the vendor is in. Plus, it’s available in Amazon stores worldwide. If you’re partial to ebooks, Amazon is the only option for that. There’s also a note for interested vendors to contact me about how to stock the book.

https://www.jerrykranitzwriter.com/books/

William Burroughs mixtape

 William Burroughs mixtape

Listening to a William Burroughs Parisian mixtape shouts to my chickpea brain that longs for frozen smartphone popsicles that come in 700 delectable flavors except the one that you want the most no matter what that flavor is thats when you tumble down the stairs to meet a maligned mouse that knows a party trick as WB scratches the tape backwards and forwards to the beat of a Welsh party song with broken scream speeches of incarnate broken vape cartridges that bounce to the cars that have rims of conclusive cut and paste home audio taping systems with a color guard nasal tunnel running right through the backline of the neo-golden kitchen of chrome plated pageantry where lions sing algebra to the beats of the tape.

Yours in home recording,

Count Robot