Five By Five From Four

 

Five By Five From Four is an EP by the legendary Boston band, the Gypsy Moths.

And I LOVE it!

Here's a quick write up about it.

1. And You Know I Do -So bouncy and perfectly 1960s whenever. Wistfully happy. Reminds me of some of the best Monkees songs.

2. Before The Lights Went Out -Reminiscing about the past is a great power of music. Really melancholy lyrics but in a true way not some teen goth way, releasing the sadness of people who have passed but in a way that helps you share out and wear out the pain.

3. Cover For Me -Fun and poppy. A nice upbeat swing after the previous track. Go home with my xylophone alone. fun lyrics! 

4. Fold Up The Air - My favorite song of the EP. Freaking beautiful. Psych pop in the best way possible. This song gets stuck in my head all the time and I never mind it living there. That guitar and piano! They sound glorious. The whole song is lush and captured perfectly.

5.Tell Me She's Alright -A fun lost love story. The ending of the story in the song sneaks up on you. It's very clever. The ending of the music catches me off guard too. I really dig how it messes with me in the right way.

If you love rock and roll, this is the EP for you. 

Best EP of 2025? Yes it is.

Yours in the love of music,

Count Robot 

Live from Evil Clown Headquarters

 

Saturday night we did this show on youtube which you can check out above.

Here are some behind the scene photos as well.

This first one is our toy piano on the right and to the left the Evil Clown HQ toy piano. Note on the lower left Tim Mungenast's mighty Roland Echo unit. The thing sounds incredible.

Another pic from my vantage point. You can see how much gear is jammed into this room.

More gear porn.

DNA Girl tuning her mandolin and looking sharp.

Paul or someone taking a picture of me taking a picture of the room.

Pek wrote down a lot of words from the episode of the Tick that this show is a tribute to, you can find the episode on youtube if you search for it.

8 cameras! Here is the video switcher

Sound desk! Sound by Joel. 

Love and video,

Count Robot

M

Is the dead flat mouse really waving its claw at me or is the claw just moving in the wind? Who do I think is going to answer these raving questions that I ask over and over again? What madness repetition is this typing and questioning? The dead flat mouse on the cracked hot pavement knows no answers or questioning Is it more dead than I am? There's no stink, just a heat drenched wind moving an indifferent branch I could be gorged on hatred and raging stupidity, but I am too worn through to care or subsist on the diet of molten misery 

Yours in copyrighted misanthropy, 

Count Robot

Static Apparitions- Ghost Dog

Here is another album write up.

Ghost Dog is the fourth Static Apparitions album.

The cover is a painting by DNA Girl that she collaged with some other art.

1. Euphoric Electrons - Guitar and tone explorations with tinkling percussion.

2. Ghost Dog - The opening sound is an Aztec Death Whistle being blown out into the expanse of Echo Bridge. To me it is a glorious haunting sound.

The dog samples come from a public domain horror movie. There is a dialogue sample from a different public domain horror movie, The House on Haunted Hill. 

We can never have enough Vincent Price in our wall of sound.

3. Transdimensional Conversation - Ever find yourself on a virtual meeting where the audio goes wrong? We thought why not explore that idea. We caused a virtual meeting to feedback. Also featuring some distorted guitar crazed sounds. 

4. Enigma Beach - The bulk of this track was recorded on a winter night on Revere Beach in MA. Beaches save their greatest magic for winter nights.

5. Darling, the Only Ghoul in the House is You - Includes a sample from the incredibly fun spooky flick House on Haunted Hill. The original version of course. There's no topping Vincent Price.

6. Mia’s Lament - Featuring a guest appearance by Mia the cat on vocals. Cats will always cat and comment on what they want.

In this instance Mia complained that she wanted food & attention, thus her lament.

Static Apparitions is (Astro Al under another name):

Madame Inconnue (AKA DNA Girl): vocals, voice, guitar, percussion, mandolin, FX, reel to reel tape recorder, Woodrow 

Baron Vincent Von Lugosi (AKA Count Robot): Aztec death whistle, voice, weird sound generator, FX, microphones, monotron, samples, reel to reel tape recorder, waterphone, genometer

Guest appearance by Mia the cat

Recorded in Edinburgh Scotland, London England, Echo Bridge MA, Revere Beach MA, and Weirdfield MA 

Yes a few bits and pieces were recorded over seas while DNA Girl and I were traveling. I always try to capture interesting moments while we're traveling.

Improvised, edited, produced, and mastered by Static Apparitions 

So what's the difference between Astro Al and Static Apparitions?

Besides the name, there is a big difference. Do you hear it?

Perhaps not.

The difference comes from this, Static Apparitions features no lyrics and no understandable spoken word pieces. Yes, samples pop up and spoken word segments appear but only in distorted, soundscape format, were the spoken word bits are just sound forms with no meaning.

Yours in another album write up,

Count Robot (AKA Baron Vincent Von Lugosi)

Neurodivergent Orchestra - The Evil Midnight Bomber What Bombs At Midnight - 9/20 - 7 pm EST

 

A few times a year I am lucky enough to be a part of a free live stream with a group of super talented musicians.

Each show is totally different and is improvised. Sometimes its improvised around a theme. This upcoming one is centered around a theme.

URL link for next Saturday show

https://youtube.com/live/t5ZTgoKheW4?feature=share

 

Check this out…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkzptjhCkbs

Inspiration for the title…

If you want to see the show but can't make the time, don't fret. It is available on demand forever after the live set ends. You can also pause and restart the live stream at any time its running.

These shows are a party for your ears

Yours in fun,

Count Robot

Border Crossing by Astro Al & wondiferous sound explorer Vanessa LeFevre

 This post is about the collaboration album Border Crossing by Astro Al & Vanessa LeFevre.

This is a lovely strange album of improvised sound sculptures.

It is the second full length Astro Al collaboration with Vanessa. Hopefully there are more to come.

We’ll discuss the other collab later.

We recorded on a pleasant Saturday afternoon on that planet of miscreants, called Earth.

Vanessa doesn’t live very far from us, which is a refreshing change as our frequent collaborator Tim Mungenast lives hours away.

One thing I really dig about Vanessa is her unique collection of handmade instruments which she really knows how to play well to get some gorgeously strange sounds.

The ever spectacular Jerry Kranitz, uber music fan and all around grand person, gave us permission to quote from his amazing write up of this album that he posted on Facelessbook. So, here is one of my favourite lines from Jerry’s post.

The smell of incense is wafting out of my speakers! 

1.Border Crossing - Pulsing tribal beats as the track sprawls on. What border are we crossing? Your brain or your souls border? Or perhaps it's both at the same time. This track was collaged together from two separate jams.

2. West Branch -Blues guitar and walls of weird tones. Vanessa weaves some fine weirdness with her arsenal of sounds. Vanessa gave this track its title. 

3. Circus of the Disjointed Acrobats - More weirdness. Some spoken word cliches layered over themselves. Shroom moms killed coolness. DNA Girl gave us the title for this track. The first track with some voice stuff on it. There aren't a lot of talky tracks in this collection. Not planned that way, just the way it happened. I believe I was manipulating some cassette recorders during this one.

4. Alien Intake - Sometimes in these jams I'm not sure which sound is coming from which one of us. I'm pretty sure I'm torturing the slide whistle on this one. The fun percussion is from Vanessa.

5. UFOs Over New Jersey - Vanessa named this track. Around the time we were working on this, there was lots of speculation about UFOs in New Jersey. Hence the title. The great opening sound is by Vanessa. The melodica is by DNA Girl. This is the sound of a UFO in search of a beach. Not sure what I'm doing during this track.

6. Used Ravens  - I blab a bit in this one. Pondering the possible fate of Edgar Allen Poe being born in the 21st century, along with other talented folk. Some times words are just part of the soundscape. 

7.Transmission from Tiangong - A psychedelic wind down from a psychedelic trip. Vanessa generated some great tones in this track. Also there is a field recording she made cicada hunting. It fit in very well. Vanessa has a superb library of field recordings. More on that in a future blog post.

Border Crossing was released June 6, 2025. We've put out a lot of stuff this year. Hopefully there will be more. There is a lot of stuff in line for 2026.

Astro Al is:

DNA Girl: Guitar, cigar box guitar, bodran, hand drum, melodica, reverb pedal, organ machine pedal

Count Robot (your author): Voice, zither, FX, monotron (a mini hand held synth), slide whistle, kazoo, cassette recorder, modified cassette recorder (a cassette recorder modified to have an FX unit built into it), otamatone (a Japanese sound making device), shaker  

Astro Al performs with the wonderful Vanessa LeFevre: Voice, the Autospring (made by Vanessa LeFevre), the Bass Lamellophone (made by Jason Sanford), Diddley Bow, hand drum, field recordings

Thanks for the fun Vanessa!

The cover is a photo of a road through the Joshua Tree desert in California. I dig it. The title of the album was by Vanessa. DNA Girl did the cover design and I think she really did a fab job. I particularly enjoy the clouds.

Yours in otherworldly sounds,

Count Robot

Another Commercial for Place Commercial Here

 A Commercial Blog Post For The Album Place Commercial Here

Hello

This blog post is all about the Astro Al album Place Commercial Here.

Song by song. Here we go.

1. Gothnik Poetry - A term I created based off a review I wrote of a fantastic album by Abstract Companion called This Haunted Play 

It’s darker than your average beatnik poetry. Robert Smith from the Cure reading William Burroughs. Will your pie crusted feet care when you’re ground six feet under?

2. Deep Fried Freedom - Chumpisim is Facisim. Fascists are never the heroes. We don’t need to pour more flames onto the planet. Be better than these dark moments. Infestation, distraction, jerk reaction, what do we do but put fire on the fire? The rich know what’s best for us.

3. Tough Turkeys - Mildly based on a true hallucination. I am still convinced a turkey tried to carjack me right near Thanksgiving. This is that tale. The moral is everything. the rainbow machine fx pedal does its thing well during this track.

4. Brown Eyes - A love poem. Spoken through a wall of weird. We managed to get some nice synth sounds on this one. The waves are crashing over me.

5. Follicle Challenged American - Rush wrote I Think I’m Going Bald, why can’t I create the words for this one? All I want is what’s fair, all I want is more hair? Truffle flake cheese giant gila monster hair stylists prance before they dance. The words for this one was written out in advance and used to improvise upon.

6. An Alligator A Day - Word play. An alligator a day keeps the crocodiles away. I used a voice changer toy a lot during this album. I would dig hanging out with a guitar playing gator.

7. Place Commercial Here - What is the journey to the top of the corporate ladder? Does it matter? Money over people, is that the slogan you really buy into? There has to be a better way to live, let this be the commercial for a real better world. DNA Girl did a nice job with the glockenspiel. 

This is the first album where I changed my philosophy on audio mastering. Prior to this album the main focus was rounding off the harsh edges and keeping it even.

With this album I decided to cast all that off and bring forth depth and sharpen the harsh edges. If this album shakes your speakers/earbuds/headphones/boombox/whatever you listen on, then the job was done right.

This album was mostly improvised. We did multiple takes of each track and then chose the best takes and manipulated them.

One issue with this album for me, is that DNA Girl didn’t have any vocals/voice on it.

It makes it feel odd to my ears overall, but we hit close to 40 minutes and knew it had to end. We try to keep Astro Al stuff as close to 40 minutes as possible as it feels like a good length for an album.

Astro Al is:

DNA Girl: mandolin, guitar, FX, synth, cigar box guitar, glockenspiel

Count Robot: voice, samples, FX, voice changer toy, modified cassette player, electric kazoo, violin, Weird Sound Generator, test oscillator, drone jar synth, vintage microphone

Special guest

Feep (the cat): Weird Sound Generator on the track Place Commercial Here

Yes, our cat Feep "played" on the album. I had a bunch of gear set up and he set it off and created an interesting pattern of sound that we threaded into the track Place Commercial Here. You can very clearly hear the sound pattern he created at the beginning of the track.

Yours in explanations,

Count Robot

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)