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
No comments:
Post a Comment