the Blind Mime

2006-04-07T10:04:00.000-07:00

R.I.P. Doug Walker - Alien Planetscapes
I'm saddened as are MANY in the space rock and cassette culture undergrounds on hearing of the passing this week of Doug Walker. He was the force behind Alien Planetscapes and a friend on the network path for many, many years. Keep rockin', Dr. Synth.

I've heard word of some fundraising benefits being talked about here and there, since Doug left behind a 16-year-old son (Doug's wife passed on a few years back). I'll make a note of any details I find.

2006-04-02T22:36:00.000-07:00

Disconnect Notice
Here's my most recent Tapegerm track. After a few months I still like this one.

LISTEN

2006-04-01T16:07:00.000-08:00

I'm back.

I've got a whole lot of stuff going on -- as usual -- and thought I'd dig this blog out of storage and let it breathe a little.

I've got a new album coming out on DigitalMusicFetish called "Closet Kisses".

2004-06-01T05:56:00.000-07:00

Hey Ruth
A new Blind Mime Ensemble track called "Hey Ruth" is in the fray this week at songfight.org:

"Creative sound going on here. It's a nice groove. By 1:00 it hasn't really connected with me yet, though. I'm not sure why. Your voice production is sounding better. I still don't like the micro-delay thing, but that's just a personal preference. The percussion part is really nice. The build-up at the end is cool, too. Ultimately, though, nothing grabbed me about this." -- Josh Woodward

"the synth line and tone is very well constructed. that synth tone was created to perform that part, and if it ever plays anything else again i will be very disappointed. the song itself isn't bad, but it's not really sticking in my head, though." --the idiot king

"Oww... the mix. Unlistenably good." --Puce

"You do the simplest stuff on guitar that is so catchy. Us over-indulgent guitar players need to heed that. I almost want more of a Bolero build-up through out, until it sneaks out in a cloud of reverb. Nice textures and vocals."--roymond

"This has the potential of being pretty cool. Drums are buried most of the time. Something keeps bringing me back, maybe the eerie vocals. I'll keep it." --Bolio

"This mix is excellent, with lots of urgency in the overdrive keys, and solid, subtle percussion. The lyrics let you down a little (even after four listens, the song still wriggles through my ears like a fish I can't quite grab), but I like the performance. This would sound great on an album." --Tony Hightower

"I recognized your voice immediately, though I couldn't help but notice that the mix is way hotter than usual for you. No noise reduction this time around? Or a new recording locale? You're the third person to use the "truth" rhyme. Anyway, I like it, but you've certianly done better." --Jon Eric

"i'd like to hear your vox dry. the ruth/truth rhyme appears again... the lyrics are alright otherwise. i like the music. the guitar tone is maybe a bit too trebly/biting. drums/bass/percussion are pretty good." --Lunkhead

"Well performed, but I don't like the tune at all. I've listened to it about three times, and it just sort of brings me down more and more. Aside from that, good use of that organ. I like the style a lot, just not this particular tune. Oh well." --user

Many people seem to be listening several times and not quite finding hold of it. And that's exactly the feeling I want the song to evoke. The character has lost hold of the woman he loves. She's changed or found something beyond him and is moving away. He's feeling something dead inside. It's one of my better songs.

2004-04-20T09:54:00.000-07:00

Dinga Da Donga
Blind Mime Ensemble has a quasiquasi Polka number in this week's SongFight! coming up. Check it out; and vote for your fave. A one-a and a two-a.

2004-04-15T04:53:00.000-07:00

AudioStreet
I set up a Blind Mime Ensemble artist page at AudioStreet today. There are currently 3 free songs there available for playing/downloading. "She's On My Mind," "Zombie Son," and "A Variation On Two."

2004-04-15T04:38:00.000-07:00

Internet Quartet
This sounds cool. It's a couple guys who'll create real string backing to your song.

2004-04-12T15:40:00.000-07:00

She's On My Mind
I've got a new track, written and recorded yesterday, in this week's SongFight! called "She's On My Mind." It should be available after today. There are many of my favorite SongFight! regulars in this fight, near as I can gather from the boards, so I would encourage you to go check out all the tracks and then pick your favorite.

2004-04-05T06:37:00.000-07:00

Zombie Son
I've got a new track in this week's SongFight! called "Zombie Son." It should be online after today. There is also a Zombie Son track by the Frontalittle Squad which uses stuff from my "Level Best." Call it a double treat. Check out all the songs and choose your favorite. I think this is one of my better songs.

2004-03-30T11:43:00.000-08:00

Lavender Splendor
Blind Mime Ensemble's latest track is for the SongFight! "Levender Splendor." Wander on over to SongFight! and give all the tracks a listen and pick your favorite just for fun.

2004-03-26T15:15:00.000-08:00

Soft Orange Glow RemixFight!
I've got an entry for the Heuristics Inc RemixFight! of his track, "Soft Orange Glow." Check out some great remixes and choose your favorite. I've also got some cover art there.

2004-03-06T10:16:00.000-08:00

Tapegerm
The Blind Mime Ensemble now has its Tapegerm archive online at tapegerm.com. A new album of Tapegerm tracks is also available. The troupe is anticipating future work more toward this realm.

2004-01-30T05:57:00.000-08:00

Friday
It's Friday already and I'll be busy and having fun with things like IndieMusicBeat, RemixFight!, and HomemadeMusic this weekend. I like to follow football. I'm not a fanatic or anything, but I'll join in on a fantasy league with some friends and I watch some on the weekends, mostly while I'm doing other things. The Super Bowl's glitz outshines the actual game so much that the game is anti-climatic. It's like the marketing and positioning is the real game, and it's like that in other things too. It's that way in corporate music too. I've been talking with more people lately as IndieMusicBeat approaches publication who are all wrapped up in the positioning of things over and above making the things themselves mean something. These people don't understand the concept of development and real content. They think you don't really need any of that; only just enough to sell it to the kids. It's the package over the content. It's like the baby playing with the box the present came in. It's the excitement of the box and opening it that's more important now than what is actually inside of it.

2004-01-27T10:14:00.000-08:00

MUDDA
Peter Gabriel and Brian Eno are talking about a new musician's digital download union of some kind called "MUDDA."

Quote:

"We tend at the moment ... to try to find a moment when a song is right. You stick the pin in the butterfly and put it in the box and you sell the box," he said. "Music is actually a living thing that evolves."

There's a short article about it at solon.com.

It's nothing we're not doing already without a "union" of any kind. But it's good to see artists with label ties trying to free themselves and thinking more toward what we've been doing for years. Welcome Peter and Brian.

2004-01-27T05:05:00.000-08:00

RemixFight!
The Skin, Disguised remix project went so well that RemixFight.com has now started. Should be fun!

2004-01-15T06:15:00.000-08:00

Skin, Disguised release date
A dozen or so artists have contributed to the Skin, Disguised album, armed with a trunk full 'o loops extracted from the Blind Mime track, "His Skin Disguise," and the creativity to tear the song apart and realise new form from its pieces. It's a very cool album with a variety of covers from which to choose. Collect them all, as they say! You can get it on Monday. Check out the web sites for the artists invovled and check out their music. Go HERE.

2003-12-22T08:13:00.000-08:00

Mucho Activity
There are new tracks for the upcoming Skin, Disguised CD by Mental Anguish and UnDesirable. The album will be released January 19th.

I wrote a new song yesterday with a SongFight title after the deadline for some reason, but I really like how it's turning out so it should be appearing here shortly; I'd like to record it tonight, but we'll see. This morning, while further arranging "Tomorrow" I came up with another track which sounds like it has tons of energy. Feels like I'm on a roll which should translate into a bunch of material for collaborations as well.

2003-12-15T00:05:00.000-08:00

Heuristics Inc. Remix
Heuristics Inc. has just completed a cool remix of the Blind Mime track "Skin Disguise." It's awesome, especially how the vocal was twisted a bit to fit the piano differently. Click HERE to get it. You'll find it under the REMIXES heading on the left.

I've also updated the "Skin Disguise" page with remixes by Extra Credit and my own remix, in addition to the "Kite On a String" page with a cover by MJB.

2003-12-07T17:55:00.000-08:00

Collaborations and Covers
I spent a little time this weekend assembling together many of the collaborations I've done, some dating back 20 nearly 20 years. There's a drop down menu on the left under the "COLLABORATIONS PROJECT" heading where you can access all of them, plus new ones in progress with links to all the artists and stuff where applicable. There should be plenty of new ones appearing this month besides on what's looking like another extensive album collection of stuff. Enjoy!

2003-12-05T08:43:00.000-08:00

Our Little Angel
I've started work on a song I've had rolling around in my head for some time. I think it's a country song about my daughter.

2003-12-02T09:56:00.000-08:00

Cosmic Confirmation
I recorded this over the past couple days and it should be up on SongFight! (green fight) some time today. I attempted some new things on this one and I hope you like it. Go check out some more new songs and take a minute to vote for your favorite. There's always a bunch of good recording artists there every week challenging themselves and having fun with music.

2003-11-28T15:15:00.000-08:00

Mouthy

Go check out information on the new Mouthy and order a copy.

Um, click on the picture now.

2003-11-26T03:54:00.000-08:00

Holiday
I didn't get a chance to record anything this weekend since I've been really busy with CD's and business; which is both good and bad. I did play around with a few things on guitar that will probably make their way into song shortly. I also picked up the new Let It Be Naked which I think is awesome. It didn't take me long to get used to the new mix and I love the straightforward, raw live sound. You can hear the lads having fun with the music now.

Hope you're enjoying the new stuff popping up all over the place on this here web site. The music is popping here too. Ask for a free CD. I can make more.

2003-11-21T08:13:00.000-08:00

Weekend stuff
I'm doing a web site for my friend Andy's new radio show on KRCL. It's in the same time slot as my old cassette culture shock show which I miss doing. 3-6am was killing me after 2 years. Andy's show feature oldstyle funk and the cool thing is that KRCL is webcasting now so he gets calls from, like, Korea and stuff. The web site will be fun and I'll probably try to make it down to the station sometimes too.

I've got my "House In My Head" track working itself out in my head right now. This morning, the idea came full force so I have that and should be having an entry in next week's SongFight again.

I've made initial contact to work on a couple collaborations as well. Jim Shelley and Chris Phinney both are willing to do something. I'll be contacting others as well and the resulting album should be quite cool I hope.

Incidentally, Jim's November 20th website entry talks about directions in music and the difficulty in selling homemade music. I'm really not so sure it's any more difficult today than in the past for most artists. Even with the fact that most home recording artists, including me, give away most, if not all, of their music via mp3 downloads and stuff, I still think there's something on the horizon that will catch hold of some small amount of listeners that would support an artist in a studio environment.

The 'Net offers loads of expanded creative situations that can fuel increased music making activity. Places like SongFight and others which foster artistic communities and activity breed stuff. I can't help but think if a band like, say, the Beatles was operating in this kind of environment how awesome it would be to have access to their work. But would we have that access? I really don't understand why big-name artists don't swim in these pools and collaborate and mutate their creativity all over the place where we can see and hear all kinds of studio recordings and whatnot. I don't get why we're still limited to 1 studio album every three years. I think fans will eventually pay for the experience and not so much the product. It's not CD's or mp3's that artists sell. I think supporting artists will entail having access to their heads and I think the Internet can help do that.

The thing is, there are artists with every bit the talent and expressing important things as past artists doing tremendous work right now. I think you can see some of them right on SongFight, for instance. Forget about TV and radio and any mass media. The real stuff is happening on the Internet. The mp3.com implosion means nothing to artists basking in the hypercreative environment of the net. The loss of that big outlet will not quell those who create their own creativity because there is still lots to be discovered.

Stick around and we'll find it.

2003-11-18T05:30:00.000-08:00

Feathers
My entry in this week's songfight is a collaboration with Hoblit, who is another songfight regular...

It's cool how this came together. When I thought of feathers I thought of it as a love song to a stripper coming from a shlub at a table in a club. (the Paradise Club in Vegas is a great place for a bachelor party, incidentally). I came up with the chords (it's an Fm7 on the chorus and I like it) on guitar and played a basic drum thing. This was actually accidentally miked from my vocal mic accross the room. It had a slightly distant, tinny sound I liked at that point, but I'm still trying to find the drum sound in the new room. Gotta play with the micing more.

I uploaded my vocal (sans bridge) with guitar and basic drum to my server on Wednesday. Hoblit played with it and said the trading of verses made it sound like we were singing to each other.
I suggested we do something at the end where we start arguing that the girl "wants me" "no she wants me" etc., ala a shlubby Mac'n'Jacko. Hoblit wrote and sang the second verse, the bridge vocals and the guitar solo. I wasn't sure about the chord progression on the bridge, but Hoblit made it work. And his ending was eery (sic) and perfect as it was so I left it that way. Much better than what I was thinking.

I took his vocal and guitar tracks into Deck with my tracks and added the electric piano and bass and second drums. I followed his lead on the bridge and added another punctuated guitar there. I'll redo the drum when I find the sound. I made Hoblit's vocal too wet with software delay to try and match somewhat the effect I had on mine, which was fixed at that point. I think I'll redo my vocal less wet so I can back it off his, and work on the vocal levels all around. This should give more separation to the two vocals, although I think we blend well as it is in the off way I like.
The collab was done in a few days, trading little more than half a dozen private messages here. I'm stoked to do more with Hoblit and others now. Glad you guys liked this one allright. Thanks for the constructive feedback.

The really cool part was seeing how Hoblit took my basic idea and completed it in his way.

You can find the track HERE, along with a bunch of other great tracks. Really good ones this week!

Here's what people are saying:

"I like the melody of the vocals against the guitar. The two singers' voices go well together." --Brother Machine

":30 and so far interesting. Where are we going? Ah yes upshift. A new face. Some serious soul there, and that makes this song. Nice. Very passionate very original. Good effort with this, guys." --abecaderian

"Much collaborative goodness. Loud. Obviously been well mastered. Both can sing! Competent axe work as there has been on every track so far. The two clearly work well together." --Mother Funker

"this collab intrigued me alot. i'm curious. the entire mix sounds like a blind mime production. seems like hobs just sings. nice harmonies together. the drums sound tinny and sort of an afterthought. the song itself is great and well written for this type of collab. nice job" --jack shite

"Oh man, you guys are like George Michaels and Elton John! This is great. Really really." --roymond

"Nice groove right off the bat. Cheesey cymbal has to go- or at least bury it in the mix a little. The vocals are ok. They get a bit too weird in some spots & screw up the great mood you guys have created. I love the ending. Great Song. B+" --Eddie Bangs

"nice singing on both parts-- i like that you both really sing hard, and though there are parts where you're off-key, i think it's fine. taking turns really adds to the song. the intro hooks me in, and the music smooths everything out. i like this. there are some clipping issues in hoblit's (?) singing, and some nasty flanging, but screw it. i like it. i dig the mmmmMRRMRRROOW growlin, too." --peabody

"These vocals seem too wet also. Is that clipping during the first Hoblit verse? In the chorus, I kept expecting the third chord of the progression to be the first chord again (some 7th chord, right?). A little more stereo/frequency separation between the vox might make them more distinct during the unison/harmony singing parts. Dang, that last line is super creepy as someone else pointed out. Anyway, in spite of my complaining I like the song." --Lunkhead

"Good voice, draws the listener in immediately. The timbre of the music sounds warmer than that of the vox, but that’s good for this song. If you told me this was a Bowie cover, I would half believe you. How’s that for a compliment? This is turning into a classic fight this week." --the 'over