Tune up the band

Any artist (and I use this term extremely loosely in regards to myself) will tell you of the horrible frustration they experience when their creativity seemingly runs dry. Visions of authors (and bloggers...) slamming their heads against the table in an attempt to break the wretched grip of writers' block. Photographers shaking their heads sadly as their eye refuses to see that hidden glimpse of art that at one time came so easily. Painters gazing mournfully at a blank canvass, unable to summon that inner something that enables them to bring life to that empty space. Musicians looking inward and hearing only silence.

It's the last of these that I had been struggling against for what seemed like months. Each time I'd tell myself to sit down and at least fiddle around with some riffs or some such, nothing happened. Sure, occasionally I'd hear a glimpse of something, but it would flit away before I could get my fingers and ears to agree what it was.

Sucky.

However, I have apparently had a breakthrough of sorts. I've started work on a couple of new tunes and have really been enjoying them. The following are pretty much finished except for maybe some additional mastering.

Silicon - It had been so long since I had sat down and written a wonderfully cheesy dance tune, so I ended up spitting this out in the last couple of days. Lovely four on the four and some acid. And a grotesquely blatant use of the Funky Drummer. And it's about 120BPM, for Christ's sake. How much more straight up techno can you get?

Spacefall - Man, do I love stealing vocal samples. This is a simple downtempo, acid tune that I threw together just for yucks. I dig it, though.

Faded Beauty - I'd had the basic riff for this sitting around for awhile, as well as skeletal idea of beats. I was screwing around with it and my friend Tim heard it. "That sounds cool", he said, "but it needs guitar." So he laid down some stuff onto of the basic structure. And this coming from a man who toured with Chemlab, GWAR, and KMFDM...

Yet Another Song About Rain - I recorded the piano lines on my mom's baby grand. The most fun part of this, however, was manipulating some turntable static and pops to sound like rain. Nifty.

So it seems I'm writing again, which is great. We'll see how long it lasts...

Bump bump boomin' in your back trunk:

Redman - Muddy Waters
(enter the psychotic mind of the Funk Doc)

Godflesh - In All Languages
(two discs of the ultraheavy shit)

Various - Neh/Not Unlike MP3 Compilation
(two bedroom musicians do their thing; one on the electronic tip, the other on the downtempo tip)

Slayer - Reign In Blood
(when you absolutely, positively have to kill every motherfucker in the room, accept no substitute)

Breaks The Blank Day - Floats In Static
(glitch crackle pop)