Showing posts with label I sing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label I sing. Show all posts

China Buffet Dollar Tree by Super Famicom

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Here is yet another album from Super Famicom, my solo project since the year 2002. As with last time, these songs had been sitting in Demo Hell for a while. I recorded the drums and bass back in 2023 and then I got bored or busy. Distracted with new achievements. As you might expect, releasing a new set of songs isn't a huge event for me warranting a big celebration and years of promotional activity. Of course I share it with the internet to be fair to anyone who might be interested. Releasing the material is, to me, a final step in considering it Finished.

Do I consider this the Best Super Famicom album? Of course. If you've ever listened to my music before, I definitely think this work deserves your attention more than whatever I did as a kid. Of course you can always let an algorhythm choose what music you should discover. However, if you've ever been to one of my shows at any point in history, the music of Super Famicom is Your culture. I often feel like commercial platforms are trying to shift the purpose of releasing music. This 'content' wasn't made by some celebrity, using you to gain exposure for their brand or increase ad revenue.

The music of Super Famicom was made because its creation is imperative to connecting with my inner self, inventing what I believe should exist in a world that is more liveable than before. Providing a semblance of Agency in my own life, it is too personal to hawk or commoditize. If that is the kind of music you're interested in experiencing, please check it out. Thanks!

Priority Male by Dildozer

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In 2014, Dildozer made a full-length with some new songs and some old songs, and a new bass player/backup vocalist. Our album cover wasn't loved by all, and that's okay. I always thought punk music was supposed to annoy everyone who doesn't 'get it'. We were before the phase when punk bands were instead trying to write songs in display of their niceness and general caring about pretty much anything. Who has time for that? I suspect Dildozer might have been kicked out of Punk if we'd stuck around. But what do you call this music if it's not punk? It's opinionated. It's catchy. It's mean. It was recorded in the non-climate controlled storage unit where we practiced all year round, in hot hot saint augustine. Dawson played my squier J-Bass, which wasn't set-up for standard tuning, so I autotuned it. On Youtube, you'll hear my newer mix of these tracks, but on the tape and on bandcamp you'll hear the nasty nasty original mix. These tapes were professionally duplicated, imprinted, j-carded, and cased. I would highly recommend buying a box to fill your closet instead of mine.

Dave Ep by Meredosia

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This is an exciting release for me, for sure. It's my first successful remote collaboration, with my friend Dave Lowther. We'd had played many shows together with his old bands Burl and Telepathic Lines. During the pandemic lockdown he decided to record some songs of just drums and send them to a few of his songwriter friends. Immediately, I wrote and recorded guitars for all three tracks but never got them 'finished'. This was before I'd started the fake band of Menards. And this is my year for finishing things and shedding the weight of unfinished songs to regain some of my creative freedom. So I finished the tracks and I'm thrilled to share them with you. Is it still True Midwestern Emo, worthy of the Menards name? You tell me.

Twin Boyfriend split with Couch Serf

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In 2014 I devised a separate solo project of Darkwave music, called Prime Breeding Material. The name doesn't ring off the tongue, but I digress. The idea was to play cello and sing along to sequenced electronic music in a non-interactive performance, playing songs that people might want to dance to in an especially goth fashion. I played one show in which I used a keyboard instead of cello, which was to come later. And as it turns out, I couldn't figure out the posture to play cello and sing at the same time, finding notes with the two instruments at the same time. So I sat on the songs and used a couple of them for the PJ Baby tour cd. As I'm trying to get most of my unreleased music out, I decided to use this set of songs for a split.

Couch Serf is a project of my friend J.B. from the Kansas City area, an outlier among my old friends who has continued to stretch his creativity and release new music. So I'm happy to have finally gotten a split together with him, and his quirky, new-wavey songs. Instead of playing cello or live keyboard on my songs, I decided to go with electric guitar so I could perhaps do a couple sexy solos. For this fake band, I chose the name Twin Boyfriend. Inspired my by romantic partner's twin sister, who is goth, I imagined what my own goth twin would be like and whether or not this is the music he'd make. I imagine the guitars and vocals would be more washed out, with less overall melody. Maybe I'll do that next time.

Deepest Cuts by Super Famicom

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Among hours of unreleased songs, I'd been sitting on these a few years before getting them properly recorded and released. I didn't see the point in releasing music if, for each release, less people were going to listen to it. Still I found myself recording and releasing songs with other people, and it didn't make sense for me to focus on that instead of sharing work that's all my own. And I don't have a label guy trying to make his money back on this release. And I don't have bandmates floating around town, boasting about what to them might be a rare accomplishment. For me it's another album, another step ahead, easier to make than it is to share. And it hurts that for all my dedication, my music career hasn't gotten much further from where it started. But what am I supposed to do? I'm great getting songs written and recorded, and I would consider it a disservice to my art to focus instead on marketing, daring only to release what might improve mass appeal. Even I'm guilty of hiding in my ego, but I'll try to cut it away for any who might be inspired. It's not my job to please or impress anyone.

So this album is called Deepest Cuts. Most of the instrumentation was recorded in 2019. The vocals were redone several times, but finalized in the fall of 2021. As you might know, I have a lot of frustration with my singing abilities, as if I have no right to sing if I can't hit perfect notes. So I tried harder than ever to make it listenable for you. There are two made-up genres of music on this album. One is NWOFNW, which is the New Wave of Florida New Wave, but there was never a first wave of Florida New Wave. The other made up genre is Fantasy Folk Wave, which is kind of like 70s progressive folk rock, but more new age and pop-oriented. Fitting the two sounds together, I think this album has a truly unique feel. And with whatever attention you give these tracks, I promise I've tried to take every opportunity to express myself and make the most of your time. And It won't be so long until my next Super Famicom album. I still have a lot of unreleased stuff. Thanks.

Garrett Oliver split with The Stone Wings

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I had a lot of fun doing the fake band of Menards, while sitting on a stack of fake band ideas. One of those fake bands turned out to be The Stone Wings, playing romantic songs with acoustic guitar, the way I used to with Super Famicom, back when I had a lot of fans. A lot of those old fans are parents now, so I thought I'd make some music for them, and perhaps see if they'd be into it. I've always been a fan of Garrett's music, having engineered his two solo albums from 2009 and 2011. That was a long time ago, and I was really excited to hear he was working on some new stuff, but a new album was a lot to tackle. So it made perfect sense for us to do this split. I hope you love it!

Menards split with Noah Eagle

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Sometimes I wonder about having a solo project that uses a wide variety of styles. Like, most popular bands only make one specific style of song, and once they have a hit, their sound becomes more specifically focused on the sound of their hit. And before long, all of their songs sound almost exactly the same. With Super Famicom I never did that, which was probably not a very smart career move. In 2020, Noah Eagle asked me to do a split with him, and I said yes. It was always in my plans to start a punk band that played punk for grown-ups. It was going to be called Menards. Instead of playing grown-up punk, Menards ended up playing true midwestern emo. I made up fictional people who are supposedly in the band, playing 2nd guitar, drums, and bass. It makes me seem cooler, having access to a set of musicians with my exact skill level, playing exactly how I would like them to.

Balrogs by Super Famicom

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In 2018, I had been sitting on a lot of songs for a long time, and I wanted to record them really well. A very daunting prospect, considering the lack of external encouragement I felt I'd been receiving to record new music. So instead of recording old, smart songs, I decided to write a bunch of new stuff without putting much thought into it. Often a piece of work isn't improved by puttig extra time and thought into it. Balrogs turned out to be, possibly, by my best-sounding Super Famicom album thusfar, and the playing on it's fairly tight, considering how it was very much thrown together. It was finished in 2019, but I had some complications with getting it released on tape. I didn't want to release it myself, because I wanted to have some form of extra help in promoting my release, and getting it heard. Also, I was hoping to collect a little more external encouragement for recording my next album. That didn't work out, so I released the tape myself.

PJ Baby's Tour CD

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A lot of songwriters start with a solo project, and then they get a band, a band of people who are all better musicians than the songwriter of what had been a solo project. When the band breaks up, so does the solo project. I never wanted that to happen with Super Famicom, even though I had a lot of recorded songs, with carefully written parts for many instruments. So I tried to start a band named after me. We were a three piece, and I got the guys to sort of play my parts. We needed a 2nd guitarist, but I was having a hard enough time getting my two most t rusted friends to try and play the music how I wrote it. The tour cd had some the songs we played live. Other tracks were for a very long album I was recording, but never released. There was nothing I loved more than writing and recording music. It was the proof that I wasn't a slacker, and that I had in fact worked just as hard on my music as anyone could work on anything. But I don't have the power of fame or fortune to get qualified people to play my music. So the band didn't work out. After all, I didn't want to let anyone else play on my albums. Such a thing would detrimentally slow my roll.

As A Human by Super Famicom

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With at least as much effort as my last album, I recorded another tape in 2014. For that year, I had moved into a little house on Lovett street where I had the smallest room, so made sense for me to spend as much time as possible in the storage unit. With As a Human, I tried to write the darkest, smartest songs of my career. I even used a thesaurus for the lyrics, which might have been a bad idea. My vocal parts were extremely hard to sing, so I used a program called Melodyne to correct my notes, like on a pop album. I don't think it made my vocals sound better, by any means. So I made them somewhat quiet and highly compressed, to carry a melody like an instrument instead of a focal point. I think As a Human has some of my sickest jams. My friend Jake Brown played drums in the next storage unit over, and put out this tape on his label, Computer Club Records.

In Spades by Super Famicom

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Following the nature of Purpose Defeated, I made another album of music that I thought needed to exist, for my own enjoyment. It's dark, passionate, and called In Spades because it has Super Famicom (as an adjective) in Spades. The lyrics are vaguely about anarchy and living the life of an artist with intention. I tried my best to be poetic. Chorus effects are used. You might refer to this style of music as Dark Punk, considering how Dark Wave relates to New Wave. These songs were recorded in the late winter and early spring of 2014, in my storage unit.

Purpose Defeated by Super Famicom

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In response to my attitudues on Endless Fervor, I tried to 'live the life'. Work hard, play hard, and do what your friends are doing, and it made me really depressed again. So I poured all of my time into making Stone Wings, and the soundtrack. Also during that time, I wrote this album, Purpose Defeated. It was goth and emo in, to me, all the right, unexpected ways. I made the kind of album I would want to hear, because I finally had the equipment and the space to do it. I never set out to write music that was folk punk, except for The Bottom's "Folk Punk Bash". Still, I played acoustic guitar and some of my songs were punk, especially in attitude. I hoped with this album, nobody would again call Super Famicom folk punk.

The Titular Tape by Dildozer

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In 2013 I was still setting up punk shows, and needed a punk band to play those shows. So I started Dildozer with Westley and Treymon. The idea was to, while acknowledging the rules of political correctness, proceed to make the meanest, nastiest, snottiest pop punk music. I wanted to make music like Carcass, but pop punk. The thing about political correctness is that, the rules of being correct are always changing. So I doubt all of these songs are very p.c. anymore. By the time you read this, it might in fact be very wrong to shame people for breaking their phones or using good hygene. Oh well. These tapes were duplicated and imprinted professionally, and packaged in sleeves I printed at home.

Stone Wings OST by Super Famicom

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Released in 2013, this was a pretty fun tape to make. It's a collection of mostly instrumentals to provide background music for my first completed computer game, Stone Wings. The game is playable, but I wouldn't recommend it. However, I think the soundtrack is worth hearing. I used a yamaha 4-track to, for the first time, record my drums with 3 microphones. The guitars and bass were recorded into my computer, through a boss gt-50 pedal. There are also some keyboards and flute things. The tape was dubbed at home, onto some tapes I think I found somewhere. They sound fine. The O-Cards were printed with my Brother lazer jet, in the cheapest (punkest) way possible.

Endless Fervor by Super Famicom

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With the sadness of Punishing the Faithful behind me, I moved back to Saint Augustine and played the most prestigious show of my career, 2012's plan-it-x fest. In my own life, for the first time, I was able to make the money I needed to buy better gear. I was feeling very positive about the world, and my life in it. With my first drum kit in tow, I recorded this tape, meant to save the world with radical punk idealism. Written and recorded in 2012, this tape was released in 2013 on my friend Chris Eugene's tape label, Ghost Friend Records. I don't know if it's still a thing or not.

Punishing the Faithful by Super Famicom

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After a while, living on the bottom didn't just make me angry. It made me sad. So Punishing the Faithful is more sad and serious, at odds with the society who I felt rejected me. Was it too much to want a room with a complete floor and an air conditioner? In desperation, I moved back into my parents' house and recorded this album. I used a lot of midi drums, since I wasn't allowed to have real drums at my parents' house. Living in Illinois, I had hopes of reconnecting with my old 'fans' by further exploring my emo roots. So if you like Emo, this is the tape for you.

Super Famicom split with Noah Eagle

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In the summer of 2011, Noah and I had been housemates for a year. He's one of my best pals, and I've always intended to support his musical endeavors. I don't know whose idea it was to do a split, but I was down. In fact, I needed to be doing more splits. At the time I was doing a lot of loud singing and loud screaming, and felt like I had a strong voice. Half my tracks on this are serious, and done with acoustic guitar. The others are weird and heavy, including a powerviolence song about my friend Garrett Oliver getting his drivers license. Justine did the cover art.

The Bottom by Super Famicom

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This is Super Famicom's punk album, and I was sick of everyone's crap. I 2011, I'd been living on the bottom for a good four years. I wrote some songs that I thought were funny, at the expense of a world I didn't like. It seemed like a lot of punks liked this album, and thought it was cool. It felt pretty neat while it lasted. You may have noticed how this album has two covers, one is on the far right of the above image. I don't know why I haven't used two covers for an album in the future, since I thought it was pretty cool, to do one just as a Fuck You to whomever isn't punk enough for me.

Whatever by The GAZE

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In 2010, the Winslows stopped playing together, and I pondered the idea of starting another pop punk band. I had song ideas that were riff-oriented, and wouldn't work with other groups I was playing in. Jaclyn moved to town from chicago and came by, at the advice of her boyfriend Josh. She'd heard I was the guy to talk to if she wanted to play in a local band. So we jammed, and she played really fast, and it was awesome. We got Garrett to play bass. I wanted to write songs that were really dark, while also being poppy. For months, I wore gym shorts, and the Gaze practiced like every day. I thought we were going to get huge, but eventually Jaclyn moved back to Chicago and I got busy with other stuff. These songs were recorded and mixed on Wilson's laptop, with cubase. I always wanted to try to do a better mix, with more familiar software, or at least get it less 'loud'. We also always played the songs more fast than good. I guess there's something admirable about that.

The Diamond Rainbow by Super Famicom

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For most of the writing and recording of this album, I didn't have a working computer, countered with an excess of heavy music ideas. Some might say this album would have had more appeal, had it had less songs, and less songs that don't sound like the last eighty songs I'd recorded and released. Songwriters evolve, and that evolution happens within shorter time frames when you write as much as I. Too bad it took me so long to get good at drums, but what can you do? I didn't want anyone else playing on my album and trying to tell me how my songs should be played. The original tapes I put this release on were found in the dumpster of a thrift store. So punk. 

China Buffet Dollar Tree by Super Famicom

Stream it - YouTube Download it - Nextcloud Here is yet another album from Super Famicom, my solo project since the year 2002. As ...