Free house!

I just finished recording the soundtrack for a short movie by my pal Jeff Griffith-Perham entitled Lost. In Dutch. I'm pretty proud of the tunes and I bet if you're one of those kinds of people who I show my work to, you'll see the movie eventually. There has been a landmark sort of event here; for years, I've wanted to cover the outstanding Goodbye the Band song "With Loss Comes Replacement" (from the outstanding LP What We Were On To, which you can download from that link!) and now I've finally done it. What makes it a serendipitous treat is that Jeff had wanted to use the song, and since I was already scoring the film, I figured I'd use this opportunity to make the cover, not to mention that it would make the soundscape of the movie a bit more fluid, as there is a lot of music in it, all by me, mostly with a very similar tone. Oddly (if you will allow me to proceed describing the song, both of us fully aware that you probably have not heard it), there is a moment at about 1:59-2:00 in which the guitar appears to develop a delay effect that I did not apply to it, nor do I recall playing the guitar in a manner such as to emulate this delay effect. This kind of thing has happened several times in my recording history, and every time it surprises me.

His Name Is Alive has a new album called Detrola, and it's really wonderful. This band (and Warn Defever, its mastermind) has been a pleasure to watch over the years; they're one of the reasons I'm sincerely glad I'm a modern music fan. Experiments and evolution are the two, uh, "E"s that drive this Detroit-area underground pop band. The minimalist Michigan synth-funk particularly excites me here, as well as the presence of saxes, but the record is a pastiche of styles and there's a track for everyone. (EVERYONE. YOU ARE NOT EXCLUDED. YOU MUST LIKE ONE TRACK FROM THE ALBUM. If it is not one of these, then it is another.) Detrola officially gets 2006 off to a great start.

And if you're like me, you'll love exploring Warn's indie-label website, Time Stereo. Hell of crazy good-sounding ideas on it. Find the Electric Pinecone.