i've recently moved again and made some major changes. before i relocated i went pretty hard in the studio for a few months.... hence the recent releases and a few more upcoming things..... at some point soon i'd like to take a little more time to talk about the Silk Duck EP release thingy - it's been a project that's been pretty important to me for awhile...... so enjoy the songs below and when i get around to it i'll probably delete this and post up some words about the Silk Duck songs. keep checking back.
I did the mix/master on this one recently for my homies in L.A. check them out at http://www.shortstorylongmusic.com/ or https://www.facebook.com/SSLmusic
Threatening Skies Draw Us Near....... I considered just naming it "threatening skies" but i showed the song to my friend Justin and he couldn't quite make out the lyrics so i decided to just be obvious and cut any confusion about what was being said. I have a serious love for tech-house tracks with those big simple synths that are somehow on the border between being a stab and a pad - kind of long drawn out stabs or short punchy pads..... somewhere in the creation of the musical parts the vocal melody came to me and the vibe of the song evoked a memory i had from DEMF/Movement (2010?) It was kind of a drizzly day. it had rained earlier but held off for awhile. Before Joel Mull got on it started raining and seemed pretty ominous. the rain was unwelcome and hopefully wouldn't stop the action on stage. Joel Mull came up and played a track that seemed a little bit appropriate to the mood but then he moved on to other tracks and didn't really capture the moment - i don't feel like he lost the crowd but i didn't feel like we went on a journey with him. (Later that night Drumcell and Chris Liebing blew the place apart - but that's another story.) This memory seemed like an appropriate time and place for a track like "Threatening Skies" to me. so the words came out of that. the image of a grey afternoon in downtown Detroit with people crowding under a giant tent and a guy climbing high above in the rafters of the tent with a pole - pushing against the tent top to dump pooling water over the side of the tent. people behind us pushing in to get closer to the music and under the protection of the tent. dreading that the rain would ruin the fun. dreading that the guy would fall and ruin the fun.
Looking For Guidance - When I was a bit younger and still in Bad Fathers i made some rudimentary house tracks that had more of a ghetto house thing going on - they never saw a release - this track is actually a reworking/modernization of one of those. The kick and the bass are the original. i had done the loop that's panned to the left by recording me brushing my fingers over an acoustic guitars' strings. the snippets of vocoded material i did by using a speak and spell type plugin in fruity loops and running an orange vocoder over them. i'm guessing the transitional synth was the albino. i layed it out differently - added the big pad synth, some percussion elements and all the automated delays and filters and stuff.
Deep Burgundy - this is also a rework i did of a track i made during my Bad Fathers days. This one is so typical of the sounds that happen in my head that i'd almost recommend it as a place to start with me to a new listener. when i pick up a guitar i usually warm up by noodling around in similar patterns to what i used on this song. any one who has listened to me play for 5 minutes would say - that's definitely Jeff's style.
Sunrise - a combo of albino synths and a pro-53. every time i hear this one i get reminded of being at "Little Further" in the 90's. after Richie Hawtin finished his 4 hour set (decks,fx, and 909 era) there was a guy that got on and did a downtempo/ambient set. i was walking back towards the group of tents my friends/acquaintances had put together and spacing out listening to the big synth sounds traveling out of the big tent into the morning sky. pretty magical. some of these synths take me back to that kind of vibe so i called it "Sunrise"
85 Decibel Monk's track that Tack Fu asked me to do the mixdown for. There's another one on his soundcloud page called "Hello 10 spot" that i did the mixing on as well.
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
areudirty
germansingergirl
gummygunk
vaporwave
stormborns
origamiaround