#brooklyn bands

[newmyths]

FEVER DREAM new single/video OUT NOW! 

Animation x Emily Zullo

[forktailfarmer]

1988-10-19 THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS r101 John F by Todd Zimmer Via Flickr: THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS @ Syracuse University Student Union, Syracuse, NY 10/19/1988

[shoppingshoppingshoppingshopping]

https://shopping.bandcamp.com/album/dead-stock-dreams

Listen to the new album above or on your favorite platform here.

Hey y'all! I'm back with a new album. And as is customary here's my unedited random thoughts about the making of this.

Thanks to: jess hectic for the harmonium free rental

my girls and especially suga boo for inspiration

Both Keiths for ideas and feedback.

I know:

during the mixing of this i experienced just knowing. i didn't need to check or test on analyze. I just new, which is such a point of growth for me and something i want to experience more of... so i ask myself how do i try to do that? but there is no try for this, its the absence of effort and its countervailing force whatever that is. its so hard to explain this. i have a feeling there's probably something in Buddhism about this idea. it's not a confidence. exactly. because confidence seems to be in relation to others. this is not knowledge but it is a true fulling knowing experience. you just know. The chatter in my head seems so tiny and unimportant in this zone. i want more time in this space. especially when it comes to news, current events and how the people around me react. life is a journey and i gain so much experience from my music making. thank you music for all you have taught me. may more peace be upon all of us.

1 i wanna get high, get by, survive and die old with you

unlike the other songs this one came to me quickly and was written and recorded with in the 2nd week of jan 2025. I'm breaking up my pattern of finishing older songs in order. because I might die soon and if the desire is there to keep going imma gonna take it by golly.

the song kept wanting to have the lyrics "i wanna get high with you" but i found those lyrics so lame and yet i couldn't stop singing them. it took a while until i cracked the story which would be a young dude in his 20s and the different stages with who would soon become his wife. we go from working a shit job in a new city doing menial IT work and feeling like life is pointless then meeting a girl. thinking the pinnacle of relationships was getting high together and then fast forwarding into home owner ship, kids, pets and money troubles and appreciating that just surviving together is the apex of this time period. And looking forward to aging together. to me it's sweet but i am sure like most of my life someone will tell me a pure honest thought i had is some how dark or inappropriate to say.

I feel so much more comfortable with my lyrics now. I have much more of a sense of what doesn't work. Does what I wrote work? I don't know but if it doesn't give me a specific pebble in my shoe feeling then it stays.

I also made a video for this song. I used to make videos for all my songs. I missed it. I'm such a visual person it's kinda crazy i've taken such a long break.

I'm tempted to post this all over the over 40 sub reddits as a proper middle age love song.

2 worry about the wrong things at the wrong times

this one was fun but dark to write. thinking about a lost boy looking for meaning in a world others have convinced him can only be saved by his violent death. the chorus lyrics were inspired by the opening of that book "i am worried about this black box of doom" or something like that. Jason Pargin wrote it. I loved the cultural criticism in that book. He nailed a feeling I have but couldn't put words to.

3 wouldn't it be cool

a disassociated fathers guilt for all his babies (fur and or human) as he struggles to be present when holding them, as i type this one of them is blocking my access to the keyboard and wants my attention and here comes the guilt that i am still typing. you can also hear one of my wards yelling at me during the second pre chorus. it happened when i was recording drums for that section and it fit perfectly in with the theme of the song so obviously i had to leave it in. it also triggers my guilt every time I hear it which was probably 165 times in the mixing of this song because my music is so dense and messy that changing one tiny thing effects everything else.

also i just realized i did this song in threes instead of the usual 4. meaning each section repeats 3 times instead of he usual 4. that's a cool idea to explain with music: a mind that can't slow down to be present so it rushes forward.

my coworkers were listening to interpol the other day and I was like "oh i wonder if thats what inspired my guitars on this song"? music just comes out of me. i rarely think of a reference and try to mimic.

4 what can you do?

another song about a divorce. but this time i'm talking to the dude. im really proud of the gentle tone i take with him for a big chunk of the song. and how he and his ex-wife still have love for each other even though there're not together. the parts that fell in love and made things click still exist inside of them. I'm probably giving voice to my inner child of divorce here and what he wish he could figure out to say to his parents and since we are in pure fantasy here they would have listened. but i've never had those kinds of parents.

5 guess im done with having other kids

"yo soy un hombre!" after i wrote this i was like "oh this is kinda feminist" specifically the part about the burden of pregnancy and its much much bigger effect on a woman than a man. ok maybe it's not feminist but more sensitive dude that can hang out with women? i dont know. why put a label on it?

anyway it's from the perspective of a feller with one kid considering a vasectomy

6 you have no clue just how lucky you are

some tough love for a lady with a racist bird that complains about modern dating life. a spot of gratitude goes a long way

7 we've got happiness flowing through the bloodline

drunk guidos outside the club about to get into a fight and this is what's going on in their heads

8,9,10,11,12 i wrote a bunch of music for the wort wrangler podcast and these are the songs I wrote. shout out to antonio of said podcast that uses my music for a ton of stuff and always sends me really nice texts. he's a great fella and a fan of my music so of course i'm gonna like him.

[shoppingshoppingshoppingshopping]

Listen/purchase: I'm Sorry That Happened so Fast by Local Teen

OK new album write up time.

Well, it looks like I screwed up the release date and set it for september 2023 when it was supposed to be september 2024. so the question is will it always be out of order for the rest of time or will i be able to fix it at some point?

cdbaby as usual has awful support and still hasn't gotten back to me to fix the date. why is support so bad everywhere? anyway....

I was doing all the boring technical stuff as i thought it was ready and then cdbaby rejected my files. apparently they don't take 96k audio. so now i am opening up each session and having to re-render at 44/16. Which is a total drag cuz now i have to relisten to the entire album again. I love most of these songs but i am also so damn sick of them now after hearing them 1000 times.

all these songs except the neat neat neat cover are from 2019. Meaning I started them then. Many were just chords and maybe a melody. A few had lyrics and were mostly done except needed clean up and a mix.

ok so first song,

away from home: this one I think I had almost everything except lyrics. All those were recorded this year. This album took forever to put together. I think I finally sat down and decided to finish it right after I released the last one. Lemme check. Oh crap that was december 2023! Damn I take forever. Or not. I know what I like and i get pickier as time goes on. I guess this is just what it takes.

I am finding I have less desire to polish old songs that don't have much to grab me. Like one of the ones in this pile was this really cool bass line and drums. I've spent maybe 20 hours trying to shape it into a song and I haven't figured out yet how to do that. There are a few like this. A few albums back I wouldn't give up and would eventually find it. But I dunno. It's just so much effort and pain. When I have literally 100s of songs that will come together easier when I finally get to them. So I'm wondering why bother.

Another lesson is that album of unfinished songs I put out. A few of those will come on my spotify shuffle and now I can hear exactly how to finish them. So the lesson there is wait. It might come. If not? that's OK. This is life. Ya gotta let go sometimes. There is pain in making music/art. It's uncomfortable. The hard part is figuring out what kind of torture is good and what isn't.

Anyway, Away from home has lyrics about a violent cartel crime situation. I love crime movies. I just rewatched michael clayton again for the 10th time? it's so good. Pulp fiction too. Which took a while to pull me in but after the overdose I was in all the way and didn't want to leave it. Butch's girlfriend isn't as bad as Bill Simmons says she is. In fact she's just fine. John Maclane yelling to himself in the car felt a little forced very "acting".

BTW it's taking at least 20 minutes just to open the 3rd song session. I think there's over 250 tracks in there.

Listening back. Away from home chorus is sooooo good. I couldn't stop myself from recording this really jazzy harmonies. My music theory talk sounds like I know something but really I aint shit but I think there's like 9ths and 7ths and diminished somethings in there.

I played the broken cello I got from craigslist free on this. Some wood glue and a jerry rigged "clamp" using ratchet tie downs and it's playable. I have no idea how to play the cello but I was able to get some good sounds out of it for this song.

2: use a hoe

this is kinda funny. i found an earlier version of this. Spent MONTHS on it. Then towards the end of wrapping up the album figured I needed one more song. Went into the next batch of unfinished songs and found this version. I thought it was so much better. It was completely done except for some clean up and much needed mix changes.

lyrics are about some of the poor folks I spent a lot of time around when I lived in florida. when people say "i don't get trump voters" I always think "Ah you never spent any meaningful time with different kinds of people."

this is one of the negatives of tiered experiences like fast pass at an amusement park or anything not general admission at an event. a society is better when different people mix in positive ways over a shared enjoyment.

It's funny that this is bragging now but my florida experience gave me bonds with fresh off the boat Hatians, Cubans and pretty much all of latin America, not to mention kids whose family have definitely been at a KKK BBQ before (or maybe it was just a rumor that everyone that lived near moon lake was KKK. I dunno. I was too scared to go) and just all sorts of people with lots of debt, loyalty to the strangest things, strong family bonds hidden under resentment and the types of folks the media just never ever shows you.

Lower Middle Class life just isn't romantic. There's a fair amount of substance use, lots of humor, missing teeth and bad tattoos on even worse skin. That doesn't make for good streaming content. One lady I knew had no front teeth and her car was literally infested with roaches. You'd see them crawling all over the seats at any time of day. how the florida heat didn't kill them? I have no idea. Also if her car was like this what was her trailer for of kids like?

Who are they going to cast to depict her in a show? Glenn Close? She has the face of a shoe that only rich people know about.

i'm solid to maybe upper middle class now but those folks still exist inside me like guardian angels. They write a lot of my lyrics. I get them but i also resent them for not doing what i would do. not that that's right, but just reporting from subconscious.

When I was 16 working in fast food, I worked with a 40 year woman named BJ. She said it was short for something like "Billie gives the best blow jobs". Kids, the 90s were wild. or maybe just florida or both. This lady also was kind of illiterate and her kid names on his birth certificate was "BRAIN" no Brian. I hope she's doing well but I doubt it. The world has changed in a way that hasn't been protective of folks like that. That's just sad. I liked these people. We worked together as team. There is a special bond you gain when working on a time crunchy environment. I hope they made it out of poverty OK or least didn't go lower.

3: send the girls over

This was one of those songs I couldn't stop writing. It was so inspiring. So many ideas and lyrics. I saw a songwriting friend recently and told him I wanted to be better at lyrics. Then I went back to finish this song and saw that I'm not crap. I can pull it off sometimes. Cuz I am so proud of these lines:

so you didn't want to lie yet we did watch it grow that thing upon your face that drips when you get cold that looks down on the poor turns up when you get old through which you soon will pay for sticking it where it surely doesn't go

Keith Hopkin of The Blue Album Group and Asobi seksu sang on the woah parts. I love his voice. We used to be in a Weezer cover band together.

So did my nephews, probably the missus as well. I had anyone that came over sing on those woahs for a few weeks.

I just love this song. Listening to it now the "I knew it was you part" still gives me chills. I also played the trumpets on this. I don't know how to play at all. Yet I was so inspired that when I hit record and blew my heart out and ya know what? the right notes just came out! I WAS FUCKING FEELIN' IT! God is good, man. I'm tellin' you.

That's the magic of music, man. It can make you do stuff you can't usually do. It's like a super power. I can feel my version of god in this moment. Thank you universe for the gift to stick with this craft and to keep trying to make songs I like. And thank you for the love I get to feel for myself when I hear what I made.

Ok now I feel exposed.

I'm pretty sure there's 250+ tracks in this. It became impossible to work on because it uses more resources than my computer can handle. But nevertheless he persisted.

4: come on baby

there's a version with 3 other parts not in this one. They were more metal/butt rock than I like. So I wrote all new parts. And then ended up redoing everything. Vocally I was trying to find the right voice then heard a DFA1979 song and thought "oh I should try that".

My les paul through my orange tiny terror is the perfect guitar tone for this kind of song. Its my favorite amp/gtr combo just because when it's right it's just perfect. It's just not always right for each song.

5: why start now - a classic vibe of "why bother? let's get ta slackin'". feels very 90s to me.

I love my funky bass lines. I feel like I should show them off more cuz I do some pretty cool stuff sometimes.

You know what's very un 90s? The amount of self love I have for my work as I write this today. It took lots of therapy, will power and the desire to change to get here. Don't get me wrong I hear the "you suck" voice daily. Just now I thought "you're being really honest here. We feel vulnerable. don't do this" then another voice said "no one listens to your music and never will so who cares?". Then another voice said, "just be in your creative space and flow. this is a gift to have this. so many people wish they could make things. you're lucky".

This song had a completely different feel. Then I went on a dancehall trip with my spotify deep dives and realized I should try that. Re did the drums. Then realized lots of other stuff needed to be redone but cause it didn't work with my new groove. so yeah, this is a dancehall song. for me.

6: neat neat neat - i made this in like a week towards the end of my last album. it came together to quickly. i put it on there but then went i went to release it Landr was like "no covers otherwise you can't make any money from ANY of the other songs on the album".

So I am putting it on this one since I am using CDbaby to release this one and they won't ding all the other album tracks if they get lots of youtube streams.

Keith Hopkin sang on this too!

7: What we are

I have a slight headache. I probably have covid. this morning I had a million great ideas for a new song I am working on. I was also so excited to do all this admin work to release my new album. but now I just feel so scattered and can't wait for this to be over.

first line is something i remember steve albini saying in an interview when asked about movies or tv shows. talk about yucking someones yum! i often have to turn steve off in my head when i am watching something mediocre. i can see the acting and just how silly it all is.

i used a lot of 1176 compressors on the first version of this. ended up removing nearly all except on the gtrs. i dunno why but that thing never worked for me. I have friend that loves it. I don't like his drum sounds. but i get that it's a classic sound.

8: use a hoe slower

spent a long time trying to get this one to work. i like it's chill vibes.

Do I sing about being dead or alive a lot? I think I sang something similar on another song on this album. I dunno. I make a lot of music. I'm bound to repeat myself

Ok i'm done. I just did a proof reading pass about a week later. I definitely have covid. I toggle between dizzy, tired, confused, hungry and inspired to make dance music. I've started 3 tracks with beats and basslines and then stop. That's fine. It takes a lot of practice to get good at a new genre.

[poozy]

For those in the NYC area, Embarazada are playing a free show at Docky's in Red Hook Brooklyn Saturday afternoon at 3:30pm https://open.spotify.com/track/6hn7D7AmtsjRoyBIhNM5ie?si=aec99b401aaf42bb

[tiiidal]

Andrew Smith at C’mon Everybody

[tiiidal]

From C’mon Everybody

[tiiidal]

Deli Premiere: TIIIDAL drops new video for song, "Apogees"

Apogee, the point in a satellite's orbit where it is positioned furthest away from Earth. It makes sense th...

“Apogee, the point in a satellite's orbit where it is positioned furthest away from Earth. It makes sense that TIIIDAL would choose to explore this concept in their latest music video: often, the Brooklyn-based indie-gazers' music has a distinct, astral quality to it. Their new video features band members navigating their way through the soft, ethereal-sounding track while honey slowly oozes down the sides of their heads--a sticky visual that, however strangely, aesthetically compliments the song's meditations on space and time. Watch the Deli's premiere of "Apogees" streaming below, and keep your eyes peeled for the band's new EP .Wavz coming out later this year.- Olivia Sisinni THE DELI MAGAZINE