It's a trip

Another vacation, another "beat vignette". This one is me walking into Placa Catalunya in Barcelona. I love videos of walking through crowds. I have a few similar shots that are especially cool from NYC. This was shot with my favorite little camera, the Harinezumi, which is excellent for shooting inconspicuously due to it's small size. I loved some of the still frames of people looking at me, as well as some people just framed well in passing, so I decided to accentuate that, it almost makes for a 'where's Waldo' effect. The music it self is a modified version an older track of mine called "Streets Empty". Interesting technical note is the live drum samples come from when I was interning at Arlyn studios, and are some great room mic recordings done with a U87 in the main room which is nice and "woody".

Below are the stills that are at the beginning of the video. I think each has a rather cool composition about it. I love the girl looking right at the camera and the confused looking couple that seem to be melting into the glare. Also, I really dig the man making the classic 'searching' gesture, which I am sure is just meant to block the sun, but I like to think of him as a wayward traveler, and he kind of reminds me of Rick Steves. The last shot I just like the guys candid face and the frame composition of the background.

In Progess

Over the last few years I've been working on developing a new art style. As with anything new to me, I don't just let it out in to the wild after inception. It must be researched, and refined, so as I can start to realize its potential. For the coming year I plan on making art a big part of my creative efforts. Best case scenario end game would be a show at a little gallery somewhere. I am considering creating a tumblr or a separate blog for this new art, but am still undecided on that at this time. For now I am working on coming up with a concise definition of what the style is. A definition that I am sure to, redefine. More on this later.

Sentimental View

Just a short little clip I did while working on making a live incarnation of our Bluffs project. I've been slowly building a library of video clips for eventual use as source material for live projected visuals. The below is one of those clips.

The Subterranean Way

Another "beat vignette" from my November 2011 New York City trip. I forgot exactly what subway stop this was at (anyone care to fill me in?). Analog bleeps and loops courtesy of Korg, and Moog. The synth at the end is a Little Phatty controlling a MG1 via control voltage, playing a single detuned sliding note in unison. The beats are comprised of various processed bits and fragments from my own library.

Time Squared

A little video I took while our shuttle crawled along through Times Square. I set aside a few hours the other night and created this little beat vignette to 'score' it. Tossed in a little modular mayhem courtesy of Moog, Korg, and Bleep Labs and Viola! I generally have music running through my head, so this is sort of like my minds eye view. I think I planned on doing more to this, but as it is I probably spent too much time making sure that the fades and subtle changes match up to stuff on screen, all the while wondering if the small handful of people who see it will even notice (same with any sort of art right?). Part of me thinks I should be doing this sort of thing to "good" (higher quality) footage, but I sort of like how even the blindingly bright lights are muted and dark. I thought about doing some video correction, but I like the noise. L85.

Getting back to it.

SXSW is nearly upon us. Music is on our minds. Time to get the music machine up and running.
I'm in a band, Rally Rally, but there is another older project that has been laying dormant... waiting. Mutating. Growing.
Grackle Pop.
Some of you may know about this project, I've been working on it for some time with fellow elusive Grackle wizard, Scott. We completed some remixes and there is upwards of 20 or so tracks in various stages of completion. We long searched for, and auditioned, several vocalists, we wanted to to be some sort of electro..pop.. mutant thing, but alas nothing worked for us. So in December we decided it was time (after several loved ones and friends kept telling us how much they liked the demos) to put some of it out there. So in the beginning of April we will be going into the studio with Danny Reisch of Good Danny's to complete an EP. As such, we decided to start recording and re-recording so of the bits going into the record. So this Sunday we went over to the Rally Rally recording roof and got Mig from Rally Rally to lay down some tracks while me and Scott tweaked away on the Moogerfoogers. It feels good to get back to work on these tracks and see where they go...

As a celebration of the reanimation of Grackle Pop here is another little video. I made this as I was composing some pieces for an intro section to a track, and there is a good chance that section might not appear in the final track so I rendered a few of the loops sequentially then just went to my slowly building achive of video clips from the Hazcam and pieced this together. As with most little audio visual things on this blog, it's just a snap shot, a preview, an appetizer.

Rally Flag

So this is a mini-track I put together last night. It's composed of a guitar loop I cut out of an unreleased Rally Rally (a synth-punk electro-rock band I'm in) track, another guitar and organ loop I cut out of Rally Rally jam session, and I topped it all off with a fresh new synth patch and let it chill over night. I've been shooting video clips with my new Harinezumi for use in live visuals or videos, so I selected a fitting clip and lined it up. Viola! This video is starring Snowball, my teacup panther, and a late golden Sunday afternoon.