An Immortality of Crabs

All of these tracks have been done for anywhere in the 9-14 month range; I did all these in the DAW, then kind of set them aside to marinate while I focused on learning, playing, and releasing modular synth stuff all year. The production is perhaps slightly rough around the edges in places (I know more now than I did then, for sure), but I'm really happy with these tracks. These are definitely working in my methodology of permuting, building, and revealing grooves which crops up in a lot of places for me -- you can also definitely hear all the NES and Genesis music I had seared into my brain as a kid!

song notes:

One or Many Ghosts: n/a

- Fifty Dog Kumite: name taken from a tweet by Emil, @soupandskin on twitter. I wanted to do a very straight-ahead vgm style track on this one and really liked the way the layering of the different sections worked out at the end.

- Faltermeier Station: my friend Richard aka @TIMESCANNER asked me to compose a theme song for a project of his, referencing Faltermeyer's Axel F and Fletch theme, as well as Angelo Badalamanti's work on Twin Peaks. I don't think the Angelo came through, but I really love the theme from Fletch so I was jazzed to run with this.

- Reveal the Chops / Baleful Bream: my best friend Kyle challenged me to make something gesturing towards David Wise's masterful Aquatic Ambience and this is where I ended up.

- The Listener and the Snail: name taken from a meme about the inner ear structures being a snail that commands us. this is the first track I used horns in and I was really pleased with the result; in terms of grooves this is one of my favorite tracks I've done.

- Interdimensional Izakaya: I wanted to riff on something in the direction of Mort Garson's "Ode to an African Violet", which is one of the best grooves of all time in my book. what I ended up with made me imagine an izakaya that had the vibes of the End of Time location in Chrono Trigger; a quiet, restful, somewhat uncanny and slightly ominous casual Japanese bar, located somewhere separate from our reality and not subject to time.

- Control Hypothesis: looking back, I can see how this had me searching for where I'd go with modular stuff, with the evolving variation on the core groove. the name of this one is from Dr. Jacques Vallee's research on UFOs and other high strangeness.

- Piltdown Stork: this was one of my earlier attempts at groove and I like it, even though the bass drove me insane trying to mix it months later without messing it up. the name was something that I thought vaguely sounded like a Budos Band song title, and those guys are some of my favorites. I wanted this one to feel kind of like the end of ZZ Top's "Cheap Sunglasses", where this groove solely unwinds and fades out.

released December 20, 2023