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WRONG NOTES: a blog of ear reverence

Wrong Notes collects posts on music, art, culture and fun stuff. Also included: news about the Ear Reverends.

Welcoming back to this site

by jay · 2005 09 30 19 00 ·

(hi all. Sorry for the incredibly long gap in posts. I'm making new music and will have more to post here soon.)

Want to mention a great new CD by my musical amigo, Bernard Bernard, which you can now listen to and buy on CD Baby. Here's my review:

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Bernard Bernard's In The Land Of Giants Air Is Flesh is an album that is equally very accessible and very mysterious, by which I mean you can listen to it once and get totally into it and want everyone to hear it; and you can listen to it over and over again and still find yourself fascinated with it sonically and lyrically and want everyone to hear it.

Thinking about the album in terms of its mysterious sonic qualities, I might be tempted to compare it to Brian Eno's Another Green World and other early albums. But, I'd also want to point out that there is an earthy quality to the Bernard Bernard album that I'm at a loss for words to call, other than the funk — with which I might compare Bernard's album to a 21st century Funkadelic re-imagining their psychedelic masterpiece Maggot Brain. So, let me make that clear: imagine Another Green World meets Maggot Brain. Wow!

So, taking the Maggot Brain reference one step further, Bernard's album has a subtle humor, good feeling, and subversive-freaky-friend groove to it. This is maybe the first thing that will hook you on it, if it's not a catchy lyric or two that you'll immediately find yourself humming.

But, there are, at the same time, deep piles of interesting musical and lyrical fabric that you will want to explore with each subsequent listen. Sometimes I'm following weaves that seems to have been left by Moondog's original Theme; sometimes I'm feeling textures imprinted by Sonic Youth's Daydream Nation; sometimes I'm living in the scenes that appear on patches cut out of Tom Waits' Rain Dogs — there is a lot to be found in there!

And, this is where I come to again and again: at the same time, In The Land Of Giants Air Is Flesh is not really like any of these things. It's an original — one of the rare, original, beautiful albums that will ever be made — ever.

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So, with me, lately:
I've moved into a new house in Seattle, and this means I've been busy looking, moving, cleaning, unpacking, arranging, rearranging, etc., and half-sleeping a lot lately. But, the music is back! I'm already set-up better than in the last place — my bAs*Sment studio, which never quite came together.

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One of the projects I'm working on right now, which I'm really excited about, is a stereo mix / master of some music Bernard Bernard and I made together a long time ago, with our friend Eduard Marghidan who is currently doing the (live) electronic music radio blog on the Greedy Soul site. I not ready to say much more about this project quite yet, but we're working towards a full-length CD release.

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So, I'll be updating this site more henceforth. Also, now that things have settled down technology-wise around podcasting, I'll update this site so that it matches what everyone else is doing in terms of so-called "podcast compatible feeds" (I had hoped that podcasting would come to embrace what I was using on this site, but what I did ended up being a case of being too early to the party and not being noticed when everyone else arrived). I'll also figure out how to make it all iTunes podcast compatible.

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Vintage Self
I've been into these Arturia Vintage synths lately (which I got for my half-birthday — self-portrait above taken then in the bAs*Sment), and also recording demos of new songs with my acoustic guitar (not pictured, but it looks like one of these).

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