For several years, I've been collecting robocall voicemails and dreaming of music around and of them. As a bit of an aside, I often wonder what our actual sounds, as a society / civilization, might reveal about us—especially in the future when people have more perspective on our lives and times. And I think about things like robocall voicemails as being part of what we sound like right now.

The following links are to two WIP tracks from what I'm thinking of calling the Ear Reverends Phone-E.P. It's an idea I've been working on again this past week.

So you might imagine a robocaller calling my phone, which triggers a robot voice on my phone who announces the call, and then the phone gets answered by my voicemail with my robot voiced greeting. That's the setting:

Call from Null and Void / Error Code 2018 / Call from The Void [WIP mix1 mp3]

Greeitings (Sometimes I am the robot) [WIP mix1 mp3]

Update: just realized I'd shared and written about my robot greeting here on Wrong Notes in 2009, in Phone recordings robots. So I guess there's a long running, but slowly unspooling thread here.

As part of February being the month when every musician in the universe started self-promoting and/or doing cool things on Twitter, I got on there too (actually, in November last year—and, hopefully doing the latter).

You may remember that I used to list my personal (@imjay) Twitter account on the about page. I still tweet there too, but I've made @herejam the official Ear Reverends' channel for cramming ideas into 140 characters. Typically, I like to say something once or twice a day about music or art, or about what's going on in the studio.

Also, unlike how I use my personal account (I follow only a few people I know well), @herejam works for me to connect with new people—especially other musicians, artists, fans, etc. So, if you're on Twitter, please give us a follow @herejam, and we'll follow you back as well!

Each of the 20 pieces from Err or Man now has its own page on the site. Each page currently features the corresponding "view" art from the Err or Man book. You can listen to each track on its page, or select from all of the tracks on the main Err or Man home page, as well.

This is an interim online release while I am still working on the bigger site upgrade, which is based around an integrated music / playlist player. After that launches, I'll also make lossless versions of all of the pieces available for download, and post additional images from the Err or Man book, as well as lyrics and other goodies.

Here are links to each page for the 20 pieces:

***

And this hereby concludes the 2008 portion of Wrong Notes. Now let's all have a happy new year!

I just got this via email—I think it's going to go on a website at some point. But, I wanted to post this here, since the photo is so great.

"Far too often we find ourselves listening to music as a background entity. Then along comes the Ear Reverends' Err or Man. The music invites you in, and you find yourself transported into a realm of Yes's, synthesizers, ambient beats, guitar riffs and poetic lyrics. Each track has its own unique underlying sound while the whole journey becomes a round trip adventure—then you find yourself back where you started from, walking away, whistling one of the many tunes running through your head."

~A Monkey's Review

My current definition of theme music for the Ear Reverends is: music created for other people to use on a website, in a video, or with a book. In one case ("Spy? Music"), the theme was more of an experiment that came out of a discussion of why it made no sense to create a theme. So, it's a bit of an anti-theme—which probably will be obvious when you hear it.

Newly released to this site is the theme for the Rockonator (scroll down, click the "get recommendation now" button to hear the theme in context). This theme was produced in early 2008 by the Ear Reverends, and it's well worth 14 seconds of your time. (Hmm, that's two 14 second long themes I've now composed. . .)

The Rockonator is a feature on the Rock On website, the companion to Dan Kennedy's excellent and funny book about the big record business, Rock On: An Office Power Ballad. The stories in Rock On about creepy corporate record business life are really relevant to the Ear Reverends—e.g., that lifestyle is exactly the kind of thing we like to avoid.

You can listen to the Rockonator and other Ear Reverends' theme music in the theme music section of this site.

The CD Baby page for Err or Man just went live this evening. Although there is a lot more of Err or Man still to come on this website, I think it's safe to say that Err or Man is now available—anyone who is interested can hear it and see it.

Just to be clear, you can now buy a copy of Err or Man, the new CD by the Ear Reverends. Yes, really!

So, welcome! And, for some welcome back! This is a "soft launch" of the site, and I am not 100% confident that it's all stable, actually.

Once it's more stable, I'll start launching more of the Err or Man pages, and start turning on the other site features—especially the music player for playing tracks online.

Also, the Err or Man CD / Book will be available in a few days via CD Baby—I'll post the link when I've got it!

Yesterday, I shipped out the first 9 boxes / envelopes with copies of Err or Man. Now I am down to a few more copies in the studio to hand deliver to people in Seattle, and then I’ve got a short break before the next batch of artifacts arrives to be assembled into their proper cd / book / goody packages.

Some of the mess after getting things packed & shipped

Cleaned that up, and now just got to get this site cleaned-up!

Packaging up copies of Err or Man is proving to be a nice lot of work. Mostly it’s the limited edition copies, which have extra objects in the bag and hand drawings and signatures. But, this first batch going out (both limited editions and first editions) is almost all wrapped-up and ready to go! And, then, going forward, I think I’ve got the hang of what I’ll have to call the Err or Man packaging process when we launch Err or Man Industries (just kidding).

Some pix:

Front of a limited edition package
(next to a classic photo of Soren Alderson and Bernard Bernard)

Back of a limited edition package

Desk during packaging, and a stack of finished packages

You might recognize a box on the desk as being the Steve Reich 1965-1995 box set, which I love and am enjoying listening to all 10 CDs of again right now. If you know Reich’s music, you can imagine me packing up Err or Man bags while listening to “Drumming” and “Music for 18 Musicians.”

HereJam studio has been temporarily converted to an assembly room, as we put together the books and CDs. Finally! For the folks who already have ordered Err or Man, your copies will be going out soon. And, then we'll have Err or Man ready for public release, too!