HELLO COME IN – Page 37 – words + music + photos

hello.shuffle — Monday Morning Pollution

I had a particularly strong run of songs on my commute this morning, so I thought that I’d share it here for awhile. Don’t always listen to shuffle on my ol’ pod but sometimes it just sounds so good. Here, with only a few exclusions is what I heard this morning while stuffed into the overcrowded sausage casing that is the metro. Enjoy.

1) “Jacknuggetted” by Manitoba from Up In Flames

Up In Flames

I think I prefer Dan Snaith’s work much more when he was known as Manitoba rather than Caribou, especially this record which is such a nice mix of 60s pop melodies, glitchtronica and sad bastard melancholy. So many fantastic intertwining melodies and sounds here, yet totally catchy.

2) “Tropical Iceland” by The Fiery Furnaces from EP

This might be one of my favorite songs this duo has ever put out… I often find their hyperactive ADD songs an incredibly difficult listen; as soon as they lock into one motif or idea its already gone and moved on to the next, which I personally find jarring and somewhat alienating… though that might be the appeal.

3) “Shelter From the Storm” by Bob Dylan from Blood On the Tracks

Blood On the Tracks

This is one of my favorite songs from possibly my favorite Dylan album. While still folky like his earlier work but to me more introspective and melancholy than those political songs. Just great…At this point, what else can you say about the icon?

4) “The Owl” by Peter and the Wolf from Lightness

Lightness

Not even really that familiar with this album, but the M.Ward-esque (at first I even thought it was M.Ward) lo-fi, old timey AM radio recording quality set to this folky song has me wanting to revisit this.

5) “American Hearts” by AA Bondy from American Hearts

American Hearts

A very calm and incredibly melancholy alt-country song sometimes is just so beautiful. Simple yet says all you need sometimes. Bondy is a great emerging talent.

6) “Everglade” by Tortoise from TNT

An extremely ethereal and minimalist piece from Tortoise, but the contrapuntal composition is still incredibly thought out and precise. I’d love to hear another album by them at some point soon.

7) “Blossom” by Nick Drake from Family Tree

Family Tree

From last year’s release, this song is one of about thirty-something tracks pulled from home archival recordings. Listening to this song, much like the rest included on the collection, it feels like we’re hearing some intimate, quiet moment that we weren’t necessarily supposed to hear. With Drake’s dark baritone voice occasionally cracking and his dexterous finger work sometimes not perfect, the song itself is quite pretty, even in its unrefined state.

8) “He Needs Me” by Shelley Duvall (arranged by Jon Brion) from Punch Drunk Love soundtrack

I decided to include this song instead of the “He Really Needs Me” instrumental score version that actually came up. I chose this one mostly because Duvall’s fragile voice really compliments the instrumentation here. Not sure how much of this version is actually the song as it originally existed in Robert Altman’s Popeye and how much was re-scored under Brion, but the song is so perfect in P.T. Anderson’s film.

UPDATE — 6\15: I finally found a clip of Shelley Duvall’s original rendition from Popeye. So obviously here you can hear that beyond the churning circus-like organ (or harmonium? mellotron?) most of Jon Brion’s version for Punch Drunk Love was rewritten. It is really cool that Brion incorporated the original motif into not only this new rendition, but the entire score. His score works on another level when Adam Sandler’s character Barry finds the harmonium in the street and occasionally pecks out a few notes coinciding with Brion’s experimental score. Great stuff.

9) “I Don’t Sleep I Dream” by R.E.M. from Monster

Monster

Certainly not the best song on an album that is certainly not the group’s best. But I think this record is underrated when it comes to R.E.M. albums, but that also might be a relic buying and loving this album back when I was in middle school. It definitely has it’s rocking moments and many of the guitars sound so crunchy and great. Might be worth a re-evaluation perhaps.

10) “Crosseyed and Painless” by Talking Heads from Remain in Light

Remain in Light

Fantastic song on my favorite album by Talking Heads. They were so ahead of their time. I could listen to this song forever.

The Final Product

Last night, I trekked up to Silver Spring, MD to the AFI Silver movie theatre to watch the Group D entries into the 48 Hour Film Project site. Running for two Group showings a night for four nights, Group D had I think 12 or 16 entries in the competition\festival….meaning there were perhaps a little under 100 films total for just Washington DC area alone.

Some were pretty good, others not so good… I thought ours stacked somewhere in the middle…certainly not the best, but easily not the worst of the night. We’ll find out next week where all the films placed (we had ballots for our group’s films).

Some of the best? A hilariously and purposefully terrible thriller of sorts about the Watergate break in, a funny sci fi film shot at the futuristic looking master control room of XM Radio, and a goofy horror movie about a scorned and vengeful cupcake making killer.

Anyway, check out our film below, and probably eventually on the 48 Hour Film Project site.

[youtube]L8BwwOujYtc[/youtube]

Pixar Adds Another Film to Perfect Record

Can Pixar ever go wrong? Not likely when even my least favorite of their films (Cars) was far beyond what nearly every other animation house is releasing. While other studios are creating movie after movie of computer animated fare that forgets about telling an actual story with actual characters instead of simply marrying celebrity voice with random animal (“I know, we’ll do one with talking fish, but like Will Smith AS a fish!”), Pixar has constantly and consistently crafted some of the finest movies year in and year out.

While enough has been said by others about Pixar, I thought I’d chime in a bit as simply a way to preface showing off the trailer for this summer’s release Wall-E… this one looks to be amazing: heartwarming, exciting and visually stunning. Can’t wait.

[youtube]SWtDmY0yUTE[/youtube]

A Near Perfect Blend of Form and Function: The 1991 Toyota Previa

Ok so we had to get some work done on our ol’ car this week, and so to see if we were getting ripped off I did some searches. I stumbled upon this old commercial:

[youtube]STqSepbkukY[/youtube]

Click here if you cannot see the video above.

I just find it amazing how perceptions of “Sleak and Modern” can change over the years.. Don’t get me wrong, its still a great car, just funny to look back at the precise engineering of 1990. I wonder how silly the current apple products or dyson vaccuum cleaners will look in 17 years?

Also have you ever heard such creepy music in a car commercial before?

Wrapping Up Is Easy To Do.

Well before I provide some final thoughts, I figured I’d share the music I came up with for the film project. (Click on the song names to download, or on the newly implemented audio player!)

In The Dark — This was the first thing that I came up with. After leaving the initial story meeting, I was feeling a sorta serious and mysterious mood was going to be prevalent. While this was not used in the final cut of the film, it did get my mind back into recording. The song is a slow repetition of pianos and atmospherics, then subsequently reversed, filtered, and processed like hell. I like it, though maybe its not quite right for this weekend, but rather more suited for a horror or western or sci fi picture.

[audio:https://hellocomein.com/soundbox/48HourFilm/InTheDark.mp3]

Horror String Orchestral — Another rejected song idea, though this one is clearly rooted in the lo fi 80s slasher movie genre… I picture a really haunting horror movie title opener set to this with plenty of gore and melodramatic overacting. Maybe next time.

[audio:https://hellocomein.com/soundbox/48HourFilm/HorrorStringOrchestral.mp3]

Alex’s Mallets — Named after an old high school friend with the same name, this was by far the favourite of the team. Compared to the previous two, this one is certainly a bit more upbeat, quirky and though repetitive, extremely catchy. At times, especially when used in a particular scene, this theme borders on darkly demonic, like a sicko circus clown theme, but maybe that’s just because I’ve heard it a million times in the last 24 hours. One aspect I like a lot is the shaker, which turned about to be the hardest track to get a good sounding recording from. Makes me wonder how people mic that type of percussion without accidentally hitting the microphone like I did.

[audio:https://hellocomein.com/soundbox/48HourFilm/Alex’sMallets.mp3]

Theme For a Drinking Establishment — One type of music I knew we were going to need was background music for a bar and a party. The former, this theme, is a standard, shoegazey rocker that I thought would be something one might hear playing on the bar’s music system. Intended to be mildly generic wallpaper, it actually came out pretty well when mixed down really low.

[audio:https://hellocomein.com/soundbox/48HourFilm/ThemeForADrinkingEstablishment.mp3]

The Long Walk Home — This one which was also used in an earlier bar scene, was originally envisioned as a introspective, mopey ‘I’m walking alone b\c I’m sad’ noir thing. It has a little of bit of a jazz feel because of the melody on celeste and some faint melancholy strings to fill out the rather simple guitar chord progression on this.

[audio:https://hellocomein.com/soundbox/48HourFilm/TheLongWalkHome.mp3]

There was a last minute drum loop of some break beats that I mixed from samples for the party scene, but it’s not really worth posting because I didn’t really write per se, but just arrange for some background filler noise as if it was music being played at the party. I also have quite a bit of aborted or under-developed themes and scratch tracks but certainly nothing worth showing off in this space.

When all is said and done, I estimate about 60 to 90 seconds of music was used in the near 6minute film… but I think in the scenes they inhabit, it works well. As I wrap up this process, I think the challenge itself is pretty daunting, but a rewarding one — not only for the music creation, which in many ways just felt like crafting songs for our EP series, but for just pulling together so many things to get the project done.

It certainly has made me want to try to make a short film of my own, or at least one that has a plot or point I can actually recognize more clearly. Still cool to be involved.

48 Hour Film Project Log (Digest Form)

I decided to minimize the amount of posts devoted to this project… so this thread combines most into one larger captain’s log. This reads in reverse chronology, so the most recent posts are at the top. Enjoy!

Rendering The Day Away. — 04 May 2008, 5:25pm

Well we’re in rendering phase, meaning all the work is finally wrapping up. Spent most of today at the HQ doing final music mixes and figuring out what scenes they would fit underneathe.

I think we used small portions of 4 of the songs I crafted, including a last minute bit of generic drum and bass I sampled and looped for a scene.

In all I think my aspect of the creation process went pretty okay — some music really fit the mood of the story and was generally well received. Hopefully it will all sound okay when all mixed together and the cues work well…we sorta had to rush through that part at the end just to get it done.

More thoughts on the process plus posting of the songs later.

***********

Melodramatic String Swells — 04 May 2008, 10:04am

Wow yesterday was a terrible day to be cooped up in the house writing music — pretty tempting to ditch this stuff and take advantage of the nice weather. But at least I didn’t have to pull an all-nighter like the rest of the team did.

I worked on a few ideas until about 2am Saturday morning, then had a leisurely morning before hunkering down around 1030am to get to work. Spent most of the day working on about six different themes, in various levels of completion. Some pretty okay, some not so much, and some good but probably not ideal for this project. (Tonight, I’ll post all the music I worked on.)

Overall, the group seemed to like most of the tracks I previewed for them so hopefully that’s a good sign that despite working in a bubble, I was able to capture the mood of what they were going for. I went primarily a bit dark and quirky, hoping that if anything it could be moody background noise if anything else. I think I left a lot of repetition and minimalism in the songs so that it wouldn’t distract from the story. Don’t look for any melodramatic string swells that cue the titular line or anything like that.

Today while the rest of the team recovers from Friday night’s all night writing session and Saturday’s all day shooting and digitizing, I will be putting some final touches and overdubs to what I have. And then final mixing and syncing with the final film. The end is in sight.

More later.

*************

1, 2, 3 Break. — 02 May 2008, 10:19pm

Some of the various groups are breaking off now to go secure shooting locales for tomorrow and for the writing team to figure out what the fuck everyone just discussed for the last 3 hours.

Which means it was my cue to exit gracefully for the night and get to work.

So far there is a definite notion that since they are able to shoot at some bar and therefore the story will start there, I will need some bar music. Easy enough to make some distant sounding rock thing or some break beat loops. My approach to this is not to have true music cues or dramatic swells that will distract from the movie, but rather diegetic music that will be simply heard as if the audience is the main character … that is if a character on screen is not around a source of music, there shouldn’t be any. We’ll see if that works.

Just ordered some foods, so I’ll be digging in soon enough after that. More later.

****************

Get Out Your Drama Sauce. — 02 May 2008, 8:16pm

Sitting with the crew of people, most I don’t know. So far all we seem to have is the assigned requirements that must be found somewhere in the film:

Genre — Drama (awfully vague, but uh okay)

Line — “I’ll be glad when he’s gone.”

Prop — Sauce (no labels)

Character — Larry or Lori Gardener

Occupation — Designer

Obviously leaves a lot to the imagination. Right now they are discussing an idea about a guy or girl sitting at bar relating a story… sounds like a romantic, existential story about love or something like that… I would detail more about this aspect but I’m not sure they know just yet. We will probably cut away at some point, or many times as he’s narrating, to show the actual situation he’s in.

We’ll see how it develops…stay tuned.

**********************

Chainsaw Samples and Robot Rom Coms — 02 May 2008, 12:15pm

Getting closer to go time… that is after I go have a post-work drink to wash away the work week tears.

I spent part of today putting together a list of resources for some free, public domain sound effects and music queues… just in case I need something to sample. I am guessing I’ll prob use my own musics, but you never know when you need the sound of a chainsaw or a rocket.

Chainsaw sample Rocket sample

Out of all the genres that we could possibly be assigned, I’m really pulling for something in the horror or sci fi realm… both because I think moody atmospherics are easier to pull off with my arsenal of music things and because I hope I don’t have to play some sappy acoustic emo guitar shite. Not sure if you can hybridize the genres, like say if you were to be assigned romantic comedy but decided to make it a robot rom com instead. Gotta stick with what I’m good at.

Another 48Hours

Tonight I will start a long weekend of composing music for a short film. The catch is I will be working without seeing the final product. The project is part of one of those “Make a Film in 48 Hours” type competitions, specifically, Washington D.C.’s creatively titled 48 Hour Film Project.

The goal of the competition which kicks off tonight at 530pm and runs until about 9pm Sunday night, is essentially to conceive an entire 5-10min film; everything from writing, shooting, editing (and all the other things that go into a movie shoot) must be done over the course of the 48 hours.

Now I have helped on short films before, and I certainly have taken part in other similar music creation challenges: 2007’s RPM Challenge, not to mention an ENTIRE FUCKING YEAR!!! of making EPs. But this will be slightly different for me since the film will not be finished, therefore most of the music will be created somewhat in a bubble.

During the weekend I will take part in some of the film creation process like idea brainstorming, editing and such, but for the most part will be writing enough music and background noise to hopefully best fit the final film. Throughout all this, I will also be blogging about the process, putting up some early samples and demos and perhaps publicly humiliating myself when I crumble under the stress.

So stay tuned and see you later…

NPR Song Of The Day: Evangelicals, ‘Midnight Vignette’

Evangelicals' The Evening Descends is out now. — Evangelicals’ The Evening Descends is out now.

Check out another thing I wrote for NPR’s Song of the Day, on Evangelicals’ song “Midnight Vignette” from its album, The Evening Descends. To read the full review and hear the song click right here!

Continue reading NPR Song Of The Day: Evangelicals, ‘Midnight Vignette’

Can’t Get You Out Of My Head

[youtube]5uxjNEESomA[/youtube]

You ever get a song stuck in your head and struggle to get rid of it? Ever hear a snippet of a song somewhere and struggle to place it, even though its on the tip of your tongue?

I almost always have music running through my brain. Whether its song ideas or snippets of thing I have recently (or not so recently) heard. Sometimes I dream about a song (a soundtrack to my dreams I suppose), and while I almost never remember the actual dream, but by the time I am in the shower I try to force myself to remember what song it was. Often I cant get that song out of my head until I figure it out and listen to it on my headphones while walking to work. Most of the time I treat it like a game…trying to figure out what the song is before I have to look it up.

Anyway, I bring this up because this week’s Radiolab delves into what makes music so catchy and why we can’t get them out of our head. The topic has now been rattling around in my head about as much as a Kylie Minogue pop song.

If you’re not familiar with Radiolab, it is a radio program from NPR and WNYC that in which hosts Robert Krulwich and Jan Abumrad explore and explain the scientific and philosophical. Its smart and funny and yet the sound they construct is pushing the boundaries of radio production. It sounds musical and stream of consciousness like early avant garde electronic music mixed with highly sampled synapses firing at rapid speed.

And yet at the heart of the show, Radiolab tells amazing stories that resonate with the listener and make you think. At its best, its completely mindblowing.

Take a listen to the Pop Music episode of Radiolab HERE!

She and Him and Yo La Tengo and Conan

A lot of ink has already been donated to the rarity of quality when it comes to actors\actresses-turned-musicians. I think most people tune out when there is that crossover because more often than not, it doesn’t feel legitimate.

In a great AV Club blog post they assert that in the music industry where there are so many hard working bands and artists out there who never seem to make it big, having an outsider use their fame as a means to suddenly undertake a music career, without the process of starting from scratch, it essentially leaves a foul taste with music fans. I would tend to agree, considering that the track record is less than great.

All of this is just a roundabout way of saying that She and Him — the duo of M. Ward and actress Zooey Deschanel — feels to me like the beginnings of something much more real.

The origins are well documented elsewhere (see every recent music magazine (real or web), blog or public radio outlet), but their debut Volume 1 is a relative success, more so if compared to the efforts of other former actors’ albums (looking at you Russell Crowe, Eddie Murphy and Shaq).

The other night (last night maybe?), Ward and Deschanel appeared on Conan O’Brien backed by none other than Yo La Tengo. The performance is short and she comes off a little nervous, but having listened to the album quite a bit, it’s nice to see the two of them making such endearing music, not to mention Ward getting some greater success and attention. Check it out below.