Thursday, May 21, 2015

i've been wanting to do an "orchestral works" for a while, it's just that i need to be strict about how i'm defining an orchestral work - because otherwise i end up with almost everything.

i'm going to lean towards horn-heavy tracks as being "jazz" and string heavy tracks as being "chamber". that's going to let me put both of those ideas off until the end of period 3.

an orchestral work needs to have horns, strings, reeds and winds - it's gotta actually be a full orchestra. it also helps if it's a concerto.

i've got two pieces that fit this definition cleanly, and two i want to remix mildly to get closer to the point. i'm thinking this will probably get done for an inri049 release, which will put reflections up to 50 - or 51, if that guitar disc gets built, as i think it will.

so, there's still some ideas to work through with this.
when you need to sleep...

the jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj period is now finished. finally. and it feels good.

publishing ambient works vol 0-2 (inri071 + inri035)

i've got the mix tape up which means inri048 is now done...

i've got a number of snippets after about 1999 that i'm not sure what to do with. i'm probably going to just forget about most of it, but some of it will no doubt end up on volume 3, which will be somewhere in the 60s or 70s. so i'll just put it aside for later.

i put aside a number of compilation ideas as i was sorting through the material. i wasn't expecting anything to get a release in this space, but i'm now questioning that. it's largely a process of elimination. but right now it'slooking like inri050 is actually going to be a similarly epic guitar-focused disc.

that said, there's plenty of guitars on this disc, especially in the mix tape. i'll post it when i figure it out...

===

i've taken to splitting my discography into phases, and my hitch-hiking trip to british columbia is a very important separation point - both in terms of the nature of the material that came out afterwards and what is now a substantial body of work that came before it. that makes it a natural point to look backwards and build compilations of intersecting ideas.

a characteristic of my work is that it does not conform well to genre norms. this is not an accident; when compiling a record, i'm guided more by the late beatles' philosophy of vast diversity in a small space than i am by any kind of desire to collect together nice singles, or by some kind of compulsive organizing into categories or concepts. i write psychedelic music. that means something different in 2015 than it did in 1966, but the commonality is that it's necessarily challenging. i want all of my records to do everything at once, and accomplish everything by their end point. that makes compilations of this sort inherently difficult, because every song touches on every compilation idea at the same time. the jazz record would have the same tracklisting as the punk record, the classical record and the folk record - and none would really be what they're claimed to be.

the one exception to this conundrum is how i interacted with ambient music in this period. i very regularly utilized ideas from the genre, but i tended to interpret ambience as something that is necessarily obscure. in this period, ambient pieces are almost always outtakes or b sides. i tended to interpret covers and remixes as ambient pieces, probably because that was unexpected. when ambient ideas make it on to the record, they're almost always for effect: introductions, endings, connecting passages, that sort of thing.

when i began reconstructing my discography in early 2014, i came across a handful of songs i'd written out into midi format and put aside for later. a number of these ended up reworked into ambient pieces, and released as b sides. i also ended up converting some of the material i wrote in this period into ambient sound collages that are more in the style of music i created after 2003.

the end result is enough bsides and remixes to put together two full cds of ambient music. none of the tracks on volumes one or two are on any official record as they appear here; this is technically a collection of remixes and outtakes.

initially written and recorded between 2000-2003 and remixed between 2014-2015. sequenced over mid may, 2015. final compilation date is may 21, 2015,. as always, please use headphones.

credits:
j - guitars (acoustic, electric, nylon), effects & treatments, bass, synthesizers, electric air reed organ, orchestral & other sequencing, drum & other programming, generative programming (sounder), "projectile synthesis" (audiomulch), granular synthesis (granulab), sound design, electronic and conventional drum kits, sampling, loops, films, voice, digital wave editing, composition, production.

sean - vocal ideas (tracks 4 & 7, disc 1), ring modulator (track 9, disc 1)
jon - background guitar performance (track 4, disc 1)
greg - drum performance sample source (track 5, disc 1)

the various rendered electronic orchestras include synth bass, electric bass, acoustic bass, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, nylon guitar, guitar effects, guitar noises (fret noises, pick scrapes, knocks), synthesizer, synth pads, mellotron, choir, violin, viola, cello, contrabass, string section, pizzicato strings, french horn, trumpet, trombone, tuba, oboe, english horn, bassoon, clarinet, flute, piccolo, mallet, piano, woodblock, music box, xylophone, tubular bells, other bells, orchestra hit, electronic drum kit, melodic toms, drum machine and orchestral drum kit.

released april 28, 2003

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/ambient-works-vol-0-2

ambient works vol 0, side b

side b mixes various ambient sections from period 1.2 and period 1.3, which, here, is all over 1999. mix created on may 21, 2015.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/side-b

ambient works vol 0, side a

side a mixes various noise and ambient sections from period 1.1 and period 1.2, which is 1996-1999. mix created on may 21, 2015.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/side-a