frissonic – Page 9 – Frissonic.net

Kickstarter Project: Christa Joy

frissonic / June 28, 2011 / Kickstarter, Opinion, rantings

As you may or may not know, I like to peruse Kickstarter to see what musicians are making stuff. Yesterday, I stumbled across this gem. I decided to support her because a) her music sounds pretty cool from the snippet on her KS video, and b) she’s a freakin’ Kindergarten teacher! How cool is that? My daughter’s gonna be in Kindergarten this coming school year. I don’t know why, but I just felt drawn to Christa’s project. So here’s hoping it gets funded!

Here’s what you need to do: share this with as many people as you can and get the word out on her project. Even ONE dollar makes a big difference. And she’s giving away some really awesome compensations for bigger donations. I selected the $25 option cuz it comes with a copy of the CD, <strong suggestion>hopefully signed</strong suggestion>.

Anyway, go support her project! I highly recommend it!

New Music Friday

frissonic / June 24, 2011 / New Music, review

List isn’t incredibly long, but you know the phrase: quality vs. quantity. Picked up some gems that I thought I had, but upon an actual inspection,

Marissa Nadler – Saga of Mayflower May
Kate York – Sadly Love
Sarah Jarosz – Follow Me Down
Alex Wise – Front Porch
Tam – Ecstatic Peace
Polar Goldie Cats – Feral Phantasms

I like the instrumental sounds of PGC. Alex Wise was a pleasant surprise, while I was equally surprised to find that I didn’t have Miss Marissa’s Mayflower May CD. That’s been remedied. 🙂

Pottermore by J.K. Rowling

frissonic / June 23, 2011 / Opinion, rantings

Well, Potter fans, rejoice. The franchise lives on through J.K. Rowling’s next endeavor–Pottermore. Apparently, it expands the Harry Potter world in new ways, though how is still nebulous. The website rolls out July 31, presumably when the “Submit your email” button will actually work. Until then, we get to stare at an inactive screen (minus the vid Ms. Rowland has in the top left corner).

Yah. I’m stoked. Not gonna lie about that. My wife and I each bought our own copy of The Deathly Hallows so one of us wouldn’t be in the dark. Also hoping to go to a midnight showing of Part 2 next month!

</geek moment>

I know a certain family with a certain daughter who is going to flip her lid when she finds out about this … if she hasn’t already. Not to mention my wife. I anticipate many a late night for her on her laptop. 🙂

Funny story about my wife … we were kind of late to the Harry Potter book reading bit. On a family trip to Yellowstone in 2001, she lugged the first book along with her. As we drove by herds of buffalo, moose, elk, and other various prettiness, she had her nose buried in the pages, only looking up when the thought crossed her mind. She finished it in a couple of days, though that’s really all the longer we were even there. Anyway, her addiction for them made me want to read them; however, I settled for listening to Jim Dale’s reading. When the movie came, I had only made it through where Harry gets to Diagon Alley for the first time.

Anyway, should be interesting to see what she has in store. According to CNN, she has about 18000 additional words to augment the site. I’m guessing that’s for book 1. That’s about 1/4 the amount of written material in “The Sorcerer’s/Philosopher’s Stone.” I wonder if she’s planning on rolling out additional text for each of the books.

Anyway, fun!

Music from the Oddest Things

frissonic / June 20, 2011 / Opinion, rantings

I love creativity, especially when it comes to music. Using odd things as instruments is an extremely cool way to get my attention. Take, for example, this video. Hopefully you’ll be able to see the vid without being a backer, but i’m not sure. it sure is cool to watch though.

Watching this made me wonder what other “odd instruments” are used in other music. Google to the rescue!

This is a curious site, though not particularly what I meant or was looking for.

There may or may not be duplicates on this page.

More along the lines of what I was looking for …

Great collection of strangeness.

CD Review: Marissa Nadler – Marissa Nadler

frissonic / June 18, 2011 / New Music, Opinion, rantings, review

The first music I heard of Marissa Nadler’s was Little Hells. The thing that struck me about that CD was just how … I don’t know … mellowingly meloncholy? haunting? Dare I say it–macabre? It was one of the most amazing CDs I had ever heard.

I wasted no time hunting down and acquiring everything she’d done to that point. Ballads of Living and Dying, The Saga of Mayflower May, and Songs III: Birds on the Water. All of it was provacatively haunting, and I listened to it non-stop for weeks.

It was a pleasant shock to discover that Miss Nadler Released her 5th CD this past Tuesday–a self-titled effort that elevates her music to a new benchmark that borders on heavenly. 11 tracks that clock in at right around 45 minutes, there isn’t a song on here that won’t leave you wondering how God let such an angelic voice slip out of earshot.

The longest track, “In Your Lair, Bear,” is 6 minutes long. It opens with Marissa gently plucking her guitar and musing, “Where did you go when the snow fell that year? You’re inside these wooden walls like a bear, eager child, for the end in your lair. For the end of the year. The old familiar fear creeps up your little arms and runs through your veins like blood through your songs.” After several listens, that’s what I’m hearing, anyway. Between her guitar, the strings arrangement, the low-key cymbals and percussion, you can’t help but swoon like a shark that’s been knocked on its back.

You see the 3rd track, “The Sun Always Reminds Me of You,” and you think, “Aww … a love song!” Yah. This is about as love-songy as “Every Breath You Take.” The only difference is that this doesn’t have the stalker feel to it so much as it has the “Shit … why must every ray of sunshine remind me of you? Curse my rotten luck.” You can hear her heart breaking with each strum and drum beat. I love the steel guitar at the end. Gives it just that hint of country flair to it without actually invoking Fords, dogs, shotguns, line dancing and cheating spouses. No, okay … seriously. You know how a lot of country has that “love lost” feel to it? That’s this song in a nutshell.

My favorite song on the CD is “Baby I Will Leave You in the Morning.” Hands down. The chords, arrangement, BPM, theme, lyrics … this thing is brooding, moody, depressingly gorgeous, and just frickin’ hot. For some reason, it has a very Pink Floyd vibe to the music. This makes it on my “desert island” top 10 list. That’s right. Love this song.

This whole CD is just breath-taking. I’m already wishing she would put out an new CD. Not because this one has grown stale (right … cuz that’s possible), but because her music is just that good. I crave, want, and desire more. Now.

File this under “shiver” cuz you will get the chills from listening to this.

New Music Friday

frissonic / June 17, 2011 / New Music

More great stuff! Had a great chat with my buddies Jon and Kyle at Graywhale. Jon was at the Samantha Crain show as well, though he got to stick around for Langhorne Slim. I did not. Babysitting constraints. Oh well. Anyway, he and I chatted about that, the fact that Alela Diane is coming with Fleet Foxes, the wonderfulness of Twitter for learning breaking-news stuff before it breaks on “the major sites” … yah. Good convo. Also talked about Marissa Nadler’s new CD, which, ha ha … I ordered this morning. Twice, actually. Got it from iTunes, then realized, “No … I want this hard-copy” and bought it from Amazon. Lovely, eh?

Anyway, got this list on the cheap! I love finding $2 CDs at Grawhale. Or anywhere, for that matter. A lot of this list are $2-3 CDs.

Chris Walla – Field Manual
Helvetia – Headless Machine of the Heart
Will Sartain – For Love (yes, the Will Sartain of Kilby and Urban Lounge, Future of the Ghost, etc)
Hayden – In Field & Town
Sara Lov – Seasoned Eyes Were Beaming
Minmae – Le Grand Essor de la Maison du Monstre
Moneen – Are We Really Happy with Who We Are Right Now?
Holly Miranda – The Magician’s Private Library
Rykarda Parasol – Our Hearts First Meet
Rykarda Parasol – For Blood and Wine

See what I mean? Great haul!!! Can’t wait to rip these and get ’em on my iPod.

Stayin’ Alive

frissonic / June 16, 2011 / Blah-ness, Opinion, rantings

My wife and I had back-to-back meetings. Mine was at 7, hers at 7:30. I went out and swapped vehicles with her and took our girls home. She always has her car radio on … something I tend to avoid at all cost unless it’s the local college station. On the way home, The Bee Gee’s “Stayin’ Alive” came on. For whatever reason, I automatically started swerving the wheel to the beat. Mind you, this wasn’t some super busy road at 75 MPH … we were going down some little residential road at 25. Very easy to control the car. The girls absolutely loved it.

As we approached our street, I realized that I was *right* in front of the police station. Anyone looking out their window would have seen us be-boppin’ down the road as we turned down our road. Oops. Thankfully, no one noticed. Ha ha!!

So of course the girls demanded to listen to it again. “Sorry girls. Radio!” That was met with a chorus of “AWWWWW”s and “WAAAAAAH”s.

Guess what I just bought on iTunes. 🙂

And with the goodness of Audiogalaxy, I can play it pretty much any time I want for them. Or … me. Come on … who amongst us doesn’t have that occasional guilty pleasure?

Bee Gees FTGP!

Possible New HD Camcorder

frissonic / June 15, 2011 / Blah-ness, Opinion, rantings

So I stumbled across this little doohickey earlier today. I like it for a number of reasons.

For one, it’ s black–definitely more difficult to see it at a concert than, say a Kodak Playsport which *claims* to be black, but is, indeed, actually white (though the part that would face the stage/security guards is indeed black).

16x digital zoom is cool, but … it’s still just digital. Hello, pixelating and artifacting. No interpolation for me, thanks.

The 16MP stills option is, cool, but … well, refer to my comment above about interpolation. The 16MP isn’t *really* 16Mp–it’s 8MP x 2. Not at all the same thing.

I like the fact that it supports SDXC. 8GB SD cards aren’t gonna give you much time. 16GB, maybe. 32GB … not bad. 64GB? Yah. Now we’re talking length. Wait … what?

Price point: excellent! Amazon has it listed for $99. that’s pretty good for a 1080p digital video recorder.

Now … I told you all that to show you this.

Difference is, that’s a flip-out screen. As in, if a security guy at a concert sees that, he’s going to FLIP OUT. I’d like to get a tech spec comparison for the camera sensors between this, the B10, and my current Kodak PlaySport. I like the PlaySport. I do. But … it has it’s limitations. For one, it doesn’t do well in dark situations. Like concerts. Cuz, you know … they’re generally dark, right? So I’m wondering if the Toshibas would perform any better. Only one way to find out, right? 😉

Here are the perks to the P100:

Really, the only difference is the 5x optical zoom. For me, that’s *huge*. Optical will ALWAYS beat digital zoom (until such time where optical zoom does not beat digital zoom, and thus renders this statement obsolete *COUGH*billgates*HACK*512K*WHEEZE*whoneedsmore*MORECOUGH*). Anyway, 5x optical would be really, really nice for concerts. Especially if we’re sitting near the back. Maybe not for, say, A Perfect Circle, where you have 12th row. 😉 In that case, no zoom would probably be just fine.

The other difference is, of course, the flip screen. I’m not a fan of it. Period. Not for the purposes I’m considering. At least with the standard non-flip design, it looks sort of like a phone. The flip-out screen *might* arouse suspicion in even the most lax of security guards. Maybe.

So really, it’s a toss-up. I do like the 5x optical. That’s a huge selling point. Digital zoom means nearly nothing to me. Especially 16x. I might as well watch fuzzy colored squares that vaguely resemble semi-recognizable shapes dance around my screen. Thanks, no. Couldn’t be less bothered.

Decisions, decisions …

App Review: SongKick Concerts

frissonic / June 14, 2011 / iPhone Apps, Opinion, rantings, review, software

Guess what app I’m in love with right now. I’ll give you a hint:

I hadn’t really checked out any new apps on iTunes’ store lately, so I thought I’d glance through it and see what I could fiind. To my surprise, SongKick Concerts was featured on the main page. The app integrates with its web-based counterpart to sync your SK accout (if you have one; if you don’t, it’s easy enough to set up one). Best part is that it’s free.

This thing is incredible. By “incredible,” I don’t just mean, “Wow, hey … this thing is pretty nifty.” No–I mean this app makes Chuck Norris look like the E-Trade baby. That’s how enormously awesome this thing is. Here’s why.

1. It scans your iDevice and finds the musicians in its database, which is vastly superior to any other concert app database I’ve seen. This thing finds EVERYthing. I loaded one song from each artist from the first half of my library (A-M), excluding classical artists and new age/soundscape artists. It had representative graphics for almost everyone, including obscure artists like Hungry Lucy, Diane Birch, Howling Rain, First Aid Kit, Emily Wells … the list goes on.

For every artists that is on tour or a concert date is scheduled, it puts a little “On Tour” banner in the top left corner of the image so you KNOW that that artist/band is playing somewhere soon. Could be as little as a one-off gig at some bar in Rigby Idaho. Could be as extensive as playing Estadio de Luz

One thing that I would like this app to do, and it may … I haven’t seen it do this yet, but it very well could–is to localize the list to my geographic area and provide that same banner for artists coming to the greater Salt Lake area. As it is, I sift through my artists and see if a particular artist is coming. If not, oh well–move on to the next one. If so, I check out date, ticket prices, venue, etc. But really … it’s not at all a large complaint.

2. The app links you out to ticket vendors. No need to go out to Ticketmaster or wherever. Links are provided to the venue, ticket purchasing, or wherever you need to go.

3. You can search for an artist and track when s/he/they are coming to your area. It’s a bit better than having to scan your whole iOS device library and look through at individual artists/bands, but at the same time, you have to manually search and select “Track” to get that localized effect. Again, oh well. 🙂

4. If 6you select the nearest large city to you, it will spit back who’s playing where, when and for how much. For example, tonight in the SLC area, we have:

Psychostick at Club Vegas
Soulcrate Music at Kilby Court
Taking Back Sunday at In the Venue
Pharoahe Monch at the Hotel Elevate
Craze at One Nightclub

I’m telling you … this is the ONLY concert app you need. Download it and check out what shows you didn’t know are coming to your area!

Conversation with Samantha Crain

frissonic / June 13, 2011 / interview

A couple of months ago, I found out that Samantha Crain would be coming to Salt Lake. I immediately sent her a tweet requesting an interview. At the time, I knew she was in Michigan on tour, so I didn’t expect a response for a few days. Imagine my surprise when she replied within a few minutes. “Sure!” So casual, so exuberant. So … Samantha Crain.

Over the course of the next several weeks, we exchanged tweets and emails, setting up date and time for the convo. We finally settled on meeting a couple of hours before her show at The Urban Lounge. We met out front and went in to the venue, where we took seats in “the green room” (i.e. the artists’ waiting room). She sat comfortably in the chair kitty corner to the couch I sat on, and looked just as at home as if she had been ready to curl up with a good book, or a movie and a big bowl of popcorn. But no … she was there to chat with me. And

Here’s the conversation I had with Samantha Crain and her band.

*ahem*

F: This is not your first time to Salt Lake.

SC: No, we played here with Langhorne Slim about 2 years ago when we were on tour with him, and then I played here earlier that year as well at Kilby with Thao and the Get Down Stay Down when we were on tour with them, and I think other than those two times … other than the first time we came here, which was a big, like 2 people came. That was a weird show. (turning to Will Sartain), Will, we came here here like 4 years ago before we ever played at any of your venues. It was this big, weird, completely butt-rock type venue, and like 2 people came to our show. It was kind of in the middle of nowhere. maybe by some warehouses or something? Palladium? Yah … that was where we played our first time in Salt Lake City.

F: That’s weird. I’m sorry.

SC: That’s okay. It was funny. I have that story.

F: So what do you think about Salt Lake?

SC: I like it. I went and sang karaoke last night in Salt Lake.

F: Where?!

SC: Cheers.

F: Nice! That’s so funny!

SC: We all went and sang karaoke.

F: I hope everybody applauded …

SC: It was funny. We did a Destiny’s Child song.

F: Nice. How did it go over?

SC: Good. I guess … I dunno, it was crowded. It was karaoke, man.

F: So this is your band (sitting on the other couch). I read your bio on a site, and it said that you had met some guys when you were doing something back east? Pennsylvania? It was the Midnight Shivers.

SC: That was my band about 2 years ago, whenever Songs in the Night came out. Jacob, the drummer for that, plays drums for the Avett Brothers now. My old bass player is not really playing, and my old guitarist has own solo thing going on. I’ve had different forms of bands for the past two years. This is the current incarnation.

F: And who are these lovely ladies?

SC: Penny Hill. We’re friends from back in Oklahoma. She plays bass. And then Anne Lillis. She’s from Akron.

F: (Turning to Anne) I lived in Stow. There’s always a Stow connection!

AL: I lived off one of the main roads in Cuyahoga Falls

F: Well welcome to Utah. Is this your first time playing here?

AL: I’ve played in Salt Lake City before.

PH: I’ve never been here.

F: Do you like the snow on the mountains? In June?

All: Yah … it’s great.

F: Not so much …

SC: Well, it’s awesome to me because I’m all over the place anyway, so I never really have to be around anything for too long. It’s cool, then I’m over it.

F: What happened to the tour van?

SC: Actually, it wasn’t a van; it was an SUV, then I had my trailer. There were 289,000 miles on it over the past 2 years, and … yah. Graveyard. It’s just hanging out until I can get someone to buy it for parts. It wasn’t like we were on the road and it blew up or anything, although I have had that happen to tour vehicles before. This was just one of those things where we got home from tour, and we had a few months off, and it was already in pretty bad condition when I got back home, and over the 2 or 3 months that I was driving it around, it was just kind of like, “I’m done.” But it did exactly what I needed it to do for 289,000 miles, so you know …

F: On your site, there used to be a link where you could go out and make donations.

SC: We’re still doing that.

F: Where is it? because I poked around on the site and I couldn’t find it.

SC: Oh … on our *website* website? They might have changed it. I need to put that back up because we do have a Feed the Muse account, and that’s still going on, but I have to re-post it on Facebook every now and then because it gets shuffled down through the things. We’re going to redo the website, so we’ll probably have a permanent link cuz yah–we’re definitely still doing that. We’re borrowing a car for the summer. Literally. My dad is letting us borrow a car of his, and my mom is doing without a car so we can go on tour this summer.

F: This is the part that blows me away. A few months ago, you were working in a diner.

SC: Pizza place.

F: And now, you’re on this extensive North American tour, and you’ll be playing at a festival in England. How did you do it?

SC: It’s not a “How did you do it?” thing. It’s how I’m able to tour sometimes. Touring, really, just like costs money somtimes more than it earns money. It’s not like it’s a success story by any means. I’ve been touring for about 5 years, and we’ve played some big shows, and we’ve played some really small shows. It’s a constant roller coaster thing. As long as I’m doing something. I realized that we didn’t have a tour vehicle, so I needed to be making money and not spending the money I had saved up, so I had to get a job.

F: I think that’s amazing.

SC: I would rather *not* have a job so that I could have time to write and record, you know, but whatever it calls for, I guess.

F: You’re working on new music.

SC: Yah, it’s coming. It’s slow, it’s coming a lot slower this time, but we’re working on stuff. We’re lining up recording times right now because what we’re going to do instead of doing a full album next, we’re going to, ove ra period of 8-9 months, release singles done by different producers, done digitally and also on 7″ with B-side recordings. It’s going to be kind of like a throw-back thing, more of like what they did in the 40s and 50s. So people will get a little bit at a time, which I htink kind of works for this digital media age that we live in now anyways, I think that kind of makes more sense to peoples’ attention spans now, than what a full album release does. It also makes more sense, I think. It’s not like I don’t like doing full albums, I love doing full albums. I like that a lot, but it’s getting to a point where people don’t buy albums; they burn them off their friends and get them illegally off the internet, or they download them of iTunes, which iTunes is good, but some of these other sites that sell them, like Amazon for example, sells my album for like $5, and I don’t know how they do that, but they do.

F: But you still get full royalties.

SC: I don’t know if I do … I don’t really know how it works, honestly. I know that it’s something through Sony. So maybe Sony’s not getting paid or something? I don’t really know how that Amazon thing works. But a lot of people do that, so … albums really don’t make money for artists anymore, and so they end up spending all this money on making an album, recording it, printing it, then they never get any of that back. They never recoup any of that. I think this way, people are more likeyly to say, “I have $3-4 to buy a 7” or something like that. Then it becomes a more gradual payment. People are more readily able to buy a 99 cent single download than they can $9.99 full CD download. I don’t know. We’re just trying something new, seeing if it works out any better.

It’s also a better model for me right now too, just because of like the way I’ve been writing lately, which has been slowly so this kind of lets it be no so overwhelming about thinking about “I need to write 11 songs for an album.” This way, I can think about having 3-4 songs for the next 3-4 recording sessions, and then I can focus on the next 3-4 songs.

F: Do you have free time? What do you like to do in your free time?

SC: Free time … yah, I’ve got free time. I mean, I guess I’ve got free time. Probably have more free time than the average person actually. When you’re touring, you’re in the car a lot, so that’s I guess free time cuz you’re not really doing anything but you CAN’T do anything cuz you’re just driving. When I’m at home, I guess I have free time. I don’t know if I’m the wisest user of free time. I do read a lot, and I started painting a lot this winter but more out of necessity. I like painting, but I needed to sell some paintings so I could get some money, so it was more out of necessity.

F: Did you do the album art for “Songs in the Night”?

SC: No, that’s actually a friend of mine from Oklahoma City named Chad Mount. He’s a painter, and he did that album.

F: What about Confiscation?

SC: Yah. The first printing of COnfiscation, I did the cover for that.

F: I think that’s the one I have, which sadly I couldn’t find because I actually have physical CDs. I mean, it’s cool that you can download them too, but to have CDs? I tried the download model for a while …

SC: I know that there are people that do like CDs. I’m one of them. I like to have physical CDs too, but it just so happens that I gues sthere are more people that don’t, and they’re ruining it for everyone else.

F: I know! Jerks! So, what is the most random CD you have in your collection?

SC: Oooh … most random CD …

F: Obscure, random …

PH: Do Vinyls count?

F: Sure.

PH: French Girls?

SC: Oh yah! That’s pretty random. I got this vinyl album back in January called “60 French Girls Can’t Be Wrong,” and it’s a choral CD from the late 60s of this French girl’s choir singing 30s and 40s pop tunes. It’s actually really awesome. It’s pretty random why I would have that in my collection. But I have embarrassing stuff that I’m not embarrassed about things, like Hanson, Britney Spears …

F: I think everyone has those kinds of CDs.

SC: Yah. I have them, and I’m not embarrassed by them.

F: I had Weird Al …

SC: Oh. Umm … yah. I don’t have that. (Laughs)

F: Well, thanks for your time! Good luck tonight.

SC: No problem!

===================

So, some comments about the convo. The thing that struck me is just how down to earth she is. She sat on the couch and chatted with me and my wife as if it were no problem … probably because it *was* no problem. She’s friendly, her smile could warm Barrow, Alaska in January, and she effortlessly carries a conversation like we’re long lost friends catching up.

Her star is rising at a meteoric rate, yet she doesn’t wait for the world to come to her; she goes and takes the world as it is and recognizes what needs to be done to make her dream stick. I point to the part of the conversation about working in the pizza place. She makes this incredible music, does all kinds of interviews with all kinds of organizations and magazines, goes on tour, THEN goes home and works at the local pizza place so she can go back out on tour, borrowing her parent’s car?! Come on. That’s NOT a success story? I 100% disagree. I think it is THE success story against which all other success stories should be measured. Why? Easy: she’s fighting tooth and nail to keep her dream alive. She goes on tour, then comes home and goes back to a normal, every day life, and thinks absolutely nothing of it. Nothing is being handed to her. Well, almost nothing. This is the other part that I just love: her parents lend her a car so she can go on tour, while her mom goes without to give her girl the dream she so desperately fights for. Yah. That’s success.

If she comes to your part of the world, make an effort to see her show. You will be a better person for having gone.