The Tiger's Dream

The fourth track on Bunnies At Large features just myself and Davis Jones. One afternoon we fooled around with instruments for hours in the kitchen and, boiled down to eight minutes, this was the result. She even played the guitar here while I twisted the knobs on my delay pedal, making the sounds that you hear at the beginning! The last half of this piece is the two of us at a keyboard, following our bliss. Originally recorded on the ADAT and transferred to ProTools, where I quantized the bejeezus out of the more rhythmic improvisations in the beginning and used the Boom instrument to add a hip-hop drum loop, adding instant funk to our randomness.

In short, this is the sound of a boy and girl feeling free and playing with their toys.

Falling Into Place

A long one from MENNO! This took a lot of editing to get it to feel right. I decided to wipe out the bass on the first half so it would have a real impact when it finally comes in. I think it does.

Actually

The opening track of the second Dr. Spaceman album. A little touch of dub to set the mood.

The New Klondike Loop

The third track on Bunnies At Large and the most recent basic track we put down. Now this one was a sweet moment of serendipity. I felt a need for something else that we didn't have so far in this collection of sounds we were accumulating. The solution arrived in the form of our visiting friend Jeremy Hanberry: world traveler, film buff, and former mastermind of the band Electric Color Wheel. Jeremy had contributed dumbek and backing vocals to the Content Providers on many occasions, but we had never collaborated with him on guitar before. The time had come to create something spontaneous together.

We set up, I got a slow-jam riddim going, and out came this dreamy, drifty thing with myself on bass, Jeremy twanging blissfully on guitar, and Davis Jones flicking flurries of notes on her Roland Juno keyboard. Only the slightest post-production after the fact (I cut a few slack minutes out, put down a little MIDI chord bed in the second half, and overdubbed a melodica) and this lovely groove is the result. When we were done, we snacked on Klondike ice cream bars and named the song after them.

Get your Bunnies At Large here.

The Rooster's Dream

The second track on Bunnies At Large is one of two that came directly out of Mark Altin's ProTools class at CCSF. The assignment was to send everyone out in small groups with little digital recorders to capture any interesting sound they could find on or around the campus. (The noisy old elevator behind the creative arts building made an amazing sound!) Then everyone had to create their own sound collage out of this material. Considering that Revolution 9 is one of my top ten Beatles songs of all time, I was totally down with this.

Get your Bunnies At Large here.

What's happening with Ear Candle Radio?

It has come to our attention that Live 365 has disabled their widgets due to some hackers getting into their system, so the Ear Candle Radio player on our blog is not available for a while. In the meantime, you can tune in here.

Brain In A Chair: The Video

The official video for BRAIN IN A CHAIR by THE GRANITE COUNTERTOPS. Animated office drone avatars appear courtesy of Go Animate!

Move This Monster

This is the opening track from the most recent Experimental Bunnies album. It began with a quasi-"township jive" groove we fell into with Glenn Stevens, and then Frank Lev and Steve Mackay came over to play at different times. I love the contrast between Steve's gritty outbursts and Frank's creamy tone. Beautiful work, everyone. Seemed appropriate to kick it all off with a collage of San Francisco foghorn sounds like the ones we hear through our window in the middle of the night. The title came from something Davis Jones said in passing: "What's it going to take to move this monster?"

Ear Candle Radio's Top 20 for July 2015

1. Chastity Belt - Joke - Time to Go Home
2. Solex - Pick Up - Pick Up
3. Ken Nordine - Reaching into In - The Best of Word Jazz, Vol. 1
4. dot Vom - Legs For Days - Love Weights
5. Cream - Deserted Cities Of The Heart - The Very Best of Cream
6. Neo Boys - Split - Sooner Or Later
7. Chuck Willis - Hang Up My Rock And Roll Shoes - Atlantic R&B Volume 4: 1957-1960
8. Dilate - Tangerine Sky - Space Box - 1970 & Beyond: Space, Krautrock & Acid Trips
9. The Granite Countertops - Rainy Night In Florida - Planets Don't Twinkle
10. Blondie - In The Sun - Blondie
11. Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band - Kama Sutra - The Doughnut In Granny's Greenhouse
12. Sam The Sham & The Pharaohs - Little Red Riding Hood - Wooly Bully: Little Red Riding Hood
13. The Delta Rhythm Boys - I'm In Love With A Gal - Jump & Jive 'Til One O'Clock (Anthology Vol. 2 - 1947-1950)
14. The 6ths - All Dressed Up In Dreams (with Mary Timony) - Wasps' Nests
15. Siouxsie & The Banshees - Jigsaw Feeling - The Scream
16. The Original Bushwackers & Bullockies Bush Band - South Australia - The Shearers Dream
17. Courtney Barnett - Avant Gardener - The Double EP: A Sea of Split Peas
18. Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band - Rhinocratic Oaths - The Doughnut In Granny's Greenhouse
19. Peter Jefferies - White Prole - Electricity
20. Lou Reed & John Cale - The Trouble With Classicists - Songs For Drella