“One of the most outstanding compositions I have heard for years. Fantastic production with everlasting changes. Beautiful and original use of instruments. He gets the most Creative Award … blazing his own trails … different in the best of ways … keep an eye on this guy – he might create his own entire “genre” of music.  Congratulations and thanks for redefining the idea of standing out!”

The piece represents a whirlwind presentation of the material that will be extrapolated in my next release.  Stay tuned…

Troels Folmann at 8dio asked me to make a demo for their new dubstep sample library.  8dio make fantastic virtual instruments; I’m a huge fan.  A lot of the string work you hear on my tracks comes from their Adagio libraries.  So, I figured, this is as good a time as any to try to make a dubstep track: an invitation, fresh sounds, and the genre is huge right now, but will fade soon.  I actually much prefer the notion of “post-dubstep.”  “Post-anything” allows one a certain genre-obliviousness – a perspective I find most fertile.  So with dubstep, I figure: Let’s celebrate all the fun possibilities that the genre brought us – a new taste for wild synthesis, sound warping, insane low frequency techniques, and (imo) a bridge from the avant garde electronic music of yesteryear into popular culture. It has opened our ears.  And deafened more than a few.

Now, I say, let’s breathe back some dynamics into this kind of music.  Let’s create exquisite subtleties to complement the aurgasmic climaxes.  After all, you really don’t get much bang for your back if it’s All Climax All The Time.  I tried to invoke this sort of expanded dynamic range a bit with this track – while still staying within the genre as it exists now.  I had fun making it.  May it find its way to receptive ears…

This piece was composed for my dear uncle, Ken Hatt, the husband of my father’s sister, Susan. Ken passed away in December, 2012. He glowed. He was deeply kind and curious, and I remember him with a big smile on his face. Satie’s Gymnopédie #1 was one of his favorite pieces, and I wrote this fantasy for him a few weeks before he passed. I wanted to write music *from inside* the beautifully simple sound world that the original piece creates. I played the piece today at a memorial service for him in Victoria, B.C.

Last night, Brass Menazeri, the Balkan Brass band with whom I’ve been playing for the past 10 years, played its final show.  We were joined by hundreds of loving fans and collaborators at The New Parish in the Oakland, CA.  We played for nearly four hours.  There were too many emotional high points to even make sense of it all.  I’m filled with a deep gratitude for my fellow bandmates and all the multitudes of deliriously dancing friends we’ve shared moments with over these years.

Here is the DJ set I played in between the two Menazeri sets:  30 minutes of fresh Balkan brass remixes – including sneak peaks of some of tracks which will be released in the coming weeks and months. Stay tuned – I’ll let you know when the individual tracks are available for download.

Although Brass Menazeri will not be performing any more shows, there will be several albums of material of all kinds – pure acoustic, remixes, and hybrid collaborations – all coming straight to an eardrum (or two) near (or in) you!

Until then, maybe this will help tide you over.

Love, eO

Love, the only beauty.  You, the only light.

My offering to you in this moment – at this Turning Of The Page – is a simple prayer, refracted through a kaleidoscope.  I allowed myself to embrace the bewildering, myriad perspectives of “all that is struggling to attain form” (i Ching Hexagram #3 – “Difficulty At The Beginning”).  I encouraged myself to revel in the awe I feel for the raw fact of existence, hurtling through time…  and that it keeps happening!

And these times are strange indeed.  A few days ago, on December 20, on the eve of the Big Question Mark (representing the sum total of all the various scenarios of everyone who even entertained a sliver of a notion that something momentous could occur on the 21st (and I’m not saying that it didn’t)), I had the special treat of witnessing the night sky over Annapolis, Maryland explode into blue, pink, white, green, and orange for about two minutes.  I’ll admit, I did take a few seconds to entertain the notion that – in fact – the aliens were getting a jump on The Big Day by taking out our power grid with fabulous rainbow-colored electromagnetic pulse bombs.  I wasn’t alone.  Twitter was abuzz with hysterical holiday shoppers: the whole town mall had lost power.  An hour later, while listening to the radio in the dark at my folks’ home, it became clear that it was a downed high-voltage power line about a mile from our house (which happened to knock out power for over 50,000 homes for most of the night).  I could imagine the little baby Jesus – still in Mary’s womb for another few days – turn his head slightly to the side and wink.  “I got yer new light right here.”  Apocalypse wow!

So the earth tips back the other way and the days grow longer.  The calendar of an ancient civilization clicks over to 13.0.0.0.0.  Various traditions celebrate the dawn of new light into the world – one way or another.  I feel so fortunate to be able to create things, and every time a new musical idea just pops into sound in front of me… that’s a new dawn – some bizarre planet somewhere has just rotated to the point where its blue sun is peaking over the horizon.  It’s all in the way you look at it.  And what’s doing the looking.  (And who wants to know…?)

New light is something we can all get behind.  By that I mean we can all stand right in front of it and be so deeply grateful – for simply existing.  The new day, the new year, the new age, the new eyes.  And a fresh mind, fed by ears funneling sound of all kinds, in unfore”heard” combinations.  It makes me so deeply happy.  I do my best to channel this love onto my sonic canvas – over and over again – so I can give it to you.

So this is what you have here, another one of my quirky tapestries.  Too complex?  Perhaps.  But you should’ve seen the other guy!  I really do hold out my hand towards the simple light of truth, doing my best not to confound and confuse.  But still, I stumble onward, the wide-eyed bumbler, tickled over and over by the fact that such a simple love keeps coaxing new amazement out of nothingness.

So there you have it.  I wish you all the most deepest joy.

And to all, a good light.

eO

P.S. Those angelic vocal samples are from none other than Kyrstyn Pixton, herself.

Sometimes you just have to let it go. In my last post, where I introduced Nest Of Wishes, I stated my intention to release music like a thistle gives its seeds to the wind – freely, without knowing what will become of it. Well, now it’s time to get down to it. I’m releasing a new song today. Believe it or not, one of the greatest challenges of my life is to write a simple song… and release it to the world.

Freefall is not a simple song. But it is a song, I think – or at least song-like. In my creative work I sometimes stumble upon something that explodes fresh into completion, and all I have to do is get out of its way. This song is not one of those things. This one has followed me around for a long time, haunting, taunting… drawing me out of my constrictions, slowly siphoning deeper waters to the surface… I put myself in service to a vision – a collection of meanings, feelings, half-seen shapes crashing against and sliding through one another, layers woven thicker and thicker… and the thing emerges – I’m running after it, repeatedly closing half of the distance to its fulfillment… but the final satisfaction continues to elude. In the end – there is no end. There is just the need to let it go.

So what wish is this? This is me, or you, a star, a seed – floating in a vast unknown. We are filled with the hope of something to give, to sing, to become. We are a code wishing to uncoil, a fulfillment wishing to unfold. Simultaneously: we are completely alone, adrift and still we are the most intimate, inextricable essence of life emerging from the void. The floating seed.

A lot of me went into this song, but now I don’t really know what it is. It has become alien to me. Unmoored, barely clinging… It is simply time to let it go.

Freefall (Nest Of Wishes #2)

All is now.

Still breathing, broke open
In the starlight of your ocean.
By all your measures, alive.

No limit, no holding -
We’re in freefall, transforming.
All our lovers combine.

You there – can you feel me?
I’m out here, and it’s still me.
Come reach out your hand to me.

Forgive you, believe you,
Live on, in and through you…

On September 13, 2012, while hiking in Tilden Park, I came upon a bunch of thistles that had just released thousands of fluffy, white seeds. They were covering the ground, clinging to the plants and being whisked away by the wind. It was an enchanting scene – like the forest after a fresh snowfall. I took a bunch of pictures. I thought about how many people would watch one of these seeds drift by and all the children that would run after one hoping to catch, make a wish, and release it again. Here I had found a nest of wishes.

Walking onward and ruminating, I had a thought: I’m like that nest of wishes. My computer’s hard drive has so many musical ideas lying around – each of them the seed of an experience with its own intentions to grow further – not yet knowing its relationship to the world, not yet seeing the landscape where it will root itself and find deeper meaning. I fuss over them, trying to figure out how they fit into some bigger context – a project, a record, a live performance. So often, I get bogged down in this process, failing to understand how it all fits together, unable to foresee how each wild, new lifeform will find its place in the world. Yet… how effortless is this process here: these seeds just fall, then the wind takes them. Nothing is foreseen.

So, I’m going to release some of these seeds. One at a time. I’ll free them, and in the process maybe I’ll free myself a little. I’ll just let each piece be itself – however raw or polished. I’ll exempt everything from “finishedness.” No version is final. Everything is evolving, part of a conversation, capable of being viewed from various angles at different times. These are snapshots of musics and the world between the musics. Each one is free to have its own journey and establish its own relationships over time. Let go, not held back only to be forced into some possibly commercially convenient yet artistically arbitrary collection.

Nest Of Wishes #1: Seedfall

This first installment, Seedfall, is a conjuring of that realm of possible musics – the in-between-seeds space.  Within its 4 1/2 minutes are a few dozen references to older works and foreshadowings of compositions yet to be released.  We float between the musics, timelessly suspended, experiencing past and future intermingled.  My hope is that the listener experiences some of the wonder with which I behold this simple, natural process.

Enjoy,
eO