got lots of compliments on last week's sermon (well, two... but that is a lot), so i must have done something right for a change! don't worry, though; i'll screw everything back up this week. just give me a minute.

i've had my mind too focused on matters musical to think about much else this past week or so. of course there's work, food, & relaxing, but beyond that just music. so i haven't given much thought yet to what this sermon might be about. really i've only gotten through the plugging part in my mind.

for starters, the upcoming dissonance is bliss e.p is going to be released by freakshow records, a small bloomington label, as part of their bad taste cassette series (with vinyl possibilities). it'll be a split release; on one side, my glorious dissonance, & on the other something by a project called grimlapse. i haven't heard it yet, but i bet it's good, knowing what i know...

this could be the start of a big happy friendship between brr! and freakshow. i'm afraid i can't start any rumors here (wouldn't be prudent, not at this or any other juncture), so stay tuned. i can tell you i'm already at work on my next full-length album, working title "perpetual emotion machine" to be released somewhere, at least by brr!

i've always been rather addicted to music, at least since junior high. i don't remember enough before that to know what was wrong with me. of course in junior high & even high school i listened to some horrendous crap masquerading as entertainment. & i bought it, & thought i loved it, because my tastes weren't yet cultured enough to handle the real thing. & i mean i listened to half-assed "hard rock", & worse, some of the drivel that passes for "heavy metal". i had some serious problems back then. but the point is that the passion was there even then, if misguided.

when i became a man i put away childish things, including that stuff i'd thought was listenable. but i didn't put away certain toys or cartoons or comic books, which transcend age groups. but yes, as i matured my tastes matured. it was a gradual process & throughout that process i experimented with making my own music, not as much because i thought i was making something great but because i loved the medium, & i loved sound, & i was dabbling simply because i enjoyed it.

i had a few years of keyboard lessons in my early childhood, ending around 3rd grade or so, but that & singing in class is all the formal "musical training" i have. understandably, the mighty mighty ben-boy, my first tape, is keyboard-driven but not exactly glenn gould calibre. in fact it's far more vocal-driven than instrument-driven, sort of oozing all over the line between spoken word & music.

by the time i'd recorded the second ben-boy tape, 420 on an undercover cop, i'd begun experimenting more with alternative instrumentation, although i still didn't have any better recording equipment than a handheld tape recorder & a shoddy stereo. there appeared the first inklings of what would become barbershop. you see, i hadn't taken the keyboard to college, yet i was still hit with the burning urge to record. inspired by the debut tape's "something else", in which the only instruments had been humming & singing, i began attempting to construct background music vocally, in a low-quality homemade 2-track setup. eventually i got my hands on a borrowed 4-track, an event momentous enough that i could finally kill off the mighty mighty ben-boy with the funeral for a ben cassette, featuring barbershop material, other goodies, & the bob dole e.p, a remix e.p which was my only collaboration with murkbox, another freakshow artist.

finally i obtained the figgitty foe, & the barbershop demo was released soon after. now dissonance is bliss a computer-made release, full of loosely-organized chaos. if you like noisy surprises, you need this e.p. coming soon, only from freakshow.

sorry, i didn't mean for this to become the brr! story, but that's how it works sometimes.

the weird thing is that my own music never feels quite the same as other peoples'. i'm really into experimentalism, & when my favorite artists do weird stuff on their recordings i don't doubt them. i just listen & love it. but when i do something odd i'm never quite sure. i know what i was aiming for (if i was aiming at anything, & not just firing wildly), but i can't be too sure how well it works. even on the songs i love, it's a diiferent experience. i do enjoy listening to my own material, & a perfectionist i'm probably not, but there's still a lingering self-criticism that clutters it up with subconscious memories & feelings. maybe that's just what the creative bug does to you.