The New Album - "Laws of Repulsion"

Here it is folks, the new album completed - "Laws of Repulsion"












The Song List:
1. Obviate, Question, Give
2. Cosmic Disorder
3 .Unholy Magick
4. Divine Forgetfullness
5. Quantum Irrationality
6. Negative Thinking
7. Extinguish
8. Elysian Failure
9. Irreligious Science
10. Obverse Purchase
11. Pathological Solipsism

This album is my return to my love of free-form jazz-rock-fusion and improvisation. My tribute to some of my old favorites - Sonny Sharrock, Bill Laswell, Last Exit, Miles Davis, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Greg Ginn's Gone project, Joe Morris - and some new ones - Nels Cline, Marc Ducret, Marc Ribot, Gregg Bendian, and too many more to mention.

Basically, the music is in the form of a guitar/bass/drums power trio with some extra synthesizers sparsely added here and there to spice up the intros, outros, etc. But what you have as a result is a bunch of very freely improvised jams, mostly first takes, ... to borrow from a John Scofield album title - "loud jazz."

I'll also be posting this album at last.fm and most likely provide a Mediafire "mirror" link.

Please download, burn to CDs, play it loudly, tell your weird friends about it, re-post the link at your blogs, etc.

Jazz Improv Project

I've put my current semi-vocal project album aside to work on some completely new music. I've been immersing myself back into a style that I was heavily into in the 1990's - free jazz improv. Sonny Sharrock, Bill Laswell, Last Exit, and a few others were big on my playlist back then, and I've begun to listen some of the newer guys in the noisy-improv scene, like Marc Ribot, Nels Cline, Gregg Bendian, Joe Morris, etc.

These bands create some incredible music, most of it improvised and created on the spot. And some of it is pretty noisy and chaotic. So I'm forcing myself to try to come up with some jazzy-sounding stuff, and record it as fast as possible with very little preparation. Just hit play and record. I want it to sound very loose and spontaneous, like a trio of musicians in a room just jamming and having fun, making noisy music and musical noise.

It's not as easy as it sounds. I may try recruiting a few folks to see if we can actually get some live jamming done, but we'll see. I may just have to be daring on my own. I haven't played real free-form in a while, so I'm sure I'm a bit rusty. Maybe the guys from Burn Without Me or Moroghor might be daring enough to face this odd challenge. Hmmmm,...

Vocals?? Maybe, but not mine...

The album is on hold for a bit - I've decided to give a copy of it to my neighbor, Clint Mitchell, who is the bassist for The Screamin' Barfys. He's going to give it a listen along with Screamin' Barfys vocalist, Dan "The Man" Flynn, who I might have come up with some lyrics and lay down some vocals. This will be a big "first" for Dimaension X.

I decided to do this, because I just thought the music was missing something. It was a lot of great chord progressions and riffs, but it sounded like it was ust missing something on top, like WORDS. These songs actually sounded like songs for once, so instead of trying to add additional guitar riffs on top, which just wasn't working, I'm gonna wait and see what Dan and Clint come up with.

I like Dan's style with the 'Barfys. It's not my usual style, but I like how his lyrics are somewhere between Jim Morrison and Henry Rollins. His vocal style is more like a more unstable (in a good way) Eddie Vedder, or, again, Mr. Henry Rollins from his early Black Flag days - very raw, but with some interesting lyrical twists.

So we'll see what happens. Either way, I'm not crazy about the music on it's own, so if the vocals don't work out, I may only release a few of the songs that are fine on their own.

New Dimaension X album nearing the end

Nearing the finish line I am! The parts are basically recorded, but I need to give it a few more critical listens and mixdowns before unleashing it unto the universe. It's a bit odd; I'm really not sure of how to describe the music. It's actually very spontaneous, a lot of the parts recorded as I came up with them, so not a lot of forethought went into this effort.

I did use my "Word/Phrase" composition method for the "basic" chord progressions and riffs, but kept it very loose, and revised things that didn't quite work. I also did most of the album with my Schecter Omen-6 tuned to CGCGCD, so I had to completely re-learn the fretboard, too. To help with this, I discovered a very helpful website called StudyBass.com (www.studybass.com - duh?). This site has a great feature that allows you to print out fretboard diagrams with custom tunings, scales, chords, etc. A huge help. Just type in how your guitar or bass is tuned, and then tell it what scales you want to see, and it creates a great printable diagram of the fretboard.

This album is very different than my usual work, which usually has a lot of keyboards and synths. This one is 95% guitar-oriented. Only a few very short and simple synth parts, and a few that are actually guitar with some freaky effects that make it sound like a synth. There aren't a lot of "melodies", mainly chord progressions and riffs that will hopefully keep your head bobbin' and your foot tappin'. I've been listening to a lot of "post-rock" and "post-metal" bands lately, and their music tends to be comprised mainly of very open and free chord structures - the songs mainly rely on simple and repetitive chord progressions, but the variety is in the dynamics of the songs, going from heavy to lighter sections, creating crescendos and decrescendos through sheer volume and tempo changes.

So you may love it or hate it. It could be ground-breaking or a total snooze-fest. But I've been wanting to do something new and different for quite some time, and my work with both Burn Without Me and Moroghor inspired me to delve into unexplored areas.

I also have to work on the cover art, and figure out the best places to post it. Very soon, folks.

What's next?

Okay - here we go - I've been trying to come up with ideas for the next Dimaension X project, and have been immersing myself in a few different types of music:

Post-metal
Atmospheric Black Metal
Devin Townsend
Tortoise

Post-metal bands as mentioned in the previous blog have really been seeping onto my consciousness as of late, much more so than your typical metal music. I just find this kind of music more open and interesting, and capable of going into different directions, unlimited by the usual "constrictions" that most "Metal" bands feel the need to adhere to. It can be subtle and mellow, or heavier than hell. It can be fast or slow. Loud or soft. Brutal or melodic. So much interesting potential.

Atmospheric Black Metal is also an area of great potential, similar to post-metal, where it may have the typical blast-beats and tremolo picked riffs, but it is the haunting atmosphere and general feel of the music that removes it from the usual stereotype. I'm not about to start adding evil screeching vocals to the music. It's more about "atmosphere". I just discovered a great band called Organ, who play all-instrumental "black metal", but they sound more like Tortoise with blast-beats and weird vocal samples.

Devin Townsend and Strapping Young Lad have been coming out of my speakers lately. I've had an odd musical relationship with the HevyOne. At first, I found him to be really annoying, just overdoing the whole "wall-of-sound" thing, but as time has gone on, and I've acquainted myself more with his music, and with the way he creates music that I've come to respect the man and the music more, and even grow to like it a lot. His tuning alone has inspired me to once again re-tune the Schecter in a similar fashion. Dev tuned most of his music to an Open C chord (CGCGCE), but I have tuned to Open C minor (CGCGCEb). Personally, I think the Open C minor is better, because you can easily make the chord Major again with one finger fret. The problem is that I now have to re-learn the whole fretboard and associated scales/modes, which are completely different in this tuning.

Tortoise is a band that I never listened to until just recently. I think I did listen a bit years ago, but just didn't have the patience or musical maturity to fully appreciate them. Their music is open and expansive, jazzy and rockin', improvisational and stricltly composed. Each member is capable of playing numerous instruments, and does so in their live performances, switching from guitar to bass to vibraphone to synths, etc. I'd love to actually be able to put together some kind of similar ensemble of local musicians and do this kind of thing. If only I could actually find like-minded musicians. That's the problem.

So my next album with probably be some odd combination of all of the above. Or not. We shall see.

Post-Metal and beyond

As I approach the completion of the drums and mixes for the 2nd Moroghor album, I am looking at the future of Dimaension X and trying to decide what's next. I am beginning to reach a sense of frustration in the metal music world, and have begun to explore more on the boundaries of what might be known as post-metal. I am finding too many restrictive "rules" and cliches in metal. I want to be a bit more exploratory and daring. Go out on a limb and take more musical chances, rather than adhere to tremolo picking over blast-beats and dark atmospheres.

I've been discovering a few more bands that are more interesting and have more to do with my current musical interests.

From Monuments to Masses, Gifts From Enola and Ahkmed are a few of those bands, along with very experimental bands Maudlin of the Well and Kayo Dot. These bands still have some metal in their nature - loud, distorted guitars and basses, pounding drums, but there is a more experimental and meandering quality to their music.

The first two mentioned I can describe as having similarities to Sigur Ros, but without the annoying falsetto vocals, and with more "rock" in the sound. In fact, Gifts from Enola often sound downright heavy and angry, more like a lighter Neurosis or Isis. FMTM have more of a "pop" sound and can be pretty darn "funky" in spots, even if the beat is odd-timed. And I would describe Ahkmed as more expansive space-rock, similar to Subarachnoid Space or Led Zeppelin during the real long live versions of "Dazed and Confused" or "Whole Lotta Love". And not a blast-beat anywhere on any of there albums. Oh well.

Now, MOTW and Kayo Dot are basically the same band (sort or), being led by c-founder/multi-instrumentalist/composer Toby Driver. Their music contains elements from many different genres including doom metal, indie rock, jazz, progressive rock, post rock, progressive metal and death metal. Their latest album was made available for FREE download at their website. Very cool. Go there and download it now. Really.

So what now for Dimaension X. Frankly, I don't know. I am most certainly still a big metal fan, and metal will always be a significant part of my musical (and genetic) makeup, but I like other stuff, too, and will be incorporating more different stuff into my next projects. When I get around to it.

I am still job hunting, which is a big priority, and the weather right now is hot and humid - not great for sitting at a computer with my guitar as my fingers sweat all over the strings and the computer cooling fans are over-worked. So no music creating just this second. When the weather cools off, I'll start working on some new material, and I will be finishing Moroghor's new album very soon.

Drumming - UGH!!

Drumming - ugh!!!

I started working on the drums for the new Moroghor album. God, I am fricken' AWFUL!

My edrum kit is not exactly a professional setup. Two years ago, when I first got into edrums, I went out and bought TWO of those cheapo ION Audio drumkits at TARGET. Yes, Target.

I spent a few days looking at drum setups online, and basically customized the two kits into one decent setup. The only big problem was with the pedals that came with the kit. Terrible.

So first I built my own triggers from Radio Shack door buzzer parts and used a few actual kick drum pedals, but these were very inconsistent. Recently I upgraded to a new, and inexpensive alternative.

ROCK BAND replacement pedals. That's right. I went to the local Gamestop store and bought one of those $25 pedals that you can buy when you break the pedal that comes with Rock Band. Guess what. It works great. And you can buy two and link them together for double bass action. Which I haven't done yet, cause I'm still unemployed and shouldn't be spending my unemployment compensation on toys and such.

So anyway, back to the original topic. Now armed with an adequate setup, I can play and record decent drums. But I still basically suck, so yes, I will be doing quite a bit of Quantization and correction. And I most definitely will be programming any of the fast, double-bass work.

I admit it way up ahead folks. I ain't Neil Peart or Dave Lombardo. More like an even slower Phil Rudd. Luckily, playing drums for Doom/Drone Metal is not too complicated. So stand back while I have at it. Hopefully I'll be done soon.