Plans for 2007
1. LEXICON is being created.
This next vocal album will be a combination of new and lost songs. I will try to keep posting the new songs as they are completed. Ironically, if more people visited the site I would not be so open with my creative process. But for now it is my aim to be an open book. However, until some legal and copyright issues fall into line I must remain weary. LEXICON will be a two-disc set—that is—one disc of old unpublished songs either redone or pretty much left in their present state, and a second disc of new songs.
In an overall sense I wish it to be a combination of what I started out doing ten to twenty years ago, and my most current work. There should be about 30 or more songs, plus added mp3 audio files, jpegs, text files, etc…I’m adding these extra computer goodies to give more options and so that I don’t have to waste paper on a booklet. Soon ALL music will be sold, and traded in none-CD format anyway (stored on non-moving media); it’s the music and the information that are more important now. I also think people would rather co-design the album art, as with Beck’s new album. I’m trying to think in more DIGITAL ways lately.
IMPORTANT THINGY: As with the second part of Tantrum, I would like to leave some of the creation of this album up to you. PLEASE, PLEASE participate and WE can make an awesome album TOGETHER! I will list your name on the credits if I use your idea and I will also send you an email if I use your idea. So…
OLDIES-- Listen to any new songs if you want:
http://www.alexwallmusic.com/music-group-81.html, and then post a Guest List entry:
http://www.alexwallmusic.com/guestbook.html, or send me an email:
http://www.alexwallmusic.com/contact.html.
NUBIES—Listen to any new songs if you want:
http://www.alexwallmusic.com/music-group-80.html, and then post a Guest List entry:
http://www.alexwallmusic.com/guestbook.html, or send me an email:
http://www.alexwallmusic.com/contact.html.
I also want to thank all the people who are commenting to me in private and publicly about Tantrum. To tell you the truth I wish I had been a little more radical with much of the music on the album. I think it has been misunderstood, which is my fault. Regardless, it is what it is. And though it is at the end of a string of CD’s, for me, it is really the first in a new direction.
I want to continue to present new ideas in music through the use of what I call “multiple melody framesâ€, where all parts of the recording are literally their own melodies. Because all melodies still usually exist in the same key, they (by overlapping and intertwining) IMPLY harmony. So theoretically the music is not muddied up with extra notes. The neat thing here is that all these melodies can make a final (almost single) “voiceâ€. Ironically, this “new voice†(a.k.a. Nova Vox) is ONLY HARMONY.
Each melody becomes a pigment in the overall audio image. I’ve tried this a few times as with Morning Star (BSides…), Stutter Fog (Blue Age), the guitar parts in Practice (Knowmad), Moonflower/Prophecy and Passing Away (Moonflower). As with some of those just mentioned, sometimes it can make the song even more cluttered though, especially when mixed with samples. Yet, each of the multiple melodies in the vocals on Follow Me (Tantrum)—there are 16 vocal parts—seem to work out very well together and might be an example of things to come…
I have begun to study the work of George Martin (the Beatles producer) and his son Giles. This year was the 40th Anniversary of Revolver and saw the new Beatles album, Love (a remix of Beatles music done for Cirque de Soleil) released. In 2007 it will be the 40th Anniversary of (what I contend to be the greatest album ever made) Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. By focusing on Martin’s use of the stereo field and the Beatles spontaneous use of other sounds and instruments, I’m beginning to understand why the music they made in 1966-1967 is still ahead of its time—even now! In particular I think Tomorrow Never Knows (Revolver) must have been a song transmitted into John Lennon’s mind from the future, check out the name!
I had “outgrown†the Beatles 20 years ago, or so it seemed. Then in the spring of this year I heard a radio special on NPR about the making of the Revolver. And from that point on I plunged back into their magic to see what other jewels could be mined. It’s different now that I’m recording music myself. And the Beatles work just keeps on giving more and more treasure. I realize now that that period between 1966-1968 was the last time that music was truly transformed. Before that, was when Blues married Classical and they begot Jazz (c.a. 1920’s) and then Rock and Roll (c.a. 1950’s).
And it may be said that the early “Beatles Sound†1962-1966 had multiple parents, including Blues, Classical, Rock, Folk, and Country. But it truly was the Beatles as artists, who added something original to their blending of these styles. It was their inner explorations that sewed the seeds of Psychedelic music and fertilized old Mother Rock and Roll (with a dash of Indian Classical music). Again, it was from within the Beatles own minds not from other previous styles that this transformation occurred. In this way all the music the group did from 1962-1966 was the lead up to the 1966 Revolver-Pepper transformation. And all of their music after Sgt. Pepper’s is the fading echo of that great transformation.
Current popular music has solidified into cliques and formulaic re-inventions of the same old styles. So much of music today is centered around fashion and sex that listening to the radio is like watching Entertainment Tonight, Fox or UPN television. All the seductive posing on album covers and dirty talk in the music is yawningly boring and sells to the people least able to handle money or sexual responsibility—horny, emotionally underdeveloped teens. And for godsakes my generation seems to be slipping into the stale genre of three-chord folk. With the exception of Radiohead and maybe Rufus Wainwright, no one is trying to be REVOLUTIONARY. No one is trying to EXPAND music from the “Pop†side.
Tantrum was a therapeutic album lyrically as I had said in the Tantrum Essays. But I consider it to be only the first step in my search for a more novel sound musically. I DO want to continue with the sticky sweet melodies, serious-sentimental and political topics, backwards experimentation; basically what I have called “Retro Pop†(I think I’m the first to call it that—please let me know if I am mistaken). But I will also add more complexity to the separate instruments and vocals; more sound overall, but with more control.
The new songs on LEXICON will be at the same time grittier and sweeter than Tantrum and they will integrate some new techniques I’ve been working on. I also hope to have a lot more help from other people as well. I want to transform music in the same way the Beatles did 40 years ago, and George Gershwin did 40 years before that. I know how remote the possibility is that a nobody like myself can ascend to such great heights, but as I’ve said so many times, what have I got to lose by trying?
Expected Release Date: December 21, 2007
2. SIMPLE SONGS will be re-mastered and released this spring.
This is the 10-song album formerly known as “A Collection Of Simple Songs†(1994). It is also an archiving of early material. It is mostly folk with some experimental stuff thrown in. It is truly simple in presentation, with hardly any electronic aspect—just guitar, piano, and vocals.
Expected Release Date: April 21, 2007
3. LUMEN is the name of the new instrumental album in the works.
Expected Release Date: August 21, 2007
ON A PERSONAL NOTE: I’m looking forward to this coming year. I wish I had more time to really put the energy needed into this music but it is hard to work at a full-time job and record full-time at night and on weekends. Still, I will do it as long as I am physically able. I’m hoping that performing a few times this coming year will help bring in some much needed money. I need a lot of equipment—keyboard, signal processing gear, a new singing mic, etc… Selling albums at gigs could help.
Thanks for checking in.
And as always…
Thank you for lending your eyes and ears!
