CEMETARIES

so i decided to get
a lot of equipment
set up..

got one quarter inch
and
hooked the mic up
to the MR-8
through input
number 1.

into the AB-2 i
split
the CTK-481 in A
and
the Epiphone in B.
The AB-2 then
passes through
the flower pedals:
the TR-2,
DS-1,
RV-3,
and
RC-2
pedals.
this all feeds
into the MR-8
through input
number 2.

a stereo cable
exits out of the MR-8
from phone jack
number 1
to the Spider 111 15.

in a minute i will
hook
the around-ear headphones
up to the Spider 111 15
that is once
I unplug them
from the M-Audios.

Write now i am real lee liking down there.

avey tare - cemetaries.mp3

GRUNT TUBE

Awkward and uncomfortable,
yet appealing.

Jamie creates music that feels
absolutely personal.


Wish I could distinct the difference in their voices..

Blue
Water
White
Death

E-FLAT MAJOR LIVE "VOLTRON" JAM

Enjoy.

CORTEZ THE KILLER

This video is for my Dad.

This video a cover of the
Neil Young
song 'Cortez the Killer.'

It is a collaboration by
director Jim Jarmusch,
bedroom dreamer Bradford Cox,
and traveling buddy Randy Randall of 'No Age'.

I want to say it is a first time collaboration,
especially cuz Jim Jarmush is thrown
into the mix.

Job well done.

LEWIS TAKES ACTION

Studio Version:



I saw him perform this new song named
'Lewis Takes Action'
in Dallas a month ago
at the Granada.
Compare it to his live version..


Live Version:




The guy is brilliant.
Enjoy!

BENOIT PIOULARD

Thomas Meluch better known as Benoît Pioulard is a music artist and photographer.
I you have never heard of this you need to.
Highly, Highly recommended.
He nicely blends recorded sounds, electronics, and atmospheric guitar.

Trust me and listen here.
Learn about him here.
Download his debut 7" EP
Enge.

If you like his music as much as I do
support the artist and 
buy directly.
He used to hand make
the casing to his CD-Rs.

He makes beautiful music.

WEATHER, CLOTHES, THE MONTH OF OCTOBER, AND MY NEW OBSESSION WITH PEDALS

It is cold again. Winter time is coming too soon. The trees will soon start to loose their leaves.. I be able to see the parking lot through the trees off our patio. I will be able to see people on the other side and people will be able to see me. I enjoy the privacy on my patio.. I love being able to open all my windows and not worry about people able to see in. Being on the third floor I have less of a chance of getting robbed also. Both of these are important qualities I look for in an apartment.

It makes me feel like we are living in our own house and I can turn up the music as loud as I want. Being used to keeping my music at a low volume because of my job, I forget how nice it is to turn up. Don't get me wrong, I like that I can listen to any music I want all day long in my own office, but it is just that I really forget how nice it is to listen to whatever you want as loud as you want. I even rearranged the furniture in my living area tonight and played music through the speakers of my surround sound in the living area while I did this to have a more enjoyable experience. Soon enough we will be living in our own house with our more than one bedrooms enjoying our privacy sooner than we think.

It also has been raining a lot lately as well as all night tonight and been an overall crummy day out today. All this rain lately makes me want to stay indoors. This is why I am not a big fan of the colder seasons and more of the warmer seasons. I can take sweating any day over not having a jacket and being without.

----------

It is time to purchase a new coat. Kristin tells me that one of the jackets I wear pretty often, is in need of being replaced. I know this, but I still keep wearing the jacket pretty occasionally because I like that jacket. I think the jacket represents me in a positive way. I would like to get some new shoes too though. I have gotten to the point where I just wear the same pair of shoes everyday to work. Bad idea. Only because it isn't good for your feet to do this. I am very much considering purchasing these Asics soon. As soon as my next paycheck is in, this will be my next large purchase after I pay the bills.

UPDATE: Purchased shoes and waiting for the them to arrive.

I have also started wearing solid color shirts from now on. At one time I bought a lot of graphic tees, but I am over that phase. When I wear solid colors it makes me feel good.. besides, I see the same people everyday and they don't give a shit what I wear.

(I go the the fridge to get a fresh new beer. A Shiner Commemorator. I think about I am low on these already even though I just stocked up on these to save one lucky bottle, after finding out that they will stop producing this anniversary beer at the end of the year.)

It is a good feeling to open a bottle and you don't have to use a bottle opener. That means your beer is local. You can open the beer without denting the beautiful cap that comes atop it. That's right, I collect bottle caps.. I don't keep them anywhere important (they are stored in a huge Cheeto's knock-off container above the water heater), but I have big plans for them. I also have big plans for all my records I purchase.. even though I do not have a working record player at the moment. I plan on building tiny shelves for all them display over the entire wall, as soon as I get an nicer, permanent place.

----------

So it is October and I have now worked at my job for two years now. It certainly doesn't feel like I have been working there that long. I remember when I first got this job, it was right before I visited Charles in Denton and he had a huge Halloween part at his house. Of course I dressed like Shaggy. Just put on a green shirt and brown corduroys. But there was another guy who dressed like Shaggy, but he had gone and purchased a Shaggy outfit from a costume store. He did not have the real Shaggy haircut, like I had at the time. Nor did he have goatee going on as well as I did. He was wearing a fake goatee from his costume supplies. Kristin does a good Velma.

Anyhow, recently I started working on a new passbook that they need done by the end of the month. I spend all Friday working on concepts, I showed some to Jason. He would says that they are hip, now and modern. But we both know that these are these concept ideas and that they will never make it to the printer. I am working with blue this year. I like this idea. I like how we have come to call each of our books the black book, white book and hopefully blue book.

So I am the lucky owner of a slightly used RV-3 pedal. This is a reverb pedal, but it also has channels of reverb and delay. It is the only time in the reverb series that they combined the two features on one pedal. I heard this pedal is totally worth it and is not a disappointment. I almost got pedal-happy there though.. I looked at pedals on Craigslist and found a FDR-1: Fender Deluxe Reverb pedal, which I heard is not so much a winner. I had tried to talk the guy down to $65 from $80, but no luck. And I pretty much lead the guy on until thinking about it for awhile and deciding that I could be using that $80 on something much more needed, like a RC2: Looping Station. If I can get this pedal for a great deal like I got my new RV-3 I am jumping at that deal too.

Xmas is also coming soon. This is time of year when end up spending more money. I like the idea that my parents had last year with, only one gift for each person. This works out well because not only are you saving money but you have thing think pretty hard to find that one thing you will get them. Also another good route is to have a Secret Santa with liquor store variety.

I have recently started trying a new Whiskey called Old Grand-Dad Whiskey. So far I like it well. Taste like whiskey and it is a little higher in proof than Jim Bean. One of the guys at the liquor store told me that it was the whiskey that Billy Bob Thorton drank in Bad Santa. He also said that most people don't like the bottle because of the label. I like the label and it was one of the things that caught by eye.. besides the fact that it was the same price for the same volume on a higher shelf with a higher proof. It has an orange label on it and has an old timey look to it. One Diet Old Grand Dad's tonight and one Shiner Commemorator. Kristin will be home soon and she got me enchiladas.

----------

I am inspired to write this personal rant because of Carey Mercer and his blog entry of his childhood on his blog 'Clouds of Evil'.

I am sure no one has heard of Carey Mercer before or of the band Frog Eyes and solo work under the moniker Blackout Beach. If you have heard of him, let me know. Anyways, I found his blog about half a year ago, through some indie blogs and being a new fan of his music.. but then all the sudden one day I checked and for some reason and it was marked as private and I could not read it.

Well tonight I decided to try his blog again and it wasn't private anymore, so I read some very interesting stories he had written. Besides being a genius at songwriting and playing, he is a very interesting writer as well. I read a story about how over a long period of time he became a musician. It begins with 'Why did I start playing music?' and goes into a long three part series of entries describing his childhood, teenage years and how him and the guitar have become great friends.

Click here to read the first entry of this life story of 'Clouds of Evil' entry entitled 'Selected Memoirs, Part 1: Origins, Kurt, Pork Chops, "The Blazer', Straight-Edge and the end of Striaght-Edge Emotional Music' here

Aa

FUN FUN FUN MATH

So last night I was doing some research on bands that are going to Fun Fun Fun Fest because I am thinking pretty seriously of going.. I just wish Kristin will go and have fun fun fun. Bands I am looking forward to are Atlas Sound, of Motreal (of course), Yeasayer, Destroyer, Neon Indian, King Khan/BBQ, Crystal Antlers and Fuck Buttons.

So the point here is that I was looking at videos of electronic artists like HEALTH and Holy Fuck and came across some great videos on myspace. Holy Fuck talks about how they create and manipulate sounds on the fly with pedals and even a 35 mm film sychronizer. These guys are able to produce electronic-sounding effects without the use of laptops or programmed backing tracks. I am very, very impressed with the techniques of this style of electronic musician.

Breakfast at Sulimay's are usually videos of a group of awesome old ppl who review new music. But check out this interview with Joe from Breakfast at Sulimay's:


Another must-watch for me is Bradford Cox's Daytripping sessions from Pitchfork. During the first two minutes he interviews HEALTH and they talk about their DIY shirts. Fucking King Khan is the man and hilarious. Man I so wish I lived in NY cuz everyone who's anyone plays there.

If anyone else out there interested in this type of math, prog, electronic music don't hesitate to let me know and I can point you in the direction of some other great bands.

Aa

P.S. I gathered my gear together to visit my homie Tomo in Denton tomorrow for some jamming and chili fest!

VINCENT

Today 'Edward Scissorhands' was on A&E.. it brings back memories of when I saw it when I was a kid. I can't believe that movie was made in 1990.. time goes by. I laugh when I think about the first time I saw 'Batman' as a kid.. I saw it in the movie theater with my parents and the music was soo loud I was covering my ears and yelling "IS IT OVER?" or something like that. All Tim Burton's movies that I can remember from being a kid are classics in my book. Especially those two and 'Beetlejuice'.

Anyways as I watched the movie I got on my laptop to do some research on Tim Burton films and early works. I watched some makings of 'Edward Scissorhand' and a short film called 'Frankenweenie'. It was Burton's first attempt at a short film.. Burton started out as an animator for Disney. It stared the child actor, Barret Oliver, that played Bastian in 'The NeverEnding Story', Daniel Stern and Shelley Duvall.

Also I found a black and white stop motion film title 'Vincent'. It is a wonderful short based off a poem by Burton and narrated by Vincent Price about a boy who wildly imagines he is Vincent Price.

Please watch:

Related News: Tim Burton's Halloween Haunte Couture Fashion Shoot

UP PAST 3 AM AGAIN

So... long time, no blog. I believe I got my first comment today! Hooooray! And I got to borrow a bass in the process! Score!

So I got a new amp for our anniversary from my gf.. very nice piece, it has effects on the amp. So this saving me from buying different pedals, which can be expensive. I can test out a bunch of effects to see what intrigues me.. and lots to choose from. So yes I need to put some new recordings up, including the Denton recordings. Good news! I just got Apple Logic Studio 9 installed on the lapi with all the additional content so one step close to getting the other Denton recording on the web with the help of a better program.



Very bummed.. went to a Woods concert tonight and the doors opened at 8, so that mean show starts at 9 (which I called up the venue ' The Loft' and I was told the order would be Opener, Woods, then Closer). So that means they should go on about 10 pm. I show up about 10 til 10 pm and I saw a sign for Woods at 9:30.. SHIT! I need to get in there now and listen to them. I bought a ticket. Went up stairs. They were in the middle of jamming on the end of a song. Then they played one more song and they were fucking done! It was a 30 min set.. nobody does that.. what was the deal.. were they cut short?.. equipment problems?.. too messed up to play? The one song I caught was a cover song, which I love the song, but my problem is that I didn't get to see them perform any of their original material. Very bummed.. plus I wasted 5 bucks parking for 10 mins.

It gets you in a funk, like you don't want to listen to that band anymore, but you know you still like them, so you just don't listen to that band as much anymore. Sucks for them. Anyways laundry day is tomorrow so YAY get to spend have the day doing laundry, which is also the only time I get to hang out with Kristin tomorrow. If you didn't get it the last sentence, it was sarcastic.. I do not like doing laundry, even though it can be enjoyably with Kristin.

Next weekend is Chuck's bach. Gotta get together my wolfpack speech and get ready to be the awkward Andrea's-Brother. Should be fun times, drinking, having good time in swimming pool (hope to have diving board), and titties! Yippy Yippy!

Anyways, ometoomanyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyaaronyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

IN NEED OF A NEW CAMERA

And I think I have found one.

If you have noticed that all my images on the blog are from my childhood, this is because I don't have a working camera or even a smartphone. So in hopes of fixing my current camera, last weekend we went by Wolf Camera for someone to look at my digital camera. The lens is stuck out and it won't power on.. what I figured and from what the guy told me is that it will prob cost about as much to fix it as get a new one. This is the perfect time to finally upgrade to a quality camera and after researching I have decided on a Nikon D40. It is rated fairly well and for the price it is a very good deal. I found a package with an extra lens for under $600. Now all I have to do is pay off my credit card (which will take about a month) so I can charge this new toy. Finally I will be able to take photos of my crap like paintings, music equipment, etc to get my blog more up to date.

Now about new music. I wrote/recorded a rough version of a new song I wrote last night. I badly want to record my collection of acoustic songs I have wrote over the past couple years and I would like to record these serious tracks at good quality. Now most of the time I use the MR-8 and it is decent, but I do have a M-Audio box which allows me to record straight to the computer. I am lacking the software I need to make the quality recordings that I truly want. I could use Garageband.. but I know there are better programs out there and getting a hold of Pro Tools (M-Audio version) or Apple Logic is becoming a diff task. I used to have a working Logic, but I recently noticed it does not start-up anymore.

So time and software are keeping me from updating my blog with new music more often. I also need to knock out the recording from Denton, which I really hope I can do this weekend. The tracks sound great through headphones or my amp, but I am not very pleased with the volume of the recordings.. but I will try my hardest to get what I can out of the MR-8.

In the meantime, enjoy two of my top tracks from the psych-pop sounds of Woods tour only cassette 'Some Shame'. I am getting excited that they will be in town on the 22nd at The Loft.

Woods - Born to Lose
Woods - Military Madness

HERE COMES THE ARK

I thought I had everything AC, until a couple months ago when I discovered 'Ark'.. which is an early recording of 'Here Comes the Indian'. Ark was very hard to track down and I had to do some name switching, by listening to both albums to get the track order correct. I enjoy listening to these two back to back.. there are new tracks and repeat tracks from HCTI but in a different order. HCTI was another AC album that took a long time to grow on me, but I def have grown to love.


Another discovery about AC that I found at Wikipedia, was how on 'Feels' they tuned their instruments to an out-of tune piano:

"All the songs on feels are tuned to our friends piano which was out of tune to begin with. Dave and I made loops from recordings of him playing her piano and we used those loops in the early songwriting process for feels. So since those loops are premade and can't be tuned, the guitars have to be tuned to the loops. it's not out of tune in any tradional whole step/half step kind of way...we're talking microtonally out of tune after years of not being professionally tuned and subtle natural detuning. Kind of like if you played guitar in standard tuning for years but never once re-tuned it to make sure it was right. It would have it's own unique out-of-tune tuning based on what strings you played most often, how hard you played it, the temperature in the room, the humidity, etc... When we went into the studio it ruled over everything we did. Even doctess's live piano playing required us bringing in a professional piano tuner, playing him a minidisc recording of our friend's out of tune piano, and having him try to de-tune the studio's piano in exactly the same way our friend's was. Without those recordings or the loops dave and i made, you wouldn't be able to get it exact unless you tune to the album while it's playing, and even then, you'd have to know which loop in the album we use to tune, which one chord it is, and because of the way we mixed the loop in, it is almost impossible to separate from dave's guitar. I'll never forget when the tuner finished (we had to wait to start recording until he finished) and he stood up from the bench and went 'there you go, the piano's perfectly out of tune.'"

DUCKTAILS/DUCKTALES

Also have been into Ducktails.. and because of this watched the Ducktales movie with my gf on youtube last weeekend. anyone a fan of Ducktails will prob be interested in 'Predator Vision' or 'Real Estate' also.. same guy, different projects. Predator Vision & Sun Araw split LP. Loving the trumpet part on 'Hey Mandala!'.. really getting me in the mood to record some material with a buddy of mine in Denton.

Who thinks Matt should cover the Ducktales theme song with his guitar and no vocals? I can't be alone..

enjoy.
Aa

AND BREATH IT OUT SLOW

Really getting in Kurt Vile's 'Constant Hitmaker' lately. I have music overload pretty often, trying to keep up with everything and totally missed this gem I downloaded last January.. until I read that Spencer Krug and co. mentioned him in a Pitchfork story. Picked up his lasted EP, 'The Hunchback', and older LP on Mexican Summer 'God Is Saying This To You'.. but yet to really given a real listen, but love his LP, 'Constant Hitmaker'. For some reason totally unknown it reminds me of old Ben Kweller, but only because of the playful lyrics.

Constant Hitmaker. Props to the late ill-formed.

I'M THE PHANTOM, I'M THE PHANTOM

Just listening to some Animal Collective, again.. Recently have been listening to Spirit They Gone.. Spirit They Vanished (Click to DL) while painting.. and the album is great for headphones. I would like to offer my blog more than just music insite.. but I will be uploading many things here. One side-project will be my personal music. While another will be selections from my graphics designs.. I want to upload new logos for my AM logo. I would love to get it up to every week, then hopefully everyday just to get some ideas out of my head, I will try to create a logo for my brand AM (Aaron Martin). Sometimes it might be 'am' sometimes it might be 'AM'...... and sometimes I might misspell words or mess up grammar, but please forgive me I am in creating state. So I prob will post a new post later tonight with some ideas.