Category: Music

True Sounds

I’m currently in the brainstorming phase of a new experimental music project, The True Sounds of Nashville. The concept is simple.

We all know Nashville as the Country Music capital of the world. But I live here and what I see and hear is not country music. I hear the engines of cars and trucks on overcrowded freeways and streets. I hear sirens. I hear the hum of AC units cooling large buildings. I hear factories, construction, and the chaos of multiple bands playing cover music up and down Broadway. I hear birds, rain, and thunder.

In the coming weeks and months, I’m going to start sampling the sounds I hear in and around Nashville. I’ll then manipulate those sounds and mix them with my own experimental ambient synths and pads.

I’m not yet sure if this will be an Anderhill project, or a darker, heavier sound more suited to A Cult of Lies. In either case, I’ll keep you updated on the project and a potential release date. – dse

Old iPhone Song Recordings from 2016

This batch of songs was different than much of my songwriting. The songs were a little more experimental, not always following the traditional verse/chorus/bridge format. I believe I was inspired by Bill Callahan at the time.

I’m going to post some shitty-looking videos to my YouTube Channel. Why? Because I don’t care how they look. The entire objective of the channel is to catalog old work. In 2016, I made some iPhone recordings of a batch of ten songs I’d written 7 or 8 years earlier.

When I recorded the songs, the room was dark or I pointed the camera without caring about angles and got the ceiling light. The audio is okay, basic iPhone audio for 2016. Just as I’m cataloging old cassette recordings using Big Yellow, I decided since these are already recorded, so why not?

Remember, the point of the channel is (for now) not to post high-quality videos, but rather to catalog a portion of my more than 1500 songs. Here’s the first song from the collection. – dse

Side Two

A little over a month ago I released an Anderhill EP titled Coalescence. Today, I’m releasing Side Two, a second EP with the same basic vibe, a combination of ambient synths and minimalist drone-based beats.

It’s been fun to program some drums and I’ll likely do more of that up the road. But my next experimental electronic project will likely move away from drums and focus more on live sampling, something I haven’t done in a while. There is a lot of industrial, road, and city noise in my current location and I’m going to take my iPad with me on a walk to capture some of those sounds.

In the meantime enjoy this one. – dse

1995/96 Songs Coming Soon

I took a break from posting songs from my back catalog on my YouTube Channel a few months back. I thought I’d already taken some notebooks I needed up to Maine and was going to start back in when I moved. But I discovered my 1995/96 work is still with me in Tennessee.

I posted the first of 15-20 songs from 1995/96 to the YouTube Channel this morning. I’ll add a link to the list on my songs page once I post a second. In the mid-90s I moved from more traditional country and blues songwriting to more pop-oriented songs and melodies. An occasional blues or country song might have still slipped in, but pop and Americana dominated my writing for most of a decade starting in the mid 90s.

Take a listen and let me know what you think in the comments on YouTube. – dse

Current Projects in the Works

So, I’m still stuck in Tennessee, but I’m making fair use of my time. I have a few projects in the works. Here’s the nuts and bolts:

  1. Cult Boy: I did a complete rewrite of my book A Train Called Forgiveness. It’s been stripped back to a novella and renamed. I’m currently doing a final edit and will proofread once more after that.
  2. Mercy, Mercy: This is in brainstorming mode. A potential novella about living through having a stillborn child. The book would have two first-person narrators, the father, and the unborn/spirit daughter.
  3. 1995/96 Songs: I’ve posted selections from my older song catalog up until 1994 on my YouTube channel. I thought my 1995/96 songs were already in Maine but I found them here. I’ll start posting some tracks in May. I might have to rewrite a few because I can’t find any recordings.
  4. Glitsch: My new website for brutalist and glitchy poetry and photos and music. Check it out at glitcsh.com.
  5. Anderhill: I’ve got a few tracks in the works on my iPad.

That’s it for now. I’m staying busy creatively. But I’ll also need to do some travel and other projects in the near future. – dse

Glitch of G_d

So, I know I said I was going to post less, and I am, but I just released another Anderhill track. It often happens after releasing an EP or an album that I try to do something opposite. This is my first pure noise release. It’s called Glitch of G_d.

At nearly 11-minutes long, the track feels like a 60-cycle hum with 50bpm industrial breath. If you listen closely, you may hear the sounds of cooing pigeons and bagpipes in the distance amongst the digital noise. It often feels like music is trying to break through, but it can’t quite find its way out of the glitch.

I used a lot of 8-bit digital sounds and sound effects and piled on the echo and reverb during mixdown, then I used some filter effects on the final mix. The end result: Glitch of G_d. – dse