If you're interested in Fred's studio diary, well, here you are! (Most recent entries first...)
All Tomorrows is now completed and in the able hands of Andy Tillison, who will take month or so to finalise everything. The artwork is basically ready, but we still need to look for a publisher. We secretly hope German prog label InsideOut will find a vacant slot for us as I'm frankly not cut out for distributing. If not, we'll probably go the standard sell-it-yourself road everyone non-commercial is taking these days.
Our deepest gratitude to Andy for letting us redo Arklow and The Sum from scratch - these two tracks have turned out to be the best on the album. Also, and for myself, it has been unbelievably thrilling to have the whole band recording, each one adding their own skills and creativity to create a whole new beast.
On an important side note, The Sum will feature a few vocal lines by Inês, to whom the entire album is dedicated, and who impersonates the female half of an African village. (My gratitude to Paulo Chagas for giving me excellent tips on how to improve The Sum!)
Band rehearsals for our live shows will resume on 9th May, hopefully already with a new drummer (we'll be auditioning three drummers over the next two weeks).
We'll post preliminary mixes of a few songs from the new album soon.
PS: Just finished reading one of the most engaging, but also one of the most depressing, books ever: Bill Bruford's autobiography. I strongly recommend this to any musician, and especially to any drummer out there!
Only a few more days to go, and the last recordings for the album are done!!! One of Paulo's keyboards died, and he bought a Roland Juno Stage, which includes a vocoder, a theremin-style infrared controller, and heaps of the most amazing sounds.
Things are going a bit slow, just as becomes our age. Only another 2 or 3 weeks to go, and everything has been recorded well and properly. Especially Arklow and The Sum have gained a remarkable facelift, thanks to the boundless creativity and good taste of my fellow band members: Luís with his impeccable taste and beautiful bass lines, Paulo with his powerful keyboards, Fernando with his gorgeous melodic guitars, and Adriano with hilarious clarinet lines that no one would eve have expected. Paulo Chagas has done some brilliant flute lines for The Sum, and poor Andy is toiling away at pulling all this together into edible, tasty dishes.
In the meantime, we're all sad to report to our drummer Bruno will leave us in September to further pursue his education. We're currently auditioning new drummers , so new hopes are on the horizon.
Also in the meantime, one gig has been confirmed: 10th October 2009, Gouveia. we hope to have gigs before that though.
And then there were six! Daymoon is now:
Fred Lessing: acoustic guitar, woodwinds, blues harp, lead vocals
Bruno Capelas: drums & percussion
Paulo Catroga: keyboards, lead vocals
Fernando Guiomar: electric guitar, vocalsLuís Estorninho: bass guitar
Adriano Pereira: clarinet, melodica, percussion, keyboard, vocals
Guest musicians:
Paulo Chagas: woodwinds & reedsMaria João Tavares: clarinet
Here a few pictures from a recent rehearsal:
The past weeks have been sheer horror - here the whole story:
The entire album was stored in two places: my internal hard disk and an external back-up disk. During a really, really bad thunderstorm a few weeks ago, my external back-up disk got fried, and my soundcard started acting extremely weird, so I took it to a renowned PC shop. They found nothing wrong with it, but decided to update my Windows XP to SP3, which I knew was not compatible with my soundcard. So I took it back to the shop and asked them to format the C: drive and NOT to install SP3. When I got home, I found they hadn’t installed SP3, but had installed the latest driver for my soundcard type instead, which too wasn’t compatible with my actual hardware, and the only way to remove it was to format the internal hard drive. Which I did, but all of a sudden BOTH internal hard drives had gotten formatted at the same time, i.e., the one with the basic project files and the other one with the second set of backup files! Back at the shop they told me they’d connected my two hard disks in a RAID array (I'd never even heard of that before) because they thought it was a much "cooler" configuration, just that they’d forgotten to tell me. So that’s how I lost the hard drive with all the Sonar files on it. And, as it turned out after all these ordeals, the soundcard had fried too during the thunderstorm. So both my back-up options are gone! Luckily, Andy Tillison has most of h songs safely on his hard disk, and I've managed to rescue two songs from the external hard drive.
So, now I have a new soundcard (Edirol, capable of recording 16 mono instruments at the same time, it even comes with a sort of external mixer – really neat!), and basically all songs are safe, except News From The Outside, which I'll redo, and TranscendenZ, which is lost for good, but perhaps we can tweak the existing MP3 mix, which I think sounds really good. I also had to rebuild most of "Sorry", which is just as well as I've now aligned everything with the click track now, and Luís, our live bassist, has redone all bass guitar parts.
In the meantime, Andy's sent me a re-built framework for The Sum, on which I'm currently working. Poor guy, he's having a really rough time with my music...
Back from Marrakech :-)
Rehearsals are going at a nice rate, mostly with the individual band members to work out their parts. Luís is bringing in all his bass parts written out in proper score! I'm amazed to bits, but must really get used to not straying off or giving it an extra bar here or there. Fernando will only begin working with us in June as he's busy with other projects (Patrícia Vasconcelos, etc.).
While the post-production and mix for All Tomorrows is taking its course, I've finally decided to bring Daymoon onto the stage of reality. Rehearsals will take quite some time, and we'll be aiming only at prog-related venues and events.
The current Daymoon live line-up is:
Fred Lessing: acoustic guitar, woodwinds, blues harp, lead vocals
Bruno Capelas: drums & percussion, incidental guitar
Paulo Catroga: keyboards, lead vocals
Luís Estorninho: bass guitarFernando Guiomar: electric guitar, vocals
Guest musicians:
Paulo Chagas: woodwinds & reedsMaria João Tavares: clarinet
I wonder what my music will sound like in a 5-piece combo...
Side-note on last weekend's Gouveia Art Rock:
As I haven't seen any reviews on PREC yet, here my own impressions:
PREC are Portuguese brass wizards Paulo Chagas (sax, flute) and Fernando Simões (trombone), of prog celebrity act Miosótis. I saw this rather unusual duo at the Gouveia Art Rock Festival recently, and while I'd heard a few sound bits of their studio work before, I did not know what to expect really, except that their performance would have to feature plenty of weirdness, especially due to Paulo's rather complex compositions and experimental performance and recording techniques, known to me from his excellent solo project Zpoluras.
So here I was on a sunny Sunday morning at the Gouveia library auditorium, where the duo had taken the stage, and they literally blew the audience away in an, alas, far too short performance. Just two men, without any other backing musicians - that's PREC for you! I've never heard anything quite like it, but I did like it a lot! In a 20-minute rollercoaster ride, Paulo and Fernando first left the audience speechless with a wild, free improvisation, with Fernando using literally every part of his trombone to produce sounds and music. These initial minutes were definitely not for the faint of heart! After that, the improvisation moved seamlessly into a stunning trip through the duo's own history and musical history in general, with beautifully interwoven references to the best of avant-prog, known jazz pieces, rock, but also satiric hints at the tackiness of Portuguese 'muzak'. All this wouldn't work without the duo's excellent performances of course, and their unique sense of creating music in a highly intimate way.
If there was any drawback at all, I found their attitude a bit too serious for the humorous tone of their music, but what else can one expect on an early Sunday morning?
All in all, while only a short performance, I was thrilled to see this marvelous duo do miracles with only two instruments, and sincerely hope more shows and – pretty please! – an album will follow.
I've left my jam band SP'AM to focus fully on Daymoon, and give my family more time. Sad, I know, and it hurts me too, but sometimes as man's gotta do what a man's gotta do...
I had it coming, of course... Andy's asked me redo The Sum as my timing is really bad on this.
The Flood. Everything's wet and flooded...
Fortunately we live high up on the hills. The cats cuddling snug and cozy in the bed...
Looks like there'll be an excellent new prog festival in Lisbon in September! This is already the second event we have in Portugal, apart from the pioneering Gouveia Art Rock. Judging from the different line-ups, I'd say the new one is more aimed at mainstream prog, featuring bands like Flower Kings and The Tangent, while the mother of all Portuguese prog events, Gouveia Art Rock, is more eclectic, with this year's line-up featuring Mike Keneally, Van der Graaf Generator and Thinking Plague. Excellent choices for this year's musical entertainment...
All acoustic drums are down now.
Andy has shown me first drafts of his work on All Tomorrows, and I'm excited beyond belief! Not only is his mixing work stunning, but his additional performances and arrangements and even re-arrangements are fantastically good!
Thomas's guitars in 'Sorry' went far beyond my wildest dreams - how come he never recorded before? His style is perhaps somewhere in-between Brian May and Mike Keneally.
Recordings of the acoustic drums for All Tomorrows began yesterday, at Extravaganza Music Studio in Oeiras, Portugal. I'm utterly impressed with Bruno's GIANT acoustic drum kit and the number of microphones there were placed on, around, inside and above it! The sound quality of the recordings is equally impressive - I'm really glad Bruno chose this studio for me. My ears are still ringing from all the noise though...
In the meantime I've entered some kind of post-birth depression as all my actual creative work on the album is now over, leaving a hollow feeling in me.
Here the final track list:
1 Song
2 TranscendenZ(guests: clarinet Maria João Tavares, sax Paulo Chagas,
flugelhorn Luca Calabrese, guitar solos Pete Prown)
3 Human Again4 All Tomorrows
(guests: vocals Hugo Flores, keyboard Andy Tillison)
5 Marrakech(guests: keyboards Jay Schankman)
6 Sorry(guests: guitar Thomas Olsson)
7 Bell Jar(guests: vocals Mark Lee Fletcher, keyboard Andy Tillison)
8 First Rain(guests: vocals Hugo Flores)
9 Arklow(guests: additional vocals Mark Lee Fletcher)
10 News From The Outside(guests: keyboards Jay Schankman, vocals Mark Lee Fletcher)
11 The Sum(guests: sax Paulo Chagas)
All drums by my good brother-in-law Bruno Capelas.
Next up: finalising Fabric of Space Divine.
Just a brief note: if you have children - and even if not - do yourself the favour and get Tove Janssen's Moomintroll books. I first read them when I was a mere 19 years old, and then read them to my daughters and other people in my family as goodnight stories. Simple as they are, they can change a life by means of their beauty and powerful philosophy.
I am awed that a prog band made some of the stories into intriguing and beautifully textured music: The Hemulic Voluntary Band, by the Swedish band Ritual. Utterly addictive.
Currently looking for a studio where to record the acoustic drums for All Tomorrows, but prices in Lisbon are 2-10 times higher than say in London. Hsve Portuguese studio owners gone mad?!
Back from Sweden from a fantastic prog event with, among others, Isildurs Bane and Mike Keneally! And I met Mr Keneally in person during the backstage party :-) Pics here.
And so the Fabric Divine will, Andy Tillison of UK prog act The Tangent will co-produce and mix All Tomorrows. Here the list of guest musicians:
Bruno Capelas (Portugal) - drums & percussion
Luca Calabrese (Italy) - flugelhorn
Paulo Chagas (Portugal) - sax
Mark Lee Fletcher (USA) - vocals
Hugo Flores (Portugal) - vocals
John van den Oetelaar (Netherlands) - vocals
Thomas Olsson (Sweden) - electric guitar
Pete Prown (USA) - electric guitar
Jay Schankman (USA) - keyboards
Maria João Tavares (Portugal) - clarinet
All Tomorrows is almost ready now! And some tantalising hints have been made as regards the producer/mixing engineer for the album - let's wait, hope and pray to the fabric divine.
Inês and Joana are back tomorrow - I couldn't bear another day...
My apologies to Jay and Musicman for not having done anything at all - my vertigo is killing me (some stupid thing in the middle ear that makes me feel spinning like I'm on a roller coaster whenever I move my head).
Mark Guertin had found a singer for Fabric of Space Divine, but the singer ditched out. Third singer already who gave up for for religious reasons :-(
Reading: Spook Country by William Gibson, Sylvia Plath's journals (once again). (A M Homes was a disappointment in the end - the book starts off brilliantly, but then peters out...)
Listening to: Make A Jazz Noise Here by Frank Zappa, Green and Blue by Sara Valente.
Inês and Joana are in the States for two weeks, and I'm bored to death :-( Well, here some updates:
All Tomorrows
Tomas Olsson has recorded guitars!!! Apart from that, I'm still working on The Sum, and I've begun a short piece with rhythmic variations, featuring heavy guitars, mini-moog and plenty of clarinet.
First Rain (vocals by Hugo Flores)
Sorry (guitars by Tomas Olsson)
Arklow
All Tomorrows (vocals by Hugo Flores)
Human Again (guitars by Tomas Olsson)
Permafrost
Bell Jar
The SumTranscendenZ (clarinet by Maria João Tavares)
I'll start working on Jay's song next week.
Reading: jPod by Douglas Coupland and The Mistress's Daughter by A M Holmes.
Listening to: Bach (violin sonatas), Phideaux Doomday Afternoon, Flower Kings The Road Back Home
Not a holiday here, alas... Some small updates:
All Tomorrows - All bed tracks are down. Tomas Olsson (Isildurs Bane musicologist) said he'd try and cut some mad guitar for it this month and next. Michael Dorp has vanished into thin air, so maybe I'll trust Tomas's judgement and will leave my own vocals in.
Fabric of Space Divine - Davis is recording drums, Mark Guertin is mixing, and I finally found the missing Turkish singer :-)
Flora Majora - The Flower Kings tribute project. I've been working on a fun track written by Mark Tomer, called The Gardens of Virahanka. Next up is a song called Sultry, written by Jay.
Just read through all the ups and downs below. Did anyone ever say I am consistent? Still, despite making music again, I certainly think of it - and feel it - differently. First of all: I cannot NOT make music. It is the language I speak best. But I am also more humble about it (says he), more distanced, and I do not think I will ever again take it seriously. To believe one is an Artist makes us blind to the things that really matter. And yet, if I have this in me, if I am filled with melodies, with ambiences, with rhythmic structures, then I must let them out. The difference between craft and art, between being an artisan and an artist? Go figure. What matters to the world is what one produces, but in the end what matters to those closest to us is who we are. And the older I become, the more I see that we cannot change ouselves. All we can do is become more ourselves. More honest about ourselves and make the best of it.
Reading: Intimações de Morte by Ana Teresa Pereira who confesses to be influenced Iris Murdoch as well as Sylvia Plath. What more could I ask for? Gorgeous writing.
Listening to: Beethoven's string quartet op. 130 and 133. Bach's St. Matthew Passion.
Cooking: diet recipes :-( Oh well, I'm trying to make the best of it. At least I can lend wings now to my vegetarian phant'sies.
Click here for a few studio and live pics with my jam band SP'AM.
While Fabric of Space Divine is still undergoing it's VERY slow birth process, my new album is taking shape. To keep things flowing more easily, I decided to rely mostly on local musicians this time round, except for the vocals, basically all of which will be done by Michael Dorp of Flying Circus. Drum duties will be performed by Bruno Capelas, and a few tracks will have Paulo Chagas on the sax. Here the track list:
First Rain
Sorry
Arklow
All Tomorrows (vocals probably by Hugo Flores)
Human Again
Permafrost
Bell Jar
The SumI initially meant this to be a concept album again around the deceptively simple word 'Love'.
Below the album cover (click on the thumbnail for a larger picture).
Happy New Year. And yes, Daymoon's on MySpace now :-) And here a press clipping from the poetry event. Yours truly can be seen standing on the far right in the larger picture (click on the thumbnail for a larger picture).
Maybe I should quit music altogether? This poetry thing is working out much better than anything else. Here' the deal: 9th December, poetry & music at Pena Palace in Sintra, Portugal. Posh, I say, posh. Here's the room (called 'Salão Nobre'):
This time, I and half a dozen up-shot poets. Excellent poetry, I must say. Way over my head. Have spent the past two weeks talking poetry with poets aged 30 to 84. At least now I can define what's a poem: like a full-fledged sonata in just one minute, Take this, by Alexandre Vargas:
MONSERRATE
Digo Monserrate.
A palavra toca das suas inúmeras patas o meu corpo desviado.
...a concavidade do som que se desfaz em bola de
sabão sobre o terreiro que aquaticamente estala, os anos
que passam ao fundo...
Bloody hell, I say. This is SO good! Anyway, if you must see the poster for the event, here it is.
At the same time, I provided a bunch fo tracks the Flower Kings tribute project Flora Majora, vocals and lyrics by genius Mr Michael Dorp of German pro act Flying Circus. Just you wait...
Looking at the below, it sounds like I'm really busy making music all day long. Fortunately that is not so. Creativity induces a state of mind - or rather an absent-mindedness - that I have come to mistrust and dislike.
Another poetry event is on the horizon, something more up-scale at Pena Palace, apparently together with Portuguese string ensemble Os Corvos. The mayor said something about a 'period' event. I hope he won't put a wig on me.
Currently reading: Plato (I had forgotten how soothing Plato is), Bret Easton Ellis (someone from a strange past once recommended this, but it is rather gruesome), and still plowing through Neal Stephenson's 3000-page Baroque Cycle.
Currently listening to: The Microscopic Septet (excellent big band jazz with a touch of humour, never fails to put me in a good mood), Rickie Lee Jones, and cycling through all my Peter Gabriel records.
What else have I been up to? Here is evidence:
At night, the garden teems with salamanders. Don't miss the Leonids meteor shower this year, on 17th and 18th November (peak time 4.45 am GMT)!
With the rain and thunderstorms coming down on Portugal as if we were on some world that's being terraformed, let me update my studio log a little with what's new.
Fabric of Space Divine is being mixed by Mark in Canada. Poor Jeff spent a whole bunch of money on some quack producer in Florida, and got back more mess than what it already was. I can't say how sorry I am about this :-( Now Mark is giving it a try, and his new setup is perfect for the task. He'd already done a superb job on producing and mixing Anthem of Dust for the Ghost Particle Project. (Incidentally, I am happy to report that Siva has made it into the translation world and is making a little extra money)
I am working at a VERY leisurely pace on a series of new solo tracks for something called 'Confessional Music'. Maybe at some later stage, this will become another full Daymoon album.
At the same time, I'm playing with my old Portuguese band SP'AM again, with new tunes, and a new bassist. Here the band members:
Franjas Nelson Rui (and me)
This is mostly a jam project, with a few more structured rock songs. The basic idea is to have fun, and to play live in a few local bars here in Sintra.
Apart from that, I'll record some ambience stuff for Hugo Flores's next Project Creation album, which also includes almost all other Daymoon members, as well as Miosótis reeds and woodwind man Paulo Chagas.
The Vanity Press Music project will start soon :-) Hopefully even with some online radio!
And that's it for today.
New ambience track: Winter im Luch (Permafrost). For my brother and his brave wife. Das Luch im Winter, hinter Eurem Haus, aus der Sicht eines Rehes, das frei über die Felder rennt, springt und fliegt.
The poet hath spoken! Last Friday, I presented poems of mine and some by other poets at the annual Sintra book fair. The event was hilariously vanity press-ish, before an audience comprising my extended family, a few neighbors, the village mayor, and a handful of Sintra town hall worthies who definitely didn’t have the faintest clue what I was going on about, but greatly appreciated Inês’s call of ‘Vai para casa, malandro!!!’ (go home, you lazy git). Fellow poet Leonel Machado had a much smaller group of followers, in fact only himself, and was the more nervous for it. Apparently, the town hall will produce a video of the event.
My next song's gotta be called It's Too Fucking Hot... like 40 degrees centigrade! What's the point of living in a beach country if it's too fucking hot to go to the beach??? Anyway, enough bitching - my latest solo track Sorry is now basically ready. Have a look at the download section. As always, I will try to talk my defenceless friends into adding a more expert touch.
Here the lyrics:
SORRY (to friends long gone)
How to say sorry - blank feeling like a pre-euro coin now
…falls accidentally in my hands
What was this? What is it now?
Now is the second-to-last round
These are the final decades, nothing but catastrophe can bring change
Weeks blurring past like a speed train
Weeks blurring past like a speed train, the past a big bowl of mush
That pushes me back into the silent halls of the mind
Sorry, I didn’t mean it - I’m just a little lame
A halo of forgetfulness surrounds me
Sorry, I didn’t mean it - I’m just getting dumb
Here I’m melting in the summer sun
Sorry, I didn’t mean it - cerebellum was taking over
Must have caught a Trojan in my brain
Sorry, I didn’t mean it - I grab the baseball stick and…
The violent need to feel someone’s cartilage yield
To bite through flesh, kick bone to pulp
While thunderstorms rage inside your middle ear
And multiple heartbeats throb up your neck
Golden fireworks of violence bloom across your sight
A taste of burnt rubber on a scorched lump of tongue
Broken flowers, falling towers - does anything mean anything at all?
When they smile at you on the TV show - does anything mean anything at all?
Sorry.
Come to think of it, I never explained what made me quit music. It's simple: I was - and am - fed up with taking music seriously. Any form of art at that. Yes, I still love making music, playing, making up stuff, but not as before, and not in the way so many people make 'art': to be loved and recognised, to get their egos patted and fondled. Because that means to lie and cheat and hide the boring part of ourselves. Art is about being loved for what we create. It boosts our ego. But so does being loved for what we really are. And if we're lucky, someone will love us for all that we are, taking the good with the bad. Which of course requires us to do the same in the first place.
That's how I see it, and with that in mind it is hard to take myself seriously anymore, unless I am a genius, which I am not.
Don't worry, it's all nothing in the end. The crap part of going past 45. Thanks to Inês, Joana, my sister and good ole pal Siva I'm feeling quite happy again. And Gerk helped too :-) I promise I'll keep on working on the odd tune called Sorry. Inês is down with a flu, and I can feel it working up my bones already as well. And that despite the foul tropical heat.
No one reads this anyway, so what the fuck... [I'll delete this if you complain]
A little music done, in a private sort of way. No, not hidden, nor does it appear to be unwelcome to anyone, but oddly enough it is to myself. I've lost it, it's gone. What comes out is mechanical movements, boredom. I cook better than that. Maybe time to do what I said all along: 'if life is an art, mine shall become a masterpiece.' I doubt it will of course, but I'll keep a distrustful eye on myself. Maybe it was all vanity, maybe it is. Writing here certainly is, hence no cure for me [why the fuck do I like my own words???]. I'll stick to growing fat and old then. Anyone waiting for a resolve? Sorry to disappoint: it might the perfect time to become a good man, but my name is Fred.
If any decent tune comes out in the meantime, I'll be certain to post it. What a pitiful waste though of time, money, everyone else's talent and misplaced love. Sorry is the least I can say. [When I was a teenager, an analyst told me once to get off my high horse; I guess the horse has finally come to its knees of its own account]
The real day moon, as seen from my window:
For Inês:
A pavlov soul, a pavlov love
Oh all these years in vain
But now, across the table
Through the still glow of the candle
And the golden veil of tears,
The warm radiance of you
And mighty Orion fill the night.
So tomorrow the journey begins,
No maps, no compass, no pavlov bells:
A pomegranate our luggage,
We shall learn the sky anew
And I breathe you
Fabric of Space Divine is my swan song. The album will be completed by the band.
The View From My Window:
And now to the news:
Three more songs will be added next week:
Separation and/or Difference - written by Paulo Chagas (Mispel Bellyful, Miosótis), performed by Paulo Chagas and myself. A rather peculiar track with a sixties Istambul feeling to it - Paulo with gel in his hair, riding a Vespa along the Bosporus maybe.
Evening Sun - written by Álvaro Silveira (Miosótis), performed by Álvaro, Paulo and myself. I'm still working on the final mix. Gorgeous groove, I had a great time tracking the bass and electric guitars for this.
Anthem of Dust - written by me, vocals by Michael Dorp (of German prog band Flying Circus), acoustic drums and electric bass by Mark Guertin (Daymoon), keyboards, flute and guitars by myself.
The album is taking shape now. There are three long suites, with each one being written by one of us Mispels alone, and the other two Mispels doing their best to ruin it ;-) Here some preliminary info about a few of the tracks:
Metaphysical Trash - Paulo's suite, is based on a poem by Fernando Pessoa. As with all of Paulo's music, this is a complex and often strange piece of music, ranging from zappaesque stuff to contemporary classical music and medieval sounds. The vocals are by British singer Rikkie Rixta (I doubt that's his real name, but MAAAN, does he have a voice!!!). I'm having a tough but also great time laying down the bass for this.
A Handful of Loquats And Then The World - My suite, a good deal simpler than Paulo's. The story of a man who ate a loquat, then a lot of other stuff, then his girlfriend, then the neighbours, then the trees, and eventually everything, which includes himself. The vocals will be by Bruno Fazenda.
If I Were Fred - Paulo imagining he's me. The result is quite hilarious.
Vasco's suite is still in the making, but there will also be a handful of smaller pieces, one of them being a beautiful and very intimate acoustic guitar piece by Vasco, as well as a variation on this by me.
Alberto (Oficina Sonora) is our drummer now, and the intially acoustic set has turned into something quite electric :-) First concert: FNAC Colombo (Lisbon), 28th July, 9 pm. Pic of me rehearsing with the guys:
Two songs are now up for download. All for free. That's probably the best policy anyway: those who are lookign for freebies get their freebies. Those who are willing to help would have done so anyway. AND ARE ALREAYD DOING SO!!! Not many, but all the work has been worth it!!! Siva, here come the laptop...
Davis has recorded further drums for my suite, but there are problems with the WAV files :-( I have added rather weird v-drum sound on top.
First rehearsal with a real drummer!!! Alberto of Paulo's Oficina Sonora. I hope he'll stay with us. Great drummer. Incidentally, here a pic from our Gouveia Art Rock show case:
New song October Sky, by Daymoon's Jeff Markham.
New song Separation and/or Difference, by Mispel Bellyful's Paulo Chagas. Featuring David Byrne-style vocals by Mr Zpoluras himself!
Antares will go without my additions :-( Just as well, I was being far too melodious anyway.
Davis has recorded the drums for the first half my suite for the new album. Vasco and Paulo can begin recording their additions now.
Álvaro has written a fabulous, sort of minimalistic song called Hip Hop - I'm trying to write a bass line for it, but it's really hard without getting too rhythmic.
The Ghost Particle Project is well under way:
December Fireflies - lyrics by Ghost Particle, music written and performed by Daymoon
Anthem of Dust - lyrics by Ghost Particle, music written and performed by Daymoon
Antares - instrumental, written and performed by Mark Mamanta and Logan. I contributed ethnic percussion, flute, recorders, and keyboard.
Completion date for Fabric of Space Divine set for end of June. In July, the album will go to the sound engineer for the final mix and mastering. The album art will go into production at about the same time. We also have a new bass player: Mark Guertin, from Toronto. Mark will perform a large part of the bass parts on the album. New set of songs begun for next Daymoon album: Love Songs!
The showcase presented at the Gouveia Art Rock Festival in April went really well - for the first time in my life, I was not one bit nervous. Rehearsing with the band to extend the showcase to a series of 40-minute shows which co-founder musician Álvaro has secured for FNAC shops in Lisbon and other Portuguese cities for July - September, with other venues to follow.
Vasco, Paulo and I have begun recording our respective suites! Davis Raborn is already recording the drums for my suite (called 'A Loquat And Then The World'). Paul's found this unbelievably good singer from the UK, who will hopefully do all the vocals on the album!
5 April 2005
Recording a couple of fund-raiser songs with Daymoon for my dear friend Ghost Particle. The results will be up for sale soon. Also rehearsing my pass parts for the Miosótis showcase in Gouveia. Fabric of Space Divine is still taking its time, but it'll get there eventually.
19 December 2004
Daymoon finally has its own voice: Jeff Markham, from San Jose, CA. Jeff also plays mighty good keyboards!!!
21 September 2004
The krummhorn thingy made it into the album and sounds rather hilarious. The whole haphazard contraption withstood about 10 minutes of wild playing, and then came apart. I'm re-recording most acoustic guitars and a lot of bass guitar parts, Davis is working the drums on the first section of the album. I'll send CDs off to Christof and Nick this week, for their vocals. Those CDs will travel a lot: one to far-way Sweden, and the other to even farther-away Tasmania! Apart from that, I've had hardly any time for music over the past weeks - work, work, work.
Listening to Spock's Beard, Guy Manning, the new Flower Kings album, and Discus (mighty fine prog band from Indonesia).
Spent last week in Southern Portugal with the family, and although I had to work on my laptop for most of the time, I got a little time off as well (see pics below). Diary entry, while listening to Joni Mitchell's 'Travelogue':
Almost Africa. Mid-September in southern Portugal. In the dark terracotta shade, a sensual breeze waltzes like hot dervishes around my half-naked skin. In front of my laptop, armies of words to be translated tease and tire my cramping fingertips. The blue-brown smell of sap-bleeding pine groves and salt from the sea. The pair of headphones kills the cicadas. And when no one else is around me, Roine Stolt is so damn right about Travelogue: oppressed wells of tears at nearly every corner of the mind. I wish I had such a story to tell. Some skins are so thin. My laptopped kingdom for a cigarette...
31 August 2004
Davis and Vasco have sent me draft recordings for various parts of Fabric of Space Divine. Can't do anything though at the moment as I'm being plagued by the curse of my profession: tendinitis. Bought a kind of shawm or krummhorn thingy at the medival fair in my village - I wonder whether there's room for it on Fabric of Space Divine? No word yet from any of the singers :( Oh well, as patience is not a virtue of the young, I can't be old yet.
Stunning jazz concert by Oficina Sonora last Friday!!! All Mispels were there, plus all members of my Portuguese rock band SP'AM, as well as the most faithful prog supporter Portugal has ever seen - João Troviscal Costa :-) Photos in the Pictures section.
21 August 2004
Klas Assarsson had to give up on the project, so all the drumming is now at the charge of Davis.
13 August 2004
Done! The last track is down. Pooohf. In the meantime, I've begun recording bass, percussion and woodwinds for two solo projects that Hugo Flores of Sonic Pulsar is working on. Solid sci-fi prog. More of this later...
10 August 2004
I'm leaving the last track for later, as everyone else is now recording their (damn English grammar!) own bits. Mispel Bellyful time! Looks like our second album will be a good deal wilder and stranger than our debut album. Even some Teutonic wordings ;-) Reading Baxter's leaf-tuner Evolution - this man's simply a genius!
5 August 2004
The base track for the second-last song, God vs Zero Kelvin, is ready now. Turned out to be pretty symphonic, as it should :-)
29 July 2004
Dee Long (Canada) is now on board too! The hero of my teenage years, who started me on science fiction music, will sing on my album! Dee will start recording in September, as he's finalising his forthcoming solo DVD (brilliant hard sci-fi rock, trust me!). But that's fine for me as work will be keeping me from recording anyway for the next few weeks. And Nick Storr and Klas Assarsson too will begin recording over the next few weeks. This is damn exciting! So here the new line-up:
Australia Nick Storr - vocals Canada Dee Long - vocals Germany Thomas Nehring - piano Portugal
Inês Baptista - vocals
Paulo Chagas - reeds & woodwind
Fred Lessing - various
Vasco Patrício - guitar
Ricardo Pinto - trumpet
Fernando Simões - trombone
Sweden
Klas Assarsson - drums, percussion
Christoff Jeppsen - vocals
USA
J. Davis Raborn III - drums
22 July 2004
Davis is recording the best drums I could ever have imagined. He's such a perfectionist, and perfect it does sound! Paulo recorded a fantastic sax quartet for the end of Expansion. And I've contacted Dee Long (former Klaatu, still makes unbelievably good sci-fi rock) and asked him if he wants to sing the klaatusian part in Expansion.
7 July 2004
And the main drummer's been found - lost & found, indeed: Davis Raborn III is back!!!! And he's begun recording already. Fucking A, dude! Davis ROCKS!
29 June 2004
Haven't recorded much, but I've finished writing all tracks for the album. A lot has happened though: I've finally found all my guest musicians, and some of my all-time heroes have agreed to work with me! Christoff Jeppsen (Isildurs Bane) and Nick Storr will provide vocals on most tracks. Apart from being an incredibly talented keyboarder, guitarist and composer, Nick (from Australia) also has an incredible voice!!! But more luck even: Klas Assarsson, also of Isildurs Bane, has agreed to record drums and percussion for some of the tracks! I'm still looking for a main drummer though as I can't imagine that Klas will have all that much time available. For the piano track on Trinity, I've managed to persuade Thomas Nehring. And Inês will make her vocal debut on the Egyptian track! I'm also thinking of adding some trombone to one of the tracks, and that'd be a job for Fernando! So, with Paulo and Vasco from Mispel Bellyful, that's an awesome line-up of people who are so much more talented than I am...
Now all the unnerving file exchanges have started, and I'm dying to hear the results.
So here the basic line-up so far:
Klas Assarsson - drums, percussion
Walter Bäbler - drums
Nick Storr - vocals
Christoff Jeppsen - vocals
Inês Baptista - vocals
Paulo Chagas - reeds & woodwind
Vasco Patrício - guitar
Fernando - trombone, vocals
Thomas Nehring - piano
and me myself on all the restOh, and the cover is basically ready as well:
(click for a lager version)
Sadder news: Mispel Bellyful will be on ice for a few months - I just don't have the time :-( That won0t keep us from playing live of course, but we simply can't find where places to play!
9 June 2004
Had to scrap the new FoSD piece, despite the nice tapping. It just doesn't fit in.
7 June 2004
How on earth does one deal with an album that's most likely 90 minutes long? I really don't want to stretch it needlessly, nor do I want to cut it down to 74 minutes. Damn damn damn. And still looking for drummers. The very gentlemanly Nuno Lourenço (of Prognosis fame) gave it a shot last week, but he felt very frustrated about my V-Drums, which are good enough, but not easy to get used to. (Hope he didn't feel so frustrated about my food...) I've contacted a few people in the meantime, including two singers, but as they're all celebrities in their own right, I'm not sure they'll want to play a part in my home-brewed little drama. I confess it's frustrating... (should I stick to cooking?) In any case, I had to add a further track, as the jump between the first digital being and the cosmos-wide expansion of beings based on pure information (structured energy) is just too abrupt. And I also thought it was time for an instrumental. A little musical confession: the tapping technique of Trey Gunn and Micheal Hedges has influenced this new piece quite a bit. I've begun recording without any drums at all, which now makes me entirely dependant on a real drummer. Maybe this is just to avoid launching an album once again with programmed drums, out of sheer impatience. After all, I just found out that it took New Eden Orchestra eight years to get their album ready!
Finished my part in a new Mispel Bellyful song. Made it even weirder than it already was. Vasco wrote a great new song that perfectly conveys the feeling of being where he was: a Caribbean island. With this strange lazy and yet melancholy feeling of emptiness, a slight wind, being lost in a mountainless seascape. Not sure what to do with it. Difficult task. For the sake of the band's reputation, I've decided to keep my vocal explorations at a minimum.
23 May 2004
Finally time again to continue recording. The base track for Digital is almost ready, Beyond.Man is ready, and Expansion has just begun. I also started working on a new MB song by Paulo, called Setes. WEIRD stuff, I tell you!
17 May 2004
A little break in-between my professional chores. It's 'too darn hot', and I can't even concentrate. Not even on music. The track 'Digital' is running into deep mud without a drummer! I've tried João Jacob, but he hasn't probably got the patience to do strange polyrhythmic stuff. I'll re-record the keyboard parts of Beyond.Nature on a real piano some time this week, as well as the female backing vocals for Ice.Prospector. Paulo's sent me the bass guitar score for a new Mispel tune, and I can't even read it! That'll take a while to figure out!
6 May 2004
The first post-debut meeting will be this evening, accompanied by a long-promised octopus rice stew by Vasco. Fernando Simões is now the fourth Medlar/Nesperado, and will do backing vocals and later maybe lead vocals, apart from his trombone. The agenda for tonight is to see what comes next. It is now indisputable that we will play live, but it looks like this will require a fairly huge stage line-up, and we still haven't got a drummer even. In any case, the stage line-up might be this:
Fernando - trombone, vocals
Vasco - guitar, maybe backing vocals
Paulo - reeds & woodwind, maybe backing vocals & acoustic guitar
Myself - electric & acoustic guitar, vocals, angklung; even though I'd love to, I won't play bass as I simply can't sing and play bass at the same time.
??? - drums
??? - bass
??? - keyboards (maybe Vasco's brother?)
??? - hopefully a percussionistWe're aiming for August for our stage debut, most likely in Peniche, as a support band for Zappanoia. After that, concerts will hopefully follow in Lisbon, I'm dying to play at the Comuna theatre!
27 April 2004
Gouveia Art Rock Festival was great!!! We sold 15 CDs, and if we sell another 9, we can buy ourselves a beer! I missed my presentation appearance on the stage because I was talking to Benjamin from Nil and Syrinx - these guys are my heroes!!!
This week I'll finally continue my Fabric of Space Divine - my wife and daughters will do the backing vocals for Ice Prospector, and I'll redo the acoustic guitars on Middle. And I'll have to find a singer for the Trinity part - I wish I could get Christof from Isildurs Bane... :-(
21 April 2004
More notes on Mispel Bellyful: Getting the final album together was painfully slow - many MP3s didn't align properly with the rest of the song, getting the volumes right was nerve-wrecking, and Paulo and Vasco redid several of their tracks. We lost the full version of Boundary to Nowhere - the album version is quite poor, I think. I also feel that Water could have developed into something much bigger...
But for the first time did we all play together at my studio! Powerful Beauty of Nakedness now has a really cool, jazzy section with Paulo and Vasco improvising together. The track will make a brilliant piece for extending on stage... (yes, plans are being made to perform this live!)
The feedback we've had on TrojanX is very good - just as I suspected it's probably our best track. Does the rest of our album live up to it?
19 April 2004
My other band's first CD Mispel Bellyful is now at the printer's and we're getting ready for our launch at this year's Art Rock Festival. The festival committee have decided to play our CD during the intermissions, throughout the two-day event. That's pretty cool, especially as there will be people from national radio. I must confess that, after mixing and mastering the album for some two weeks until late hours every day, I'm really exhausted, and I think I'll give the studio and myself a break for a week or two, before I resume my work on Fabric of Space Divine.
16 March 2004
Fabric of Space Divine is now pretty much past the physical middle of a CD, and while I have only managed to conclude the past and present, there's so much Future to sing about! It is quite a nuisance when you begin to understand that you have material for more than a CD, but not enough for two.
Getting so far has been much easier than I thought; the leitmotifs - if a small man like I is allowed to mouth such a big word - practically fell into my lap, leading, as their name suggests, with relative ease thought my suite. Natrually, I am trying to avoid over-usage of these motifs though.
Last weekend I completed the centerpiece, this is, the song that sits at the actual centre of the suite, naturally dealing with the present, with Here and Now. Paulo Chagas from Moonrock (and Zappanoia) has suggested that I replace the initial (synth) string section with a (real) quartet of reeds and woodwinds. Sounds like the right job for him to record ;-) This string section, by the way, is my second ridiculous attempt at at least a canon, but alas, even if you had removed Telemann's brain, he would still have produced something more intelligent than I did. I wish I could deny that I have not evolved past the poorest of renaissance music...
The initial vocals will have to be redone as they're really feeble. I guess I'll have to wake up at 5 am to record that bassy voice one has after getting up. Or I could ask Neal Morse... ;-)
For the first piece into the Future section of the suite, I cheated a little: I recycled Rocking Back To Earth from my first album, brushed it up a little, and gave it a very special intro to lead out of the relative gloominess of the Middle piece. But as it is still one of my favourite tunes, and even though it's plain old 60's pop, I would not want it to gain dust.
The follow-up piece to this will be the first-ever human being going entirely digital. This might sound silly, but I truly believe that this will happen, and that indeed most people long for this. After all, as I complain about in the Middle piece, all we ever know is right Here, right Now. The past is stored information, and stored in a far from reliable fashion, and the future is nothing but extrapolation from the stored information. We do have ways to move our Here and Now to other Here and Now's: by reading, watching movies, talking to other people, imagining, dreaming, etc., and most of us willingly resort to such ways of escaping our own Here and Now. Still, there is no way to expand our Here and Now. By hosting all the information that we are on an external IT system, we would no longer be limited to our physical Here and Now.
Musically, the First Digital Being will have multiple time signatures, and will sport a somewhat lengthy intro where the sound of a cricket gradually turns into an electronic sound, and an electronic sound gradually resolves into the voice of the first digital human being.
Extrapolating from the past to the future, I feel naturally concerned about the terrorist attacks in Madrid. Everyone one the family decided last night not to attend any of the Rock in Rio concerts (Peter Gabriel!). This is especially sad for me as I am a great supporter of the Islam, as can easily be noted in my songs of this album. But hopefully, all this will one day be nothing more than a footnote in the history books of mankind.
Problems to be solved: well, first of all, all vocals have to be redone. I read that Neal Morse records all vocals again at the very end - maybe that's a good idea to follow. But first I'll have to solve the problem of Sonar blocking totally and utterly when lots of online effects, e.g., reverb, delay, chorus, are applied.
I hope to be finally able to dedicate some more time to Moonrock next week again - Paulo and Vasco have provided some incredible canvases for me to paint on (just that their canvases are getting more and more complete, which I gguess is a good sign).
Davis (whom we hoped to have as a drummer) hasn't said a single word for a month :-(
