State Fruit (Featuring Mike Hopkinson)

On July 4th, 2005 I decided to skip the parades and festivities. I had just bought a lot of recording equipment and my friend Mike Hopkinson proposed that we play music that day. He'd been playing drums for a little less than a year I think, but he was so natural.

We composed this song in a few hours and recorded it immediately to hard drive. I used my friend's Paul Reed Smith guitar on this song, played through a Fender Princeton amp. This was my first experience using a Sennheiser cabinet mic (which I still use to this day), so I achieved a real "studio-esque" guitar track. I played electric guitar with Mike on drums live onto the recording; we had no isolation of instruments in his basement, save for the fact that my amp was turned, facing opposite to his drums on the other side of the basement. I went in later that afternoon to overdub the bass guitar and acoustic guitar parts.

At the time I was listening to a lot of the Gamehendge songs by Phish, and you can definitely tell by listening to the minor sevenths and muted strumming pattern in each part of this song. I truly feel like the only thing this song lacks is a light sax (or other horn) melody. Still, I present the recording to you now in its preserved form, as it was recorded on Independence Day.

On Meditation

I remember a couple years ago, I told Rachel that if she meditated correctly her head would hurt. That's because when you meditate correctly, your brain tries to exit your head. It wasn't totally false, it's just one way to meditate.

When I first bought my synthesizer and started composing a lot, I began to do what I now call synth meditation. I would create a sound patch, improvise for a few minutes, and compose a short melody. Then, I'd take this melody and play it over and over again, every now and then deviating from it. Sometimes, I'd have the synth plugged into my hard drive, and I'd record these meditations-compositions-improvisations. The first of these synth meditations comprised my first electronic full-length album, recorded in 2005.

Recently I found an old journal which described my discovery of a new type of meditation. I'll paraphrase the entry:

Today I discovered a new meditation. I took my new Brad Mehldau Trio CD to the cedar bench, and stretched out on my back. Listening to the record, I took a short nap. It was December, and when I woke up, a thin layer of snow had collected over my face and body. When I opened my eyes, I stared straight up at the tree that hangs over the cedar bench. Without moving my body or my eyes, I focused closely on the tree branches, then at the glowing moon behind it. I became completely in control of what I saw - I could at will remove the tree from my view, and just look at the moon. I did this repeatedly, removing then replacing the tree back into my view. And it was meditation.

Austin City Limits

If you are the executive producer of Austin City Limits, and a man with Pocahontas braids and a kid in a white cloak in an electro-rock duo named Ghostland Observatory approach you promising good music, do not trust that band. Or put them on your show.

A.G.D.

East Peoria, Illinois
Summer 2003

Occam's Razor

Written and recorded in Summer 2005. This song is another synth meditation, applying heavy layers of strings in chorus. Occasionally, the string section will peak into a tinny hard-synth sound, evocative of club sequences.

The drums are not an honest loop - well, yes it's a programmed drum sequence, but it was recorded simultaneously with the synth part. While playing, I occasionally hit keys that were programmed to either re-start the sequence (thus causing uneven 'loops') or to diverge from the sequence into a drum roll (listen for it when the guitar dies down in the middle) or other fills.

There is a live guitar part on this song...two in fact! The main electric guitar part, which comes in after 45 seconds of intro, was rehearsed many times but recorded in one take as usual. Somewhere in the middle, comes in a clean guitar part to echo one of the electric guitar riffs, and it remains through to the end of the song. The interplay between the two guitar parts is interesting, and one of the first real successes I've had in combining two very different guitar melodies.

Enjoy the song. Listen with headphones.

right-click here to download song

South Of The Border, West Of The Sun

In the past year, since Thanksgiving 2006 to be exact, I've been reading many books by Haruki Murakami. MIT gave him the title Artist-In-Residence a couple years back - I wish I was attending MIT back then to hear to him speak. This weekend I finished Murakami's novel South of the Border, West of the Sun and I can assure you that it's one of the worst books I've ever read. Maybe it's because I read so much Murakami that he became too predictable, but his other novels are so much better. If you like trippy, surreal stuff read Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. If you like music and love triangles read Norwegian Wood. The description on the back of the book says that South of the Border is 'mesmerizing', but instead Murakami drags out the plot over one hundred extra pages of filler. The one thing I loved about Murakami was his cultural awareness, especially to music, and how he intelligently laced his works with references to all kinds of artists and composers. However, in this work, it is overdone and forced - it only subtracts from the story. Maybe I burned myself out on Murakami, but to his credit he's written some awesome books. For now, I'm going to take a Murakami hiatus.

In other book news, I recently finished Rosshalde by Hermann Hesse. Fantastic. It's a quick read. I related a lot to the main character (at least back when I was reading it). A really fresh book if you're into the 'individual' or 'Self'.

Right now I'm reading Diary by Chuck Palahniuk. Really, really horrific and eerie but exciting nonetheless.

At home, I found a roll of Ilford HP5 400 film that I probably took in high school. I'm planning on developing it once I get back to MIT, in addition to (hopefully several) rolls of film from my forthcoming trip to Sénégal.

Malt Easy

Hinsdale, IL
February 2006

Pearl Jam (United Center, Chicago, May 2006)

From left, Jeff Ament (Bass), Eddie Vedder (Guitar, Vocals)


Chicago, IL
May, 2006

Perhaps, Maths Haikus

I.

this is this is this
is NOT a haiku per se.
And there is no rhyme.

II.

All I did was
Simply subtract one
To create this.


Cambridge, MA
04 November, 2007