Christopher Blog

13) My Love 12:26

Not available since 1999

This song is an epic. An epic embarrassment. My scalp literally started itching when I put this on for the first time in years. A vile beacon of self-pity captured in 12 glorious minutes. The temptation to not post this song was very high. I think only 3 people would have noticed its omission and their silence could have been bought with a chocolate bar.

While the intention was to create a grand plodding opus devoted to rejected feelings, it’s a near-forgotten sentence that documents what a waffling tart I can be. Oh, how the wonderful memories flood in like a bout of food poisoning.

You know something is about to go horribly awry when you hear the sample and the drums start out of sync. This is the most visible example of me trying to synchronize sampling with music without a sampler on a 4-track cassette machine.

The lyrics are trite teenage angst. I sound like a fat kid with a black leather coat. On a maturity level, I probably was still just that.

For a song of this size and scope, we will need to go section by section. (continue reading…)

www.comecloser.com/ikonowerk/christopher_lucifer_rising.mp3

That is the new link for the re-interpretation of the Jimmy Page soundtrack `Lucifer Rising.’  Had to consolidate servers a few weeks ago. So if you were looking for it and were getting a `not found’ error, here is all 27 minutes or so of it.

For the newly curious, the above is a cover of the Jimmy Page’s soundtrack for Lucifer Rising. More info can be found on this project in the `Lucifer Rising’ section of the blog.

www.comecloser.com/ikonowerk/christopher_lucifer_rising.mp3

I broke a toe. (So I am told)

I take this as a tell-tale sign that I am close to completion of this record. Nothing ever gets completed without some ridiculous unforeseeable incident. Take `Smoke and Origination’ as an example: I lost the whole album (and Torched Laughter, and the metal project) while mixing. The exception was `Lucifer Rising.’ That was because the guiding hand of Satan took care of me.

Thankfully, this toe doesn’t interfere with my hands or my ears. Nice try karma, better luck next time. I am used to your petty games. I know you put pin holes in the cosmic condom.

Moving right along:

The first step in this adventure of suck called MIXING is equalizing the upright bass.

The bass is the foundation of the music. Once I figure out how I can make sound as good as possible, it will make adding all the other instruments much easier.

Since taking a 10 minute break from writing this particular entry, I found the right sound of the bass. If I didn’t take that break, there would have been some mighty mean cussing in this blog. (It’s early yet)

I took a moment today to think about why I really despise the mixing process and frustrated at times with recording in general:

It stems from years of dealing with over-analytical technophiles who made anything and everything sound complicated. As a youth I would ask silly questions like `how do you get a guitar to sound really heavy without being mushy and sounding lifeless?’*

The answer would be a 6 paragraph manifesto regarding the impossibility of achieving said sound with gear that doesn’t cost in excess of 200,000 US dollars. At the end of this smarmy speech they would brag about the mixing board they owned that was once used for a rehearsal for Mahavishnu Orchestra back in 1972. (Before Jan Hammer & Billy Cobham left the band and sold out MAAAAN)

I say `they’ because there are several variations of the same answer from different experienced engineers I dealt with in the past. Some used Mahavishnu Orchestra as the claim to fame, some used Tool or Aerosmith. They made everything sound impossible.

While I sit here and play with equalization I can feel their fucking hockey haired smugness dripping acidic breath on my shoulders. If I was still in contact with them, they would be sending me the schematic of a kinetophone with the word FAIL going across it via e-mail.

Sorry, I couldn’t find the schematic.

This is by no means an affront to experienced engineers. Just addressing the rubbish that had no semblance of positivism, ingenuity or encouragement for those who were curious about the fundamentals of sound. If more guys were like Bob Katz, perhaps music and audio these days would be a much better creature.

Anyway, let’s see what Day 2 brings.

*Turn the gain down. Add mid range. Play around. Done.

The reason I haven’t posted anything in the past few weeks is because things have been downright slow and negative. With all that bad energy floating about I get very unmotivated to do certain things, like posting a blog entry. It’s much easier to seethe and let my intolerance ferment into sweet hateful ether.

Despite all the `Torched Laughter’ tracks being completed last month, I’m still recording vocals for other projects. I was to finish everything by March 29th, but that didn’t happen. By the 29th I finished one song (not related to `Torched Laughter.’)

1 out of 15.

If there is a positive way to look at this stat, please let me know. Because I am quite at a loss.

I do know why I didn’t finish the recordings in the allotted time frame. Cue bullet points:

* Intimidated by the workload. It’s not a matter of just recording one track and then going to the next song. At times there are 10-12 vocal tracks to do for a song (making those big fake choruses.) I don’t have the blow to motivate me to pull off 12 hour days of singing the same `OOOH’ 144 times in a row. (I wish I could though) Which cleverly ties into:

* Creating a level of standard that might not be unattainable. By doing this, I can safely self-sabotage anything I do and not feel any guilt or pressure to meet a deadline. It is a passive-aggressive trait that has done more damage to my person than I want to admit.

In this case, it was the following rule: SING THE WHOLE SONG. Do not record one line at a time. Record the entire song. I am unqualified to pull this off. But I insisted on doing it this way. Something to do with pride, arrogance, etc. This alone set things back several weeks. The good aspect is that I can do it now under certain circumstances and the vocals are genuine and not patchwork. But the price was a lot of time and exhausting to the voice from overdoing it.

* Not staying positive. In order to even attempt what was laid out in bullet point #2, I had to warm up twice a day for 2 hours. Many a day those warm-ups were a waste of time because the recording process later in the evening was just terrible. The voice was there, the mind and heart weren’t. The intimidation and all the pressure I have thrown on myself were knocking me out of whack. Why did I put myself under these conditions when I knew I wasn’t up for it?

Because my heroes could do it well and do it quickly. I want to be as good as them. Obviously I am not. If they had an inkling of care, they would be sneering down at me from their cocaine castles. Provided they weren’t so dead and all.

Even worse were the days when the mind and heart were there, and the voice wasn’t. Which bleeds into:

* No sleep. I won’t go into detail about this. But if you don’t get rest, the voice suffers greatly. Smoke, drink formaldehyde, lick unhygenic prostitutes, but make sure you get rest. I don’t get much rest.

* Finding my voice. This will be the next entry.

After a long week filled with drama, sore elbows and shoulders, losing track of what studio day it is, all the drum tracks are completed. Whoosh! That is a big breath escaping from me. Or a precursor of a death rattle.

In order not to feel overwhelmed I played one drum a day. Tuesday was African Djembe day, Wednesday was `I’m going to do this track despite not sleeping zzzzzzzzzz’ day, Thursday was Ashiko day, and Friday was changed from Rock Band party day to Dumbek day. After last Friday’s dramacophony it was necessary to change this day’s priorities.

Since I haven’t updated since last week, here are some key bullet points of what has happened:

-Last Friday’s Rockband Party descended into chaos, thrown rings, self-loathing, and none of it thankfully centred around myself or the missus.

-Last Saturday was a continuation of Friday, but there was much sleep. Woke up in the afternoon just in time to return the upright bass. I already miss that hulking hulk thingy.

-Sunday I was test miking again. Another guitar was bought. Remember that Ibanez AF85 I was salivating over? It’s as good as I thought it was. 

-Monday was drum practice. It was also `Family Day’ in Ontario. A new holiday. I rejoice. There’s a warranted incest joke to be made here I am sure of it.

Tomorrow/this Saturday I return the AKG C-1000’s to the rental outlet. If you’ve been keeping up with this blog you’ll notice that these mic’s have been a blessing.  I will see if they can be bought for a reasonable price.

Let’s get right into it.

Why?

After writing for 3 days I hoped to come to some sort of conclusion aside from the stock `ah well it resonated with me at the right time.’ Obviously there was something that pushed me really hard to do this project; I do know it certainly wasn’t for any sort of tangible satisfaction. Certainly not ego gratification or financial gain. (continue reading…)

The reason I killed my first blog (the Thoughts Section on my site) was because I knew it was becoming more of a talk-back box for my ego and had very little substance. After seeing all the horrifying poofests that people sometimes call blogs, I felt my own writing was at best equal to the garbage that aggravated me. So it was killed unceremoniously.
As long as people can post such insights like `OMG Global Warmin sUXX11!’ and other brilliant colloquialisms applauded by febreze scented syncophants, I think on occasion I can break silence for a bit and chat a little about some of the work I do. Writing about it helps me understand it and myself a little better. Maybe even understand the motives behind undertaking the project. I’ve never been proficient with diaries, journals or any sort of record-keeping.*

(continue reading…)

So begins the second installment. Our conflicted quasi-hero talks about kinship, the Anger Curse, and the logistics of reworking music based on instinct rather than meddling with sephirots. 
What I immediately felt when I heard it was a sort of kinship I haven’t felt before with a piece of music. As soon as the first synthetic melodies slammed themselves on top of the tambura I was re-orchestrating it in my head as how I would do it. I’ve never, EVER had such a sympathetic resonance with a piece of music that quickly before. I don’t think I even heard the ending before I went into the studio and started to construct the drone that I would eventually employ.

(continue reading…)

(Note: Posted last month) 

As reluctant as I am to post any type of blog, I thought it would be a nice change of pace to actually share some of my experiences with you regarding the Lucifer Rising recording. Which you can download HERE
This blog segment will run until Friday. After that, I go do whatever a Christopher does. I hear this weekend is the Death and Resurrection Show. I may go catch the matinee. (continue reading…)

Press release from April 3rd 2007. Excuse the faux awesomeness of the third person write-up.

Canadian solo artist Christopher recorded a 27 minute re-interpretation of Jimmy Page’s notorious `Lucifer Rising’ soundtrack which is available as a free MP3 download HERE and download the artwork HERE

Page’s 23 minute soundtrack was scrapped from the same-titled Kenneth Anger occult-themed film and has never been officially released.
“The film and music is shrouded in mystery, mishaps, a curse; and excess. They were ripe for re-interpretation and the invocative nature of the music and film resonated with me.”

“The soundtrack Page created was ahead of its time. The unsettling tibetan chants and the even tempered tambura that carries the whole soundtrack were used in a way that would be only looked into several years later by other composers. It’s a shame that the ideas Page employed were not committed to the final edit of the film. It truly does live up to its name.”
The re-recording is a tribute to a great piece of truly `underground’ and `unsettling’ music. (The Page soundtrack is usually found on various Led Zeppelin Bootlegs and recently was a feature in UK’s Classic Rock Magazine)

“Out of respect to Kenneth Anger, Jimmy Page, and the lunacy of modern copyright laws, this piece is available free and not synced up to the film. Someone more enterprising than I can sync it up starting at the 38 second mark.”