D E A D L I N E

Wow! What a busy album this has become. I know that a lot of members have been as frantic as I have, getting their tracks together - but from what I've heard so far - the standard is way high, and the songs are awesome. It never fails to amaze me, the level of subtlety and detail that makes its way into IML tracks. I'm really looking forward to getting intimate with all of them.

Eric and I managed to record the vocals for our SPACE JUNK track this past weekend in Milwaukee. It was a heck of a challenge, and we almost completely abandoned our rap approach to Barney's experimental track; but in the end we tapped into our hidden hip-hop identities and got stuck into the track. It was incredibly challenging to vocalize all the complex rhymes - super-fast rhythmic singing does not come naturally. We were rhyming all night in the pub afterwards.

Feeling quite sad that the trilogy is coming to an end - but very glad that it's concluding in such style. Rock on IML!

Semi-interesting stuff.

Hello everyone,

As some of you may know, I've been working on my senior thesis as a Music Technology student at Ball State University. The topic I chose is speed composition/songwriting, and I picked out a couple artists and groups to talk about and interview. Guess what? The IML is one of them. As part of the assignment, I had to make a website presenting the information...it's not too flashy, but it gets the job done, and here it is:

http://djwaldkirch.iweb.bsu.edu/MUMET/

Greg, Tim, and Barney gave me lots of great insight into how and why the IML works, and I'm sure some of you would be interested to read about it.

The site is basically just my 32-page paper divided into 7 parts...if you're having lots of fun in the IML and want more opportunities to write music, I encourage you to look into the other sections of the site!

Looking forward to more vocals soon!

Dan

P.S. I made the site in about an hour, and it's not due for 2 weeks...if you spot any mistakes, let me know!

But he still hasn't gotten his stuff back.

I just finished and uploaded my vocals for Tim M's Pluto track, and I love how it turned out. It's called "Lonely Planets Club," and I went in a bit of a strange direction for the lyrics. In the song, Pluto is a somewhat bitter divorcee, probably living at some sort of bachelor pad. He recalls his recent breakup with our solar system, and though he's in a lot of pain, he remains somewhat optimistic. His support system is, of course, the Lonely Planets Club. In the end, everything turns out great for Pluto, because he finds happiness in a new relationship with the Kuiper Belt. A little stupid, I know, but the decision was made after I learned that Pluto's heart is literally made of ice and stone. If that doesn't scream "messy breakup song," I don't know what does.

I was obsessing a little bit over these lyrics for the past few days...I think I may have over-thought the concept, but I really like the song. I especially like that you can take it out of the context of the Space album, and it could easily be just about a guy, not a planet.

That's about all I have to say about it...download it and enjoy! And of course, let me know if there are any mixing issues...I've been working on it for the last 4 hours and I have no idea what it really sounds like anymore.

Do Androids Dream of Electro?

Recorded all lyrics to my song yesterday (4 robots, a party rabble singalong, a vincent price impression and some heavy 80s rap) and it sounds .... well... er.. I dunno. So I asked my team of critics for some feedback as I always do. My 4 year old said it 'sounds a little bit scary', my six year old asked for Hannah Montana back on the ipod and my wife said it sounded better in the shower!!

Hmmm..... Anyway, had great fun doing it. Had never sung much in character before and it turns out there were quite a few characters waiting to be released.

Deadline on Monday. I'm all excited like its Christmas Eve and I'm 5 years old.

Prima tempo

As the production of the Laika song draws to a close I wanted to share my experience of being a first-time songwriter. I was handed the brief just after the Cambridge Science festival gig was finished so it seemed particularly pertinent to make it as educational as possible. One of the great things about the IML is everybody's forced to do some research; I love researching so spent a couple of days scouring the web for as much on Laika as possible, moving into the USA-USSR space race and the Cold War, ie ended up generally trying to get my head around 20th century Russian politics and wondering how I was going to fit all that into a 3 and half minute song. What became almost immediately apparent is that the guy responsible for putting Russian animals in space, Oleg Gazenko, actually felt pretty guilty about the whole Laika business so that seemed like a great starting point. In 1998 he said this:

"Work with animals is a source of suffering to all of us. We treat them like babies who cannot speak. The more time passes, the more I’m sorry about it. We shouldn’t have done it. We did not learn enough from the mission to justify the death of the dog."

One of the other scientists (Vladimir Yadovsky) took Laika home, on the eve of her space journey, to have some play time with his kids. I was getting a sense that there was a level of guilt from the scientists about blasting this dog into space on her terminal journey and that Laika was a pretty lovable little dog. Thus the song I've written is an attempt to be from the perspective of these scientists at the time (thus it turned out I didn't have to fit 50 odd years of Soviet politics into the song afterall, phew) and gave me an excuse to try and sing with a bit of a Russian accent. After I'd written what turned out to be pretty much the final version of the song I read the marvellous graphic novel Laika by Nick Abadzis - he did tonnes of research and came up with practically the same story so that was quite gratifying!

Once I'd done the research I was surprised at how easily the lyrics were to write (much thanks must go to Kip here for giving me a firm structure to work with) -- maybe not surprising to you guys but shocked the hell out of me, I thought it was going to be much harder. But I was fascinated by the process and the different way of thinking it provoked (compared to editing medical journals which is my usual brainpower outlet). However, it plagued me after a few days; for a week I had the song endlessly, incessently on a loop in my mind, got pretty sick of it and had to just entirely leave it alone for a while. Still, I played my mum a rough version I'd recorded and it made her cry so I thought I was probably on the right track.

Anyway, the final result will be uploaded soon and I'm happy with it. Barney's been doing some nice production on it (though I did have to say 'let's turn down the robot effect a bit') and I've been learning some basics of logic pro this evening. So, all in all a fun learning and gratifying experience which I'm keen to repeat...

Here's a short animation all about Laika which I wish I had done http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nz7Xbo1m5XA

xx Layla

Only 10 vocal tracks this time. Fighting...urges...

I've just finished recording vocals over Ash's doomy track about Gully Foyle (main character of "The Stars My Destination"). I had a lot of fun with this one. It's DARK, folks. It immediately reminded me of Deftones' "Change (In the House of Flies)"...a whole lot of atmosphere, and a whole lot of groove. There's actually one bit left to record: a teeny tiny screaming part...it's a little too late for that right now. Don't worry, the scream is tasteful. On a related note: I wonder if I'm the only metalhead in the IML...

I don't want to ruin it, but there was something sort of funny about working on this track: half of the lyrics were already written for me. If you're interested in spoiling it for yourself, head over to the Wikipedia article about the book...it won't take very long for you to find what I'm talking about. That said, I did write lyrics of my own, and I really like those too.

And in some IML news: Greg asked me to take on another track in place of my roommate Mike, who is a very busy guy. I'll be singing over Tim M's track about Pluto. I'm really excited about this because the two tracks could not be more different. My work on Ash's track is similar to the Blackbeard track from the Sea album...but I'm going to have to do something completely different for this new one. It's so...happy! I've always wanted to try something a little more...flamboyant, vocally speaking. I'm excited.

An interesting predicament: one of my favorite singer/songwriters, Jonathan Coulton, has a song about Pluto called "I'm Your Moon." It's a love song, from the perspective of Pluto's moon, Charon. Charon is trying to cheer Pluto up after his recent demotion from planet status. Also, Charon and Pluto are roughly the same size, so Charon doesn't revolve around Pluto, they revolve around each other. Jonathan Coulton called this particular phenomenon "the most romantic thing I've ever heard."

So, I have to do something else! I have two ideas for making a happy Pluto song. Idea #1: a song sung by a pre-2006 Pluto...he's just so happy to be a planet, and nobody can take that away from him! Idea #2: a song sung by Planet X (Pluto before 1930). Everybody's looking for him, and he's trying to get their attention...I'm over here, guys! The problem with that: it might come a little too close to "Call Them X"...but maybe not. Votes? Other ideas?

Time for bed!

Robox

Yesterday, I spent the whole day programming, chopping-up and editing robots. Good old Microsoft Mike did the honours, singing on Jim's track about DEXTRE the Canadian space hand. I have to admit (though its a crazy-making process) I LOVE editing robots! Mike comes out with the most random and ridiculous pronunciations and bullsh*t. I also wrangled with some Vocodering, via Cubase's lovely VST plug-in. I'd love to have pitched Mike, Cornelius-style, but I don't have the budget for Melodyne right now. This is what Cornelius does with robots....

What music did Neil Armstrong take to the moon?

The answer to this is in an excellent article on the links between space travel and music in american culture.

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/article6021883.ece

Hope all's going well with the song writing...

Time travel and the IML

Time passes so quickly. There you are, walking around Cambridge eating Jarlsberg cheese out of your hand, when SMASH! ... a week has suddenly gone by. I used to think that I fell into mini comas, but apparently this is how everyone feels.
All of a sudden, the vocal deadline has started to approach for IML Mission 3. It has reared up like a post-coma rush. It's not in my face yet, it's not days away, but it's there.
My usual method for describing approaching deadlines is to compare them to how close Omar Sharif has come over the horizon in that interminable scene in Lawrence of Arabia. I'll say, for example, "the deadline is three inches high now", or "the deadline is horseback, about three metres away" or even, "the deadline is shooting at me with a rifle; it's an Arab. What the fuck is going on?" It's a very scientific comparison and more people should use it.
Fortunately, I've been doing a lot of reading about wormholes during this period. And if there's one thing that wormholes can actually punch in the guts it's time itself. That's very useful, I thought. These IML deadlines are very tight - let's see if I can use my assigned IML theme to lengthen the amount of time I can spend on the vocal.
Thus, as well as research, I have been conducting experiments. You know, making homemade wormholes out of locks of David Bowie's thigh hair that I bought on the internet, mixed with malt loaf and my own vomit (it's not hard to induce vomit these days - I just peer outside and catch someone's eye and I'm there). Anyway, I succeeded. What I mean is, I passed through my own wormhole - please don't sneer - and emerged in 1977.

No, really.

So what does this mean? Well, it means that - as well as technically being at least three decades older than anyone else in the IML - I've been working on my vocal track now for over thirty years. It's been an obsession. Everything about it had to be perfect. I'd spend half a decade honing it and then I'd suddenly become exasperated and scrap it and start again, moving on to new recording technologies and production techniques. I've made at least sixteen different versions, using at least three hundred different vocal melodies and four hundred different sets of lyrics. At one point I had the perfect version on tape, but then someone on a hover board pinched it from my paws and I was back at stage one again.
It's been an epic adventure, not unlike that of T.E. Lawrence's, except for the lack of similarities. But all epic adventures, of course, have to come to an end.

So where am I now?
Well, after thirty years, back now in 'real time', sharing the same deadline as everyone else in the IML (I can see you, Sharif), I've decided to start from scratch again. You might say that I travelled back in time for nothing, that I've wasted thirty years, but I don't see it like that. Experience is everything. Well, not everything - experience isn't a packet of Frazzles - but it is important. I've been through three decades to get to this point. I've been through a wormhole of my own creation for Christ's sake. Now, more than ever, I am ready to start writing some lyrics, to sing heartfelt of my travails, and to discuss the delights of watching Overboard with Goldie Hawn at the theatre on its cinematic release in 1987 (now that is why people should time travel). My work starts now.