Secret Mommy's new album

I'm really excited to be putting the finishing touches on my newest audio output, The Mall. It's going to be a download only release on my own label, Ache.

If you scroll down just a little bit, you'll see the blog entry I made about a recent one-time-only performance for a symposium called Listen Again. Well, the composition I came up with for that evening ended up being something I was quite proud of. I decided to take the piece back to my lab for a bit of retooling. I edited it a little bit, adding a few new moments here and cutting a few moments there. However, I tried my best to retain a certain loose spontaneity that can only be found on "live albums". I didn't want it to lose all of the performance's spirit among too many heavy, precise edits.

The result is an 8 part piece of music called The Mall. It is made entirely of recordings I made of our culture's greatest cathedral, the mall. I travelled to 3 malls in the lower mainland here in British Columbia, capturing hours of audio ranging from intricate recordings of elevator buttons, clothing racks, and footsteps, to huge ambiences, water fountains, and underground parking lots. I then, chopped it all into little bits and reassembled into 30 minutes of "music".

The official release date is April 5th. You will be able to download it here: acherecords.com . I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed making it!

If you'd like to help me promote this album, please get in touch because, frankly, I am terrible at that aspect of making art (and, come to think of it, life in general).

Listen Again

I'm currently working on new music for a performance at the Listen Again symposium. I've been asked, as Secret Mommy, to compose and perform a piece created entirely of recordings of shopping malls. So after spending a few weeks travelling around the lower mainland, recording device in hand, gathering my ammunition I am now "hard at work" manipulating and composing.

It's been a while since I've created under the name Secret Mommy and even longer since I have created within the strict regiment of past work like Very Rec and the Wisdom EP. It's an interesting and exciting experience to revisit that path.

More on the symposium & performance can be found here.


LISTEN AGAIN.

With an ear to the past, present, and future, Listen Again: The Changing World of Everyday Sound, Audio, and Noise, and the Future of Sound Studies is a 1-day symposium devoted to the interdisciplinary exploration of sound and the present condition of sound studies itself, offering a unique examination of art, music, culture, society, politics, and and the changing character of everyday life.

A Deep Breath

It has been madness for me over the last few days. I have been preparing for the Ache Records Super sale; stickering, stuffing, and packing records; loading up carloads and unloading carloads; putting the final touches on the website, etc. What I had thought to be a 4 or 5 hour task ended up taking about 16 hours and that's with calling in some extra help for the second half of it (thanks Erin and Pops!).

But it is done for the most part! All of the participating record stores in Vancouver have the stock and the website is up and ready to process your order. Go ahead, Vancouverite, and look through your couch cushions for those toonies you lost last week and drop by any of the fine folks at Red Cat, Scratch, Zulu, Audiopile, Dandelion or Zoo Zhop for a record or two. Then go home, throw on the album and bask in the music and the feeling of supporting us.

We had the first of several events go down last night. Despite functioning on 2 hours of sleep, I managed to have a blast. Thanks to Spirals, Hari Legs, David Zoo Zhop, and my fellow band mates for knocking it out of the park.

So now I'm at home after the kind of deep sleep that one wakes up from with a feeling that he or she was in a boxing match the night before. I feel rested but dazed. The sun is shinning, I'm drinking a fantastic coffee, taking a deep breath, and stretching out my muscles which ache (pun intended) from carrying so many boxes of records. This is either the eye of the storm or it has passed by and it will be smooth sailing from here on in. Who knows? But as my friend, Luc's, ominous fortune cookie once read: Hope for the best but expect the worst.

Next up is a party at the elusive Red Gate in Vancouver tonight. Babe Rainbow and my newest band, Mt Career are playing.... and exhale. Gotta run!

Caving

One of my newest musical projects, Caving, has a new (and debut) album out called U.S. Caves. It is technically released this Friday as a free download, but I've already put it up on Bandcamp because, well, who cares about a release date for a free download?

The album is essentially a rap mixtape. I've taken acapellas (some well known and some a bit more obscure) and created my own beats and music to accompany them using a lot of world music samples and digital tomfoolery. I'm really interested in getting involved in rap production and while such a venture is probably well beyond my social and professional reach, it was fun to come up with these tracks to share with you nonetheless.

T.I., Rich Boy, Pill, Drizzy, Weezy, Cool Kids, if you're out there: hit me up and we'll get crazy.


Here it is!

Busy time upon me.

Wow. Life keeps coming at us, hey?

I've been busy busy busy. The bulk of my busyness revolves around this Ache Super Sale I'm working on. Oh, what sale is that, you ask? Basically, the experimental record label I run is turning 10 years old this year! Wild. I've been running this thing for 1/3 of my entire life. What a thought!

So, to celebrate (and, honestly, to help make a theoretical dent in Ache's daunting debt) I'm throwing a sale. Not just one of those 10% off type sales, though. More like one of those liquidation sales you see when a business goes under or moves and it's completely chaotic because everything is so cheap. The kind of sale that evokes people to fight each other, step on each other's faces, and throw out their babies so they can fill up the carriage with more wares.

The label: Ache is a forum for different ideas about what music can be, and how it can function without any rules of genre or concern for commercial success. Each Ache release comes with a feeling of excitement and hope that it might move you and, if even slightly, change your idea of what music is. A point of pride for me is Ache's diversity. From African street music to beautiful drones to Japanese thrash, Ache's only ethos is that the music is challenging and does not function within the guidelines of the conventional music industry. If I believed that an artist was creating music purely to sell records (or what I call "playing the game"), I would not attach the Ache name to it. 

The sale: I'll be selling everything between $1 and $5 both in person around Vancouver and digitally everywhere else in the world (plus shipping, of course)

So if you've ever been curious about the music I put out, or if you are interested in hearing new, untainted musical ideas, now is the time to check out Ache. I have a streaming audio player of some tracks from the catalog for you to get acquainted with. Enjoy!

For those of you in Vancouver, I'm piecing together all sorts of celebratory events for the sale as well: A birthday party with Babe Rainbow and my new band, Mt Career; a DJ in-store at Zulu Records where I'll be playing only Ache stuff while people hang out, have a few drinks, and buy records; and even a weekly pop-up store at the Toast Collective! More info on each of these is available here

I also just finished my first CAVING mix yesterday! But I'll write more about that in another post. This one is already feeling like the It of Stephen King's career. Length-wise, I mean.

Free Will

Here are a few photos of my piece, Free Will, which was created for a group show and fundraiser for the Prohab Helmet Society; a non-profit organization that provides bicycle helmets by donation to those who would not normally wear them.

In case these three photos don't quite communicate exactly what the deal is with my piece, here is a brief description:  Free Will was participatory. I turned the helmet into a blackboard and provided chalk and an eraser. The only thing written on the helmet at the beginning of the night was "Do What Thou Wilt". I was curious as to whether or not that was a clear enough invitation to the attendees to pick up the chalk and exercise their own Free Will. Luckily it was, and once one brave soul broke the ice early in the night, it was quickly covered and recovered with doodles, inside jokes, symbols, and a canoe. I was surprised that there were only 2 dicks drawn on it that I could see. My guess was that there would be 5.

The pieces were all sold via silent auction. I was pleased to see at least a few bids on mine (only one of them might have been real. The last bid I noticed before leaving was for a hand job), assuring me that I had done my part in raising some money for a non-profit organization that I'm thrilled to support.

The Aproaching Autumn

It is official. According to Discorder Magazine, I am a "celebrity". Check out September's issue for an article about some local peeps favourite places to go in Vancouver, including yours truly. Click here for the web version.

It's been an extremely busy week. I have a lot of projects on the go. I think I might have been on a bit of a Creative Vacation for the summer months. It was not a planned hiatus, it's just one of those things that happens naturally to me when the beach is hot, the beer is cold, and the light of summer evenings seems to last forever. Oh, and I recently got engaged to my beautiful lady-friend, Erin T, which is obviously taking up the bulk of my brain space!

Although the summer isn't technically over until late September, today certainly feels like the first day of Fall here in Vancouver; it is evident in the weather and the demeanour of the people here. Which is not to imply that people here seem bummed-out; there's just a certain coziness to those I pass on the street today.

As the rain returns, so does my drive to make things, it seems: I'm currently working on painting a bike helmet for the The Prohab Helmet Show & Fundraiser at the Modus Gallery (206 Carrall St.) on September 17th. Vancouverites (and those travelling through on this date), there is more info on this show here.

I'm also working on a Caving mix. It's going well, I think. The new stuff I'm doing seems to be migrating away from the dubstep element and heading towards a more conventional rap production. I think that U.S. Caves, my first official mix, will end up sounding more like a rap remix project than an electro/dubstep album. I have decided that my dream job would be a rap producer and I'm making choices to head that way. If anyone would be kind enough to put in a good word for me with T.I. or Gucci Mane, I would really appreciate it. Tell them that I can guarantee a club banger.

Another thing I'm working on right now is a 10 year anniversary sale for Ache Records in October. I want to create a two week event around the idea. Shows/Parties/In-Stores and records for dirt cheap. There will be more on that in a later post, though.

Oh, and another item of news for the people of Vancouver: the remaining pieces from my past Grace Gallery show, Such Events Have Led us Here is now hanging at the Whip on 6th & Main. So if you didn't get a chance to see it at the Gallery a few months back, now is your chance to check out some of it.

And lastly, I'll will be gathering up more rap for a new monthly party with my friend, fellow Girl Fight guy, Michael LaPointe. It's a party we're calling Gold Standard Rap Club. The concept behind it is to create a real, honest rap night in Vancouver; a place we rap enthusiasts can go to drink, dance, and socialize without having to brave the dreaded Granville Street. We also wanted to steer away from too much old school, for fear that people may misinterpret our love for rap as some kind of hip irony. We have also completely removed the word "DJ" from any of the flyers & press. We, quite literally, just hit a space bar on our computers. We are starting this night not for any kind of glory or celebrity as DJs, but just to play great music for great friends and create great times. I hope you can come! It's THIS TUESDAY at the Astoria! Oh ,and it's completely FREE!