when it's done

as great as it was to get out the "counterfeit" web project, i'm eager to complete the rest of the album.

one of the thinly-veiled messages of that song is a criticism of low-bitrate compressed audio as a sonic baseline for music. MP3s are a great promotional tool. at 320kbps, they can even take the place of other somewhat disposable formats such as the CD single, cassette single, or mixtape. but my ultimate goal is to release uncompressed (in terms of the audio file format, not the dynamic range) recordings, in a physical format. i want them to be associated with specific artwork and design and presented initially in a certain order.

strange how this is now considered old-fashioned. i think of it almost as multimedia, something expressed on several levels: audio, visual, tactile. the final result is more of an art object than a mass marketing tool (which is necessary too...and what MP3s excel at).

i've resigned myself to the fact that this album, more than any other i've worked on before, is just such an "art object". there are overarching themes. various song lyrics reference each other. different tracks flow together. imagery is visually connected to the music.

at this point, 7 songs are done, and another 3 almost finished. in addition, there are 5 instrumental interludes. several more songs and instrumentals were written, and some of them recorded, but those are what made the cut after putting them in order and trying some rough crossfading.

some tracks just didn't fit into the flow, or were deemed not good enough. the decent ones may come out in some form in the future. for a short time i toyed with the idea of a second CD (maybe just a 3") of more instrumental material, but i think that would delay the project too much more as well as make it too costly. then again, just mentioning it, i like the idea, so who knows? the point is, it's done when it's done. but i can say that more easily now that it's actually closer to being a reality.