Greetings Electronic Cottage comrades!

I wanted to share with you a new (ish) album that I have just put up online. On August 28th, 2018 I played a show in Tallahassee at the All Saints Culture Club with a few local bands to support Time from Gainesville who were on tour. One of the other performers (Dice K, aka Addison Kane) and I decided that it would be fun to make a little cassette split of our live show. We made 20 copies and each took 10 to hand out to friends and have at shows. It was a lot of fun to make and dub and generally just a nice little experience. I finally got the show up online so that everyone can hear it. I recorded the entire thing on my Sony ICD-UX560 handheld recorder.​

I thought you would maybe enjoy a little play by play of my set. I feel a little silly about doing this, but if there is any place where I think the joy of feeling the small worlds inside you made real in sound will be appreciated then it is here.

Heightened Reality Vignette:
​I wanted this song to feel and sound like a strange dream that felt realer than real. As if you had fallen into your dream and thought you were completely awake, before sleeping and dreaming within that dream and realizing that there was no awake. That since life is an experience, and dreams are an experience, that dreams are a life on their own. I start out with a tape recording of me just waking up and recording a dream I had been having. For a while I was trying to record dreams for ideas and just ended up using them in songs. The synth that beeps in is an Adafruit MintySynth followed by another small handmade synth, and I play/fade back and forth between them. Then I fade in some tape loops of music from India and then mutilated portions of the dream tapes. It all ends with you stuttering back to non reality, fading into the next dream.

Toothy Opal Grays:
​My idea when I began preparing for this was you woke up into a foggy morning, you almost fall back asleep but then awaken completely. Outside the mist obscures your view but you can hear birds, and the sun is illuminating the fog and glittering down and down to you. This begins with samples of me talking that I played from the Electro-Faustus Simulacrum. Samples on this had been previously manipulated. I then begin improvising on guitar thru multiple pedals on my pedal board. Birds are sampled and begin in a regular way, then gradually slowed down and stretched until they are part of the sun and light. Then the guitar begins a different, more foreign sounding scale. You are getting older. The light is not as bright. The mornings are more complicated and the birds blur more into your background now. You spend less time in the light and more time seeing what it illuminates. The birds are starting to sound like frogs. It is night. When did it get so dark? When did you get so tired? The bird/frogs are a lullaby and it is time to rest. It is time to sleep. 

So that is what I was thinking/feeling when I performed and improvised these songs. I hope you enjoy it and can take a little bit of the joy I had playing it with you when you leave.

On Monday February 25th friends, strangers, and sacred sound gurus gathered at the local coffee shop in St. Petersburg Florida to watch an amazing show. The artists performing were our lovely Penny Grune-Fae, Run-on Sunshine, and Deb Ruby featuring Gilli. 

It was a fantastic cool evening, and the Black Crow (our illustrious venue) had all the doors open, allowing a cool breeze to flow through the room bringing the sweet scents of coffee and other beverages. The audience gathered around the impromptu stage in front of cool local art and a small piano and I sipped at a damn fine cup of coffee. 

Multiple recorders were readied and activated as Penny began an amazing set and I just happened to have one of those recorders. Here is my recording of Penny's set, recorded with a Sony ICD-UX560. I hope you enjoy the recording (my favorite is the epic harmonic bits at the end).

Stream 320 kbps mp3 above and Download WAV below

above: Rafael González     below: Dylan Houser

above: Rick Groshong     below: Scott Kindberg

above: Scott Kindberg     below: Gina Newman

On my little record label Veduin Hiss I have been attempting to curate a series I call Slang. It is an experiment where I send different artists a microcassette recorder with a blank tape. Their mission is to fill both sides of the tape and send it back to me. Then I upload the finished product to my label's Bandcamp. I mailed out a number of recorders but it is a slow process to get the project going.

So far there have been three installments in the series:
— Slang Vol 1: simvastatin by Dylan Houser
— Slang Vol. 2: Paralysis Voyage by Jeremiah Paddock (me)
— and recently Slang Vol. 3 by Brian John Mitchell of Remora and Small Life Form (also Silber Media and many other projects).

I am excited to share this with the community. It is free and I think it will be the kind of thing that Electronic Cottage readers will enjoy. If you are interested in being included please contact me and I will try to get a (hopefully) working microcassette recorder and tape to you.