Two months in the waiting — here’s the latest track for the album. While this is the penultimate track to be released, it’s the first track on the album. It’s the introduction and sets the stage for the rest of the album.

One left to go — still being re-worked.

I can feel my techno production chops getting better on this one – that’s the advantage of reworking it after the rest of the album was complete.  I especially had fun inventing percussion sounds. They’re all made from various objects around my apartment or body, and then manipulated for various effects. Too much fun. I can get lost in that world alone. May you get lost in this one. Welcome to the complicated world.

(as always you can listen to just this track above, or grab the whole album to date to the right).

The very definition of an executive is one who is supposed to get things done. Does this desire for accomplishment effect other desires? What does this mindframe mean in love?
From the perspective of the Occupy movement the word executive is nearly synonymous with villian. Is there something else to be gleaned from this perspective?

It’s time for… Love and the Executive.

It’s been a long-while coming, but the latest track is finally here.  Only 2 more left! Sorry for the long wait on this one. It’s one of the hazards of releasing this album over time — it gave me time to decide I wanted to rework this and I completely re-did the music for this song. And then this new incarnation kept evolving. It started with a very sparse guitar sound and in the end probably used more layered sonics than anything else I’ve done.

Usual story – get the whole album to date from Noisetrade on the right, or just download this individual track from SoundCloud.

Chimp Art by Matt Cioffi (www.mattcioffi.com)

Biz yoga image by iHeartCHR

Silver tie by Jeffrey Hunter and nicetiestore.com

P.S. Thanks to the fab Jeremy Morse for some great suggestions that brought the final details together…

A music friend of mine gave a listen a few months ago to this and said, “the wordless vocal section is my favorite part here.” Which was great — but then I had to point out that it wasn’t actually wordless. Good thing the kick drum was also a fave….

The track by itself is available at soundcloud – or you can listen or get the whole album to date from noisetrade (at the right).

This track feels pretty different from the others to me. Most of my best feedback has come from folks who liked the edgier tracks. I’m curious if this rings a chord with others. Or with the same folks. As always – I love feedback. What do you think?

Also – note the beautiful artwork on this post is available (at great prices) from the artists. The first is by Rebecca Haas, part of a whole series of cool designs over book pages, and is available here. The second is by Nicklas Gustafsson, and is available here. The third is from the Boston Public Library.

As usual, an overview of the album is here, and the lyrics are in the comments.  Not a lot of tracks left to go… See you in a few weeks!

Photo by Patzi Temples, from zerne.wordpress.com

This one is a bit more straightforward than some of the others, especially in how it relates to the love side of this theme. It also touches more directly on my fascination with conflict as a means to transformation.

Musically, this song actually has a couple of melodic lines, one of which bears some mention. The second one is an ephemeral sound -  and next to the blunt piano, it comes off as almost background atmospherics. It’s further obscured by the fact that it is itself made up of two simultaneous set of notes making up one overall sound. But in the end that it gets a moment by itself, and for me that’s the melody that creeps back up in my mind hours later.

The details:
Download the whole album to date over in the noisetrade area to the right, or just download the latest track from soundcloud here: http://soundcloud.com/jacobcorvidae/love-and-the-duelist

Next track in 2 weeks.

Please pass this on to your friends, family and enemies….

Lyrics are in the comments.

Jacob
[If I was as badass as Amanda Palmer my initials would be JFC, but I'm not, so if I ever wrote JFC then my middle initial could only mean "fuzzy" or "furry" or something...]

The legendary Peggy Oki

[Update: For new folks: this song changes mood over the course of the song - if you only listen to the first half, you miss it entirely. Just so y'know...]

This track tends to get 2 reactions so far: people tend to really like it or they say “huh…”  And for that reason alone, I’m rather fond of it. The lyrics are all the names of skateboarding moves, intentionally arranged to make an abstract poem. But it’s not purely abstract. Even in these sparse, seeming nonsequitors a narrative emerges. This is a song about the tensions between grace and grit. I’d love to hear what you think.

You can now download this single track: http://soundcloud.com/jacobcorvidae/love-and-the-skateboarder

And of course, you can stream or download the whole album (to date, so far) to the right (through Noisetrade).

Lyrics are in the comments.

4 down, 5 to go.

See you in 2 weeks.

[Oh - P.S. -- Originally, I was hoping this track would include sounds from Jesse Chorng's SynthShredder - a cool skateboarding/music interface, but the project's been delayed and wasn't ready on time. Ah well... maybe a future remix.]

Adam Kinney - photo by Hannah Reel

Well, so much for the regular schedule…. All was fine, but then I up and went to India (!) for almost a month… and upon returning was swamped with my own life, and then a variety of (I’ll spare you the boring details) simple tech issues which weren’t so much to overcome, but kept the album release on the backburner for a while.

My apologies for the gap. We should be back on a regular schedule now. New track every 2 weeks or so, but I’m not certain it’ll be clockwork….

Thanks for your patience! I hope you enjoy the new track…

Here we are with the third track to be released: Love and the Anarchist. While not thoroughly fast and folky, it’s certainly faster and folkier than our previous tracks — and yes “faster and folkier” won out in the voting. “Unusual” was not far behind, so I’ll probably release that next. Apparently, most of y’all could care less about “pretty”.

But even with the “faster and folkier” label applied, this isn’t exactly a folk song. Many of you know my acoustic work more and while this is as close as it gets on this album, it’s still not exactly an appalachian mountain song, Tom Lehrer tribute, nor Iron & Wine-like. That’ll all have to wait for other venues…

This is the only song that’s more than 10 months old in this collection. I actually wrote this years ago, then lost most of the lyrics. But the structure, the sound and the feeling behind it stuck with me.

As with most of these songs, this steps into a particular character and mindframe and speaks out to the world from there. If not for the bridge, this song might not fit into the theme of this collection — but between the bridge and the way that the rest of the song speaks to the Occupy movement without explicitly being about it, it was a natural to include on the album. In fact, given the tension, lyrically and musically, between the bridge and the rest of the song, I’d say it was a precursor to some of the core tensions at the heart of this entire album.

I had a friend ask me where I found the time to make this album, given my other personal, professional, activist and artistic endeavors. She said “I hardly manage to have time to clean my room, much less record music.” So I’d like to offer this official disclaimer:

NO rooms were cleaned in the making of this album. Any resemblance to real or superficial cleanliness of rooms is merely a by-product of procrastination techniques.

Here’s the next track: Love and the Actuary!

A special shout-out to the tremendous trombonist Cecil Scheib (of New York’s Hungry March Band and Cobra Gold) who’s great work fills this song out. Also thanks to Joel Howrani Heeres for the loan of his stand-up bass.

Response to the first track was great! Thanks, everyone for all the good words and feedback. I hope this next one also works for you.

Tell me what you want to hear next! — see the survey below.

Also, here’s another photo from the photo shoot done for the album. Again, a big thank you for photography to Spilt Sugar Photography. And as per her request: photographs by Spilt Sugar, photo editing and manipulation by yours truly.

Again, you can listen and download to your right. And you can always head over this way to get more info on the album, Love and the Occupation.

Thanks so much for listening, and please feel free to direct others to this site.

Next track in 2 weeks!
(now answer the question below)