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Matt Lebofsky's Immersion Composition Society PageThe Immersion Composition Society (ICS) is a international collective of freak musicians, separated into local "lodges," where each member has the same perverse craving to spend whole days alone writing, performing, recording, and mixing as many songs from scratch as possible. At day's end lodge members convene at one member's house to drink, socialize, and listen to everyone's material. I am a proud member of the very first such lodge, aptly named Origin Lodge, here in Oakland, California, though I sometimes run with Wig Lodge, also in Oakland. Below is a registry of all of my ICS output since I began contributing to this society. The best stuff eventually ends up getting remixed and released under my name on various compendiums, some of which are available at: Select one of the dates below to see a list of that particular day's output and perhaps some fun anecdotes as well. Click on highlighted song titles to get mp3s or streams. Actually not all songs are available - I left some out due to extreme profanity, my own shame and embarrassment, or because they were artistic failures which should not be validated by public scrutiny. I hate to rank these songs, because they all have some merit, and you can never predict what other people would actually like better, but nevertheless I mark with a "*" all the songs I feel have "staying power." These are tunes I wish I could play live someday with a band of my clones. PARENTAL ADVISORY: despite the exclusion of the worst offenders, some songs available below may contain bad words, bad ideas, and/or bad singing. It is up to you to discover which of these may permanently alter you or your child upon listening. May 4, 2019 - March 2, 2019 - July 7, 2018 - January 13, 2018 - October 14, 2017 - November 19, 2016 - August 6, 2016 - January 2, 2016 - April 11, 2015 - April 11, 2015 - December 6, 2014 - December 7, 2013 - September 1, 2012 - May 5, 2012 - December 3, 2011 - May 28, 2011 - November 27, 2010 - June 5, 2010 - May 1, 2010 - January 30, 2010 - December 12, 2009 - August 22, 2009 - March 28, 2009 - February 28, 2009 - January 31, 2009 - December 20, 2008 - November 29, 2008 - November 8, 2008 - September 27, 2008 - August 30, 2008 - July 26, 2008 - April 26, 2008 - April 12, 2008 - January 12, 2008 - November 10, 2007 - April 14, 2007 - February 24, 2007 - January 20, 2007 - October 14, 2006 - July 15, 2006 - June 24, 2006 - January 21, 2006 - December 24, 2005 - November 12, 2005 - August 20, 2005 - July 9, 2005 - June 18, 2005 - April 16, 2005 - December 18, 2004 - December 11, 2004 - November 20, 2004 - June 26, 2004 - February 28, 2004 - January 10, 2004 - December 20, 2003 - December 6, 2003 - November 22, 2003 - November 8, 2003 - August 9, 2003 - June 28, 2003 - June 14, 2003 - May 31, 2003 - May 10, 2003 - February 22, 2003 - January 18, 2003 - November 30, 2002 - November 16, 2002 - October 26, 2002 - September 30, 2002 - August 18, 2002 - July 13, 2002 - April 6, 2002 - March 10, 2002 - February 23, 2002 - January 5, 2002 - December 8, 2001 - November 11, 2001 - September 22, 2001 May 4, 2019 Listening party at: Nat's house Recorded on: Mac laptop using Logic X My usual basic session. Sometimes there aren't that many sparks, which was fine. Plus I had a day of several social events so time was limited. Four songs, two of which were relatively useful. Great to have Nat back in the picture for the first time in forever!
1. The Ballad of the Probiotics (1:55) March 2, 2019 Listening party at: Bill's house Recorded on: Mac laptop using Logic X Once again it's been a while, and holy crap I kinda knocked it out of the park. Sometimes the creative firehose is at full frickin' pressure. Five of the six tunes ended up on my next solo album. And I was so jazzed by the general success of this session I had my own private ICS the very next day when I ended up creating the start of another tune "Boring Origin Story" which also ended up on that album.
1. What's With All the Birds? (4:38) July 7, 2018 Listening party at: Amy's house , Recorded on: Mac laptop using Logic X Somehow the stars aligned and I had the time and wherewithal to do another session. However I had all kinds of technical issues, as well as performance issues, but I still ended up with four pretty decent songs. I think I ended up with more material time-wise than all other participants combined. Part of that had to do with writing two dark epics, and one angry little tune, and thus I felt I needed to squeeze out one more - a happy love song just before the deadline - if only to prevent bumming everybody out.
1. Includes Now (6:17) January 13, 2018 Listening party at: Amy's house , Recorded on: Mac laptop using Logic X Not counting some "ghost" or "lost" ICS sessions, this was my 75th ICS day since I started doing this over 15 years ago. And as such I celebrated by doing something I've never attempted before: 20 songs. That's the usual artificial goal we set for ourselves, so why not try? Well I kept the songs short (19 seconds each on average) and strung them together in a suite for maximum effect. Here are the song titles (and their timing indices). Below that is a link to the bandcamp page (which has the complete suite "Five Hours Twenty Songs" and more info).
1. It’s Getting Away! (0:00)
Five Hours Twenty Songs (6:20) October 14, 2017 Listening party at: Steven's house Recorded on: new-ish mac laptop using Logic X I actually did an ICS session or two in the meantime, but they were spent working on actual albums. But this time I went old school: simply letting my brain do whatever it wanted with zero preconceived notions or expectations. So, yeah, here's five completely random songs. Drums, basses, guitars, keyboards, midi programming, and a touch of harmonica buried in there - all wrapped up in some half-assed but adequate mixes. I even whipped up lyric sheets to present at the listening party for the first time in years.
1. Projecting (2:26) November 19, 2016 Listening party at: Steven's house Recorded on: new-ish mac laptop using Logic X A rainy-day ennui session, done entirely using my laptop, soft synths, and my QuNexus keyboard controller. So a very constrained, introspective day. I got one short atmospheric tune done called "Pointless Discussion." And then I wrote another and felt like it, too, represented a pointless discussion. And then a third one. Then I stitched them together into a suite called "Pointless Discussions." Voila!
1. Pointless Discussions (4:20) August 6, 2016 Listening party at: Steve's house Recorded on: new-ish mac laptop using Logic X I had a busy day, but missed doing ICS, but I couldn't show up empty handed. So I started my session at 8:45pm. This little ditty was fully realized (using my laptop and micro controller) in about 15 minutes. Not that surprising, really.
1. Berating (1:08) January 2, 2016 Listening party at: Amy's house Recorded on: 2009 iMac using Logic 9 Well I've been meaning to force myself to migrate my in-house production to a slightly more state-of-the-art machine (i.e. moving from my 2003 G5 using DP4 to a 2009 iMac using Logic 9). The bad news is that this newer machine and newer software isn't even close to as useful as the older machine. The good news is now I know. Anyway, this was just a quick 3 hour session as an exercise to prove the above. Fun session, lots of new people, everybody had great stuff.
1. Same Pants (0:51) April 11, 2015 Listening party at: Steve's house Recorded on: Mac G5 using DP4 (even still!!!) A pretty good session day. I worked pretty solid for 8 hours, generating 14 minutes of hot, fresh music and obviously still exorcising some demons. However the excessive inspiration and tracking left little time for proper mixing. Fine. Here are the rough versions (maybe to be replaced with better mixes someday).
1. Spit Baptism (3:16) * December 6, 2014 Listening party at: Steven's house Recorded on: Mac G5 using DP4 (still!!!) It's been a year, but it was the same old, same old. And that's a good thing. I'm once again finding myself woefully behind in recording my *real* music, so I needed a low pressure session to dust off my recording gear and engineering chops. Also, it's just a fun thing to do. For some reason I gave myself this random constraint that I had to do the whole session without my (currently really long) hair in a ponytail, just to prove that I could without getting too annoyed. Nothing really new or important here, musically.
1. Moves Like Hagar (2:04) December 7, 2013 Listening party at: Steven's house Recorded on: Mac G5 using DP4 (still!) And after another long, long hiatus I came back and squeezed out a couple of standard Matt tunes. A whiny strummer, some ambient horror, a standard indie rock tune, and a long loopy moper with nice chords. Nothing that great, but good to shake it out once in a while, you know?
1. 5:45 (0:56) September 1, 2012 Listening party at: Cooper's house Recorded on: Mac G5 using DP4 It's been a while, and I've been touring a lot playing bass and keyboards, so my guitar/drum/voice chops kinda were out of sorts when I started this day. Fair enough, I ended up just sticking to this one song and fleshing it out as much as I could. It's a real bummer, based upon a true story I heard the other day about a friend's unexpected witnessing of the insane underworld of child sex slavery.
1. Crushed Eft (7:34) May 5, 2012 Listening party at: Karry's pad Recorded on: Mac G5 using DP4, iMac using Logic I've been really busy, and had very little time to do a proper session. So I made practical use of my limited time. First song is something I've been working on for years: a piano version of the Dr. Nerve guitar/bass duet (written by Nick Didkovsky). I've been about 90% done learning this piece for a decade, so I finally used the ICS force to get the last 10% and record the thing already. It's pretty rough, and obviously several takes edited together, but no midi edits or other cheating I swear. Still have to tighten the screws on that one, but at least a proof of concept is there. The other piece I just farted out as a means to work on my Logic midi data entry chops and learning about the default sounds.
1. Did Sprinting Die? (Dr. Nerve cover) (4:52) December 3, 2011 Listening party at: Steven's abode Recorded on: Mac G5 using DP4, iMac using Logic It's been a while, during which I was touring a lot - and touring really kills my chops (because, ironically, you don't have much time to practice). So the focus on this session was to write stuff that was good practice. That's why I did a Matt Lebofsky ICS first: an actual cover song! The first tune is by Motorpsycho, and a fairly faithful attempt at it. The rest ended up being standard ICS fodder. Two tone poems sandwiching a prog ballad epic (which was inspired by somebody else's true story - it's not about me), and the final song which leads me to believe that playing instruments is total bullshit and I should just program MIDI from now on - it's way too much fun. By the way... this session means I've been doing ICS for over 10 years now, totaling well over 300 songs during 64 day sessions. Yup.
1. Tristiano (Motorpsycho cover) (5:14) May 28, 2011 Listening party at: Cooper's house Recorded on: Mac G5 using DP4, iPad2 Another haven't-done-this-in-a-long-time sessions. Out of practice, but I came up with some good tunes. Inspired mostly by my new Korg keyboard, so it's very present in these tunes. The first tune (a drums/organ duo) I intended to throw away but it was a good enough "soundcheck" song. The second tune unintentionally sounds like recent Radiohead. The third and fifth songs are true stories. The fourth song has backdrop foley of me and Jenya hiking in Utah desert sand (recorded on my iPhone days earlier) and the lyrics are indeed a haiku. The last tune is the requisite mind-melt mini-epic. Recorded it all the same day as the listening session, which included fresh sessions from Cooper and Lew, who haven't done it in years. Great to have them back. Everybody else rocked it, too, as usual.
1. Gargoyle Balls (1:19) November 27, 2010 Listening party at: Steven's pad Recorded on: iMac using Logic, Mac G5 using DP4 Usually when I take a break from doing this it takes me some time to ramp back up. I guess this batch was no exception - I was hoping to generate a lot more material, but there ya go. Still, it's pretty fucking dark and pretty fucking dense. Dig it. Following the 10 hours of effort making all this crap was a great listening session containing all kinds of random material from new/old faces.
1. Valerian (2:43) June 5, 2010 Listening party at: Steven's pad Recorded on: iMac using Logic, Mac G5 using DP4 Another typical session for me in a lot of ways. No real new ground or discoveries, but among other things you got a real mopey epic, along with a song about dog feces. All true stories. The third song would have had more saxophone but I had bashed the mouthpiece into my lip after one take causing all kinds of bleeding. Plus I ran out of time in general due to social obligations so the mixing/mastering is of less quality than I'd like. I'll clean it up later if I re-release any of this junk.
1. GWB (2:58) * May 1, 2010 Listening party at: Andy/Michael's place My first real-ish session in a long time, but still I did this mostly as an exercise for learning Logic and getting my chops on this software together. Yeah, I'm burning out on DP (which I still run on a dying old G5 tower - part of the reason I'm switching over eventually). Anyway, the longer tracks were started in Logic MIDI-land, then shoveled over to DP for the real instruments.
1. Drips (2:16) January 30, 2010 Listening party at: Dren's pad Recorded on: Mac G5 using DP4 There was a major track swap going on for a full month before this session involving pretty much everybody else except me. So I whipped this one song together the day of the listening session just to have something to play so when I showed up I wouldn't be empty-handed. Took about an hour. The rhythm code: 5-6-5-6-3.
1. Adventures in Science (1:40) December 12, 2009 Listening party at: Dobson/Mellender's haus Recorded on: Mac G5 using DP4 I wasn't really planning on doing this session, but at the last minute realized my chops were in need of work, and this would be a good way to "warm back up" without too much pressure, i.e. spend a day working on recordings of stuff I didn't really care about. So here you are, four tiny tunes. A large showing of people this time around, including many usuals as well as less usuals (Shamrock, Ri, his pal Tim). Great stuff by everyone! Freakhead did 80 songs. What a loon! Yes, my "No Kill Shelter" song made everybody sad.
1. Vector (1:32) August 22, 2009 Listening party at: My place Recorded on: Mac G5 using DP4 It's been a while, but I dusted off the creative cobwebs and had an indulgent session. Some worthwhile bits in there I guess, and usual Lebofsky-type stuff: a mopey epic, a weird dance tune in 15, a couple throwaway bits... and song 4 which is actual me playing along with a piano score I quickly threw together in Sibelius. The listening session was awesome - ten people, ten great contributions, lots of geeking out about gear and gigs and life as a musician until wee hours.
1. Jaywalker (7:08) * March 28, 2009 Listening party at: Steven's place Recorded on: Mac G5 using DP4 For no good reason I felt it would be good to finally reach the goal of 300 songs done during these ICS days. To do so, I forced myself to write 10 songs during this session - and not just 10 bullshit short songs either. The whole thing took me roughly 12 hours (including mixing). I ended up with more music (time-wise) than any previous session. Cool. It's all kinda dark and midlife-crisis-y, but that's where I'm at, I guess. It's almost like a concept album. And yeah, I really miss playing bass guitar.
1. Life Defying (2:22) And.. as if that wasn't enough, Jenya and I squeezed out a quick but perfectly depressing duo song just before the session. We're thinking this is a sketch and probably just the intro of a future Fuzzy Cousins epic.
11. Place (2:40) February 28, 2009 Listening party at: Mellender/Dobson's place Recorded on: Mac G5 using DP4 Mmm-kay then. I did this session the day before, after spending the whole morning making a giant hole in the ceiling of my kitchen (hunting for several roof leaks). Plus I was in the throes of cramming a bunch of Fleetwood Mac material in for an emergency gig later that weekend. So I was in weird mental space. Anyway, here are four songs. None of them really stand out in my mind, but they represent various facets of my being. The second song seems embarrassingly histrionic but I wrote the words to fit the music. The third song features a string orchestra arrangement using the scoring program Sibelius of all things, then I tried to apply real instruments on top.
1. Crayolaphobia (2:38) January 31, 2009 Listening party at: Steven's place Recorded on: Mac G5 using DP4 Another large joint Origin/Wig Lodge meeting of sorts, with a couple prolfiic newbies who both arrived with tons of cool material. So it was a long night of listening but everybody had really entertaining shit. I myself had a weird session that same day, broken up with a three hour trip to Cotati to pick up half a butchered pig, so I didn't have a full day to work on it, but then again I usually burn out after six hours anyway. As proof that I've been doing ICS type composition my whole life I brought some old 4-track recording "Shape Up or Ship Out" I did back in 1989 (including Commodore Amiga drum machine program output) - I'm finally getting around to dumping this old stuff to digital. The rest of the material is of the "usual" sort, kinda nice for the most part. I need to remix a lot of it. The guitar on the first song is the baritone with all the strings tuned to "D" (left that way since that Moe show).
1. Everything Nothing (1:29)
5. Shape Up or Ship Out (1989) (1:22) December 20, 2008 Listening party at: Mellender/Dobson's place Recorded on: Mac G5 using DP4 A small holiday gathering (actually without Nicolas) of me, Mellender, Clarke, Karry, and Mick. Everybody brought something relatively short. I only had a few hours today to work on anything and gave myself the constraint of just using my Yamaha MM6 keyboard and that's it (outside of DP looping/manipulation). So it's fairly techno-y but still kinda weird. Total musical and political geekery went on well into the evening after listening to everybody's fine contributions.
1. Do You Work Here? (4:28) November 29, 2008 Listening party at: Steven's place Recorded on: Mac G5 using DP4 A full fledged Wig Lodge meeting was at hand. Jenya and I didn't have much time (due to holiday plans and all) so we decided to just spend a couple hours working some funky dance tunes using just my Yamaha keyboard and whatever production DP could offer. We ended up getting sucked into this one song, adding real instruments after all. So it's me on keyboards, guitar, voice, and production, and Jenya on bass guitars, real percussion, voice, and production. Maybe Fuzzy Cousins will become a sexy dance band.
1. Plant Your Nasty on Me (2:57) November 8, 2008 Listening party at: Nicolas and Michael's House Recorded on: Mac G5 using DP4 I actually did this one song for a Wig Lodge session the previous month that never happened. And I did it on very little sleep after returning from an overnight gig in San Diego. I gave myself an hour and this is what I came up with. The weird stuff at the beginning is a blue tape fugue, followed by creepy vocalizations, then a bass/keyboard improv duo, then a percussion frenzy using whatever items were within reach, then a bass guitar tap fest, and finally a funk jam with ungodly bass guitar/piano unisons (played simultaneously). All together interesting but not really that good.
1. Nap (2:36) September 27, 2008 Listening party at: Steven's place Recorded on: Mac G5 using DP4 I didn't have much time - like four or five hours - so I tried a new game: come up with a fake band name, fake lineup, and then pretend to be them. So this time it wasn't me - it was The Hidden Fees recording their debut EP "Please." They are a power trio where the guitarist sings (and strangely sounds a lot like me)... Anyway the results aren't all that wonderful, but my fellow ICSers appreciated the "raw" sound since I did everything assembly line style (recorded all the drums, then the bass parts, then the guitar parts, then the lyrics, then mixed in one fell swoop and chopped it back up into eight songs). In any case, a lot of output for 5 hours of total effort. Quantity not quality this time around.
1. Reunion Tour (1:45) August 30, 2008 Listening party at: Mike/Andy's apartment Recorded on: Mac G5 using DP4 One epic song which I forced myself to more or less completely score out before recording, which is not exactly what I usually do. Then another song which found me experiencing minor technical issues and I was so burned out from the first song that I left off any excess overdubs and called it a day. Actually the listening session as well was fraught with technical problems: Andy's stereo had a blown speaker, Emil showed up with a blank CD (he brought the wrong one), Kelek/Steven did a joint session and some of the mixes were distorted. Still, what we did hear was inspiring as usual.
1. Cascades (6:24) * July 26, 2008 Listening party at: Steven's place Recorded on: Mac G5 using DP4 First real session in a while - and there were a lot of people planning to attend so I kept my focus on "density" (i.e. short songs packed with lots of information) rather than proving I can make another 7 minute prog rock epic among other things. A lot of silly/dark stuff. "Doom Broom" is an homage to the band the Stickmen - maybe a ripoff more than an homage. Lots of amazing stuff by all the other meeting attendees - it was rather inspiring.
1. Another Soundcheck (0:37) April 26, 2008 Listening party at: Mike/Andy's apartment Recorded on: Mac G5 using DP4 I was more in the mood to listen than create this time around, so I just did a "power hour" (i.e. give myself one hour to do something/anything) and this one little track was all I came up with. Just drumkit and voice.
1. Blister Box (1:13) April 12, 2008 Listening party at: Mellender/Dobson's abode Recorded on: Mac G5 using DP4 Yet another typical offering from me- a couple short instrumentals, a goofy pop tune, a prog rock epic, a weird ballad. It's up to you to figure out which is which. I did it all the previous day in about 10 hours from start to mix/master. I had a block party the actual day of the session - though the first song is not about that as much as my current answer to "Life During Wartime." And I've been listening to a lot of Kate Bush lately hence the appearance of fretless bass (with doubler). 'Twas a good Origin Lodge session over all. Nic/Mike did a joint "hat lib" session, Freakhead/Dominique did a joint session as well, and Karry and Wally did their own things - everybody was in top form.
1. Block Party (2:38) January 12, 2008 Listening party at: My house again Recorded on: Mac G5 using DP4 A good way to kick off the new year with a clean slate. I purged big time on this session, working longer than I normally do (12 hours, I usually burn out after 8) - though you probably can't tell since it's still not that much music, temporally speaking. There were at least two songs I started and ultimately abandoned. So be it. Anyway, I belched up all kinds of stuff: tweaker, techno, classic rock, jazz/fusion piano trio... First time 1. using new studio monitors, 2. building real/fake drum loops in DP (the penultimate song has a drum loop but the dueling basses are all live - I'm really getting into jamming on my new/used 5-string - it ended up on every song). I channeled Motorpsycho for "Corn Cherry Mama" and Cheer-Accident for "Brisket Weather." I admit the latter is cutting it a little too close on those 6/4 guitar clusters. It happens. Or maybe I'm the only one who noticed.
1. Misanthrope (0:47) November 10, 2007 Listening party at: My own damn house Recorded on: Mac G5 using DP4 First new session in a while (though I did an "album clause" day a couple months ago to catch up on languishing Midline Errors stuff). This session was short and sweet and no real revelations, though I did finally break out the violin and trumpet again (for "Rotorua") and also got a recording of my baby grand upstairs on the last track via a microphone downstairs cranked really hot. The only instruments used in the second track were a pair of metal bowls.
1. Pot Committed (1:38) April 14, 2007 Listening party at: My own damn house Recorded on: Mac G5 using DP4 Crazy session for me. Not much to say except I got more quality material than usual, or so I think. I was aiming for at least 18 minutes on the first piece but just got seven. "You are Jesus Now," is a quote from Mike Pukish in a recent e-mail so I stole that for the song title. The final song gets a star because the chorus came out better than I thought possible. Maybe that's just me.
1. The Farting Husband (7:13) But wait! There's more! Jenya and I (a.k.a. Fuzzy Cousins) had a few scant minutes over this past week to do a pseudo "exquisite corpse" ICS session. Sort of. I started with a couple song fragment ideas, Jenya then added stuff, and then I took another crack at it, etc. All told, "Pissing" is me on guitar/bass/keys/voice and Jenya on drums/voice. We could take equal co-writing credit on that, but Jenya was the mastermind behind "Cold" writing the lyrics and the melodies/harmonies over my rather basic guitar part.
1. Pissing Contest (2:17) February 24, 2007 Listening party at: Andy & Mike's apartment Recorded on: Mac G5 using DP4 A formal Wig Lodge session. I wasn't planning on doing anything this time around but plans suddenly changed. So I figured this would be the perfect opportunity to resurrect a Buckles Bunklucky epic which I started on the November 20, 2005 session but scrapped because I was burnt out and thought it was total crap. It was basically 90% done - I got past the Tucker Tushbottom entrance and kinda just dried up. So I spent an hour or so today cleaning up the last couple of sequences and mixing it and now it was at least presentable as a whole. You be the judge. Anyway, I'm glad I attended this listening session as everybody else's contributions were amazing.
1. Buckles Bunklucky Goes to Mount Diablo (5:32) January 20, 2007 Listening party at: Dren's Office Recorded on: Mac G5 using DP4 These days the public sessions are few and far between, which is both a good and bad thing. This time around I had 6 microphones on the kit (some recently purchased). Though this is a far cry from when I was just using one microphone, they were poorly aimed so the sound quality isn't exactly six times better. Otherwise, it was the usual drill resulting in some fun songs. The only minor disaster is that I lost the "good" guitar take on "Dirndl" during mixing so there are a few flubs left in there but whatever. I can fix those later if I like.
1. Nanuet (1:28) October 14, 2006 Listening party at: Cyberspace Recorded on: Mac G4 using DP4 Bored and frustrated by the A's getting swept in the postseason I decided to embark on an ICS session on my own right here, right fuckin' now. The whole thing ended up taking 80 minutes from the moment of entering my rehearsal space and setting up microphones to final mixes being burned on a CD. Frankly, I didn't really produce anything all that great - just lots of bad first takes and indulgent purging. Well, judge for yourself.
1. A's Lost (Swept in Quite Convincing Fashion) (0:19) July 15, 2006 Listening party at: Nicolas and Michael's House Recorded on: Mac G4 using DP4 A good ol' Origin Lodge meeting with the usuals, and I did my usual 12 minutes of crap. Some pretty good stuff all around, though nothing totally stands out. I got a couple ideas for songs by using the "random article" feature on Wikipedia. There were no sequencers used at all in track 4 - all notes were played with my fingers and thumbs on my Roland D-5. Oh yeah - I got a new condenser microphone for my birthday - the drums/voices sound better, no?
1. Starlight Problem (2:28) June 24, 2006 Listening party at: Steven's house Recorded on: Mac G4 using DP4 Actually my first formal Wig Lodge session, and it was a hoot and a half. I disappeared for several months preparing for tour, and then going on tour. So it was nice to come back and purge. Even though this wasn't my best session on the books, it was a super fun listening session - everybody had a kick-ass session. Too bad I had to drive to Sebastopol that night and couldn't hang around for a second listen. By the way, the "bitch" is my brother, to whom that ugly little song is dedicated.
1. Bumble Bat (2:48) January 21, 2006 Listening party at: the Nursery Recorded on: Mac G4 using DP4 The first "big" session in a while. Lots of the usuals and a couple newbies to boot. We listened in the kitchen of the Nursery which currently has the best stereo system in the house. As for me, I had a pretty good day. I once again used a random song title generator for all but one of these tunes (the throwaway "Feliz"). This helps get random inspirational juices flowing, I guess. I showed up with my lyric sheets, and Steve countered with a printout of a waveform from one of his songs.
1. Bassett Maw (1:36) December 24, 2005 Listening party at: Nowhere Recorded on: Mac G4 using DP4 There was no session scheduled, and I suddenly found myself with three free hours on a Saturday afternoon. So why the hell not churn out a few quickies? So here ya go. Hasty composition, lots of sloppy first takes and piss-poor lyrics. And the mix is really frickin' hot for some reason. Enjoy!
1. Happy Holidays (0:45) November 12, 2005 Listening party at: The Nursery Recorded on: Mac G4 using DP4 I tried to avoid doing filler bullshit or songs just for the sake of the entertainment of my friends. So I churned out the following two songs in 3 hours, and then was working on a 5 minute Buckles Bunklucky epic when suddenly it dawned on me it was total crap and not worth wasting the rest of my day. I threw it out. So that's it. Just two songs today. Sorry, folks. The latter song features samples of me counting at age 2, with some coaching from my dad. Am I cute or what?
1. Shit Comes Right Off (3:03) August 20, 2005 Listening party at: Steve's House Recorded on: Mac G4 using DP4 A good day, both in session quality and listening party attendance. As a challenge to myself I used a hybrid half electric/half acoustic kit: only the hi-hat/snare/bass are real - the rest are samples played off a Roland SPD-S pad. Everything else was the status quo. This was also the first session in literal ages where I recorded the same day as the listening party. So I was fairly giddy by nightfall, laughing uncontrollably when Mick innocently prefaced his CD with, "This was my first DP session with Matt and Steve." Of course he meant Digital Performer, but nevertheless DP can mean something entirely different.
1. Holodeck (2:50) July 9, 2005 Listening party at: My House Recorded on: Mac G4 using DP4 Finally another real ICS day. The game for me today was to avoid working on short bullshit, and therefore maximize output in the time domain. For the most part I was successful, coming up with almost 18 minutes of stuff that's at least adequate, some of which I'm quite pleased with. The listening party ended up just being me and Lew and Freakhead and Jenya. Everybody is so busy these days.
1. Laborers Form a Union (2:58) June 18, 2005 Listening party at: My House Recorded on: Mac G4 using DP4 I called a last minute session with too little notice for any quorum to be reached, so I decided to just do a solo day if only to keep me in practice. I spend about 3 hours coming up with 3 ditties. Didn't bother with drumkit today (it's always a hassle to set up microphones, mix the extra tracks, etc.).
1. Return (2:29) April 16, 2005 Listening party at: Dren's House Recorded on: Mac G4 using DP4 / Tascam 424mkIII First one in a while, and I ended up with reasonable results (though I pretty much decided after hearing the final CD that I really need to get better mix monitors). This was recorded/mixed in fits and starts throughout the long day, including one song done on my front porch while Jenya used our rehearsal space for an actual band rehearsal. Anyway, usual crap: weird humor, flaunty chops, self-loathing, etc. During the listening session I was shocked to find myself having to prove that Slint is a good band. Why should this ever be disputed?
1. Opener (1:10) December 18, 2004 Listening party at: Steve Lew's House Recorded on: Mac G4 using DP4 The second of two small holiday season Origin Lodge meetings. Unable to schedule any long period of time between last week and this meeting, I did something new - I did my session after a long work day. To do so, I spent the afternoon thinking of ideas and jotting them down. When I got home I gave myself 3 hours to record and mix these ideas. Somehow I managed to accomplish this, mostly thanks to increased my tolerance for bad takes and refusing to do any punch-ins. There are no edits in any of the songs below. Not bad - one song per half hour.
1. Turbo Scrabble (2:02) December 11, 2004 Listening party at: The Nursery Recorded on: Mac G4 using DP4 The first of two small holiday season Origin Lodge meetings. My day started late, was broken up by various errand runs, and contained at least two songs which I scrapped halfway through because they just sucked. So I'm not really all that happy with what I came up with, but it's not bad, either.
1. We are not Escapists (2:24) November 20, 2004 Listening party at: Morgan's house Recorded on: Mac G4 using DP4 This was a big one. Most of the members from both Wig and Origin Lodges were in attendance, as were representatives from both the X-Ray Lodge (from Santa Cruz) and Neptune Lodge (from Vancouver). Luckily everybody kept their submissions relatively short, so that we weren't up until 4:00am listening to everything. I think I had the most stuff, clocking in at over 12 minutes. Too bad I had a lackluster day. Wasted precious hours on 5 little whatever tunes such that I barely had enough time to flesh out the one unwieldy prog rock epic. Oh well. Can't win 'em all.
1. Yucca Yucca (1:00) June 26, 2004 Listening party at: My house Recorded on: Mac G4 using DP4 Hooray! I finally got a real hard-disk recording setup working at my house. So I got to add as many parts as I liked, use digital compressors left and right, and even have stereo drum parts! The only weird thing which I have yet to figure out is how to get the final mixes to be louder. So these .mp3s are a little quieter than the others. Maybe I'll fix them someday. Maybe not.
1. Year of Nothing (2:56) February 28, 2004 Listening party at: Dren's place in Alameda Recorded on: Tascam 424mkIII I had a pretty good day, inspired by a program I wrote that came up with 40 some odd song titles by picking completely random words out of the standard unix dictionary. I picked the titles that made at least some sense to me and went from there. Yes, I realize that song #5 is a complete Scorn ripoff.
1. Yokel Antenna (1:46) Jenya and I also squirreled away some time on another day to work on a tune together. That's me singing, playing guitar, bass, and some percussion. That's her singing, playing keyboards, taiko drums, regular drumkit, radio, and the cat. 1. Adrift (2:18) January 10, 2004 Listening party at: Karry's new place in Oakland Recorded on: Tascam 424mkIII A fairly good day all around, and a real mixed bag of material. You got your catchy pop tune, your angry purge, your prog rock epic, your ambient drone, your insane freak out, and your throwback vocal piece. It's up to you to figure out which is which. Jenya heard these songs and said, "wow, you're really workin' it out today."
1. Why Did You Bring That Up? (1:35) December 20, 2003 Listening party at: Morgan's house Recorded on: Tascam 424mkIII I had no time to do anything for real. I wrote/recorded these little ditties in less than an hour, mixed them all down, then got on with my day. You can't do a full ICS day all the time, you know?
1. Blood on the Waterslide (0:56) December 6, 2003 Listening party at: Morgan's house Recorded on: Tascam 424mkIII I really hit a groove on this one, I think. I physically felt like I overdid it by the end of the day, but then it turns out it was just food poisoning. Damn El Torido! Song #4 is dedicated to ES.
1. Life Stains (1:25) * November 22, 2003 Listening party at: The Nursery Recorded on: Tascam 424mkIII I teamed up with my wonderful wife, Jenya, to do this particular day together - she played drums, synth, vibes, and sang some backing vocals. This is something we should do more often.
1. Lemmings (2:25) November 8, 2003 Listening party at: My house Recorded on: Tascam 424mkIII Screw the computer. I went back to using just the 4-track, but with the extra added help of a dumb, cheap compressor I dug out of the basement for the first time in years. Well, I did piece together the 5 or 6 separate elements of the final epic track in the PC. So sue me. Wow - it almost sounds like I know how to play the saxophone.
1. Hey! Who Shit in my Bong?! (0:54) August 9, 2003 Listening party at: My house Recorded on: Tascam 424mkIII / Pentium II computer This session (a) was poorly attended, (b) featured some of my better stuff in a while, (c) was another 4-track/computer hybrid for me, and (d) includes the debut of my saxophone, which is kind of embarrassing.
1. The Suffocating Band (0:55) June 28, 2003 Listening party at: Andy & Mike's apartment Recorded on: Pentium II computer Another Origin/Wig Lodge joint set. Nic came up with this idea that people should work on revisions of their songs. I took it one step further and did revisions of other people's tunes. Rather, I just cut up other people's contributions, adding them on top of each other, and making them "better." HA!
1. Three (2:09) (Guberman/Walker/Dobson/Carton) June 14, 2003 Listening party at: The Nursery Recorded on: Pentium II computer All that needs to be said is this song is dedicated to Matthew Sperry.
1. Why Now? (6:41) May 31, 2003 Listening party at: My house Recorded on: Tascam 424mkIII / Pentium II computer Another attempt at using my computer, but this time I did basics on my 4-track and then added additional stuff on the PC. All this technology and effort is vastly reducing my output. My feelings about this are represented in song #4.
1. The Breathing Band (1:31) May 10, 2003 Listening party at: Andy & Mike's apartment Recorded on: Pentium II computer Dreadfully sick of using a 4-track when everybody else has these fabulous home studios, I somehow coaxed my tired old PC into doing some hard disk based recording. The first song was a masterpiece, but must be kept silent due to obvious political reasons. The final song contains a loop from the now-defunct German indie-rock band Porf.
1. Open Letter to a President (3:18) February 22, 2003 Listening party at: The Nursery Recorded on: Tascam 424mkIII Trying to shake things up a bit, I decided to use only one instrument today (besides my voice), that being my crappy old Roland D-5 keyboard. No sequencers or loops - just me triggering lame patches (including drum sounds) with my fingers and thumbs.
1. Explanation Song (1:36) January 18, 2003 Listening party at: The Nursery Recorded on: Tascam 424mkIII The fresh year brought out fresh ideas, including a whole new Buckles Bunklucky suite. I feel this was my most inspired day since last April. To this day I still feel completely smug with how well song #2 came out.
1. Banana for Breakfast (1:12) * November 30, 2002 Listening party at: The Nursery Recorded on: Tascam 424mkIII Another short day - am I burning out? Today we see a return of the beloved Buckles Bunklucky character. We also have me fattening the brief set with a lazy cut-up of various CDs from my collection (including Magma, Breadwinner, 5ive Style, Ruins, Rapeman, Happy Family, Of Montreal, Van Der Graaf Generator, Brise Glace, and Alboth!).
1. Harry Potter Song (1:12) November 16, 2002 Listening party at: My house Recorded on: Tascam 424mkIII Another listening party at my house. Today was pretty short and to the point, though I finally started bouncing tracks to make room for lusher arrangements. Note how I usually start all my sets with a short, loud, throwaway song during which everybody quiets down and I can adjust the volume levels accordingly.
1. Big Fat Fucking Unison (0:24) October 26, 2002 Listening party at: Nat's apartment Recorded on: Tascam 424mkIII For some sick reason I decided to not use any bass guitar today - it's all keyboard bass and baritone guitar instead. The listening party was only like 3 or 4 of us in Nat's apartment, and Nat wasn't even there to attend it!
1. Lentil Soup (1:52) September 30, 2002 Listening party at: My house Recorded on: Tascam 424mkIII Back to normal ICS procedure. The listening party was at my house for the first time, which was fun. Meaningless factoid: the entire drum track for the last song was done first, and in one take. And my German is much worse than my Spanish, but that doesn't stop me from trying.
1. Journey to Gerkens (1:38) August 18, 2002 Listening party at: Backyard of the Filbert Street house Recorded on: Tascam 424mkIII And today was "International Volume Day" where every ICS member from every lodge had exactly one hour (between noon and 1:00pm), instead of the whole day, to create as much as possible. Of course the sum total of everybody's output lasted much longer than an hour, which I think was the whole point of the exercise. I tried to push boundaries by managing to write and record one 5-minute song in this time, but Morgan blew everybody out of the water with his 9 or 10 songs. Anyway, this tune has been cannibalized and reborn as the Three Piece Combo tune, "First the Bad News."
1. Everything is Potentially Beautiful, Therefore Ugliness is a Sin (4:58) July 13, 2002 Listening party at: Morgan's backyard Recorded on: Tascam 424mkIII Today was "concept album" day. People did different kinds of things - I personally did a mock two-sided album, with five normal songs on side one, and a ten concept fragments on side two. I'm leaving out song #3 because it's way too silly, even by my standards, and offers nothing of artistic interest (as if).
Side One:
Side Two: April 6, 2002 Listening party at: Morgan's house Recorded on: Tascam 424mkIII The first of several joint sessions with the Wig Lodge. Many people arrived with gobs of material that we listened to well into the evening. Everybody talked through song #3, which really fucking pissed me off, but I didn't say anything until just now. I'm pleased with every song I did on this particular day, which is a rarity.
3. Drunk out of Boredom (0:55) March 10, 2002 Listening party at: The Nursery Recorded on: Tascam 424mkIII Between you and me I feel this is my personal best ICS day from the first two years, with April 6th, 2002 being a close second. And that's taking into account song #1 which is totally, totally stupid and #8 which has a funny title but otherwise sucks major eggs. Enough said.
1. Test Tones (0:57) February 23, 2002 Listening party at: Morgan's house Recorded on: Tascam 424mkIII Still stuck using the 4-track, I began recording drums in mono so I could efficiently add more parts to songs. I'll leave out a couple songs here, one because in it I'm screaming adult content well above my range (and it's a total Shellac ripoff).
1. Panic in Lansing (0:18) January 5, 2002 Listening party at: The Nursery Recorded on: Tascam 424mkIII Upset that Nic and Mike kept making compilations that only included my worst songs, I thought I'd be clever by making one long song, so they'd have no choice but to include it. Being as how it's a total angry, bummer of a song, they put it all they way at the end of the transmission.
1. The Chatterbox (13:20) * December 8, 2001 Listening party at: Nic and Nat's old house Recorded on: Tascam 424mkIII Starting to push the boundaries a bit in this set. Winter always brings out the prog rock in me. I'm fully aware that my Spanish is bad - that's the point, really.
1. The Only Worthwhile Song on the Radio (2:16) November 11, 2001 Listening party at: Nic and Nat's old house Recorded on: Tascam 424mkIII ICS day #2 for me. Still on the 4-track cassette, and still can't seem to get rid of that distortion. I spent the first two hours of the day working on a song about my family which was so depressing that after it was half recorded I almost cried. So I erased it, and wrote an epic about having complete, passionate sex with Satan himself. That's the first song, which nobody should ever hear again. The last song of the set is dedicated to Steve Reich.
1. A Song for the Family (4:02) September 22, 2001 Listening party at: Nic and Nat's old house Recorded on: Tascam 424mkIII My very first ICS function. I've been doing speed composition/performing/recording for many years, so I fit right in with the (then still very small) gang. Everything was done on 4-track cassette. Note the uncontrollable distortion due to me not knowing the equipment very well yet.
1. Trying to Find Inspiration at 8:30 AM (2:48) * |
