Music Cutup Review

recorded on my laptop in my room
obscure enough that you need to pay full attention
rising above the ever-growing masses to do
tunes that left a deep welt on anyone who listened
rendered completely impotent, unable to exact change
without the disgust and haughty attitudes that seem to permeate
some enterprising archivist with a tape recorder

the least practical of pop albums
a sophisticated interplay of dissonant, underplayed instruments
a throwback to the times when bands weren’t on magazine covers
behind the club with acoustic guitars in hand
in some fashion to fulfill contractual obligations
sometimes the sounds are a bit too distinct from one another
with an emphasis on minor chords

feel the pounding drums of that last tune somewhere deep inside
they're in now and you're not going to be able to get them out
fill that need for despair and tragedy within pop music
songs are just supposed to be heard
they really fucking rock.

Cutup from music reviews at Nudeasthenews.com
Sprayback by Yours Truly
Links via Google

The Studio is a Mess

The studio is a mess...But the music keeps on keeping on.
Thunder Echo Ensemble is wrapping up the loose ends and finishing off the new Album, My Old Future.
We are still fighting over possible Album Cover Art, and we still need to finish the mixes on a few tunes, and the final track order has not been agreed on, and Jay keeps disappearing in his time machine, and Monkey Boy keeps ordering Chinese food and expecting the rest of us to pick up the bill. But the music is sweet. And we are looking forward to publishing, the release party with all the record company execs, and the world tour.
We are looking at CafePress.com as a way to get the CDs out to you all quickly.
More News as it develops. -- TEE

The Cutup & Sprayback Concept

In a past life a friend of mine, Jason, was really into William Burroughs. My friend introduced me to the concept of cutting up text with scissors, then selecting bits at random and pasting them together again to form a new text. This is a trick William Burroughs learned from Brion Gysin apparently.

These experiments result in some very interesting combinations of words and phrases and lots and lots of garbage.

My preferred Cutup and Sprayback Method is to read some text and copy out phrases and words that grab my attention and paste them into my word processor. Then I rearrange the bits a bit and hit print. Cutup and Sprayback.
While not truly random, I find this method more poetically rewarding.

I am also running Google searches on randomly selected phrases in the Sprayback to see where these things lead. My previous post (below) is one such experiment. So if you see Cutup posts in the future in this Blog, you will know what I am playing with.

Enjoy.

film best cutup

who saves his own life with a video camera
a truly sensational debut
such a first-hand knowledge
the bug-splattered windshield is sheer genius
that's it
the handsomest man in hollywood
but on an epic scale
compelled by the face and pace of contemporary tokyo
metalheads in the equivalent of marriage
spills us into the abyss of the last century
soundless imagery of another vintage machine:
his namesake's statue of moses
and its reputation as the red heartland
the debut discovery of the year
the best fun i've had
funny and flinch-making
that’s it

Cutup from Artforum's Film Best of 2004 film reviews
Sprayback by Your's Truly
Links by Google

A Poor Excuse

A poor excuse for what I’m gonna do.
Case sensitive associates creating gaps,
Between life and living.
A poor excuse for what I’m thinking now.
Your breath a flute dancing above a 70’s disco.
Your movements cascading like asterisk snow.
A poor excuse for what I’m not saying.
Empty streets mirroring empty eyes.
Network applications flavoring the spaces between.
A poor excuse for what I’m doing now.
Showing gold pieces to cats.
Providing the gaps that need filling.
A poor excuse…

TEE by any other name...

So what is in a name?

Tension in the Timelines

Please keep your hands inside until the Time Machine reaches a complete stop.

The new TEE Album, My Old Future, is all about Time Travel, so I have been doing some time traveling to gather material for the album. Time travel is not the straight forward task the movies would like you to believe. In fact, I am not entirely sure that time travel works the way HG Wells thought it did.

I am quickly becoming convinced that time travel efforts actually create or tap into alternate time lines. For instance I found one past where Elvis was President of the United States and fought off an invasion by aliens (but more about that later). Obviously, that never happened in the current time stream, I just checked the encyclopedias and none of them list President Elvis or the flying saucer attacks in the 60’s. There are a bunch of CIA and Air Force cover up stories on the Internet that I don’t remember seeing before. And that is the weird part. I can’t tell if I am actually returning to the same time stream I started from. Maybe traveling through the time streams actually alters them and I can’t get back to my old time stream. I’m going to have to study this some more before I take any more trips.

Has anyone seen my turbo jet pack? I was sure I left it in the garage, but now I can't find it.

Album Cover 3?

Here I am returning fromthe future in my own time machine.

Album Cover 2?

My good friend Flavio thinks this should be the new album cover.
What do you think?
Got a better suggestion? Send it in.

New Album Cover?

Monkey Boy thinks this should be the cover of the new album, My Old Future.
What do you think?

Things are jumping at the Studio

Things are busy, busy, busy at the Lazy Jay Studios where the Thunder Echo Ensemble are recording new songs for their up coming album, tenatively entitled, My Old Future.

We have a handful of quality tracks, and a basket full of dreadful crap which we will not burden the listening public with at this point. But after we make it big in the music biz, we will be sure to include the crappy tracks on the box set of B-sides and rarities. It is good to plan ahead for these things.

The battles are fully underway with the Record Company Executives about which tracks will be released as singles and what order they should appear on the album. The band predicts that the Execs can kiss their ensembled asses and will not give up on their artistic vision for the album.

Everyone who has participated in the recording sessions agrees that the new material is a departure for the Ensemble, but at the same time continues the Thunder Echo tradition of funky beats, throbbing bass, eclectic instrumentation, and collective weirdness. New and old fans of the TEE experience will not be disappointed.

The album could be released as early as February or March of 2005, but no definite release schedule has been announced at this time. A world wide tour to promote the album is sure to follow.

Stay tuned for more news as it occurs. -- Monkey Boy