Canvouver Has Arrived

As of a few hours ago, my new album, Canvouver, has officially gone live on all the streaming services, and is also available for purchase, both digitally (including lossless formats) and on CD (thanks to the awesomeness of Atomic Disc).

Canvouver CDs

Today (November 3rd) also happens to be Bandcamp Friday, so if you decide to pick up the new album there, Bandcamp is waiving their revenue share, meaning artists (including myself) will get a larger cut.

Here’s all the links:

Purchase

Streaming

And here’s the full tracklist:

  1. Whirlygig (4:24)
  2. Canvouver (9:43)
  3. West Richland (2:46)
  4. Walker Lake (6:20)
  5. Aloclek Drive (6:13)
  6. Rio Salado Parkway (5:00)
  7. Arroxeado (9:19)

 

Hope you all enjoy the new album–it was a lot of fun putting this one together (much as it was for its predecessor, Electrical Gremlin), and I’m already plotting what kind of shenanigans I can get into with Album No. 3.

-Alex

New Album, Canvouver, Wheels Out November 3rd, 2023

On Friday, November 3rd, my second album, the absurdly-titled Canvouver, wheels out the door, a mere seven months after its predecessor, Electrical Gremlin.  And it again features my bizarre cover art, this time featuring some sort of . . . sentient, self-driving giant can of “fancy whirlygigs”, the best of which are apparently imported from West Richland, Washington.  (The more you know.)

Canvouver is currently available for pre-order on Bandcamp, and you’ll get to download the three previously-released singles from it (“Whirlygig”, “West Richland”, and “Walker Lake”) to tide you over until the full thing goes live.  You can pre-save it on Spotify here.  It’ll also be coming to Apple Music, YouTube, Amazon Music, and all your favorite streaming services on release day as well.

Overall, Canvouver is a mellower-yet-mathier affair than Electrical Gremlin, and actually has a fair bit of New Wave, shoegaze, and atmospheric ’80s pop influence amongst its unusual mix of inspirations.  “Aloclek Drive”, for instance, sounds like Claude Debussy and Phil Collins teamed up to write the theme music for some legal drama, while “Arroxeado” is fueled by lo-fi shoegaze-y guitar haze.  Also, much as the title track on Electrical Gremlin saw my theremin’s circuitry fail, the title track on this one involved my guitar going out of commission.  (Thankfully, both the theremin and the guitar are repairable.)

To give you an additional taste . . . here’s a snippet of the title track, “Canvouver”, which shapeshifts throughout its nearly 10-minute runtime.

Also, as an added bonus, here’s Vibe Cat visiting some Tanasbourne-area office parks and attempting to figure out the 7/8 groove on “Aloclek Drive”:

I hope you all check out the new album when it lands next month, and I look forward to being able to share the whole thing with you very shortly!

-Alex

New Single: “West Richland”

My latest single, which will be featured on my upcoming second album, has just landed on the streaming services and on Bandcamp.

The title of the new track is “West Richland”, named after the city of the same name in the eastern part of Washington state (a title which, no doubt, will be of great amusement to a certain portion of my fanbase).  It’s a short, hypnotic little tune with synths and detuned cello, imbued with a sense of semi-arid pastoralism (befitting its namesake), and featuring a cavalcade of meter changes.

I’ve decided to offer it as a pay-what-you-want download on Bandcamp for the month of September–and yes, that means getting it for free is an option (though Bandcamp will limit the free option to the first 200 who choose to do so).  You can pick up “West Richland” here.

And here’s some streaming links:

Spotify

Apple Music

YouTube (also see below)

Things are progressing quite well with Album No. 2, and I will be unveiling its tracklisting and rather absurd title and album art fairly soon (hint: it involves a popular spoonerized misspelling of another city in Washington . . . which also shares its name with a major city in another country, though the Washington one actually came first).  If you’re looking for a further taste of what’s on the next album, the Walker Lake EP is also available–both tracks on it, “Whirlygig” and “Walker Lake”, are also going to be on the track list with “West Richland”.  (Also, I somehow released three singles with “W” names, strangely enough.)

Hope you enjoy!

-Alex

 

Walker Lake EP Released

In other news, the Walker Lake EP is now live.  It features the previously issued “Whirlygig” alongside a new track, “Walker Lake”, both of which will be on my next album.

“Walker Lake” is a languid, meditative track with synthesizer and electric violin, inspired by the lake of the same name in the Nevada desert (just north of Hawthorne).  You can read more about the actual lake here.

The new EP is now streaming on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, and others, and you can also pick it up for just $2 on Bandcamp, iTunes, and other digital storefronts.

You can take a listen to “Walker Lake” below:

Hope you all enjoy!

-Alex

Check Out My Interview With Custom Made Music Mag

Check out my interview with Dave Allison at Custom Made Music Mag here.
We talk about my album, Electrical Gremlin, how I shifted from contemporary classical to experimental rock, the odd gear I used on it, and how I discovered one of my favorite bands at the Washington Square Macy’s. Thanks to Dave for the great questions!
Also, the Walker Lake EP launches tomorrow (and may have launched some places already,  since it is the 7th in some parts of the world).
-Alex

New Single: “Whirlygig”

The first single off the sequel to Electrical Gremlin is now available!

“Whirlygig” is slated to be the opening track on the new album (as of yet untitled . . . perhaps Electrical Gremlin Vol. 2: Electric Boogaloo?) and is a dizzyingly moody, mathy romp with percolating synths, an angular, stabby bass line, and brooding viola over a skittering beat.

It’s now streaming on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, and others, and can also be purchased via Bandcamp and iTunes (among others).

You can take a listen right here:

And, of course, Electrical Gremlin remains available for purchase (both on CD and lossless digital on Bandcamp) and on streaming.  I hope you all enjoy this new track, and stay tuned for more new sounds!

-Alex

 

Electrical Gremlin CDs Have Arrived!

The first batch of the CD edition of Electrical Gremlin has now arrived, and can now be ordered on my Bandcamp page, for $10 plus shipping.  Many, many thanks to Atomic Disc, just down the road in Salem, Oregon, for doing such a fantastic job on these.

The CD edition features a snazzy LP-style protective sleeve, a small booklet, some heptatonic manifolds (which do indeed relate to the modal structures used on the album), and gremlin’s face even makes an appearance on the disc itself.  Here’s a few images:

Front of Electrical Gremlin CD edition. Inner view of Electrical Gremlin CD edition, showing the gremlin's face on the disc. A box full of Electrical Gremlin CDs, ready to go.

-Alex

Electrical Gremlin Has Been Released

My new album, Electrical Gremlin, has officially been released today.  You can purchase the digital edition over on Bandcamp for just $7.  And since today, April 7th, happens to be Bandcamp Friday, Bandcamp will be waiving their revenue share from purchases, making this an excellent day to buy Electrical Gremlin, and lots of other interesting music there from independent artists.

Electrical Gremlin Cover

For those who are wondering if there will be CDs, the answer is yes.  I have an initial small run of CDs on the way, which will be available for purchase on my Bandcamp page once they’re available–just $10 plus shipping.  The current estimated arrival time of when I will receive the discs is the middle of next week.  The packaging is quite entertaining . . .

Electrical Gremlin CD Edition Mockup Image

Mockup image of the CD edition of Electrical Gremlin . . . and yes, the gremlin’s face will be on the disc!

If you’re the streaming type, Electrical Gremlin is now live on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube, and a number of other services . . . and if you’d like a taste now, here’s the third track, “Poltergeist Activity”, straight from YouTube.

I hope you all enjoy the new album, and thanks for your support!

-Alex

 

 

New Album, Electrical Gremlin, Releasing April 7th, 2023

This coming Friday—April 7th—I will be releasing a new album of music, entitled Electrical Gremlin.  The new album is up on my Bandcamp page, where you can also preview (and buy with pre-order) the third track on the album, “Poltergeist Activity”.  (And yes, I did the cover art myself.)  If you buy on release day, it happens to be a Bandcamp Friday, during which Bandcamp waives their fees.

It will also be up on the streaming services, too–here is a pre-save page for Electrical Gremlin on Spotify.

Electrical Gremlin is, in some ways, a major departure for me—in fact, I’d probably class it as my own personal Kid A. Suffice to say, it is a wild ride–eight tracks of instrumental music for strings and electronics, ranging from Neu!-style krautrock, to quasi-ambient synth-hymns, to modal viola freakouts, to Rihanna-meets-Larks’ Tongues-era King Crimson absurdity.  And there’s a cello tuned down a fifth.  (Also, for those of you who follow my theoretical heresy, aside from a brief incursion on the fourth track, “Sapphire Requiem”, there’s not any Locrian Liberation going on–but there’s plenty of Corinthian, Leucadian, Thasian, and Cyrenean to go around, among others.)

The music on Electrical Gremlin is a type I’ve wanted to make for a very long while—at least since discovering the aforementioned Kid A and Larks’ Tongues in Aspic back in 2006, and even moreso after Beak> burst onto the scene.  The impetus for finally going for it came after a lot of reflection in the wake of what has been a long and especially trying period of time—I went through some rather rough personal stuff right before the pandemic lockdowns happened in March 2020, which made an already bad time much, much worse.

Despite being flooded with the sensation of (as Darius Milhaud once put it) “a thousand simultaneous musics rushing towards me from all directions”, and filling my manuscript book with all kinds of sketches in the time since, while also making considerable progress on the theoretical end, my tried-and-true way of creating music felt increasingly counterproductive.  In fact, I haven’t completed a “piece” in the classical-academic sense in almost four years—Cyan Egg Music, Op. 59 remains my most recent.

It’s not the first time I had felt that—indeed, I went through a similar sort of ennui in the early-middle period of my doctoral program, though this was more intense.  However, in this case, rather than waiting and wading around in the mire, hoping I get an excuse to write Gray Egg Music again (the piece that let me climb out of it the last time), I decided to finally and truly embrace the leftfield “popular music” (if you can really call it that) weirdo that had been percolating under the surface for over a decade-and-a-half.

Very little on Electrical Gremlin was notated out beforehand, aside from little sketches.  Instead, the process for making this new music was based more on a feedback loop of improvising, recording, and adjusting, working primarily out of Pro Tools.  The immediacy of this approach has felt very, very refreshing, and  effective at clearing that creative logjam that had been stymieing me for the past three years.  In fact, I’m already working on a sequel—an “Electrical Gremlin Boogaloo”, if you will.

Electrical Gremlin will be available in just a few more days, and I hope you all check it out and enjoy it, in all its weirdness.  Here’s the full tracklisting:

  1. Evergreen Parkway (10:15)
  2. Viridescence (4:50)
  3. Poltergeist Activity (3:48)
  4. Sapphire Requiem (5:40)
  5. Electrical Gremlin (4:24)
  6. Gilgamesh (5:43)
  7. 424242424 (5:39)
  8. Kyrene Road (8:12)

 

-Alex

I (Almost) Have A Book: Introducing A Unified Theory of Heptatonic Modal Harmony

Those of you who know me and/or have closely followed my work know that one of my big projects I’ve wanted to do is to write a book on my modally-based harmonic system, which I’ve been developing since diving head first into the modal realm way back in 2002–back when I was a mere teenager (albeit one who was nearly done with a bachelor’s degree).  I’ve had a number of attempts at it over the years, but back in August 2020, amidst the trying times of the height of the pandemic, I made another attempt at it, with a bit of a different approach to structuring it.  The combination of that new approach, and the fact that I’ve been able to truly develop the system in the past few years, has allowed me to reach the point where, at long last, I finally have a rough draft of the whole thing, running a bit shy of 300 pages in its current formatting.

The current title is A Unified Theory of Heptatonic Modality. The book covers the various types of heptatonic modes (all possible within 12-tone equal-temperament) and some of their interesting properties (particularly from an expressive standpoint), before diving into aspects of establishing the modes in a musical setting, exploring the possible chord types, ways to assemble those chords into progressions that are analogous to functional tonality, in addition to getting into modulation and polymodal complexes.

I am, at this point, still evaluating my next steps, including publication options.  But it feels nice (and very surreal!) to finally be nearing the point of having a comprehensive statement of this harmonic system, which has been a passion of mine for two decades, and I am looking forward to finally being able to let you all get your hands on it at some point in the near future.  In the meanwhile, below a preview of a few select pages from the current iteration of the book for you to peruse.  Stay tuned here for more updates on the book, and thank you all for your continued support and interest.

-Alex