You can now play along with “Music to Squeak By” for free! This Bandcamp-exclusive album includes backing tracks made from the original recordings along with pdf leadsheets for concert, B-flat, E-flat, and bass clef instruments.
Download it today for whatever price you choose.
With the 10th anniversary of Curious Automata coming up in March of this year, I think it’s time to clear out the archives a bit. This album is a collection of misfits whose tone didn’t match the projects for which they were intended. Also, in the spirit of moving on, all the tracks on this album are released under a Creative Commons Attribution license so anyone can use them as they see fit.
“Broken Tree” was improvised after my favorite shade tree was split in a late spring storm in 2017. It was previously released as a rough cut for my Bandcamp subscribers but it’s much prettier and has been edited for time here. I think it still captures my mood as I waited to see if the tree survived, though.
Tracks 2-12 were all recorded during the two sessions for 2018’s “We Were”. Those were during the end of my marriage, so they were a bit of an art therapy project as I went through a divorce. I wrote a list of things to remember, then improvised around each idea. For the original album, I decided to lean toward the positive tracks, so the remaining ones here have a bit darker tilt.
I hope you enjoy these moody leftovers, and thanks for listening.
-Vic Dillahay, Guitarist
“Chubtopia” by Kosnoco (a.k.a. Komodo Snowcone ) is a brilliantly original journey down a path less traveled. A plethora of diverse influences from metal to R&B fuse into a totally original sound. Infused with killer hooks and an off-kilter sense of humor, this a release you need to hear.
I’m a big fan of the E-mu Proteus line of ROMplers. They are not hugely versatile, but their sounds were all over 90s and early 2000s sci-fi television and games. Probably my favorite of those was Kenji Yamamoto and Kouichi Kyuma’s moody atmospheric score for Metroid Prime. Since the 20th anniversary of Prime’s release was last Friday, November 18th, I decided to play around with some of the patches used in the game and explore that sonic world with my guitar rather than a GameCube. I owe a huge thanks to SynaMax for his excellent research into the synths and patches used in the Prime series. It let me quickly dive into Yamamoto’s tools so I could see what I could make with them.
Since this one is a bit of a departure from my normal genre, I’ve released it under my audiosalvage production moniker instead of my own name.
Please enjoy this bit of a throwback to the futuristic sounds of the 1990s, and thanks for listening.
For a limited time, you can play along with every song on “Music for Chasing Squirrels” for the low, low price of nothing. This Bandcamp-exclusive album includes backing tracks and pdf leadsheets for concert, B-flat, E-flat, and bass clef instruments.
Download it today for free or whatever price you choose.
“Music for Chasing Squirrels” is here! A follow-up to last year’s “Music to Squeak By”, it’s another album of guitar-driven instrumentals with odd and unexpected twists.
First off is “Mrs. Harvey’s”. Named after Longmont’s historic bakery, it’s an up-tempo tune in mostly 6. “Nines”, the second cut, is a funkier version of Graphite Addiction’s “Mental Morphology”. “Cibeles” and “Blues for Phrygia” are two sides of the Phrygian Dominant coin, one an uptempo Latin and the other a Swing Waltz. Side A ends with “Dearest”, a ballad in memory of lost love or alternately a lost invoice. Same difference.
“Fossil Creek Tunnel” starts Side B with its portrait of an incomplete trail. “For C and D” features C major and D minor triad masquerading as a jazz standard. Almost 21 years in the making, “Near Majority” is a musical joke taken much too far. “Somewhere West of Wichita” is a welcome return to normalcy. Almost. Continuing on that road, the record closes with “Actually, Actually”, which as close to country as I dare venture.
Check it out today streaming, at Bandcamp, on CD, or on lathe-cut vinyl. Thanks for listening!
-Vic Dillahay
Graphite Addiction’s 2007 debut release has been reissued in a limited run of lathe-cut vinyl!
15 years ago, we played a CD release party at the sadly long-gone Deja Brew in Longmont. We had no idea that the next decade and a half would bring dozens of gigs together and 5 more albums. And now the original album is available on vinyl – as we originally sequenced and mixed it.
Check it out at the Curious Automata store, and thanks for years of listening!
