Hot, Hot, Heat

hey everyone, kevin here. things are heating up around ol' Endless Summer Institute of Sound HQ, hence my not posting here for a couple of weeks. the best news is that we have a new member of the ESIS "family" and that is aaron rogers, the new assistant at the studio. he's only been here for a week or so and already has made himself damned near indispensable. it's really great news though, in so much as we're working like 4 or 5 days a week down in the studio and that means more music made, etc. i'm very happy to be so busy.

so, anyway,the first thing coming out of ESIS, it turns out, will be the rmx me and the torrey canyon collective did for axe riverboy ( who, you will recall is xavier from tahiti 80 in solo mode ). it's coming out on JVC in japan, which is a big major label. kinda surprising they would put out rmx album but maybe japanese major labels are just cooler! check out the track listing here.

alos continuing work on the bertrand burgalat rmx feat. vocals by robert wyatt. it's coming laong quite well so far. also doing a song i wrote for french singer jean-emmanual de-luxe that features vocals by bertrand burgalat!

also got a nice message from sean o'hagan the other day on myspace. very cool guy and as i mentioned before, i'm working on a song sean wrote for jean-emmanual de-luxe. hopefully, sean and i can doing something together in the future? keep your fingers crossed.

anyway, we'll be fixing up the torrey canyon collective website in the next month or so and put up a myspace page as well, now that something is actually coming out by us. we also should be finishing up the orange cake mix record soon too. in fact, by the new year, we should have quite a bit done. we've also been working on our own songs and they're coming along quite well so far. we will probably post a demo or two on the myspace page in a few weeks. watch this space for further details!

let your freak flag fly...oh yeah. one more thing! kevin from the chamber strings e-mailed me the other day saying our old friend, liam hayes aka plush has a new video out for a new song from new forthcoming album. kevin thinks it's the best thing he's ever done and while i'd still say that "found a little baby" is better, check out this great song and video.

Music with the seasons?

Now that cold weather has begun its rapid descent upon us here in Northeast Ohio, I've been thinking about how my music choices are affected by the weather, specifically the hunkering down for the dark, cold days of winter.

Some people probably load up on cheery music, the kind of bright, summery sounds that remind you of warm times and being outdoors. Everybody's got their own favorites, but classics like the Beach Boys and even newer pop stuff like Jack Johnson, Ben Harper, or Archer Prewitt just screams summertime to me.

For whatever reason though, I go the opposite route. I go with the winter, embracing the darker, mysterious, dense sounds. I put away the Nonesuch music from Africa, Johnathan Rice, and anything bright and cheery. I dig out dense, dissonant stuff like Godspeed You Black Emperor, Low, or albums that are just melancholy like The Wind by Warren Zevon, the last thing he put out before his death. Why does darker music fit the days? I don't know, but it works for me.

What does everybody else listen to this time of year?