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 Imagine [5:10m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (50)

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Imagine – A cover of the John Lennon song by chilljam.com
Following the Beatles cover from last week, we’re releasing our cover of John Lennon’s song, Imagine this week. This song was played during the same outdoor session as last week’s version of Strawberry Fields Forever, but Imagine was played earlier on in the session. Actually, you can hear the wood crackling quite a bit in the background of this recording as it was still pretty wet at the time and hadn’t yet settled in for the quiet burn.

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Download the album, In My Other Life, this week on chilljam.com.
In My Other Life sprung from a set of song ideas that spoke from the point of view of particular people who have lived in history. Although there are only 3 songs in this release, each stands as some of our most unique works and marks a transition for me into starting to use pre-written lyrical ideas and concepts. However, with these songs, I had yet to actually bring the lyrics with me to sessions to work with. Often, I would write some ideas for possible use as lyrics on my computer at home or work and would read them before heading off to meet up with with the guys. Then when we’d play, I’d try to work off of what I remembered in my head.

To download the album:
1 Go to the In My Other Life… Listen :: Album page.
2 Scroll down past the player and you’ll see a link labelled “Download this Album”.
3 Simply click on this link and the album is yours, complete with the album artwork.

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One of the reasons I was originally interested in putting together the Chilljam.com site was that I wanted to focus on gathering together all of our material into one place. I thought it would be great to put it all together in a nice presentation so that others can access the work and enjoy it however they want. However, I also wanted to gather together the work that I’ve done with other projects in the past and present them in a way that is both accessible and enjoyable.
So today, we’ve got a new section on the right-hand column called “Links” in which we can link to sites with these works.
The first site we’ve got under this category is the Stars Burn Out Music Archive, which includes all of the recordings I have from one of the projects I previously worked with, Stars Burn Out.

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 Strawberry Fields Forever [3:41m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (50)

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A mostly acoustic version of Strawberry Fields Forever played live outdoors.
A couple of weeks ago, we did a little jam set on Neil’s back patio. It was nice relaxing scene with a little chiminea burning and some tiki torches as our only sources of light in the darkening summer evening. I played Neil’s dreadnaught acoustic guitar and sang, Neil was playing an assortment of percussion instruments and Jeremy was playing through a little Fender bass practice amp I bought years ago. The recordings were done through a single omnidirectional microphone on the picnic table into my Macbook Pro.
Surprisingly, this setup yielded quite a few songs that sounded pretty solid on the recordings and we’ll be releasing those in the coming weeks.
One of these recordings was a version of Strawberry Fields Forever, by the Beatles.

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Download the album, The Daily Routine, this week on chilljam.com.
The lyrical ideas for The Daily Routine came about during a period in which I was working directly for a government contractor in Washington, D.C. The album describes aspects of my daily commute into D.C. on the MARC train and Metro, my day-to-day work, and then the ride home during the evenings. As one can probably tell in the lyrics, I never really felt like I was the right fit for the job and culture of the position I was in. I felt no problems handling my responsibilities. But, as a web developer working for the government, I was really looking forward to developing something that I felt would be publicly beneficial. I ended up finding out the much of the work involved the politics of apathy. Most people I worked with simply didn’t care and were just there for the paycheck. Lyrically, this album describes my observations and thoughts during this time.

To download the album:
1 Go to the The Daily Routine Listen :: Album page.
2 Scroll down past the player and you’ll see a link labelled “Download this Album”.
3 Simply click on this link and the album is yours, complete with the album artwork.

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 Caught in the Net [2:36m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (42)

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Here’s a live one with all 3 of us.  

This one is very heavy on the bass, so be sure to listen with good speakers.  Neil uses drinking glasses as his drums and the effects on Joe’s vocals echoes throughout the song.

Some very nice spoken word with an ambient beat.

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This week we’re releasing my favorite of the chilljam albums recorded to date. Lonely Microphone Recordings were recorded during a period of transition for the project. The PC that we were using for most of our recordings to this point died on us, disabling our ability to record multitrack recordings for mix down in post production. However, we wanted to continue to capture what was going on so Jeremy brought up a recording device and we attached a single room microphone to it to basically capture all of the sound in the room as it happened. So effectively we had no way of mixing any of the instrument levels. This is basically a series of live recordings.
Despite this raw method of recording, I really loved the massive sound this album has, along with some epic songs and flowing structures.
Hunt 17 tells the story of predator and prey and how their roles can be reversed given particular circumstances. The story begins with one character hunting another deep in the jungle. However, after the hunter fails to kill the prey despite leaving him/her as dead, the prey turns around and comes back after the original hunter leading to an eventual confrontation between the two.
See What’s Inside, Open Gate and Locked Door were all recorded with Beavis the following weekend. These 3 songs are some of the best jam sets that I think we’ve ever done and each song flows easily into the next with some great peaks and valleys.

To download the album:
1 Go to the Lonely Microphone Recordings Listen :: Album page.
2 Scroll down past the player and you’ll see a link labelled “Download this Album”.
3 Simply click on this link and the album is yours, complete with the album artwork.

(more…)

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 Open House [3:30m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (26)

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A couple of weeks ago, my wife and I watched Jeff Tweedy’s DVD, Sunken Treasure. I marveled at Tweedy’s ability to play songs that felt concise and complete with a great deal of open space and loose structures. He also has a great penchant for writing songs that explore interesting subjects but feel very relaxed at the same time.
After watching the DVD, I started playing around with some song ideas to work on something more relaxed in feel as well. Open House was the result of this little solo jamming session.

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 And... [1:54m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (29)

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The last couple of weeks have been intensely busy for me and I don’t really expect it to let up until near the end of summer. Several projects are in the works simultaneously and just trying to keep up with the day-to-day stuff can often be difficult to do.

I don’t think my situation is unusual. Many people these days, especially those of us living in highly populated metropolitan areas, are constantly on the run. Our minds are constantly turned on and responding. We’re constantly thinking of what we have to do next and with all over the recent advances in technology, life seems to be getting faster and faster each day.

And… is a spoken word piece focusing on this aspect of life. We’re always thinking about what we have to do next. Always piling things on with another “and I’ve got to do…”.
Stylistically, And… utilizes some electronic beats fading in and out of the background much like my attention span as I am trying to juggle so many things. Vocally, I was reminded of some of John S. Hall’s vocal stylings, similar to the rambling slice-of-life stylings that he would perform with King Missile.

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