A couple of weeks ago, my wife and I watched a hilarious movie called, Super High Me. The basis of the movie is that a comedian goes 30 days in row without smoking any marijuana. Then after experiencing 30 days sober, he smokes constantly for 30 straight days in a row.
In one of the scenes, the comedian has to undergo a memory test in which he is given 3 words at the beginning of the test that he needs to remember by the end of the session. While sober, he has trouble remembering the words by the end of the session, so during the period in which he smokes, he’s obsessed with the 3 words, cucumber, wire, and boat.
This was a hilarious scene and I just liked the words “cucumber”, “wire” and “boat” together. It sounded like an interesting surrealistic idea to start off writing a song with. So after the film, I wrote down these words quickly to describe a little surrealistic scene of the “Cucumber Wire Boat”.
Jeremy happened to have just written the music so when we got together that Sunday, I just ad-libbed the words I’d written over his production work.

An olive firecracker goes off, blends everything together in rainbows.
Just shine down in a mountain of water.
It’s all flowing down because gravity pulls.
It’s calling all of us together.

Can I whisper in your ear?
I think you can hear me.
I think we’ll sail far away in this vessel.
It’s pulling in, it’s pushing out with the waves.
Breathing in and out for all of us.
It’s organic.
It’s fluid and it’s alive.

Cucumber Wire Boat by chilljam.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at chilljam.com.

Over the last couple of weeks, things have been incredibly busy for us as we’ve just been getting over all the obligations life throws at us in the new year. Because of this, getting together to play in a simultaneously collaborative environment has been difficult. So, instead, we’ve been producing material individually. In as many cases as possible, we’re working on doing some asynchronous projects where we can each record aspects individually and then pass it along to the next person.

Thugs, right now, is just a lonely effort at the moment, but I wanted to post it up anyway. I imagine it may sound different if other members layer onto it and perhaps it would be interesting to post some of these songs as they go through each stage of development.

Thugs by chilljam.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at chilljam.com.

For something a little different this week, we played a bit over at Jeremy’s house and I brought my camera along to try taking some video of the band. We’re planning some future work with video and I wanted to capture some stuff while we were all playing.
I hadn’t really planning on keeping any of the audio along with the video, however, this particular video came across pretty decently so I thought it’d be a good one to share on the site.
Now, I don’t think we really planned on having any vocals while we played and didn’t set up anything to capture vocal work but I just felt like singing so I just pretty much sang/yelled as loud as I could control over the instruments. Surprisingly the mic picked it up ok and this is what we ended up with.
Hope everyone enjoys it.

Identity

I’ve been falling apart
Ever since you left me here
To waste away in rust
I used to know you
You used to love me
But you’ve moved on
It was bound to happen
A child is only called
until time says otherwise
And what we’re left with is faded tattered notes
About the way things used to be

It will all live on
I will live through this
And return to you when you’re done the day to day.
All of the things you used to love will still be there
Waiting for your return
Like your front door after the journey.

I know the days are long
You’re just trying to get by
Each day stretches on like
Rubber bands across and across
And across
Each Layer you peel like an onion
And yet another remains.

But the core is still there and the meaning still true
Don’t haunt yourself with concern for loss.
Just brighten the picture and focus the subject.
It’ll develop on the other side and you’ll
Find yourself still standing

It will all live on
I will live through this
And return to you when you’re done the day to day
All the things you used to love will still be there.
Waiting for your return
Like your front door after the journey.

Creepjacker starts abruptly with a crash of disjointed noise loosely connected for moments with syncronized stops. However, after some drunken chaos, the song finds it’s way into a lighthearted stroll underlined with distortion and tension.

I think we hit a milestone with this one.  The time signature in this beat is unlike anything we’ve done before.  The extra added storm effects in the end go right along with the lyrics and thundering drums.

Split Open and Melt is a goofy use of Phish’s lyrics from the song of the same name. I thought it was fun to play around with the huge flange effect that was found on our mixing board and drastically change pitches through it so that it sounded like my voice was melting at times.

Lazy Sun Melts is a trippy, shimmery work. There’s no real direction. There’s no purpose. It’s like a sonic representation of lazy.

This is a short mellow piece featuring saxaphone. The sax gradually takes the music into an abstract composition that dissolves in the end.