This track is a result of a improvised jam session with Anthony Shawn and myself (Jeremy Scott). We jammed for a couple hours one night in the new studio and recorded some cool sounds. This one is a pretty simple little groove with a cool bass line. The MEAT! of the song is about 1:50 into it.

In the past, we’ve recorded tracks in layers, starting with the beat and then adding synthesizers sounds on top. A couple of these tracks I’m talking about are Concrete and Fruity. Fruity being one of my favorite out of the two. So, we are revisiting this experiment with Anthony Shawn and myself, and calling the project Old Jessup, but this time, we’re coming up with this stuff live. Stay tuned for more of Old Jessup.

MEAT! by Chilljam is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.

The fourth and final video recording we have from the Greene Turtle set is a improvisational performance of Swimming with Sharks. I’d written the words to this about a week before the show, reflecting on a very difficult work project I’d recently completed over the winter. During our set, Jeremy switched into jamming on this chord progression and I immediately thought the words might work with the progression so I just started singing along to it.

I really don’t know what to say about these past months
So much time spent bringing Frankenstein to life only to realize that I was the mad scientist.
I just need a little lightning the next time I flip the switch.
I keep getting phone call after phone call and putting everyone on hold.
I just need a little more time before it’s perfect.
Of course I’ve eaten.
A cereal bar and some caffeine will put me right again.
I can’t worry about tomorrow. I just gotta make it through today.
Cause
We’re all dancing the steps and I’ve gotta stay one step ahead.
I can see the sharks in the water
Swimming ceaselessly with their suits and ties on
Get in. The water’s just fine.
So what’s the next step genius?
All that planning and bleeding leads to more planning.
Maybe I’ll just put a toe in the water.
Check the temperature and see how warm Hell is.
Such a thin line between soul selling and buying. You never know who’s the dealer.
You trade the time for money. And the money for more.
There’s always more on the shelf.
They’re having a sale today.
So maybe I’ll just take a lap or two. I can swim with the sharks and survive.
Do I want to?

Swimming with Sharks by chilljam is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at chilljam.com.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://chilljam.com.

The name of this improvised jam says it all. It sounds like a contant build up through the entire song, kinda like The Lost Cymbol. It starts off with a dreamy rhodes and ends with loud drum rolls.

Endless Build by Chilljam is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at chilljam.com.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://chilljam.com.

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.

Thank you to everyone for your continued support and interest!

The Daily Routine by Chilljam is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at chilljam.com.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://chilljam.com.

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.

Thank you to everyone for your continued support and interest!

Lonely Microphone Recordings by Chilljam is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at chilljam.com.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://chilljam.com.

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.

Here’s my first experiment with GarageBand.  I added some distortion to the rhodes and some nice chorus to the guitar.  The drum effects also added some crispness to the snare and some fullness to the kick drum. Then, I added several synth pads over top of everything to even out the sound.