Mr. Furious Records

Along with releasing Moon Gazer, Brandon asked me to write something about the album.  A review didn’t seem quite right, but what happened is that I ended up live-blogging my first listen.  -h

1 – Moon Gazer

• starts off with a block-rocking sleep-beat!
• it sounds like shooting sunbeams from one’s eyes is commonplace in this world
• love the space at the end of the first verse/chorus
• i feel like this is going to be my favorite panda face album

2 – Lofty Eye

• yeah, i think so!
• this feels like all the things i like about panda face – sweetness and creepiness, the vocal stylings, weirdness and pop… ness – all cranked up four notches at once
• i’ll have to ask brandon how his musical adventures since the last record – renfields, millions, burns – have influenced this, and what order all that stuff happened in
• really proud this is going to be on MFR. brandon just emailed me out of the blue, “hey, i have a new record out, will you post it?” that is exactly what i hoped MFR would be!

3 – King of the Sun

• ooh, i wanna dance a bit. i’m doing kind of an egyptian neck movement thing
• AND HE JUST SANG “EGYPTIAN FANTASIES…” we have some connection going on
• is that “cesearian?” probably, there was a roman thing, too. fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck weareintrouble. i think i might get cut open, somehow.
• whew

4 – White Hawk

• i have been listening to brandon’s music since the blane “blair” EP, so, about ten years. i think we’ve only met once, and it was at a dark satellites/renfields show, and i’m terrible at hanging out at shows because i’m super-focused on my performance and my gear
• the sounds in this song are really cool, but the song doesn’t rely on them. i think brandon could make this work acoustic. that is a compliment. but i’m glad he didn’t, for this version, at least.
• another sort of unexpected, tight ending. i’m loving these arrangements.

5 – She Fell

• another great sound, that rubbery bass. it could almost be cheesy in someone else’s hands, but since it’s panda face, i know i’m going to end up hiding under a blanket, so it’s already kind of ominous
• sick deep filters, deployed very subtly. nice touch.
• is anything still sick when it’s cool? i don’t know. i might be out of touch. i didn’t start saying “snap!” until 2006.
• and i still do sometimes :-|
• this is def my fav panda face album. it seems fully realized; like brandon accomplished exactly what he wanted to, and i love hearing that. that’s what i always aim for, and only rarely, partially ever achieve.

6 – Mysterious Danger

• nice interlude. kinda british educational film strip-y. death is probably coming around the corner…

7 – The Down Low

• or not? this is funky and kind of twangy. two great tastes that i’m listening to right now together and they sound good.
• first line = perfect
• the little high keyboard on the chorus is making me laugh in a good way. with joy. that happens to me sometimes when a riff is just perfect and overwhelming. here, it’s like the musical idea is spot-on, kind of like something out of a ’90s Dre production, but it has this cracked kind of Pavement, played-it-wrong-but-left-it-in-whatever quality, too. both of those at once is magical.

8 – Lame to Try

• maybe we won’t die after all. i predict this will be a bit of a love jam.
• cool instrumental part under “i think you know exactly what we should do” (might have gotten the pronouns wrong)
• over the whole album, is this the least amount of guitar brandon’s ever had? might be. not good or bad, just observing. what guitar i’ve noticed has been well-deployed. and you know by now how i feel about the various synths.
• nice come-down ending

The past week and a half, I’ve been on a writing streak like I haven’t been since I was working on There is Something and not nothing (probably late ’08 or early ’09).  It’s been Mars Lights stuff, writing vocals and lyrics to songs we’ve already demo’d instrumentally, sometimes years ago.

Six songs down, and I have two more demos I can work with; then I’ll have to start writing more riffs :-)

It would seem premature to talk about content before you can hear the songs, but I’m pleased with the variety.  There’s a happy song (of sorts… ) for the first time, some noir, and some science.  Plus, the usual lack of first- and second-person pronouns, and general mayhem.

This will be the first bigger set of songs we’ll have the chance to rehearse and play live before recording.  For the Sides, everything was recorded first, before we ever played a show.  In many of those songs vocals were just rough sketches when we did them, and in some, they hadn’t been started at all.  For the LP we’re working on, I think three of my four were done and had been played at our duo shows, but several of Drew’s had no vocals when we put down the instrumentals.  A few of my new ones include semi-improvised sections, so I’m especially excited to work those out in the practice room before we put them down.

We have about five albums we want to make, so there are loud, weird jams for the forseeable future.