“It’s Nice to Eat the King” is my first new music recording in a year

“It’s Nice to Eat the King” is my first new music recording in a year

Posted inMusic, Videos, Works by Eric
Recording music was an escape for me. My focus on big, layered sonics, ambiance and sometimes even downright noise came in no small part because I can get lost in all that sound. It's meditative. Relaxing. Soothing despite the noise. But for some reason, the pandemic has coincided with the longest musical dry spell I've experienced in years. Aside from some digital music created last year for a project I will post about another time, I haven't created anything. Nothing at all. Hell, I went nearly a year without even picking up the guitar, much less writing something on it.…
Unplugged 3: Insanely excited about the next two m2 projects, so that’s great

Unplugged 3: Insanely excited about the next two m2 projects, so that’s great

Posted inMusic, Works by Eric
Sat down for my first purposeful recording session in a long while a few weeks ago. Recorded for four or five hours straight, just a mic in a room (an attic, actually) a few feet in front of my amp. Really cold up there. My fingers were numb. Laid down ten tracks of material, lots of layered guitar work weaving in and out of one another rather than the dense sound assault I've done in recent years. Tried a new approach to playing and just attempted various iterations on it. The interplay of the guitars excited me. Had about an…
Unplugged 2: snow daze are no ways

Unplugged 2: snow daze are no ways

Posted inMusic, Random Musings
My whole life, staying focused has always been a challenge. As long as I'm doing new things, exploring new ideas, doing new tasks, and pursuing creative projects I can keep that in check (usually by multitasking so I'm bouncing back and forth from one thing to another), but it takes work to, you know, work. So to suddenly get slammed with a fairly big snowstorm that keeps the family home, thereby extending their winter vacation home by another four days, isn't exactly a boon to focus. Love them, but it's a small house, and no, I don't have a dedicated,…
My first new music for 2018: “Coming Up For Air,” by m2

My first new music for 2018: “Coming Up For Air,” by m2

Posted inMusic
This is the new m2 record, my ongoing music project focused on guitar soundscapes, drones, and dense ambiance. It's outer space music. Music to write or meditate to. The sound of ocean waves and the moons of Jupiter; of machinery at the bottom of a canyon and of being 100 feet beneath the water. I almost dropped this in the autumn of 2017, but I ended up spending quite a bit of time fussing with the third track, removing it, putting it back, fussing with it some more. Ended up using a severely shortened version of it (about 4 minutes…
The new Godspeed You! Black Emperor disappoints, until it doesn’t

The new Godspeed You! Black Emperor disappoints, until it doesn’t

Posted inMusic
I can still remember my reaction the first time I heard Godspeed You! Black Emperor (then stylized as Godspeed You Black Emperor!): "Sonofabitch, some bastards did it! Those crazy bastards did it!" And it was amazing. This was mid 1998. I had pulled some friends together for a semi-improvisational noise band called Slumbersigh. We played a few shows early that year, blasted some feedback at the audience, and called it quits before summer. During that stretch, I waxed poetic to the drummer about this sound I heard in my head, this musical thing I wanted to do but had no…