A Fistfull of Demos

Here are the first three demo tracks for the album. The opening track is one of two bookends that kind of reflect back to the early albums. I call it 'En-trance'. The second demo is 'Poseur'. The first half is coming together nicely. The second half? Not so much. It's pretty gritty. The third song is 'My Name is Raul'. There are no vocals yet, but if you've heard the original, you can probably guess that that's not going to be a big deal. The bass lines and most of the synth/sample work on these are pretty rough. They'll be cleaned up, and Guitar (and maybe more drums) added. I wanted to put all three up, because I think they make the direction of the album seem pretty obvious, even if they're (very) rough at this stage.

En-trance (Demo).mp3
Poseur (Demo).mp3
My Name Is Raul (Demo).mp3

Give a listen. Let me know what you think. Unless what you think is, "Thom's strange..." You don't need to let me know that, because I already know that.

SOTP! State of the Project!

So from the perspective of the blog, February seems like it may have been a pretty inactive month for the MION RB project. Fortunately, looks can be, and in this case, are, decieving. Things are happening on two fronts. On the one hand, I'm in the process of acquiring gear...primarily for the purpose of getting some decent drums recorded, but also because I love new gear. I've got an Alesis Multimix 16 on order, and have seriously been looking at both new keyboards, and also the possibility of an electronic drum kit.

At the same time, I haven't slacked off writing, either. Poseur is, for all intents and purposes, finished. I'll put up a clip of it later tonite, so you can hear a rough version of what it sounds like. (At this point, all of the recordings I'm making are demo recordings, not the real deal yet. I have chord structures for 'My Name is Raul', 'Creation', and 'Trashcan Blues' and hope to record demos of Raul this weekend. There's also a bridge between Poseur and Raul that I've been thinking about.

Although I haven't given much thought to some of the later tracks, the album is starting to form in my head, and it's really becoming more of a pseudo-concept album. By pseduo-concept album, I'm thinking in the sense of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band or Zappa's You Are What You Is, where each song isn't necessarily about the same topic, but there's some unity and flow from track to track. ...I'm not, by the way, comparing the *music* I'm coming up with to either of those fantastic albums.