Our TV eye is on you

We’ve been busy editing the album as well as some videos. The videos are now finished and posted to YouTube for your enjoyment. Unfortunately, the album is taking MUCH longer than expected. Don’t worry! It will be out soon. However, for those of you thirsting for new material, we are pre-releasing a completely unreleased song. Age of Static has been performed at most of our shows, but we’ve changed a few things about the studio recording. Now, this is not the final version of the song. We’re calling it the video edit. Also, we’ve uploaded videos for Future in Question, They Sent Us Their Dreams, and Sebastian Says, ” Checkmate, I think”. You can find all four of our music videos at C/Fe Records’ YouTube channel, http://www.youtube.com/user/CarbonIronRecords. I promise we will be back soon with information on when Aiglatson will be released.

Albums, Videos, and Songs, Oh My

We have been incredibly busy between work, grad school, and the projects we have been working on for the band. We have been trying to compile a retrospective of our previous work. This stuff is all from 5 years ago or more, and none of it was properly mastered. We mainly used these recordings for live shows, and I seem to have misplaced my lyrics for some of these songs. So, the instrumentals will have to be enough. The songs will be released on Bandcamp and various other online music sources. We will be giving it away for free. We are very proud of the work we did, but we have improved greatly. I don’t think our progress really comes through on our three songs for the C/Fe Menagerie. So, we have decided not to charge for our previous work, but we appreciate any show of appreciation from our audience.

There is one song from this era that I still appreciate, but which I hate because of my amateurish vocals. “Letterman” was my reaction to 9/11. I come off very accusatory on all the recordings we have of this song, and to be honest, I do not know why. I don’t remember being angry exactly. I don’t even remember writing the poem as though it were a reprimand, but that is the way it comes across now.

Our full length of new material, Aiglatson, should be out by the end of the year. It will show that we are much more accessible to a general audience besides hipsters and art students. Our first single from the album will be “I Belong to the Future.” It has a full fledged chorus and a driving beat. “In the Future” will basically be a club hit. The original version had more of a New Wave feel, but the song has since morphed into a more driving rhythm. However, it will be a little while still before we can release those songs.

What we are spending most of our time on is videos. We have three videos in the works for the three songs on Menagerie. Now, I decided it would be a good idea to use some public domain footage for “Future in Question.” It will feature footage from the 1939-40 New York World’s Fair. It would be very hard to capture the spirit of the song without using footage from that era and especially from that event. The other two songs, “Sebastian says, ‘Checkmate I think'” and “They Sent Us Their Dreams,” will both have original footage. Of course, I wanted to use footage from Blade Runner and post apocalyptic movies like Omega Man for “Sebastian,” but my copyright laws and my own artistic integrity dictate that I really shouldn’t. We should be posting “Future in Question” sometime in the next two weeks. “Sebastian” will likely take longer, and “They Sent Us Their Dreams” will take longer still. We have much more footage to shoot for dreams than either of us expected.

Create your future,

The Still Lifes

Music future?

Jakub posted an interesting blog on the C/Fe website about the beginnings of C/Fe and the state of the music industry. We definitely think it is worth reading.  http://carbonironrecords.wordpress.com/2010/02/02/music-future/

Our songs on the C/Fe Records sampler: C/Fe Menagerie Vol. 1

The lyrics for the songs on C/Fe Menagerie Vol. 1 have just been posted. We actually have three songs on there, but one of them is an instrumental. The last two songs are actually alternate versions from what will appear on the album. “Future in Question” and “They Sent Us Their Dreams” were both mixed specifically for the sampler. The album versions will be more focused on my vocals.

“Sebastian Says, ‘Checkmate I think’” is primarily Willem’s. However, there was enough collaboration involved with a few sounds here and there and a suggestion or two which make it very much our song. One thing I am very proud of is my work with the urn.

“Future in Question” was mixed to sound more like a proper song than the intro as it was originally conceived. The lyrics are actually a number of quotes about the future conglomerated into a single work of art. Performed live, the piece becomes more a propaganda tactic than a song.

“They Sent Us Their Dreams” is based on a Ray Bradbury novel, a myth about the human condition. I don’t really like talking about my lyrics too much. I think they stand as pieces of art without the need of explanation, but I take no issue with dropping a couple of clues for the reader and listener to gain some sort of perspective. The song has two very different versions. It was hard to choose which version would be the album version and which would be the sampler version. Ultimately we chose the version with the more dynamic soundscape for the sampler.