Bits 'n Pieces

Hey there, fearless readers...

Sometime in the next two weeks, the second official EUTOXITA album, The Cry of a Bird of Prey will be released. The duplicator approved the audio masters (it’s a double-disc set) and should be notifying me soon with approval on the graphics. The second disc includes enhanced content. It’s a little clunky; I bought an old version of Macromedia Director 8 but couldn’t get Flash stuff together in time, so I fell back on an html interface. The disc includes a low-quality mov file of Nosferatu with my soundtrack embedded. It also includes my stop-motion short, Midnight Double Feature. I plan on selling it at a single-disc price, so all five of you who actually paid for a copy of trainwreck should be happy.

I have officially started the new EUTOXITA album. An acquaintance loved trainwreck but said, “Hey, where’s the country? You’ve got every style on there but country!” I offered that “When I Was a Child” is country influenced, but to no avail. I also explained that I can’t stand modern “country” and that brought us into talks of “the outlaws”—Cash, Hank Sr., Willie… Long story short, the first new song specifically written for this record* started as an old-school country waltz… and then got fed into the EUTOXITA filter. No Rascal Flats, mate. Think “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” meets Peter Gabriel.

I’ve made two other major decisions for this album. The first is that the record will, whenever possible, be a mixture of cinematic-soundscape-like textures and acoustic or rock-based instrumentation. This is where my voice (the writing one, not the singing one) has been going anyway; I’ve simply decided to be more intentional. The second is that a good portion (a third? half?) of the record will feature guest vocalists. I have, for example, already started writing a song for David Steadman (Floodwatch, MFG) to sing. It is neither Floodwatch nor MFG like in the least...

The working title of the album is voices inside outside.

*There is already one completed song that will go on the record. It was not, however, written specifically for the record.