El4D - Daydreams

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10/18/11 El4D - Daydreams Album UPDATE!!

(This is a little bit about the album i've just finished, Daydreams)

It’s 2011, almost October, and i’ve just turned 24. I’ve finally accomplished something that i’ve been meaning to do for many years, something that i have wanted to get done before i died, and something that i’ve learned a lot from and have had a lot of fun doing: the completion of my first album - the fantastic, psychedelic, and often times downtempo, Daydreams.

Daydreams is a collage of unorthodox songs that began as a set of conceptual ideas, guidelines, and thoughts that slowly blossomed into and ultimately became the album that you hear today. Almost each song has its own unique history, from Remembering the Walk, which began as an experiment in ambience, to R0DNEY K1NG, which turned out to be a giant glacier sliding slowly to an almost complete stop, in Las Vegas, of course.
[Strings] was borne out of the albums’ last track, the aptly titled [Remember Me] Now. I challenged myself as a musician to almost completely refrain from using the musical instruments that i was familiar with, and instead, to try to compose a song, not from the ground up, but from samples that i had amassed, grouped together selectively, and then cut and had my way with. It was like building an entirely new image that had never been seen before, out of things that had. I used some of the puzzle pieces from this box and some from that box – rather obviously, some of them had trouble fitting.

[Strings] emerged out of the acute strain of chaos that ultimately and abruptly caps off the album. It expands upon the dimension of [Remember Me] Now, and becomes an invitation to one of Calvino’s lesser known electronic cities. This one, existing next to one of todays digital clouds, somewhere between discs and processors.
Many songs have doubles, parallels, different avenues, versions and ‘perverted versions’. I didn’t know what to do with them at first, i just kept trying to explore these different ‘environments in sound’, these ‘places in audio’, these words that better describe worlds. I drove myself mad, playing around, exploring, hoping to ‘find’ the proverbial one. Sometimes it happened. Other times it happened twice*.

Often times I felt like i influenced my music too much for my own good. I wanted a new challenge, some new ‘rules’. I had all of these old toys, and no one to play with. So i attempted to do something which i’ve never been very good at, namely working with other people:

Philosophengang in German means ‘the philosophers walk’. I think that may have been what Nietzsche called it, i’m not so sure. On yesterdays walk, Toby Bryan was our philosopher. I attempted to be the ground he tread.

Monsieur! with Veronica Karrer has always been one of my favourite stories in song: I played Veronica some innocence on the guitar and within a few minutes she produced the eloquent piano lead that will never change. The song, in it’s infancy, reminded me of a place i had never before been. Monsieur!

And I’ll say this: I’m not one for religion, but my friend is a prophet. On a road trip to Arizona a few years back, Elijah introduced Veronica and myself to Alan Watts. We had enough time to make it through six or seven CD’s of his and whenever i heard a line that i particularly liked, i wrote down the track number, disc number, timestamp, and a few words to help me remember. These notes inevitably became Alan, Revived.

This leads me to my good friend, teacher, and roommate, David Thomas. David is featured on Cubby T, Introspective Tea, and Remember Me [Now]. Even before David ever hit an electronic drum pad that had been connected to my laptop, and even before either of us ever knew he would, David had been one of my greatest assets in terms of musical help. It was as if he sold his soul to the devil and got something that he could never repeat, but could convey using his whole body. Without the devil knowing, he threw a few moves my album's way.

I want to thank Chloe Myaskovsky for her amazing artwork - her painting doesn’t look like my identical twin brother, Yuval, but rather it looks like me, Elad. This is according to my mother, our mother, which is saying a lot.

I want to thank Miles Gussin (and David Thomas again), for teaching me that silly word that is as hard to spell as it is to learn, ‘rhythm’. Miles would bring his setup over to my apartment and we’d each stare into our screens working on music day and night, stopping just long enough to help each other out, listen to each others work, and stay high. It’s certainly worth mentioning that in the beginning Miles and i did not have laptops. He would bring his giant computer tower over and i had room on my desk with a separate flatscreen, mouse, keyboard, and cables for him to work on. That’s dedication. There’s more i can say, but Miles knows what’s up.

I want to thank Monica Finc for so many things that i really don’t even know where to begin. She saw me in some of my best and worst times musically. She heard my songs almost as many times as I heard them, and yet she always encouraged me to continue, reminding me when i forgot. She continues to remind me today, and probably still will tomorrow, and that’s just her reminding me. I hope i give her as much as she gives me.

I want to thank wholly everyone for wholly everything. My family in particular is owed an undeniable kudos. You will each be thanked individually, with time and as we meet. Thank you all.

-e.a. 10/10/11

Lover.

Bukowski, on Los Angeles:

"I'm here to begin with and then you build around that. Or I build around it. I've lived most of my life here and I've simply gotten used to the place. I can't even get lost, sober. And just the other day I found out where the L.A. zoo was. And the women here seem to love old men. I've never seen women like that. At the same time, I'm suicidal and there's the smog to help me out."

Humans, humans, humans..

"From the archeological record, it's inferred that Neanderthals evolved in Europe or western Asia and spread out from there, stopping when they reached water or some other significant obstacle. (During the ice ages, sea levels were a lot lower than they are now, so there was no English Channel to cross.) This is one of the most basic ways modern humans differ from Neanderthals and, in Pääbo's view, also one of the most intriguing. By about forty-five thousand years ago, modern humans had already reached Australia, a journey that, even mid-ice age, meant crossing open water. Archaic humans like Homo erectus "spread like many other mammals in the Old World," Pääbo told me. "They never came to Madagascar, never to Australia. Neither did Neanderthals. It's only fully modern humans who start this thing of venturing out on the ocean where you don't see land. Part of that is technology, of course; you have to have ships to do it. But there is also, I like to think or say, some madness there. You know? How many people must have sailed out and vanished on the Pacific before you found Easter Island? I mean, it’s ridiculous. And why do you do that? Is it for the glory? For immortality? For curiosity? And now we go to Mars. We never stop."

-Svante Pääbo (Swedish evolutionary biologist)


Article

Po'em

Berkeley, how fun
How similar you are
too.

[Bukowski, and crew]

So similar,
that street brew.
That jazz trumpet drifting
cross the electric pond reflecting,

You,
eclipsing.
You

[And..]

Berkeley, World;
How i have loved..

Familiar to,
familiar as
my brain,
under
stood
you.

"Kaiser is where God lives. I am not so sure it is at churches."

Mario S.'s Yelp Reviews
http://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=TgfvhtGxMKjlzLTuq6Hb4g



Oliveto Cafe

I met a first date, Craigslist-derivative, from among the many responses, mostly naked pictures of women derived from one or maybe two men, I guess, who acquire e-mail addresses. I can't quite figure that scam. But, she had long flowing black-brown hair with blue eyes; she wore a gray and white plaid trench with an inexactly similar Gap scarf, part American Indian and Nordic. When she moved, it was like she was scattering pixie dust. Her coral-colored finger nail polish and the smoke that was her hair dazzled. The first thing I noticed was the open drink menu, turned to an early page. It said: "Negroni," which was exactly what I wanted. She ordered a Moscato. Hers was lighter, a bit like Lillet Rouge and mine was viscously thicker and stronger. We immediately enjoyed each other's company and the drinks made us loose and giddy. It is hard to be serious when someone seems to like you. You open up, say just about anything, and you may even read a poem to her. It was the poem I read at the Calistoga Inn and then another one, and she didn't seem to get it. I guess you have to read poems to know what they mean, but I am not like that. You don't have to know the meaning of every word, but you hear them. There's enough of the sense of where something is going to know that there's a wonderful world opening up. So, I stopped. Maybe the woman who was correcting papers at the other table heard me and could appreciate what made me want to be a writer. When I was in intermediate school, I sat in the Kaimuki Public Library listening to T.S. Eliot read "The Wasteland" on a record player. We ordered the beet salad with almonds and watercress or arugula with a subtle dressing. It cannot be beat, pardon the pun. She ordered and got the cannelloni, I the hen. I am allergic to wheat, so I didn't want any of hers. My hen was moist, glazed over with herbs and oil. It was hot and perfectly cooked. I loved the stuffing. There were two more drinks for her, and I had a glass of red I let the waiter pick. I had planned to say: "What you would like, but by then I was less articulate. The man, who made my drink, wore a black shirt. He had a moustache and beard. His glasses were black-rimmed. He was strong and reminded me of a close friend, who had the same smile. It's as if he had traveled the world and he had seen everything and the Negroni was a reflection of his wisdom. And the waiter, I bet Spanish, thinner, I think long hair, and beard. I remember his modesty, and respectfulness. How he made me feel was like I was royalty. I want to tell both of them now, how good I felt, how safe to be myself with this woman, who was making me feel good. Everything the waiter did was kind. The bartender was professional when he brought the drinks. There was no flaw, no complaint, only the sense of being in a fine room with generous friends. In all, the meal and drinks were about $70+. I left $20. It was not just a light meal; it was being in a room with people who made you feel better than you might feel about yourself.

Silver Linings

Daydream in Blue

I looked at the setting sun from my post at the coffee shop. I didn’t just look, i stared. Big, beautiful smiling circle that it is, as it were. Almost wholly unreal, on a day like this, how the sun just sits there as if it sat its whole life.

I watched it explode in brilliance and in light, and thought of how now, as people, we forget that we live off of it, we try to take care of it, but at the end and beginning of each day we can’t do much but admire it. Pretty with no doubt, is our glowing orb of life-bearing light.

Then I saw a plane fly by, the kind of plane that ferried human passengers all around through the sky. From one port of air unto another, the plan was to move all the passengers, with little delay, until the end of time. What must those passengers be thinking, thoughts coursing through each of their minds, as they become ferried as they were; to be. From the same port to a similar position, later in time.

Further down the line come more checkpoints and options and dotted lines. This one to go here, as that one goes there, and following the laws of thermodynamics that leads to problems that change but never go and disappear. They just keep on changing, only to reappear as different things in different scenes.

A nightmare, must be this dream! I keep watching the plane trailing away, up higher in elevation with all of those same people that flew out of sunny L.A.

It’s the passengers time; the lucky ones’ sitting on the west side, gently looking at the opposite of this suns’ rise. The moon comes over opposite, gently bugging the tide. The passengers that sit to the east crane their necks, each trying to catch the last glimpse of that big ball fleeting in the sky, before it slips underwater, determined; efficiently having set.

They’re all hopefuls, we’re all hopefuls as of yet. From my position on the ground i thank the gods that i’m not challenging physics, rationality, and Bernouli through heavier-than-air jets. Jets made of space age materials that we as a people have harnessed, pretentious.

And so i digress. I try to do what they told me, in class and in all those years that have now become history lessons. There’s no stop to looking at the light as i trudge forth, as Icarus begins his fall, blind. With boots strapped on so hard that my veins turn black as they beg to be untied. I go running as i begin to notice markings on this planes aft side. Vertical stabilizers marking DHL or Fed-Ex or some other shipping collective leaves only one clear meaning: All those passengers i quantified, all those souls flying over this great divide, all of this strolled in my imagination as i sat perplexed outside...