Introducing Jack in the Bucket

(or, Why Sacajawea has to work on the side)

Cats Cradle Robbers are very pleased to present our second collection of electroacoustic constructions, Jack in the Bucket.  

This album collects together material spanning our first seven years of making music together, from the very earliest tracks (Kelley’s Loss, Attempting Electronic Reprisal) to material that was significantly developed expressly for this release (Lita, Mille Boba).  We’re very proud of the music that has resulted from our eclectic bag of stylistic tricks, and we hope you will too.  Here is some insight into the material on this record, which is now available for digital download on Amazon, ITunes, Spotify, and many other channels.

All music is by Nick “Snake” Dallett and Ed Essey, except for Electrullabye (DJ Essey’s solo) and Ujjayi (Snake’s solo).  Also, because all of our music starts with improvisation by the participants, guest artists share in the glory or shame of their tracks, and therefore writing credit can also be imputed to Sumit Basu, Steve Markowitz, Joe Breskin, Tomo Hoku, as well as to Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones, and John Bonham from whom we borrowed riffs to build Mille Boba.

Many thanks to our wives for putting up with this madness twice a month plus snow days.

DJ Essey mixed and mastered it all.

Jack in the Bucket (feat. Sumit Basu)

DJ Essey: Trombone, SSE (synth, sequencing, effects)

Snake: Trumpet, Dobro, Vox, breaking glass, keys

Sumit Basu: Trumpet, Vox, champagne bucket

On June 25^th, 2009, Michael Jackson passed from this earth.  On that day, we had already planned a Cats Cradle Robbers session at DJ Essey’s Seattle bachelor pad (aka Cats Cradle West).   Microsoft Senior Researcher Sumit Basu joined us to see what we were up to.  He and DJ Essey became acquainted at MIT, and Sumit was playing with an automated music authoring software project called SongSmith.

At the time, our production process was still in its infancy, and we were more focused on the creative process than the final product.  For example, rather than using headphones, we were playing a burgeoning track through speakers on a loop, and recording additions live in the room.   Each track has the rhythm tracks playing in the background, which adds a certain ambience to the track, but this is any audio engineer’s nightmare.  Luckily, everything fell together, and this track happened in the space of 2 hours, from initial drum loop to final configuration – practically “live” from our perspective.  These days, we use headphones and proper isolation techniques that allow us greater freedom in how we use and modify samples in our constructions.

Inspired by Michael Jackson, Sumit sang a variation of the chant “ma ma ko, ma ma sa, ma ma ko sa” first used by Manu Dibongu in his 1972 song Soul Makossa, and later used by Jackson.  The lyrics on this track were ad-libbed and are prone to subjective interpretation.  Here are the lyrics as I understand them:

Ma ma se  Ma ma sa  ma ma ko sa

Ma ma se  Ma ma sa  ma ma ko sa

Ma ma se  Ma ma sa  ma ma ko sa

Ma ma se  Ma ma sa  ma ma ko sa

Champagne bucket a bucket a buh

mamase makossa

Champagne bucket a bucket a buh

mamase makossoft

Jack in the pocket it’s just a question of time

You got a rock in the pocket you got a rock in the rhyme

Jack in the bucket, you got a question of time

You got a rock in the pocket, you got a rock in the rhyme, gotta

Sacajawea she got to work on the side

(unintelligible)

Sacajawea, she got a working design

(inscrutable)

Mille Boba

Snake: Dobro, SSE, Vox

DJ Essey: SSE

Sometime in 2007 or 2008, the band went for a pre-session dinner at Szechuan Noodle Bowl and unexpectedly ran into DJ Essey’s friend David and his wife Millie.  We combined forces, and after dinner wound up at Gossip, where Millie introduced Nick to Bubble tea (aka Boba Tea) and thus forever immortalized herself in song. 

Originally entitled “Immigrant Millie Bobo”, the track was our first experiment using miked samples and was released on our website in its original form in 2009.  Snake played two classic rock riffs on his dobro – Jimi Hendrix’s gorgeous melodic line from Third Stone from the Sun, and the ostinato from Led Zeppelin’s Immigrant Song – and we mashed ‘em up, adding an original guitar line, both straight up as Snake played it and diced up by DJ Essey.  The track remained in that state for about 5 years until we pulled it out to include on this album.  Snake added bass and rhythm guitar to harmonize the melody two new ways (once in E major and again in C# minor), and we replaced the original Immigrant guitar part with the same ostinato using a piano sample.  The final song title came about through our typical associative process, dropping a word here, changing a vowel there.  The result, “Mille Boba”, is a Sino-Italian portmanteau that translates to “One Thousand Breasts”.  Make of that what you will.

Something We Ate (feat. Steve Markowitz)

DJ Essey: SSE, breath

Snake: guitars, wine glass, SSE, breath

Steve Markowitz: piano, words, breath

Snake’s association with composer and improvisational pianist Steve Markowitz (as “Polyrhythmics”) predates the formation of Cats Cradle robbers by several years.   We always have a lot of fun with Steve – he’s playful and uninhibited, and we share a nice musical chemistry.

This was the first of several sessions with Steve.  We got together at Cats Cradle East, where DJ Essey captured Steve’s improvisations and singled out the loop that forms the backbone of this track.  We followed that up with a number of versions that progressively added new layers, new sections, and finally led to what you hear on the album.

Electrullabye

DJ Essey: SSE

DJ Essey’s first solo outing for Cats Cradle Robbers started as an experiment in animating pitch in Ableton.  

He built that seed into a lovely electronic lullabye that aspires to answer Philip K Dick’s titular question.

Hush little baby

Don’t say a word

Poppa’s gonna buy you

A mockingbird

Swan Station 5

DJ Essey: SSE, leaky shower

Snake: Bottom drawer, ceiling fan, piano, bass, SSE

In May 2009, DJ Essey joined Snake’s family on a trip to Port Townsend to experience the Rhodedendron festival.  The band set up shop in Essey’s room at the Swan hotel where they proceeded to disassemble and sample everything in sight.  The bottom drawer of the dresser became a bodhran, the brass ceiling fan a tabla, the screen window insert a shaker, the dripping shower an alarm bell, a disassembled curtain rod an agogo.  Did Snake play the ceiling fan with chopsticks or with his bare fingers?  Snake remembers it one way and DJE another.

Several tracks began on that trip, but none harnessed Essey’s inspiration like this tango-flavored construction.  Featuring bandoneón, viola, and cello samples, we also took the time for Snake to learn and record Essey’s sequenced bass and piano tracks verbatim using real instruments.

The Swan hotel, combined with a common preoccupation with the first season of LOST, inspired the title.

Ujjayi

Snake: Piano, classical guitar, SSE

Snake’s solo outing, like Essey’s Electrullabye, started as a learning experiment in Ableton Live.  Snake took a simple loop and added live guitar and piano samples to evoke a trancey yoga mood.  The ujjayi (oceanic) breath is approximated by a found shotgun sample and lots of reverb.

Attempting Electronic Reprisal

Attempting Electronic Reprisal is based off of our very first Ableton Live set, called Attempting Electronic, made during our first jam session with Kelley Vice.  As Snake and Kelley played, DJ Essey created electronic loops to accompany the guitars.  The second set made during that session, The Tyranny of the Drum Machine, has been lost to time (and a dropped laptop that clobbered the harddrive).  Attempting Electronic Reprisal is one of only three tracks that survived the lost hard drive (the other two were La Voie Lactée and a track called Spirit Hole Skydive which was our first experiment with a live instrument).

 Stealing Candy (feat. Joe Breskin)

DJ Essey:  SSE

Joe Breskin: Guitar

Snake: Guitar, Lindsey guitar, Big Bad vocal, SSE

On another trip to Port Townsend, Snake, and Port Townsend guitarist Joe Breskin took guitars and recording gear to the Boiler Room for an impromptu performance.  This track started with a couple of samples from that evening, but the main action revolves around a guitar riff of Breskin’s called “theme from the Pfeiffer River beach”.   Joe discusses the creation of that tune on his website (search the page for “Big sur” here).

Stealing Candy also features an experiment in Augenmusik (“eye music”).  The synthesizer break partway in includes a MIDI track in which the notes are laid out to spell the name of the track.  This results in a series of tone clusters and glissandi that underlies the more composed melodic chimes.  The effect of the combined tracks sounds like a summertime ice cream truck, or candy truck perhaps.

Kelley's Loss

The original sessions that led to the formation of Cats Cradle Robbers were conducted in the summer of 2007 on the back deck at Cats Cradle East, and included a third founding member: guitar virtuoso and technical writer extraordinaire Kelley Vice.  Kelley lasted two sessions and was a no-show for the third, when we put together this loop.  Were we bitter?  Is the title a little passive aggressive?  Maybe.  But we’ll see how Kelley feels when the royalties start pouring in!

Kelley remains a friend and we stay in touch on Facebook, but he hasn’t participated in a session since.

Weftovers (feat. Tomo Hoku)

Tomo Hoku: ili’ili

DJ Essey: SSE, pu’ili

Snake: Bass, ukulele, flute, dobro, harmonicas, uli’uli

Tomo Hoku is a friend, Japanese translator, hula teacher, tour guide, and world traveler.  She also happens to write a column for a Japanese language periodical out of Chicago called Prairie Magazine.  She came by Cats Cradle East in 2009 to interview the band and see how we work.  She brought along some traditional hula instruments for us to try out - little did she know she would get roped into participating.  For the Japanese speakers in the audience, here’s the resulting article. 

La Voie Lactée

Another one of the early “spirit holes”, this loop also started life as an Ableton exercise – this time focused on animating tempo.  The base loop does not change anything but tempo –starting off at a moderate walk, increasing to a brisk trot, and finally tailing off to nothing.  The name comes from a surrealistic French film by Luis Buñuel – for reasons lost in time, Snake was reminded of the film by the track or the process.

This track is notable as well for including the melodic phrase that became – either by subconscious suggestion or by coincidence – the opening melody for Boiling the Ocean.

Boiling the Ocean

DJ Essey: SSE, frying pan, chips, ice, coke, salsa, toaster, vitamins

Snake: wine glasses, bottles, steaming flask, knife on steel, kettle bass

Snake dreamed up a project when he was leading improvisational ensembles in the 1980s, which involved taking a group of improvisers through somebody’s house, playing music in each room using only objects found in that room.  While this was never accomplished using live musicians, the project is being realized by Cats Cradle Robbers under the name “Real House Music.”  Boiling the Ocean is the first track from this project.  It was built by sampling sounds produced by items in Snake’s kitchen, and the process was documented in a video which you can find on YouTube.  We have since “boiled” Snake’s bedroom (Salumba Parte, released on the album Abewsing The Mews), Shed (Honeydew Waltz), and laundry room (The Dry Sound of Atonement).

Lita

DJSE: SSE

Snake: Lindsey guitar, Gibson L6

In 2008, DJ Essey's love of tango and salsa dancing had him out late dancing nearly every night of the week.  He'd come home, late, and still fired up from a night out, and put his hands on the keys.  Those were very much bachelor days, when the Cradle West kitchen was a full time music studio with amps, mics, and control surfaces hooked up everywhere. 

With blood still pumping in his veins and beats in his limbs, the DJ would sit down at the control surfaces and build loop-based scenes.  One was based off of a dance fantasy conceived as Lia… but since the piece was so small, and the vibe inspired by Latin vibes, she was dubbed Lita, a very spunky little seed. Most of our seeds never go anywhere, but this seed was so vibrant, Snake had to work with it.  Snake picked up his guitars and laid down a few riffs.  They were a totally different direction than DJ Essey had planned to take it, and the piece would lay dormant in creative tension for years.  

Sometimes Lita came out to play, only to be put away with little progress made. Magical forces happen when a team agrees to "stop starting and start finishing," as when Cats Cradle Robbers applied kanban principles to our music.  As Jack in the Bucket turned from an EP into an album, we were committed to raising Lita together, and she sprouted into the piece released today.  As with most of our tracks, this collaboration led to something that neither of us would have created individually, proving that one and one can equal three for very large values of one.

Production Management the Cats Cradle Robbers way

**NEW**: have a look at the updated version of this article on Snake's LinkedIn profile:  https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/production-management-cats-cradle-robbers-way-nick-dallett 

In our day jobs, DJ Essey and Snake are both Technical Program Managers for major Seattle-area software companies, and we bring that toolset to bear when producing music.  Having a common language for project management has helped us to communicate effectively and to put structure around what we do.  This in turn helps us to separate the project management aspect of the band from the creative aspects of making music.  Along the way, we’ve developed language to talk about the unique ways we work: terms like “jaanaap” (a made-up word describing a specific way of mixing time signatures), to "boil" a location (making music using only found objects from that location) or “freakout” (a particular type of melodic development), as well as our own taxonomy for describing the current state of a given track (seed--> draft--> mix ready--> master ready--> final).

As an example, let's walk through the process that led to the release of our new album, Jack in the Bucket.

This project started as a 5 song EP, and was all finished and waiting for sales of our first album to reach a carefully chosen point before publishing, when we had a sudden realization. 

• We realized that we have a lot of more recent material that we are very proud of, and that are in various stages of not-quite-complete, just waiting for us to be inspired to work on them. 
• We realized that the only milestone that we recognize as “done” is having these tracks published and available to the world. 
• We realized that the growing pile of unfinished projects was a psychological burden that was preventing us from fully enjoying our work.
• We realized that waiting for each album to pay for the next was not working and that we needed to invest more in a steady stream of releases in order to gain listeners.

In light of this epiphany, we instituted a new strategy:  starting now, we are working full bore towards having our backlog of material published and in distribution so that YOU can purchase and download everything we do in its final form.  Jack in the Bucket is the first release in this new strategy.

Step 1:  Organize

We met at “Cat’s Cradle Westerer”, DJ Essey’s lovely home in Seattle, armed with markers and post-its and laptops, to execute the first stage of the new strategy:  grouping all of our unfinished tracks into albums-to-be.

To do the grouping, we performed an affinity exercise.   This methodology is typically used to organize the results of brainstorming into high-level concepts.  In my time at Microsoft Office, we used this exercise at the beginning of each release cycle to bring customer feedback and new ideas together to define release themes.

In this case, the data items – the list of about 60 unfinished tracks – were already present, so we started by listing these on post-its.

(The color in this case was not significant).

Next, we started to put the post-its on the kitchen cupboards.  As we went, we tried to place things in ways that seemed to go together.  This happened iteratively over a period of about 20 minutes, many of the stickies moving several times as we grouped, regrouped, rethought, had epiphanies, and grouped again.

Initially, we each worked autonomously, without discussion.  Towards the latter stages, we started to discuss the patterns that were emerging, and formed concepts around the groupings.  This resulted in some additional tweaks. 

At some point, we realized that several of the collections naturally coalesced into 13 track groups.  Since our first release, Abewsing the Mews, was a 13-track album, we decided at this point that each of the albums should have exactly 13 items.  We tweaked a bit more to enforce this new rule.

Here are the collections that emerged from the affinity exercise:

Jack in the Bucket

This collection started with the original 5 tracks from the Jack in the Bucket EP (Jack in the Bucket, Electrullabye, Swan Station 5, Ujjayi, and Weftovers), and added tracks that we felt hung together with the other tracks.  One pair of tracks – La Voie Lactee, and Boiling the Ocean – were always destined to be together, as the repeated melodic motif in the former track was – by complete coincidence – recapitulated in the opening melody of the latter.

The New   

        

This collection contains some of our newest tracks, plus older tracks that have the same cohesion and poppy freshness that has been coming through in our most recent efforts.

Religious

A number of our tracks relate to collective or individual religious experience – everything from hallucinogenic visions (Acid-washed dreams, Laudanum escapade) to settings of sacred texts (Nandapoorian Daystallian).  These became our third collection.

  

Un--

The 20 remaining tracks defy categorization.  Time will tell what happens with these.

Step 2: Prioritize

The next step was to decide which collection to work on first.  Jack in the Bucket was clearly the closest to done.  We had already finalized 5 out of the 13 tracks.  Of the rest, most were fairly well along in development.  We took each track and labeled it according to its progress along the continuum from “seed” – some ideas and samples, but no final structure – to “final”.  Most tracks were either “draft” or “mix ready”, meaning they all needed mixing and leveling, and some needed evaluation and restructuring.  Lita was still a seed – some cool ideas, but in need of development and structure.  For Lita, we wound up writing a whole new B section in a minor key and recording new parts for that bit to tie the track together and give it more direction.

Step 3: Divide and Conquer

In order to make progress quickly, we split up the remaining tracks and tackled them in parallel, working on two laptops.  We’d each move a track forward – arranging, writing new parts, adding effects – and then swap headphones to exchange “motes” – music notes – so that we kept the collaborative nature of the music.

Step 4 – publish

On February 8^th 2014, the day that it snowed and Seattle came to a standstill, DJ Essey was at Snake’s house in Kirkland (Cats Cradle East) to put the finishing touches on the album.  Because of the snow, he was unable to return to Seattle, and this provided enough time for the pair of us to finish the project.  February 9^th, we published Jack in the Bucket to our online distributor, CD Baby, and it is slowly making its way to the various digital music resellers that will carry Jack in the Bucket to the world – check it out on ITunes, Spotify, and Google Play, or wait for it to appear on Amazon, Napster, Xbox music, and more.

Step 5 – repeat

The next project on our list is the collection we labeled “the new.”  Retitled “A Quirky Hour for Something New” after one of the tracks in the collection (DJ Essey started this track late one night, long after the coach had changed back into a pumpkin, and the title was taken straight from Snake's bleary-eyed comment), we’ll be working on this for the next few months and hope to have it out before the end of the summer.

We have an album!

We've been a couple of very busy geeks.  Just 2 short years ago, we put the finishing touches on a very special project.  We now are very happy parents of Abewsing The Mews.

2 years?  Yeah, well, I guess neither of us realized how very busy we've become.  But we finished editing and mastering, and our all-digital album is now the best kept secret on Amazon, ITunes, Spotify, and about a dozen other online retailers.  Shhh... don't tell!  But do go buy the album - as quietly as possible.

Here's that link again to Abewsing The Mews.  Go.  Now.  Quick before they're all gone!

Without further ado, here's what you'll find:

• Corruptional Facility

A tray full of crayons is used to great effect to simulate the transformation of childlike innocence into an army of mindless drones.  Any resemblance to our own education or Pink Floyd's The Wall is purely coincidental.  This track includes possibly more found objects and random samples than any other track we've done, including sawn wood, a towelful of silverware, an alto recorder, a crushed terarium, and a Bertleman slide, among many others.

• The Possum and the Pea

Furry and cheerful, this community of small mammals works happily throughout the day.  After dark they let their hair down at a rave, nibbling tiny mushrooms.

• Salumba Parte

From the Real House Music series.  Filmed on location in Snake's bedroom.  No small children were harmed in the making of the samples.  Not badly, anyway.  Check out DJ Honey Badger's wicked snowglobe remix.

• BassBanjBone (feat. Sean Fairchild)

Emmy-winning bassist Sean Fairchild of the Seattle band Chi:Child carelessly posted a video to Facebook of him practicing the bass track to his song Seattleites.  He hardly recognized what we did with it.

• Toasting More Often (feat. Sumit Basu)

Microsoft Researcher Sumit Basu is a frequent collaborator with the band, and a key contributor to this track in Snake's favorite time signature.

• Back in Angel Parking (feat. Allen Jordan)

Allen is a former school chum of DJ Essey, and kept us just distracted enough with his wandering synth fingers to help us shape this iconic track.

• Totally Frigid

dedicated to his Fiancee Salome, DJSE's goal here was to create a track that she would want to listen to.  Success!  She hates this track almost 15% less than our other material.  We like this track because it leads the listener on a musical journey.  Where do you wind up?

• First Frost in the Garden

Adam eats an apple, and can't sleep all night thanks to nightful frightmares.

• The Immortal Bottle

MC PaytonRose cameos here in the intro with a bevy of very nonhumansounding cetacean sounds.  Snake spends the rest of the track beating a wine bottle with a hammer.  No really - he pounded on that thing for nearly two full sessions before he finally got it to break.  

• Fall's Scents

Just when you thought we couldn't create anything lovely and lyrical, along comes this little gem.  But don't let that lull you into a...

• Mydas Touch (feat. Sean Fairchild)

Sean was so distrustful after that whole riff-stealing incident that he decided he needed to keep a closer eye on us.  So, he came by Cats Cradle West to lay down this little ditty in which Snake shares what a few things in his life have in common.  

• The Way of the Ancient Robots

Snake wandered Belltown with a portable recorder for about an hour looking for something - anything - he could use to ruin this otherwise completely lovely piece of electronica from DJSE. He found about 10 people who were angry enough to lay on their horns, and a couple of girls just looking for someone - anyone - to buy them a - BOO!

• That's the Shit

One of our oldest, sweetest, and shortest loops.  Yeah... that's the shit.

Enjoy!  Tell your friends!  And, as always, just say no to boring music.

- CCR

CCR should be seen as well as heard

Snake has been hard at work processing footage of our various sessions, and he's published several videos now to his YouTube channel.  The approach is an amalgam of music video and documentary that attempts to entertain while giving some insight into how we create our musical constructions.  Here's what we have so far:

Boiling The Ocean

Our first "boil" - in fact, this is the track that inspired the name of the process of "boiling" a room (sampling sounds that can be made using items found in that room, and making music with those sounds).  DJSE and Snake take over Snake's Kirkland, Washington kitchen.

Weftovers

Journalist and hula expert Tomoku Hellman came by Cats Cradle East to research an article on the band, and wound up getting involved in the creation of this track.  Snake took this excuse to play around with digital compositing techniques in Adobe After Effects.  Don't miss the exploding guitar!

Truesetto

This video features Snake playing the one of a kind Lindsey fretless tenor guitar - one of our favorite instruments, which was made for Snake by luthier John Lindsey of Port Townsend in the mid-1980s.  Also featuring the Electric Dih (an original creation of Snake circa 1981), and the bookmarked Gibson L6.  DJSE plays phantom drums.

Toasting More Often

Sumit Basu is one of our favorite musical collaborators.  This session features Sumit on ukelele and trumpet, as well as a sampled collection of junk from Snake's shed.  Snake's favorite time is 5, and you can hear it in his playful bass line.

2xtar solo

The most recent Sumit collaboration is something called "Voros Nem Magyar", a work in progress which we filmed.  During the session, Snake recreated the 2xtar, an instrument invented during the "Honeydew Waltz" session.  Here he plays a solo on this unique instrument.

Honeydew Waltz

Snake allowed us a sneak peek at this video in progress.  Honeydew waltz is our most ambitious boil to date, and he's working his way through all of the footage to create a richly layered impressionistic experience.  Here's the first part of the video-in-progress.

What's in a name? - Cats Cradle Robbers demystified, by Snake

People sometimes ask how we came up with the name Cats Cradle Robbers.

When I was a kid, we used to play this game with string that you may be familiar with.  Cats cradle involves forming a figure with a loop of string between your two hands.  Your partner then takes the string in a specific way and forms a new figure through the act of taking the string.  This is a creative back and forth cooperative process; a game of digital capoeira if you will.  Really good players can make up new figures as they go.

The Robber in Cats Cradle is the person who takes the string away and turns it into something new and surprising.  I don't know if this is a common term, or just something we made up - I haven't been able to find any reference to it online.  I like to think DJSE and I play a sort of Cats Cradle game with music as we pass it back and forth, taking turns being the Robber and adding something new and surprising with each pass.  So, we're the Cats Cradle Robbers.  

You're welcome.

-Snake

Tone Poems

A lot of the time we start out a session with no agenda – Essey lays down some beats, or I start some riff or other. The mood of the piece evolves as we add more sounds. Sometimes, the music starts to suggest a story or an idea, and we follow the suggestion. Other times, we start with a specific idea in mind. This week, we spent a Saturday afternoon working on a Bhangra-inspired construction whose working title was “One Thousand Lawyers” (more about how we come up with track names in a future post).

Bhangra is a form of music from the Punjab region of India. Its origins are in folk dancing, but the infectious rhythms and the unique sounds of the folk instruments have spawned a whole genre of Indian house music. I wanted to see if we could replicate that sound and add our own stamp to the format, pulling in a funky bass line, and atypical instruments such as the Afro-Brazilian berimbau and our usual assortment of found-object percussion.

My typical attitude towards vocals in music is to treat them as musical elements, not as lyrical elements. The actual words, if there are words at all, are often an afterthought. But as we evolved the Bhangra construction, it seemed to call for a vocal, and so we started scribbling down lyric ideas, starting with a melody and a rhythm, and trying to fit vowel sounds to the shape of the music. What we came up with evoked the idea of stumbling home in a monsoon rain through chaotic streets after a night of clubbing in Mumbai. Here are the words, starting at 2:52, to what we’re currently calling “Acid-Washed Dreams”:

It’s not raining, it’s steaming
Virgins blaspheming Shiva
And in weaving these visions
To believe is to leave her

Cars and bars and whores
Among the the Bollywood nights
The lights and the stars making the boulevard soar
Until they lock the doors and it’s just me, alone
Walk in the warm rain
Steam rising from the street in the heat
To be alive in the city of flowers and songs and mycelium dreams

Here are a few other examples of constructions that started with no specific idea and evolved into stories:

The Possum and the Pea
Whimsical woodland creatures go about their oddly anthropomorphic business with a happy demeanor. In the evening, they go to a rave.

Nice Driveway
A down and out Slavic musician belts out a traditional Russian folk tune on the street outside a seedy bar after too much vodka.

Corruptional facility
Students are routinely brainwashed at a school staffed by jack-booted fascists (I imagine this is the same school we met in Pink Floyd’s “another brick in the wall”).

First Frost in the Garden
Adam tosses and turns through the longest night in Eden, his head filled with disturbing dreams, while Eve is off on a sinister and unprecedented errand.

That's all for today, cradle critters. Enjoy!

-Snake

Hot off the press - the new Weftovers video by Snake!

DJ Essey and I have been hard at work constructing new audio works - check out the media page at http://catscradlerobbers.com to see what's new (I'm particularly partial to Dewy Iris, and our latest track "1000 Lawyers" is a Bhangra-inspired sketch that should grow into something really interesting in time).

I work a bit slower in the video department, but I've finally completed the music video for Weftovers. This started with footage shot during the initial session with Tomo Hoku at Ed's place, and I took off from there, using this project as a testbed for a number of advanced digital compositing and animation techniques I've been learning in my spare time.

So, for example, I augmented the original footage with shots of myself practicing Capoeira, my daughter and I on the trampoline, and a number of shots taken against the orange and green walls of my living room and front hallway. On the evening that Ed arrived at my place to create "Fall's Scents", he walked into an improvised green screen studio where I coerced him into lip-syncing his own poem in order to build the facial morphs for the poem sequence in the video.

Enough chatter - on to the video. Enjoy, and please post feedback!



- Snake