Tripecac - Gorilla Love

I wanted to kick off the album powerfully. Unfortunately, I think I confused "powerfully" with "weirdly". This is an artsy-farty blech-fest. It starts with a weird time signature, has a dorky instrumentation, and never gets a groove on. It sounds like something off of Baby Steps. Not cool.

Tbe title is a pun on "charity" and "ease". Or maybe "charity" and "tease". I'm not sure! Whatever is wittiest; you decide! This song and my ego need all the help they can get at this point!

Well, not really. My ego is fine. And the song isn't that bad. I just wish I had started this album more strongler. Yeah, much more strongler.

The title is a pun on "high chair". If you didn't figure that out, then you probably belong in one.

This started off as gentle jazz. I quickly got bored of it, so funked it up a bit. It was still boring, so I added vocals about the disillusionment of growing up. Does this mean Tripecac is growing up? Or afraid to grow up? Who knows? Who cares!

The title is a pun on... Hmmm. Should I tell you? Or leave you in suspense? No, that would be dupid. A very dupid thing to do. And I don't want to do dupid things on this album. No way, this is supposed to be a bundle of brilliance, not a dump of dupidity.

Um, so, can you say reggae jazz funk number X? Where X is approaching three digits? And Y is what you ask yourself every time you hear Travis crank out yet another bland RJF instrumental?

Do you know what "RJF" stands for? Do I need to define all my terms? Can't I leave some mystery in here, some illusion of sophistication? Is sophistication alluring? Not really, IMO. You know what "IMO" means, right? No? Do you know what "no" means? No? Huh?

I told G that I'd name this after the next two words she uttered. She said "No", and then "That..." and so there you go.

I started with the drums, and didn't add any other instruments the until the second day. I really didn't like the music, and felt the drums alone were more interesting. To make things better/worse, I added vocals, which were completely improvised. The chorus ties in with the song title. Yeah, I know: what wit!

Bad advice. Did I give it or receive it? I don't remember.

Oh yeah, I just remembered. Someone on the Sonar forums was trying to get started in computer-based music production. He was fishing for advice on hardware, software, and techniques. Since he said he already had instruments, I recommended that he think about using hardware synths instead of software synths. Some other people disagreed with my advice. The original poster ended up disregarding me too. Sigh. So there you have it!

The music: yet another jazz/reggae/funk instrumental. Yeah, I know: big surprise. The good news is that there's a verse/chorus structure. The bad news is that it sounds like a cheesy keyboard, the mix is mud-city, the tempo's sluggish, the drums are too busy, and most of the solos are boring. My favorite bit is the doubled notes at the end of the (fake) guitar solo. My least favorite bit is the rest of the song! Zzzzz...

The title is a pun on "weekend" and either "me" or "meek". So, it means either a me-weekend or a meek-weekend. Same diff.

I was listening Cure reissues on the day I started it, and wanted to see if I could create something Cure-ish. Minor keys abound, but somehow it sounds more loungy than goth. Oh well!

The lyrics follow the title pretty closely. They're intentionally morose (to stick with the Cure theme). I spent about five minutes writing them. That's pretty good, actually; for the first time in years, I don't think I improvised more than a line or two (in the bridges). Hey, you know, that's progress, right?

Hmm. Okay, fine. Snooze-fest, mope-fest. I gotcha. And yeah, I agree. It's up there with "Solid Blue" in terms of mopey cheesiness. Well, at least the lyrics are heartfelt (if a little whiny and self-centered) and not completely BS.

:(

Sniff.

Smooth mellow jam, started with a brand new template. My goal was to get rid of the muddy-sounding effects and keep the mix nice and crisp. At the same time, I wanted to avoid electronica, so I made the music extra jazzy and swingy.

The title is yet another pun. I always seem to do puns these days. Okay, well, this one is a little geekier than the others. It can mean either "dumb template", "dump template" (as in sysx dump), or "dump late" (as in I wanted to make sure I didn't forget to dump the new template until it was too late). Yeah, ugh is right!

At least the music is nice and direct!

If you drink too much juice, it makes you hyper. If you're hyper, you make songs like this.

Or at least I make songs like this. Even though I don't drink juice. Unless you count the "juice" of fermented grapes. Or hops. Or rice. Oh yeah!

The lyrics are incredibly dumb. This might come as a surprise, but I actually wasn't drinking when I recorded them. They're sort of a sequel to "Early"; I even added a musical "wake up" as yet another lame joke. If anything, the lyrics are about my occasional tendency to over-flavor things... like this song.

I was reading a book about Antarctica. And then I got a map of Antarctica. So that makes me a fan, right? Do you get the joke?

Okay, the real joke is the music. Sigh. Here's the deal. I wanted it to sound "cold". I started with strings, and then went trancy. I tried to keep it sparse and not add any "jazz" notes, but couldn't help the jazzy organ solo near the end. Oh well. So much for my attempt at a concept song!

Yeah, and so much for making up for the song's faults via entertaining liner notes, Trav! These and the tune are about as finesseful as icebergs. Groan.

As an experiment, I grabbed some old lyrics (from 1999) and decided to start a song from them. There were some chord progressions scribbled down too, but I mostly ignored them. So technically, this isn't completely new, but who's counting?

Lyrically, it's a sequel to "The Trap", but is simpler and (hopefully) funnier. I pre-wrote all the words except the bridges, which were adlibs. And no, this is not autobiographical in the least!

The music aims to be simple, short, and (I hope) catchy. Only time will determine whether we (I) remember this as enjoyable or irritating (can anyone say "My Old School"?).

This felt like yet another boring jazz/reggae/funk jam started on yet another Monday, so I called it "Monday N". It also means "mundane".

The music was similarly uninspired. I purposefully tried to make it as raw and uncompromising as possible, despite the typical Tripecac framework. Hence the long EP solo, the aggressive drums, and the lack of a melody. It's not "A-list" material, and is probably one of those songs that will drift by unnoticed, but hey, I started it, so I had to finish it.

You know, it's sort of like a job. Just because you don't feel enthusiastic doesn't mean you can skip work. We've gotta earn our rent money, and with Tripecac, I've gotta earn the few good songs by plowing through lots of duds.

Check, please.

Okay, this time I dug wayyy back for some lyrics. These clunkers are from 1994. I think they were inspired by a "Faces of Death" movie, where monkeys were put in boxes with their heads sticking out of a hole. The monkeys spun around in circles, shrieking, completely panicked. Eventually someone grabbed a monkey and then cracked open and peeled back its skull so that its brains could be eaten. Yum!

The lyrics are really dumb. So's the music. I... uh... hmm... don't have much to say about this puppy. No pun intended. Ha ha ha!

The title refers to G's last minute shopping spree before leaving to visit her family. The music, which I used to test Sonar 4.0.3, was intended to be melodic (heartfelt), but steadied by routine.

When it came time to finish this song, my heart wasn't in it anymore. I felt it was boring. Bye bye, grand idea, if there ever was one. Hello, next song.

This is a snobby little song about conformity. I made the music brain-dead simple. The lyrics are simple too. Simple, simple, simple.

You like my fake Italian? You like my fake song? Actually, it's not too bad. It starts with an atypical rhythm: 123 123 123 123 12 12, but then devolves into the usual 1234 jazz/funk/reggae. Fortunately, it's driving and builds in intensity. So it's not as boring as it sounds!

Umm... Did I say that right?

I wanted to end the album with an epic vocal song. I also needed to end the album quickly so that I could send it to G in Sicily. So I went with the first thing that popped into my head: a title track.

At first, when I was building the music, I didn't see how I'd fit vocals in there, since the music was already thick. I forced myself to start humming along, and then singing along... and finally I made myself switch on the mic and started recording vocals. I figured that it'd be better to squeeze in the vocals early rather than waiting. I wrote out most of them (very little improv), and they're heartfelt.

The bassline is very heavy ("gorilla-like"). The verses are sparse and cool. The rest is pretty muddy and repetitive. Ah well. At least it's long enough to finish the album! :)