Ok. I think I got it now...

Things are in the works for later this year, (but just because they’re in the works doesn’t mean they’ll...ya know...actually work.) I’ve come up with a few decisions, a few ideas and a way of possibly doing a live show. (Cue nervous shaking now.)

STG is still moving ahead after performing at the WTII festival earlier this month, gained a few fans, made a few friends, and had a good time. All of us now are dug in at our home studios throwing demos at each other over the internet and piecing together our next original release. Some of ‘em I’m proud to say started in my own noggin. Previously when I joined most of the tracks were already written and I just added some scratches or sampled bits on top & tweaked effects live. Now I’m uploading rough demos for the guys to work with. The hard part is holding back simply because you got three other guys who have to add their noisy and wordy bits to the stew and bang it into shape.

But now to the DMK stuff, this being the DMK blog after all. I’ve upgraded my DJ software to Traktor Pro 2. This probably means nothing to most of you, but It’s a huge shift in the way I can perform and write music, doing both really at the same time which is what I’ve always dreamed of. I can still beat juggle and scratch, but now I can also grab, loop and effect snippets of keyboard riffs, bass guitar, vocals and even loop the scratching back into itself to build up layers.

I’ll still have to use some other DAW (that’s Digital Audio Workstation for those of my friends that aren’t electronic music geeks) for some sound design and beat programming, but the bulk of composition will be in realtime.

Because the nature of the music won’t really lend itself to a traditional album/track format, I’ve decided that I’ll try to release 15 to 30 minute improvisations as monthly podcasts, posted on Soundcloud for streaming. If anyone really wants to download a copy for their mp3 player or whatever, I’ll post them for cheap on Bandcamp. Hopefully I’ll have the first of the new stuff up by late July. Seeing as this is all going to be composed/performed/recorded at the same time, it’s not much of a stretch that I’ll try to do something similar in front of a group of people who would enjoy such a thing and hopefully not throw glass beverage containers at me. If you got a place where you think this kinda nonsense would be welcomed, e-mail me at deadmanzkassette@gmail.com. There are some bugs to work out yet but I hope to be ready by fall.

Now back to the job I actually get a paycheck for...