Outskirt - Last song, album closed

On Dicember 8 16:30 (so this is the exact "release date" :-D) I rendered last song and uploaded on MySpace, Last.FM and Missero.it:

15. Belief: Pride

It's an endless single cuban (in my way) loop, with compulsive bass, an insistent xylophone and a reasonable amount of small percussions layers (but drum set is definitely rock.) It prepares with diablo rhythms and lightheartedness to approach melancholic Pet's Repository intro.

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I got a largely foreseen sense of emptyness, and temptation to add another song or two. Or three... Probably they should sort out kind of cover of the rest of the record, after one month passed on this project the reason is obvious. Better leave it alone, it's over... Never flog a horse after the finish!

Now have a rest with music, and prepare graphical announce(s) to friends (and enemies).

Outskirt - Belief: Slot & Wrath

On Dicember 7 I completed both Belief: Sloth & Belief : Wrath, and uploaded on MySpace, Last.FM and Missero.it:

12. Belief: Sloth

A bit sloth and a bit lazy, 7/4 . Maybe it's the most mainstream part of Outskirt, a contaminated synthpop.

13. Belief: Wrath (Hommage à Shinu Mazafakingu Ujimushi)

It's a cover of TBA by Shinu Mazafakingu Ujimushi, an english grindcore band who recorded only that song on a Lo-Fi or Die compilation. I listened to it zillion of times, for a couple of reasons:

1) I got it only in mp3, and it's disgusting low quality, maybe they did it with a VeryVeryLame mp3 codec for bad cell phones. Sounds are melted like you were listening the band from into a washing machine, except a tom, in fact ...
2) song's "melody" (...) is overpowered by a single note, the one of a very acute tom, metallic like the snare drum by Metallica in St. Anger (years before Metallica).

I just couldn't stop to listen that watery roaring made by bass drum, bass, guitar and snare drum, and above this hammer hits piercing my brain. Sometime I think that I probably I'd never love so much it if it was not so really bad coded. Points 1) and 2) are in symbiosis.

I replayed (almost) slavishly same drum sequence, with different timbers and sounds, and recreated the "roaring" with three violas. The result is kind of "Kronos Quartet plays Shinu Mazafakingu Ujimushi". And I putted on a different layer the rest of drums, reaching three plans instead of the original two.

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Now I only miss 15. Belief: Pride. So I'm just a little late (one day) on my supposed timeline.

Outskirt - Pet's Repository

On Dicember 6 I completed album's closing song, plus uploaded it on MySpace, Last.FM and Missero.it:

16. Pet's Repository

After a pondering time, I decided that cemetery or graveyard are terms too gothic. Repository is ambiguous, can be the ultimate repository, or kennel. It's difficult to argue who's more tied to solitude, so O.T. is off.
Song is a result of contructing and dismantling. First I grew up with dozen of instruments and atmosferic pads 'til the grosser. Then I had a u-turn and started to delete part after part, so i obtained a skeleton progressive, I mean more similar to Cardiacs than Camel. I like the result of a punk approach to prog, such as Pere Ubu (in an avant fashion) or Cardiacs (more melody aware) did.

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At this point songs I have to finish are: 12. Belief: Sloth - 13. Belief: Wrath - 15. Belief: Pride.

Outskirt - Belief: Envy

On Dicember 3 I completed Envy part of Belief suite, plus uploaded it on MySpace, Last.FM and Missero.it:

14. Belief: Envy

Envy is in my opinion a childish/unripe kind of defect. So this is the seed.
Talking about the song in itself, it's an electronic section starting as cold sum of sequences, dense but minimal, with shifting changes on the like of Raymond Scott's Soothing Sounds for Children, and its develope is dotted in a crescendo by some Carl Stalling 's intruders.
Don't know if conceptually speaking I went on a cacophony, or better, an unnecessary remark on what was already remarked. The result sounds much frenzier and brilliant after Stalling invasion, that's the most important thing.

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This evening I worked on (old named) Pet Cemetery (16th and last song): I completed the sad main sax theme and a seed of variations, so I'm at 25%. I feel it's getting better than I expected, so I'm in euphoria about it. Meanwhile, I think this title reminds too much Ramones' homonym song.
I don't dislike them: with Dickies they're my favourite idiot punk band. They reached out the sublime, in their kitsch, primitive but effective approach. I listened a lot to both for years. But I change the title whatever, just to avoid somebody think about a cover; so now it's Pet's Graveyard. I keep it for a couple of days, to test if start to seem unsuitable after a while.

Then I tried to go on with Belief: Sloth, but some pegs doesn't fit in their right hole. Days in, days out.

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At this point songs I have to finish are:

- 12. Belief: Sloth
Something to re-work, or throw and make it another way.
- 13. Belief: Wrath
Hommage à Shinu Mazafakingu Ujimushi, great one-day band, so it's a grindcore part; yet to start. But got it all perfectly clear in my mind, I only want to play it for last.
- 15. Belief: Pride
Got the cuban theme, and some hypothesis on the (coherently) cuban develope. Here the problem is keeping the piano fresh as a rose.
- 16. Pet's Graveyard
Started at the best, probably tomorrow this will be the song I'll work on for first.

If I'm in the right mood, maybe I finish the four songs within monday. So I can let a couple of day pass and then make the last full check, before declaring work done, and think about a videoclip.

Outskirt - from Thar Desert to Belief: Greed

On November 30 I completed songs I described while working on them in last post, so I uploaded all on MySpace, Last.FM and Missero.it:

08. Junction Box
09. Belief: Lust
10. Belief: Gluttony
11. Belief: Greed

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On December 1st I solved a couple of problems in song n.7, so I finished it as well.

07. Thar Desert

Bass, which serves both rhythm & melody, a compulsive-riff guitar and a very dry drum set. Funky to the rougher, I had in my mind Bill Laswell style when he played in Massacre or first Material record (Memory Serves), plus the old No Wave funk area (Konk, Contortions, Liquid Liquid and the like).

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This evening I made some modification in another couple of songs: orchestral background in Reidsville, NC and a couple of passages in Zimniy Dvorets. Updated both songs and uploaded to the usual repositories.

Outskirt - Update

I've been sick a whole week, it started while I was recording song n. 7 Thar Desert, so my (supposed) timing now is a little longer. I left that song (a funky number) on W.I.P. , 'cause I'm still not satisfied with the groove - I thought I had to pick up that song again later, so I went on with next songs.


08. Junction Box

It's an electronic joint between first Outskirt half and Belief + closing two song. Works like a teather curtain.


• Belief suite

I'm not a believer (in neither deity nor men), so everything related always gave me a scent of loneliness. I perceive the subject doesn't fill, as probably doesn't exist. Capital sins are symptomatic: no honest man can deny they're bad acts, whatever point of view, being religious or not. So if You don't believe when You face them You think it's a trial where judge is absent. Obviously a true believer cannot accept this pont of view, as he thinks that simply the Judge exists.
I'm not interested in demonstrate anything, it should be a bumptious and silly claim. But I'm interested in my particular point of view, and develope in music.

09. Belief: Lust

First movement is an obscure carpet of percussions with a couple of solo inserts by saxophone and a dry guitar acting both a crescendo and then a physiological after-coming decay. I don't deny it's grossly didactic (on purpose).

10. Belief: Gluttony

Second movement is cleaner, with a off-beat jazz drum, double bass groaning in your belly like hunger and an oboe trio from far like a smell of delicatessen.

11. Belief: Greed

Third Movement is greed in timing (less than a minute) but it's the most RIO song in Outskirt, in debt with Henry Cow or Art Bears' dischordant melodies.

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I'm working at the same time on this four songs, I'm near to complete 'em all; maybe tomorrow.

Outskirt - Zimniy Dvorets (the Winter Palace)

Song n. 6 uploaded to Outskirt's play/download pages at www.missero.it and Last.FM.

6. Zimniy Dvorets (the Winter Palace)

I changed my mind yesterday while working on Amazon Rainforest. I had as startup a classical romantic theme, something between Mussorgskji and Saint-Saëns, but more on the russian side. I've seen in my mind old documentaries and ancient pictures about the Bloody Sunday while I imagined the rest of the song, an endless zig-zaggin' progression chords ostinato, very grave, dramatic.

And same time I imagined this enormous building getting empty by czar Nicolas II sudden leaving for Alexander Palace. Right place for the pianist I left on Enterprise in Sigma Hydrae strike back.

Also, I found interesting having a song about a New York airport and then another about S. Petersburg's Winter Palace.

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So, I shifted Amazon Rainforest to cue's end, and thinking about rebuilding a logic from this song onward. Maybe I have to fill with a couple more small songs this outline change.

Outskirt - LaGuardia, 3:00 A.M.

Song n. 5 uploaded to Outskirt's play/download pages at www.missero.it and Last.FM.

5. LaGuardia, 3:00 A.M.

Airport totally smoke free "thanks" Rudolph Giuliani: a nightmare. I draw on this to catch the surreal atmosphere broken by sneaky zombies supposed to be fresh managers ever on the go, and tired immigrates side by side with young cheap travelers, all looking for nightime low-cost flights.

Song result is something like Cardiacs playing be-bop in front of Starbucks coffee-shop night time.

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Next song is Amazon Rainforest, a quite complex (to me: I'm not Liberace) piano part in Outskirt. I think I'll need a couple of days to build the structure.

Outskirt - First 4 songs

Ended up with song n. 4 Giant Star Antares, and uploaded with the other three to Outskirt's play/download pages at www.missero.it and Last.FM.

1. Sigma Hydrae

It's Outskirt's intro, comprising a vivace drone (in comparison to those of GI!BE) growing up progressively (...) with chorus to his theatric closing, disturbed by an elusive pianist involved in a spastic series of tryouts, searching for the right theme. I imagine him on an Enterprise-like starship's bridge, trying to get in vain inspiration by Sigma Hydrae nebula slow approaching.

2. Møre og Romsdal

It's a Norwegian County splitted in countless fjords and isles. I could only describe the feelings through a glacial jazz-death metal approach, so I tried to melt the cold Meshuggah and Mike Barr kind of outputs. I wanted to give a couple of unexpected twist to add lunacy, I hope I achieved that aim.

3. Reidsville, NC

I've been living in Greensboro (and going back to Italy sometimes) from 2002 to 2005 when I was a designer in a Reidsville company.

Reidsville was an average industrial area before China's low-cost production side effects, and it was never high populated anyway.

Near Greensboro there's Winston Salem (up here my favourite pub), Tim Sparks' (and other more moonshine-conventional guitarists) hometown. Some of them I've heard in concert on different nights while eating at a small pine-wooden restaurant in Reidsville.

The guitarist usually took a chair from a free table, went in an apt corner and started to play, surrounded by voices, noises and when warm weather (so windows were opened) with car passing sound. This song was the most emotional to put together.

4. Giant Star Antares

I'm quite satisfied with the results. I avoided to pump sounds on purpose to get an early kraftwerk/krautronics taste. Electronics sounds like minimal classical instead of being a multilayered baroque pastiche of pads and ambient sounds covering nothingnesses, which is more than boring.
Back to outer space (after the intro Sigma Hydrae), it's 5 minutes of audio travelogue about revolving around Antares, from door to door.

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Now I'm working on song n. 5, LaGuardia 3:00 A.M., I hope I'll finish the recording within friday 14 evening.