happy new year everyone. hope things go well for everyone.

that is all.

let me tell you about arms and sleepers, if you don’t know them. they are, for the most part, local (to Boston) and while i am a new admirer, i feel like i’ve known them forever. their music mixes so many elements of post rock, electronic ambient and jazz that each composition is really a treasure. an instrumental band not afraid of vocals, an ironic twist.

anyway, they work really hard (after seeing them perform this past august with caspian and actors & actresses) you get a feeling how much they give to their craft. so, this fund raising effort is an opportunity to give back a little, or at least lend them a helping hand, so that they can continue to make contributions

hell, its those kind folks that lend me just a fraction of legitimacy. i’m really going to be working on this. one thing i am going to be doing is going to a friend’s recording studio (dirty water sound and music) and track drums and some guitars and maybe get some help with my mixes so that at least the stuff i produce doesn’t sound as amateur as it does now (probably the more significant source of frustration i have and what consistently fuels this feeling of illegitimacy.)

another aspect is the fact that sky flying by is not a real band, i can’t tour, or play live gigs. mostly because i’m intolerably difficult to get along with. no, not that i have a huge ego and everything must be done my way… not in the slightest (in fact, i have very little ego, it got snuffed out by years of self deprecation and trauma)… but what the issue is, i’m not very good at human interactions, and i usually make people feel pretty awkward and uncomfortable, so that’s why i’m not part of a band.

so this new song i’m working on is a reason to keep truckin. i know i’m not a real artist, and i know sky flying by isn’t a real band but there has to be a reason i keep doing this. i don’t know what it is, but i’ll keep looking. and when this new song is finished, maybe i’ll be another step closer to finding that reason.

Question: is sfb really a solo project?

Answer: yes, it really is. through the miracle of technology, you can record yourself playing every part in a song, individually. i’ll get to the specifics in a later answer but yes, so far, to date, every song i’ve released was written, recorded and mixed by one person (me.) which should explain a lot. now, this doesn’t mean there won’t be collaborations, there will be, and when they do happen, those that collaborate will get all of my praise and the credit will be theirs.

Question: why aren’t you in a band?

Answer: i used to be. many of them. this was a long time ago. i just don’t work very well in a band environment. i’d like to try again, and have a very open mind. in fact, a friend of mine and i occasionally practiced, but his personal life got complicated and that was pretty much that. i’m not bitter about bands, i just know what works and what doesn’t. i think i’m more interested in collaborations, not persistent fixtures like what a band is. but lets also be honest, having asperger’s means i’m not so good with the whole communication/talking thing, and i get overwhelmed easily in social situations, so not being in a band right now is also a safety mechanism for me.

Question: do you ever play live?

Answer: to date, no. i know this is has a handicapping effect on what i can do with sky flying by, in the possible “reach” this project can have, but at the same time, that has never really been a concern for me. yes, i’d like to return to gigging. i wouldn’t be adverse to the idea of playing some local (Boston) shows, but there’s a huge practical barrier here. i’d need people to help me out, i’d need a drummer, another guitarist, a bassist and someone manning a keyboard/laptop. so there you have it, the real reason you won’t be seeing sfb on any show flyers any time soon.

Question: are you trying to get on a record label?

Answer: the simple easy answer is, “no.” i don’t need a record label to do what i do. why do bands/artists sign to record labels? well, first and foremost, i believe, that its for the validation. artists are like that, validation is important. its important to me, but that validation often comes from the signing to a record label (“hey! someone in the industry believes in us!”) Also, labels help you with things like, recording and releasing your music. well, yeah i may not be able to produce something that sounds as polished as i’d like it to be, but i don’t really need help in that area, and so far i don’t have any problem with the releasing music part either. the internet is changing, or has changed, the whole notion of what it means to release music. that’s a good thing. instead of collecting an album’s worth of material, spending thousands recording it, then having a release maybe once a year, its possible to trickle out songs to a fan base who keeps a pretty close watch out for new material. You don’t need a record label for that.

Now, would i consider signing to a label should an opportunity arise? i would consider it, and for this reason: doing all of the work of a release (read: marketing) is painful to me, and i suck at it. no, let me clarify that… I FUCKING SUCK at it. i don’t have any contacts, i simply just don’t know anyone (and no one knows me.) while, i prefer to keep things like this, it makes it very difficult when doing a release. so if there ever was a label that wanted to help, yes i’d consider it.

Question: do you consider sfb post rock?

Answer: Well, lets look at this. From a purely technical perspective, yes. We’ve got drums, guitars, bass as inputs and instrumental music as the output. If you use the standard definition of “post rock” then yes, sfb is post rock. Using classical rock instrumentation to produce non-standard “ambient” instrumental music. Now here’s where this makes me a bit uneasy. No i don’t have any problems people categorizing music, our pattern-matching centers in our brain require that we do this, but my problem is that it puts me in a league of other artists that i simply cannot hold a candle to. Lets take a look around this genre, and what have you got? Bands like Caspian, This Will Destroy You, El Ten Eleven, Do Make Say Think, God is an Astronaut, The Mercury Project, Mogwai, Tortoise, Joy Wants Eternity, Saxon Shore, and i could go on and on, sfb simply doesn’t belong, and for me to agree with this categorization is the ultimate in arrogance.

Question: how do you write your music?

Answer: well, its pretty simple really. i usually sit down at my computer, plug in my Gibson SG, and start to fiddle around with a melody. 9 times out of 10 i’ll not get anything i like, but when i do, i usually do a quick recording of that melody and then switch to figuring out a bass line (on the keyboard.)

This is one of the toughest parts, because i like to impart a lot of emotion in the bass line usually by creating a divergent bass line that goes counter to the main melody. this often, to me anyway, creates a dispondent or sad quality that i’m always looking for. once i’ve got the bass line down, i then start layering on other guitar parts to fill out the sonic landscape. once that’s done, i move along to drums. this is probably where i spend most of my time, figuring out the drum parts and i never get it right. basically the drum part you hear is the one i hate the least, which is usually the last one because i’ll just have to stop.

with drums complete, i start with the “fiddley bits” like loops and samples (if the song requires them.) so that’s pretty much it, there isn’t a lot of pre-thought that goes into writing, but what does happen, is when i find that initial melody, i can hear the finished song in my head and the goal is, to get what i hear in my head out on “tape.”

Question: so who are you anyway? what’s with the anonymity?

Answer: well, first, there isn’t any anonymity if you want to know my name, just ask. i’m not trying to create any mystique around sfb, in fact just as i write that i kind of laugh to myself. if you knew me, or talked to any of my friends, they’d tell you how stupid i think that is. no its pretty simple really. its not important for people to know my name, or who i am. and if something is not important, then its not required information. let me turn the question around, would it make a difference? i don’t honestly think so. just know that i’m just an ordinary person, who happens to love music and is obsessed with art, science and craft of producing it.

Question: i’ve heard that you are straight edge, is that for real?

Answer: yep. Very much so. Straight edge is something i believe in, and have believed in for over 20 years. i’m in my mid-30′s now, and still “live by the edge” but now its a very personal aspect of my life. yes, i have the tattoos and yes i get asked about what “true till death” means and what’s the deal with the flaming Xs but i usually don’t go into much detail. its not that i don’t care, but its also why i don’t advertise the fact that i’m a pretty strict vegetarian, it puts people on the defensive. i don’t like that, and i wish there were more people who thought as i do, about straight edge, so that other people’s first instinct wasn’t to get defensive over their own lifestyles. i’m no one to judge. its just for me, i take a lot of pride and draw a lot of strength from being straight edge, but it doesn’t extend out past my own consciousness. i’m too libertarian to be an intolerant oppressive jerk about straight edge.

Well, i think that just about wraps up about a year’s worth of questions i’ve gotten. i welcome your questions, so if you have any just let me know.

last night was one of those very rare occasions.

the place, tt the bears, in my old neighborhood in central square (cambridge.) literally lived around the corner from the place. so it was weird being back and walking around the neighborhood. the show started promptly at 9:30p with arms and sleepers.

they are a three-piece post-rock/down-tempo electronic group who’s record “black paris” is simply unabashedly beautiful and weird. the “stage” (i put stage in quotes because if you’ve ever been to tt’s, you know it isn’t really a stage) was filled with keyboards, laptops, drum machines, a real kit, a few guitars and bunch of random amps here and there and an odd collection of toy instruments as well, while the back was draped with a huge white canvas. their set started and a projected film of an old jetliner comes taxing up to a jetway as the song starts. they play very lonely mournful and ridiculously melodic interweaving melodies with… what’s this? loud fast angry drums come in and the sound just erupts… the crowd doesn’t know what to think. the images in the background keep changing but all basically old films of single jetliners flying mixed with odd digital noise and strange animations. it goes on like this for 45 minutes (not that i was keeping track, frankly i was lost in their presentation.)

more and more people kept showing up, i was surprised just how full the place had gotten, even for the opening act, and everyone was just into it. they got it. i was surprised.

next, actors and actresses lugged their gear on stage. i’m relatively new to this band. i got their record this past spring, and whenever i hear them, i immediately think of park street, only because for some reason my iphone decides to play one of their songs, without fail, whilst i wait for the train there. they are more like a classic shoe-gaze band that wanders into the dreamy weird place of post-rock. another three-piece, bassist (who plays a ric, that was nice to see) a guitarist and a drummer. the only band tonight that has a vocalist (the bassist) which was nice, they play a very meandering airy very emotionally driven rock without any of the pretensions of many shoe-gaze bands. they continued a non-stop video narration throughout their set, filled with badly distorted home movies, atomic bomb explosions (hey, it’s a post rock show, it wouldn’t be complete without that) and buildings falling apart. yeah, it was right up my alley.

there were only a few of us who knew their songs, which when they played “dig to china” all four of us where like “yaaayy!!”

yet still more and more people were packing themselves into tt’s. i’ve never seen it this packed. you couldn’t move. the reason? caspian was coming up.

caspian is really like no other band. first their line up just doesn’t make sense. four guitarists, a bassist and a drummer! good grief! second and more startling, their music is a strange cocktail of dreamy and ambient with mean and aggression with delicate and beautiful and pretty thrown in. the second they started playing everyone’s attention and focus was absconded by the band. they had us by the scruff of the neck, but then you think, no, they don’t, they have us by holding our hand, carefully. their set comprised of playing older songs off of “the four trees” and “you are the conductor” which was just so splendid to hear live. i’d been listening to these songs for a few years under the ear buds it was truly amazing to hear them live, it added a whole new dimension and perspective to these songs.

their set ended too soon, even after playing four encores, which the very last put this show into a whole different realm. the last song ends with a long drone section, but instead they played it with a very tribal-like drum pattern while the guitars droned and the bass line continued. then the other bands started coming up on stage, and the roadies started setting up more drums… as this is going on… then everyone got drum sticks and started playing along… and before you know it, this huge cacophony of drums, all played in unison, fills the place and everyone in the crowd is just spellbound. after five minutes, when it was over, the audience, me included, didn’t quite know what to do. it took 30 seconds or so to realize it was ok to leave.

i left, took the ear plugs out and went home knowing immediately, that this show was one of those very rare events. sort of like the first time i saw fugazi (which is damn near a religious experience)

i just have to say, post rock isn’t for everyone. there were people there who didn’t get it. oh they were kind and respectful, but questions of “where’s the singer?” and “no vocals?” were quietly asked.

no, in post rock there are no vocals. no singing (well actors and actresses has a vocalist, but even then, vocals are just part of the landscape.)

in post rock, the tradition is to break tradition. to have a vocalist means someone stands out front. no, that won’t do. to have a vocalist means to distract from what else is going on. in post rock there is no “stage show” there isn’t any theatrics, you don’t go to see a “dynamic stage presence.” that is for posers. post rock is using the instruments of rock ‘n roll but use them the way no one would have thought. the music is filled with annoying fret board masturbatory shredding, there aren’t excessive drum solos (well, no solos of any form.) no, instead the music is beautiful and dreamy, ambient, loud, and everything serves the melody, which is dark and sad and mournful and full of joy and hope. post rock is not for the attention whores this goes for the musicians or fans. its just not what this music is about. again, breaking tradition is the only tradition.

as caspian left the stage, they all hugged each other, and the “leader” looked out at the crowd (finally) and shyly waved and thanked everyone.

now two of the master pioneers of music technology are no longer with us (les paul and bob moog)

sad day.

so now that i’m finished, i will now actually have some spare time to really start working on music. i am going to be going into the studio this summer to start recording the next record, and it sure would be nice to actually have songs to record.

so that’s my story and i’m sticking to it.

i don’t mean to insinuate that the music i produce now is more significant or relevant than the rubbish on that old record, its just so far removed of what i feel and believe music is now. yeah i’m still straight edge, always will be, and will always appreciate the things i learned from hardcore back in those days, but so much of that energy was mispent and misdirected it almost borders on regret. but not quite that far. its all apart of getting older.

i did, however, start actually working on the next record, which is to say that i’ve dabbled with some guitar tracks here and there. nothing too conclusive yet and nothing to write home about.

as soon as i get something i want to post, i shall, through the usual sites (and through here of course)

the more i think about it the more i believe that “how much worse…” was a mistake. this review just confirmed for me what i had in the back of my head all along. this release was a test. i suppose being a software engineer i’d call it an alpha release, see how the system works and then go back to the drawing board.

i’ve been working on  music for the better part of 22 years, and i still haven’t figured it out, and this release just does show that i’m still confused. i’ll keep practicing, but i’m not making any promises.