Greetings, pals,
Here’s a lil’ me update. It’s been quite a year so far!
I have this new song I am looking forward to sharing, called On Top Of The World. It’s a blast of power-pop rock and it was so very fun to make. This one’s a true solo recording in that I played everything on it - guitars, bass, vocals, drums, tambourine and indeed cowbell. Produced it at home, and all the pieces fell into place beautifully. Release TBA soon!
The weekend before that, I made something entirely different, not power-pop at all, more like a poetry slam thing. For which Shannon Wheeler has made this lovely cover art.
It must have been 1998 or so, on a Windows machine, I saw the shutdown prompt - “It is now safe to turn off your computer” - and I just cracked up. Did the Microsoft UI designers know how poetic and funny that was? Here so many years later I had a little bleat around it. The drums are recycled from an earlier track of mine, from the great Thomas White - founding UpTones drummer and sometime collaborator in my more recent shenanigans.
That’s on its way to the streaming services too, so you’ll be able to find it in the Spots and Pandas and Apples and Oranges soon if’n ya like.
On the 1st of this year, I made this Ska song,
and I want to make a big rabbity Berkeley Cat shout out to all the Ska deejays out there who have played this on their shows! Thanks and skank you very much :) On New Years Day I wanted to start off on a good foot and just make something bouncy and groovy and dubby and happy and unmistakably Ska, so I did, and there it is.
ALL of the above, after thinking, seriously, that I was done with this for a while. See, I had put so much effort and time into Charlotte in the Garden of the New Futility, that though I was happy with the result, I was also a bit exhausted by the process. Figured I’d take a nice long break hahahaha well that didn’t happen.
I learn more with each track I make, and somehow “Charlotte” was a big teacher for me. Strangely, each of the three tracks I’ve made since then were about as easy to make as Charlotte was challenging. They’re each so different. And for me, unexpected. It’s a wild fun ride, having a creative outlet like this. I was asked recently what kind of music I make, and the question sort of stumped me. I don’t remember exactly what answer I blundered, but I do know how I would reply now:
“I guess I’ll find out!”
Charlotte and the marmot send regards,
On Top Of The World coming soon,
Cheers and thanks for your earballs.
<3,
Dinsky
Learning about recording techniques is a lifelong thing.