New Music – “Battery Street”
Finally after approximately 5 years my good friend Darrell Burgan (Palancar) and I have finished our long delayed release “Battery Street“. It’s an epic Ambient/Atmospheric work in 5 movements.
Here’s some info from the site……
This is not the first time that John H. Lewis and Darrell Burgan have collaborated. John, an electronic/ambient artist and keyboardist extraordinaire known for his FootFall solo project and his work with pop/rock band Second Story, and Darrell, an ambient artist known for his Palancar solo project and work with ambient groups Copal River and Cluster Balm, had previously released a joint track on one of Darrell’s albums in late 2002, and both enjoyed the experience of working together. But never before had they collaborated on a full length release, much less a longform ambient epic; nor had they ever worked on a single piece that took so long to take from conception to completion or demanded so much of their lives to finish.
Indeed, the seeds for this collaboration were first sown in early 2003, when the two artists first started chatting casually about the notion that “we should do an album or something”. Somewhere along the line they stopped talking about it and started making music. Now, nearly six years later, they have completed the piece that started with just a vague idea tossed around in a chat room, a piece that grew to be a gigantic ambient opus in five movements.
The story of this release is really the personal journey that both artists took while putting this album together. The music has been meticulously composed and assembled, with a truly obsessive focus on the details, which might help explain why it took so long for these two artists to finish this one piece. But in the end, Darrell and John feel both the effort and the wait was very well worth it. Both artists sincerely hope that you, the listener, enjoy this music as much as they have enjoyed making it.
The album is presented in two forms: the entire piece in one track exactly as the artists originally intended, or as separate tracks for each movement for more convenient listening if the entire piece cannot be heard in one sitting.
The full release can be downloaded at Earth Mantra.
Wordless Wednesday – RTF – Romantic Warrior
New music gadgets!
I’ve been designing a laptop based “live” music rig for quite some time now and it’s finally starting to come together. In the process I’ve picked up some new toys for this effort and I pretty much have everything I need at this point.
I needed a controller, preferably with 76 keys as I like to stretch out from time to time and it would also allow for the possibility to play other styles of music outside of my usual electronic and ambient work that I do, should the need arise.
After some research I decided to pick up a CME UF70.
- It really seems to do the job. It has a great action and all the features I really need. The manual is horribly written but it gives me enough to figure things out on my own. Honestly though, I can’t imagine that someone new to keyboard controllers wouldn’t get frustrated with the documentation that comes with this instrument. Also, I should note that I’ve heard some bad things about the USB drivers. I don’t plan on connecting it via USB so that really isn’t an issue for me. As I spend more time with it I’ll post more about my experiences.
And the other cool little toy I decided to purchase was BleepLabs Thingamagoop. At it’s core it’s pretty much 
just a noise maker. It’s essentially a very basic analog style synth with some interesting controls, including a photosensor and some knobs and switches that allow it to emit some truly unique and mostly unpredictable sonic strangeness. With all this wrapped up in a silly (but oddly appropriate) package, I just had to have one. You can read more about them at http://bleeplabs.com/thingamagoop/.
A Zune and tuning back into music.
It would appear that I have to eat my own words as I went and bought myself an 80gb Microsoft Zune around the holidays and have begun to feed my music addiction like I wouldn’t have expected. I’ve reacquainted myself with a bunch of my old favorites like Massive Attack, The Orb, Brian Eno, Peter Gabriel, Spock’s Beard and many others as well as begun to dig into new music (to me anyway). Some standouts that I’ve recently acquired would include recordings by Kiln, Tim Hecker, Mouse on Mars, Loscil and The Flower Kings. I should also mention all the free great recordings that I’ve been listening to from the nice little web label Earth Mantra.
It’s actually been great fun exploring various music sites and looking for interesting things. It reminds me a little of my younger years (yes I am officially old) when I would just scour music stores for something new and cool to listen to. I honestly can’t wait to get my hands on my CD collection (which is still in Indiana) and load them all up.
Although it might be a little Orwellian, the Zune software also keeps track of the stuff I listen to and allows me to show it in a social environment and on sites like Facebook and Myspace. Check out what I’m listening to. I’m happy to say you won’t find any Yanni or Kenny G there. 
