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……

Battery Street

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.

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.

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/.

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.

As an owner of two cats as well as a few synthesizers it’s completely inevitable that the two eventually meet from time to time. I’ve nabbed a few photos of just such meetings on occasion. As I’ve found on CatSynth.com I’m apparently not the only one. (not that I really thought I was unique in this respect.)

CatSynth is a blog written by Amar Chaudhary seemingly focused on just such a phenomenon…..the pairing of cats and synthesizers. (and I don’t mean in some bizarre cloning experiment)

The blog is one I frequent and it’s been in my blog links for a while but the reason I bring it up in a post is Amar saw fit to give my cat Gabriel (and my Roland JP-8080) some face time.

You can check out the post HERE.

So, if you’re a cat lover, synth lover or both wander on over and give it a read.

Sharon and I took a trip to NYC this past weekend. It’s something we hope to enjoy more often now that we’ve moved up to the northern part of Jersey.

It was chilly but we had a good time seeing some sights while wandering around for most of the day. You can see the whole set of photos here.

It is interesting being the age I am in this ever changing digital world. I’m squarely in the middle (when it comes to adoption) of so many emerging technology changes. The best example I can think of for me is the prospect of letting go of my physical CDs and moving into a digital only format.

I just can’t do it. I still want to buy that physical product. I’m not sure what it is but as I browse through the various online sources and find music that interests me, when it comes time to lay down the coin I can’t pull the trigger. I’m not completely sure what stops me. Perhaps it’s that something about buying the files just doesn’t feel “permanent”. Maybe the idea that I’m just a hard drive crash away from losing my entire collection is the kind of thing preventing me from making the switch. I also find myself envisioning the “hassle” of being able to listen to it away from my computer.

The unfortunate thing about this (for me anyway) is that as of recently almost all of the music I would want to purchase is only available in an online format. Most of the music I’m interested in at the moment are all independent releases and so many of these “DIY” artists are forgoing the overhead of creating a physical CD altogether.

So, I think I’m going to find myself “kicking and screaming” into the digital music age. I think I’ll have to make the transition if I really want to continue to listen to new music, which has always been one of my favorite things to do. One thing is certain, if I do make the transition, I most definitely won’t buy using iTunes. The reasons for which are a topic for another post.

I saw a link to this somewhere and thought it was interesting. I think I’ll let it speak for itself.

Check it out HERE.

My longtime good friends Mark and Josh under the name Din Within have just released their debut CD. Entitled “Awaken the Man”, it’s a tour de force of every creative and intellectual gift that this duo have at their disposal. If you’re even a mild fan of progressively tinged rock you should take some time to indulge yourself in this release. From the opening of “Better than Before” to the conclusion of the epic title track; “Awaken the Man” has something for just about any music lover out there. It also features guest contributions by what might be some of the most talented musicians on the east coast or anywhere for that matter. “Awaken the Man” is an extremely inspirational piece of plastic. (well, it’s actually a little more than a piece of plastic )

Do yourself a favor and check it out.

It can be purchased here—-> “Awaken the Man”

So this weekend was the culminating performance at Different Skies which is a gathering of some very talented and creative electronic musicians for a week of fun and music making in Arcosanti, Arizona. My good friend Darrell Burgan (Palancar) attended it for the second time this year to perform and also broadcast the weekly events on StillStream.com.

Now that things have settled down for me, I have to admit I’m really disappointed that I couldn’t attend this year. With all of the moving around and turmoil that Sharon and I went through over the past year and half I just couldn’t commit to heading out. I’m going to make a point to go next year. I’m really starting to get excited about making music again and the Different Skies week would be just the type of thing for me.

So, I have the full year to get my live keyboard rig set up and ready to go. I’m putting quite a bit of thought into it. I want to keep things simple and light but have all the things I need at my fingertips so I can create easily with out too much messing around with the gear itself. I want to have some time to get things tweaked before I put myself into a performance setting though. Hopefully, I’ll have everything ready for next year’s Different Skies.