Release Notes
Hello! These are my release notes.
These may or may not provide additional context to things.
Please Enjoy…
Solo Works
Taking a Breath, 2013
I was a special ed kid and also a "little shit" according to most people. I liked a lot of classic rock as a kid, particularly the Beatles, AC/DC, early Bowie, Peter Gabriel/Genesis, and other artists.
I was also a fan of radio pop music as pretty much every child was at the time. I liked to mimic instruments with my voice and sing along to the songs I knew.
You can now probably see a clearer picture of where this album came from. Fascinated with the technology available to me, the ability to record an album and release it to the Internet, for friends, family and random strangers to hear, it all seemed like a great idea.
Unfortunately, my rockstar dreams were crushed for many reasons, which should become obvious if one actually listens to the record. I recorded it through the mono computer microphone of a Dell laptop - likely a Latitude or Inspiron - on a pre-installed copy of Audacity 2.something, using the glorious Windows XP as an OS.
I recorded all of these performances in one take, in the middle of class, which is something I was definitely not supposed to be doing. This results in many of the recordings abruptly ending with someone asking me to stop goofing off.
I was a very busy kid, and not yet diagnosed with really shitty anxiety issues. Looking back on it now, I definitely had those issues while I was recording these. You can sort of hear it in my voice, I was trying to be as quiet as possible so as not to embarrass myself.
Recording these was definitely more fun than whatever I had to do in special ed, a time I remember being not fun at all really. Eventually, I finished enough for a full album, made plans for two followups, began recording the first, and stopped after two songs.
For a year or so I stopped caring about making music, but this is a good look at whatever I was interested in way back when.
When I was starting my Bandcamp page I put up Taking a Breath. I had 128k mp3 files backed up on a computer and used those as the basis for the Bandcamp version. I became embarrassed of it several times, and it went down and came back up, although I don't think anyone really cared or noticed.
In thee year of our lord 2021, I miraculously found a backup of the original Audacity project files, stowed away on a long-forgotten USB stick. I was able to restore the original track listing from the metadata of these files as well. Exciting!
Additional Notes
A couple songs on Taking a Breath were initially meant for other unfinished releases.
Sam the Ham was a demo for my first band, The Projectors, and is credited to them. The Projectors were me and the incredible Joshua Madden.
Got My Groove Back was a demo for another band I was in called The Destrukshun, and is credited to them. The Destrukshun were me and a kid named Jake. Our album was going to be called Jake & Sam, and we wrote a letter to Apple Records asking them to release the album.
(Just Like) Starting Over, a cover of the John Lennon song, was one of two songs recorded for the followup album, "8365".
There is another song for 8365 recorded somewhere, but it's currently lost. It's another cover song, and I don't remember what of. [I didn't keep many backups as a kid.]
No catalog number
The "AHHHH REMIX" Song, credited to "Things Are Looking Up", 2014
Backing track for a remix of Grayson making a funny noise.
The name "Things Are Looking Up", originally "Turn Up The Volume", was my very, very short-lived pseudonym around 2015-16.
I believe the file for this survives on an old backup, not sure about the album cover [which was probably stupid anyways].
It's not that great of a release and it was removed a few months after its initial upload.
No catalog number
FNaF Piano Music EP, 2014
I had trouble gathering all the files for Imagination's second album, The Predator, to release properly on Bandcamp.
For a short while, the piano pieces "Freddy", "Foxy", "Bonnie" and "Chica" [named after Five Nights at Freddy's characters] were available as this EP, credited under my name.
When I eventually was able to find the rest of the audio files recorded for The Predator, I deleted this EP and put the tracks on the deluxe edition of The Predator.
Audacity Tests, 2014
In preparation for Imagination's "The World" I used Audacity to test out some features I hadn't used before, notably, multi-track recording.
For some reason, I decided to release these publicly.
"Angry Angry Ocelot" was something a friend of mine named Liam used to say to piss people off. I wonder what he's doing now. The ocelot was in reference to Minecraft, which had recently added them to the game.
This release is not "true lossless": it is mastered from mp3, ogg, m4a or another lossy source. Downloading a flac file of this is essentially worthless. My apologies for the inconvenience.
SAMB002
Phone Music EP, with nemoguy29, 2016
This is me and my friend [credited under his former YouTube alias] playing with DTMF tones, recorded on an iPod.
The song titles are the file names that iTunes gave to the tracks upon import.
I remember being particularly fascinated with the distortion effect that occurs when two tones play on top of one another.
This release is not "true lossless": it is mastered from mp3, ogg, m4a or another lossy source. Downloading a flac file of this is essentially worthless. My apologies for the inconvenience.
SAMB006
I Don't Even Know, 2016
Tunes made with a generative-ish sequencer called Otomata.
It's certainly not as bad as I've made it out to be.
SAMB013
Failed attempt at a remix album, 2016
Some early attempts at remixes. Actually, a lot of these are just me fucking with some records, which I wouldn't necessarily classify as "remixes", but whatever.
A list of samples will be provided for this and any other of my remix releases without sample credits.
The song "Entertainment" had an interesting history. For whatever reason, Bandcamp didn't allow me to upload the original version, so I put a note asking listeners to download it at a TinyURL link.
I'm not sure how many people actually did that, but eventually I fixed the issue. Apparently I wasn't satisfied though. I'm not sure really what I was going for with it, unfortunately, it's escaped my memory.
Samples
1, 2: Genesis - Live [1973, Buddah-Charisma recs.]
3: Trap Them - Feedin the Charlatan / I Hate the Kids [2014, freebie flexi disc with Decibel mag]
4, 5, 6: Makin' Out [1978, freebie flexi disc with MAD magazine, arranged by Norm Blagman, lyrics Frank Jacobs]
7: Queen - We Will Rock You / We Are the Champions [1977, EMI/Elektra recs. from "News of the World"]
8: Rush - What You're Doing [1974, Moon/Mercury recs. from "Rush"]
9: several iterations of the Family Feud theme song
10: two songs from the soundtrack of "Fatty Bear's Birthday Surprise", a game by Humongous Entertainment, 1992.
11: several Tally Hall songs, likely from Complete Demos/Marvin's era.
SAMB015
Another failed attempt at a remix album, 2016
The very quickly-recorded sequel to the first one.
Track 6 is a weird acronym I don't think anyone picked up on. The song I sample is called "Got My Mind Set On You", and it's called "Good Mythical Morning Soy"... GMMSOY... alright, sure.
Oh I farted of the season
Samples
1: Peter Gabriel - Shock the Monkey [1980, Charisma/Geffen recs.]
2: David Lee Roth - Easy Street [1985, Warner Bros. from "Crazy From the Heat" EP]
3, 4: Peter Gabriel - Soft Dog [1980, Charisma/Geffen recs. b-side of "Shock the Monkey".]
5: George Burns' very real and hilarious cover of Fixing a Hole [og. The Beatles], from the little-known Sgt Peppers' musical movie thing. We live in a very weird world! [1978, RSO]
6: George Harrison - Got My Mind Set On You [1987, Dark Horse/Warner Bros. from "Cloud Nine".]
7: Yello - Oh Yeah [1985, Vertigo/Mercury/Elektra, from "Stella"], Koji Matsumoto - Oops I Farted [2007, Scholastic, from the Captain Underpants "Super Silly CD o' Fun"], Zombies - Time of the Season [1968, CBS/Date, from "Odessey and Oracle"]
8: Brad G Kids - Praise the Lord [2015, from "Let It Out!"], Cal Chuchesta - Friend From the Apple Store [2015, from "The New CALassic"]
9: C418 - Long songs are for people who don't have time to make them short [2010, trx 17-23 from "Life changing moments seem minor in pictures"]
10: all above-mentioned
SAMB016
I Still Don't Even Know [plus the secret Pre-Order thing that nobody knew or cared about], 2016
Not much to say about the main album, of course. It was again made with Otomata, and is pretty similar to the last one.
For some reason I decided to put up a pre-order of this album with 3 exclusive tracks, so exclusive that I didn't put them on the final record.
I have no idea why, but after this pre-order inevitably failed, I never put up those three tracks ever again.
They aren't bad or anything, not by any means, they were just filler I suppose???
Not really sure what my thought process was... anyways. Eventually I'll put those back up.
SAMB017
Failed Attempt at a Remix EP
In the turntable style of the first two, with the notable inclusion of a song about touching kids.
Interesting choice.
I was really into progressive rock at the time.
Samples
1: The Who - Do You Think It's Alright?, Fiddle About, Pinball Wizard [1968, Track/Decca recs. from "Tommy"]
2: The Who - Christmas [1968, Track/Decca recs. from "Tommy"]
3: Genesis - Cuckoo Cocoon, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway [1974, Charisma/Atco recs. from "The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway"]
SAMB017
An Adventure/Retro Game OST
I made this on some looper webapp, the same one I also used for the Ahhhh Remix Song [as Things Are Looking Up].
It was for my old pal Josh's little platformer game. I hope he's been doing alright.
I just looked, and you can still grab the game here, if you want. I believe the last build had my soundtrack in it.
SAMB018
To be continued