Din Don Dub

Taking a little break from yacking about my stuff ...

One of the great things about archive.org is the serendipitous chancing upon some hidden gem. (Although this is getting more difficult as the amount of stuff being uploaded has become so vast and the browsing capabilities of the site are limited.) One such gem is a tune called Din Don Dub, a wonderfully layered combination of nature sounds and electronic effects. It has a slow-paced, syncopated rhythm. It sounds as if the audio signal of much of the drums and other elements is reversed. Sometimes that technique comes across as gimmicky but here it works to excellent effect, giving the song a non-human yet organic feel.

There's no information on the artist, Gery Petit. The CC license is French and a quickie Google search reveals that maybe he's music producer in the French film industry.

Beautiful, hypnotic and haunting, I think the tune touches something that's difficult to describe. Enjoy.

Pondicherry Cutie

Here's one I put together about a year ago - Pondicherry Cutie. It's my first full song with Logic, basically learning the ropes of it's FM synthesizer. After I had gotten the theme down, it struck me as something I'd heard before. Then it came to me, it reminded me of Horace Silver's "Calcutta Cutie." Side by side comparison revealed it wasn't really a rip-off, just a similar feel. Hey, it's not like Steely Dan when they stole Silver's bass line from "Song For My Father" and used it in "Rikki Don't Lose That Number."

Salty

For some reason, an old (year and half) song of mine is attracting a lot of downloads at archive.org: Salty. In the last month or so it's gone from around 20 downloads to 160, making it my third most downloaded song after Zigong Blues (656) and Bad Buddhist (394).

Don't know why exactly. It's a pretty low-fi GarageBand effort. It's a simple arrangement around a bass loop with piano and trumpet. Mainly I wrote it as an exercise to help improve the timing of my drumming. When I started recording against loops, I had discovered my tempo keeping was pretty weak. The computer doesn't lie. With Salty, I would come down to my basement studio, load up GarageBand, hit record and do a take or two. Eventually I got a pretty solid version which is what you hear on the song. However, at the time I was still recording with a cheap stereo mic and my old kit so the drums lack clarity and punch. The fills came across pretty well though and they have nice retro sound and feel.

I do like the song. I wouldn't have posted it otherwise. But why the sudden interest? A Google search doesn't reveal any cites of the song in the blogs or someplace. Not that I mind. Just curious.