Blue Math

Blue math is hazy reasoning, cloudy logic, skewed judgment, and impossible results. You know you can get through the ill of concept, I mean, you do it all the time. Most of us live blue math by default. This world breeds it and let's us take the lead in parsing and decoding it. So you try to work around the math, work with it and for it. Math seems nice sometimes. (You got the answer you expected!) It can be social - you CAN take math out to a party and not be embarrassed. At any second though, it can turn BLUE.

So, this can be your theme also:

Some holes in the system, let worms peek through - true.

Attic Apartment Fever

Now the situation gets more severe. There are warbling insects - rods even, flying about. We are under a reinforced glass skylight, in the attic of an antique colonial and the trees are above. Summertime in an attic apartment is really special. Stifling inhuman heat. The air here is thick and smells like old wood and horse hair insulation. You can try to stay away from things that want inside your head, but when you have the fever, you've got to be strong to succeed.

And a bird flew so high, it became a plane

Tune That Computer

The cut out bin is where over the years I have bought many excellent gems. One time when I was a kid I dug through the cut out cassette bin at a music store on the Jersey Shore and picked up this tape. I did not know who Robyn Hitchcock was and I really did not like what I heard but I kept listening. I was only 15 and I believed in the cut out bin.

Forward to another odd find from a cut out bin: Taking Tiger Mountain (by strategy). By this time, I was in college but still scouring the depths of those bins. This time I was working at a record store, so the search was long and lazy but no less fruitful for its lack of urgency. There is a song on here called, Third Uncle, a hyper tongue twister of a song. It is relentless. I wanted some of that for Tune That Computer.

I also really liked that visual - tuning a computer like you would a guitar. Blowing in a pitch pipe to figure out where the problem on your tower lays. Twisting some hardware until the screen stops flickering.

These lyrics are meant to baffle and you don't have to listen too closely to hear them twist my tongue. 6 years later they still baffle me.

Yes, I Was Nervous Then

A song about nerves. How to calm them and how to realize they are on edge. There is truth on the line:

Suddenly I remember why I'm worried, isn't that the worst thing in the world?

I hate that feeling. As someone who spends much of their time worrying about possible resolutions to potential concerns, I know this state. I can thank my brain for always looking for the surprise.

Musically, I was going for a Dr. Dre piano part. In reality it sounds way too ill (ill as in unwell, not as in phat) to ever make the cut anywhere near a Dre track.

I Have It

I have it!
I mean, I've had it
and I need some advice.
Get branded, get stranded.
Please advise, you advise.

You may be thinking, "Why start an all electronic EP with an acapella chant?" Come on folks, don't be so uptight.

W/# - A W/# Situation

I've lost track of whether this EP diversion came before or after "A Sweet Science". My sense is they were hatched simultaneously on parallel tracks in different dimensions. W/# (with number) was a needed distraction in a time of personal difficulty. For this, I wanted some rules to follow and for a variety of reasons, I decided that my pseudo side project would have no acoustic instruments. It would be all electronic, except for vocals. Limited to an edition of 30, I cut out war images from an old WWII picture book for the cover and used some custom rubbers stamps for the liner.

When I sent this out for review, I did not put my name under writing credits, but I did give myself mixing and recording credit. I was thinking of David Bowie and Arnold Corns, except I was Bowie and Freddie Burretti. Only in my mind did/does this make sense.

No guitar was freeing to me. I could really screw with my aesthetic and bring out some weird shit. The result is an odd mix of bleak and playful.