Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Do you ever really learn any lessons?

I find that no matter what, I consistently make the same mistakes. over and over again, year after year, month after month, day after day. Obviously we all take certain lessons from our actions on a day-to-day basis, we learn what works and what doesn’t. For instance I know that a cheeky 5 minute snooze past my alarm in the morning means I hit rush hour traffic and that can automatically add a nice 20 mins to half an hour to my bus journey to work. So I’ve learned not to take that cheeky 5 minute snooze. But that’s easy, I can control that, what isn’t so easy to control is how you are affected by the people and situations around you.

If you listen to any of the music on this site, you might make several assumptions about the author, (whether or not they’re accurate doesn’t really matter) one possible observation might be that there can often be themes of pessimism running through a lot of the songs. That’s one I’m willing to admit to. I think it’s certainly true of most people that the ‘darker’ part of life is often much more inspiring and conducive to creating. I guess this comes simply from the fact that people love to moan, more than they love to praise, and I’m no different. Pessimism leads to the misguided presumption that it can act as a defence mechanism for disappointment, and in theory I can understand that viewpoint. but it doesnt work, it never works, and this is a lesson I never seen to keep hold of. Disappointment is inevitable, and that’s fine. But when you try to prevent the worst from happening, you’re quite possibly fighting a  losing battle, things will work out how they work out, and people will do what people want to do. It’s both exciting and terrifying, chaotic yet consistent, frustrating and yet completely natural.

Things change, things fall apart, you want to try and stop this from happening, but you secretly know it’s impossible, but it never stops you trying. This is exhausting, and pointless. But you never learn that lesson.

Weezer – Why Bother?

New ‘Falls Apart Ep’ at Halloween….

So now that this website is finally up and running, I should be cracking on and continuing with my weekly build-up to the new Down In Autumn album with a new track. But I’ve been distracted.

Whilst all the headaches with this new site were going on, I spent some time and started tinkering with a new remix, which is what I’m posting up this week instead of a new Down In Autumn track.

http://remix.nin.com/play/mix?id=20489

The remix is of a song by a band called How To Destroy Angels, who are essentially a new project by Nine Inch Nails genius Trent Reznor. Trent being the ultra cool dude that he clearly is, makes a large amount of his work available online to download and remix at your leisure. You download a song’s individual elements (vocals, drums, bass etc.) and with editing software you can pretty much do whatever you want with it.

They decided to build this creative fan community and made a website specifically for people to upload their mixes, where you can listen, vote, make playlists and other such good stuff.

So I’ve taken a song called ‘A Drowning’ and given it the Down In Autumn treatment. The original is a 7-minute long slow-electronic-burner, I’ve tried to turn it into a Down In Autumn song, only with a female vocal rather than my own. I took the lead vocal track and reconstructed the tune around it, using the same stuff I always use; acoustic guitars, organs, keys, etc.

Follow the link to check it out. I’m unsure as to the legal/ethical issues with posting the actual mp3 on my own site, so I’ll leave it as just the link for now.

Hope you enjoy. Check out the original too, and check back here soon when I’ll have a new song and possibly a video to go with it.

http://remix.nin.com/play/mix?id=20489

Tom