The Sad Tax

RPM TIME...
New name THE SAD TAX it's the new thing I'm doing. It's a lot like the last thing only a little less.
62 minutes, pretty experimental, maybe a bit more focused on mood and a bit more song based then SUPERGOD!. I think of it as a transitional album, I guess. What I'm transitioning to I'll leave that up to your imagination.
It's listed on bandcamp as "name your price" which means you can pay nothing for it if you are inclined to being a cheap bastard. I would recommend downloading it from bandcamp because when you stream it off the web player you miss out on how awesome the track transitions and segues work and each track has it's own special artwork. And I learned some basics on Blender to do the album art and I have to say without a doubt it's my favourite part of the project.
Anyway, giver a listen. I think it works really well as an album listening experience as opposed to an individual track experience. So clear an hour off your schedule and wrap your ears around The Sad Tax "Red Pearl Mountain"!

SUPERGOD! THE MOVIE

Alright folks, after almost a year of work I'm ready to début this sonnavabitch to the world in Youtube form! This Christmas I spread it around as a DVD (which makes a lovely present for a loved one and can be easily purchased through my Bandcamp page here) and had a couple of small screenings but now it's time for the internet to get it's chance at it.

The movie is a strange little experimental thing I got the idea for last January while I was musing about what I was going to do for the RPM Challenge. I wanted to do something more ambitious. So I decided to actually do it and throw myself into this album length video project I've had in the back of my head for a long time, for my RPM project. I figured I would film most of it during January and do the music and editing in February. After about a week into February I realized that I was never in million years going to be making that deadline. So instead of killing myself to get a really shitty film done by the end of the month I decided to concentrate on making the soundtrack album first and then try to make the film as best I could afterwards.

When figuring out the plot and concept of the film there were three things I had to keep in mind, for one I knew it had to be something that I could do all by myself or otherwise it wouldn't get done (anyone who has experience organizing volunteers knows this to be true). For 2, it can't cost any money (I'm poor). And for 3, the story has to be something that can be expressed without dialogue because I am not an actor and I am not a fan of my speaking voice. While I was in Hava Java's on my Christmas visit last year I had some inspiration while recalling a short British film from the 60's I'd seen a few months earlier (I've been trying to find the name of it for the last 4 hours without any luck, if after my description you think you know what it's called please tell me). The film was about an intellectual and sceptical man on a sabbatical retreat to a coastal village who after an argument with a local resident about the nature of the universe goes on a walk and finds an ancient looking flute thing in an exposed grave site on a cliffs edge, and after picking it up and trying to play it without thinking much of it, is then followed by an apparition of some sort that in all a flurry appears in his room at night (which ends the film). I thought something like could be evocative and could be done by one person essentially and not need much or any dialogue. The perfect plot! But I had to screw around with it.

The movie was definitely a learning project. Pretty much every scene of the film involves some sort of fairly complicated effect that I had to figure out.from scratch. The movie was definitely influenced by (and I'm going to make the bad decision of comparing the works of proper masters to my cheap and shitty student film) the work of Svankmajer, Lynch, Tarkovsky and Maddin and it features many loving shots of food, random music videos, vaseline lenses, triptychs, moody drone pieces and a drawing that is either 1.21 billion miles across or 1 millionth the size of an atom depending on how you view it (it starts about 34 minutes in if you're curious). If you are curious about how the drawing sequence was accomplished then check out my entry on the Vicar Ouroboros video as it's pretty much the same method only slightly more elaborate and using 32 panels instead of 9.

Anyway, I'm pretty damn happy with the film and I guess the challenge now is to figure out what I can do with it since it's finished. I'm gonna try getting it into some festivals (possibly as a much shorter edited down version) and see what else can happen with it, but I'm the type of creative dude who as soon as I finish a piece I don't want anything more to do with it and only want to move onto the next project. And I gotta lotta ideas for new projects I wanna jump on. So I hope you all like it and don't just watch the first few minutes and move on to some other youtube piece of crap. You can buy a copy of the DVD or download the Score from me from my bandcamp page here. Enjoy!
Cheers!