Vacation

Heading back to seattle for a few weeks.  I'll be on the road for most of the time.  But the first and last weekend, I'll be at home relaxing and enjoying life.

Heh, seriously.  I'll be taking care of a lot of things while I'm there.  But I should still have time to catch a break.

To do list:
• Spend time with my wife.
• Look at a house or two
• Do taxes and resolve owed taxes from last year (<3 IRS)
• Clean the studio and do some mastering work
• Get access to my Service Credit Union account so I can figure out how much I still owe them
• Enjoy some time around (possibly) Napa Valley, San Francisco, LA and Utah
• See Leæther Strip live in concert, woo!
• Get a new usb midi controller (M-Audio Oxygen 49, I think)
• Discuss the future
• Wish I didn't have to go back to Korea
• Hope Tokyo doesn't get some ucky fallout for my return trip layover there
and a whole lot more...

I'm sure this doesn't even cover half of it, but it's what I've got off the top of my head.  Yes yes, I know a lot of that is totally irrelevant from the perspective of most people who might be reading this.  But I vent and process a little here too.

If you really want to hear me vent.  I might think about linking my rant blog sometime.  For now, it's just for me and whoever finds it accidentally.

Now, I have to go sign out on leave.

Tschueß,
-Anthony

Near future

Remixes, my future (post army) and Cantonment commercial release (soon).

Spent a chunk of last night working on my "homework" for the transition assistance program class I'm in this week. Getting out of the Army is a fabulous thing. But all of a sudden, one realizes, even if you stayed in your military career field, you'd take a pay cut. While I'm ok with taking a pay cut to go from 14-16 hours a day, 60 days a year in the field, 1 year in 2-3 deployed, etc, etc to 10 hours a day M-F. It does pay better to be a civilian in Iraq. Though it's a pain in the ass to get you and your equipment there. I'm so off track already...

Regardless. I'm down to about 6 1/2 months left in Korea. Then a few paychecks on terminal leave and after Dec 1st. I need to already have some kind of Seasonal job lined up, transitioning into part time while I'm in school. Probably back to the retail world for me for the time being. They don't really offer much in the way of my skill sets in part time jobs near Seattle bus routes. So, I'm feeling a tiny bit nervous. But worse come to worst, there's a variety of jobs I'm qualified for and I get a tiny advantage with veteran's preference. Namely government jobs. The closest non upper upper management ones are mostly TSA/DHS guys.

Otherwise, Surveying. Which might even be enjoyable in the PacNW weather. But that's all a moot point as I'll be in school starting in January with a 70% pay cut and 15% more bills.

Wow, so so far off track for the topic of this discussion.

The OTHER thing I was doing last night is the Klutæ - Desert Storm remix. I'm still working the song back together and messing with instruments. It's coming together though. Probably after tonight it'll be time to futz with it a bit. Though I'm going to be busy preparing and packing for my trip to the states. So it might be on hold.

I will have a couple non-consecutive days with my full studio set up during those two weeks. I'll be adding some spit-and-polish to the Cantonment tracks. After that, I'll be pushing a commercial release shortly thereafter. I'm still on the fence about remixes. I might just push those as freebies online later if anyone wants to do a remix. I'm not in the position to pay for them just yet...

So here's the list of upcoming goodies- -
KLUTÆ - Desert Storm [U-D-R] remix.
Frontal Boundary - Mental Illusion [U-D-R] remix (on his commercial release).
[U-D-R] - Cantonment Final Master and Retail availability.

I haven't decided the best route for a retail release, but I might go with a 1 shot iTunes (or multi digital distribution) release. ReverbNation has a pretty good ongoing deal with a monthly fee. But my finances are about to get pretty thin. Once I have access to my UPC or barcode thingy. I can self release the hardcopy CD myself for distribution. I do have a route for doing that, but it'll be up to what I can afford. Currently, there isn't much demand.

That being said, I'm in this for myself and my fans. I'm not planning on living off my music anytime soon, so I don't expect or anticipate a very profitable response from releasing Cantonment. But you never know what the future holds. Time for a serious indie promotion assault methinks.

"It'll cost ya good nuyen or two little puppy dogs.  Har har!"

Cheers,
-Anthony

Experimental music

I just finished up a song I did for my wife's school project. We were on a super short time schedule so I more assembled it with with loops in GarageBand. My first go kinda missed the mark a bit and ended up sounding like a 60's James Bond theme song.

And here I was supposed to be writing about the element of Earth from the Traditional Chinese Medicine point of view.

We worked on it a bit more, but with our time crunch, modified my 007 theme with some slightly different elements. We had also intended to have her sing. She did very well, but I ended up doing a rendition myself to get it out the door with her to class this morning ^_^

I will say though, for being totally raw and with a couple minor flubs. I sung in a style that was about 75% outside my norm. I think I did ok too. So I guess I haven't lost my touch just yet. Though for the year and change I was living in Seattle and working at Ft. Lewis (54 miles one way). I was singing my ass off in the car to everything. So I actually came up some new techniques.

If they're appropriate to industrial I dunno. But should I ever record my rendition of Covenant's "Final Man." You'd all get a giggle. Actually, it sounded really cool... from a singing in the car perspective.

We're also off GO1 after two weeks (aka now we can drink), so cheers!
-Anthonormal B. Funfrock

...yes, I just made just made an obscure reference to "Dr. Funfrock."

[U-D-R] News - back on blogger

Heya

I switched the [U-D-R] news over to my blogger account. While it's a rather wide format and kinda mucks with my website template. It's a lot easier to post and maintain (and I like the way it looks). As well as being able to post when I'm away from my computer.

Cheers,
-Anthony

Cantonment EP

I've decided Cantonment is going to be an EP with 6 tracks, possibly some remixes. Cantonment, being a place where soldiers live. It seems somewhat appropriate to leave it as music I wrote and or reworked while I've been in the army. Though the combination of this EP and a long hiatus has essentially killed the Prometheus (working title) album that was scheduled for 2006-2007 originally. Most of the newer material is from what that album could have been.

I also think holding out for later this year or even early next year while I put together more tracks isn't really fair to those who might want to buy the album. Especially when the music I'm writing now is somewhat different than these revamped tracks from 1999-2005. That being said, there is a lot of unfinished songs from 2006 that might not fade away completely.

I'm looking forward to what the future holds. I'll be heading to school at the Art Institute of Seattle for the Audio Design Tech program. Huzzah for the post 9/11 GI Bill. Though they keep hacking away at the benefits. All in all, it's far better than the Montgomery GI Bill that I joined up for, so I can't complain.

I'm heading back to the states for a few weeks pretty soon. I plan on hooking my trusty macbook pro up to my lobotomized studio that sits idle while I'm off in Korea. Giving the 6 tracks a final once over with some real reference monitors.

Hopefully around May, there will be a Cantonment EP for sale somewhere. I've so far only released promo materials to a handful of people. Though with the ability to record audio from preview only streaming tracks, I'd imagine anyone could get my music for free. The next album is likely to be fairly hush hush until it's about ready.

I think I'm rambling a bit. It's almost midnight here and I'm running on 2 hours of sleep from last night. TGIF for sure. Well, tomorrow is Friday for me. It's nice being 17 hours ahead of the west coast sometimes.

Love and other indoor sports,
-Anthony