...doomsday.

This is the track played in the new Borderlands 2 release announcement trailer. I fell in love with it right away.

So good.

Nero - Doomsday

I bought the whole album because of this song. So good.

I'm going off on a tangent about music in general.

We're going to start today off with a couple definitions from Dictionary.com

mu·sic   [myoo-zik]noun
1. an art of sound in time that expresses ideas and emotions insignificant forms through the elements of rhythm, melody,harmony, and color.
2. the tones or sounds employed, occurring in single line(melody) or multiple lines (harmony), and sounded or to besounded by one or more voices or instruments, or both.

...error PRJ0015 : The NULL device is missing from your system. (Interview with Eric Oehler of Null Device - WTII Minifest II Interview #5)

Null Device Interview (WTII Minifest hype-a-palooza)

It took me a while to get this interview out there as life got in the way. So, today we got this pig finished and published for the people.

Falken: I myself love the work you do. I will come right out and say that I am a complete fan. It's completely different than what I usually listen to, but just amazing melodically. So many different instruments and amazing vocals. It's not something I normally see in "the scene". What led you down this path with Null Device?

...I was reminded of some fun I had many years back.

On the way to work, I got sick of the usual blabber on the radio that I have been listening to for many years. I plugged in the iPod as I am known to do from time to time and let it go to shuffle mode. I have a lot of music, it's a 120 gig iPod and it's over half full. I can go for quite a while without hearing the same song twice.

Tony, Terry, and Cal

This morning I was reminded of a time that was a lot of fun for me when a song called "Over my dead body" happened to play. A few years back, a local band out of Racine called "Snooky" needed a guitar player. They were committed to 3 or four shows still and didn't want to have to pull out of them and let their fans down. I knew these guys for years. Opened up for them when I was still in Lithic for MANY shows and the guys became good friends of mine. So, when Tony, Cal, and Terry were down on their luck and needed someone to step in... I did. I learned a set of about 8 or 9 songs and helped them out. In the end, Bill (amazing guitar player) ended up taking over and they kept on rolling.

While they are not playing together anymore, I still consider their music some of the most influential on my playing in am.psych. John has mentioned that he can still hear it in things I play from time to time.

...Feuer Frei!

I've been waiting for this show for since 1998. The last time I got to see them was when they toured on the first Family Values tour. I was a doing street work promotion for TVT Records at the time and they had me handing out cassettes with the latest songs from Sevendust, Gravity Kills and others on there. As a thank you for doing that bit of work, they gave me two tickets to the Family Values show here in my town and I took one of my good friends to the show.  He'll be there with his wife and our former room mate as well (he didn't get to see them last time).

...I finished the interview with Caustic...THE LIGHTNING ROUND! (Caustic interview : Part III)

This is the final part of my three part series of the interview with Caustic. If you have not read the other parts, click HERE for part one, and HERE for part two. I had a great time doing this with Matt. He's a no bullshit kind of guy and he helps make my day. I've really looked forward to his responses over the last few days and they have made my day a bit better than the last. For those of you who are new to this blog solely because of the interview with Caustic, I urge you to become one of my regular readers. You can subscribe on the right side of the page. This is here mostly for me as an outlet where I can tell people what made my life better today. In a time where so many people put a lot of time and effort bitching about things, I am trying to do the exact opposite and shine a light on things that make me happy.


Now, for the lightning round... I asked Matt seven questions that for some reason I thought would be short answers. I should have known better than to expect a word association type answer to these...

...I whip my questions back and forth. The Caustic Interview (Part 2)

This is Part II of the Caustic interview. Part I can be read here.

The interview continues....

Falken: That's great that you're not limiting yourself though. I've listened to Pre-Golden Vag Caustic for a while now and taking a listen to the new album... I'm blown away. It's a great album start to finish that is probably going to be in my rotation for months to come now. That doesn't happen too easily, and not just because I know you.

What is your take on remixing music in general (yours or others)?

...I'm having a good little interview with Caustic (part 1)

A face you can trust.

Earlier today, Matt put it out there that he's up for doing interviews. Being a very curious person about all things music and what people think when they are making their art, I decided "what the hell, worst thing he'll say is no." 


Background, I've only "known" Matt since early 2010 when Dan Clark and Eric Oehler put together the Fading Belief tour and had am.psych and Caustic on the bill for the Madison/Milwaukee/Chicago shows. I must say, Matt is a riot, I love what he does on stage, and I wish I got to see more of his performances in my younger years. Great stuff. To this day, I get Lady Business in my head out of nowhere and just rattle off "boom boom boom, lady business." It scares people. 


Other than that, I just have good conversation with the guy. We hit each other up on Facebook from time to time, and I've even sparked his interest in possibly doing a cover song of an old 80's tune with me in the future.


So after the jump is part one of my interview with Matt of Caustic: 

...what started as a joke, is now something serious.

A long time ago, a friend of mine thought it would be funny if after every post I made he would put the line "rub one out" somewhere in the thread. Well, 6 months later it got shortened to r1o. Mistypes changed it to R10 and so on. There have been many variations of it. So, with that, I recently started really getting in to prog house. I don't know why. I just really like it. So, I have decided to take a stab at it and take Falken to a different area of music than I have in the past. Normally it's dancy/electro/wtf. But, I'm going to blend my own style of prog house with industrial low end nu-metal guitar goodness that I have become known for in to what is going to be a great project for me. I am actually excited. I've learned quite a bit on my own in what spare time I have managed to get together and I know my synths and drum stations better than ever.

So, now what started as a joke is quickly becoming something I enjoy. No longer will I blush or facepalm when I see R10 anywhere.

...music just has a way to make me feel good.

Falken

Music is the thing that moves me. It is my oldest love. One that will never go away. Playing live is something I just enjoy doing. It's an outlet for me. If I am sad, or angry, or depressed, I snap out of it right away.

It is something that transcends language. Take most of the German industrial and EBM bands that are out there. I speak English, but I still listen to the music. Why? It's the beat and the melodies behind all of it that makes me move. I'll be seeing Rammstein in May. I saw them the last time they toured the US. It's great music. I've watched countless videos of their European shows. But it doesn't matter to me that I don't understand what is being said in the words because it is being FELT in the sound that is pounding through me. KMFDM, AndOne, Quarashi, and many more I've listened to just because the music is that good.

Sometimes you don't even need words at all when you're writing. That is the approach I've used when writing my music. I tend to think music first, words last.... or never. All but one of my songs are instrumental. The song that does have lyrics, I'm hidden by a vocoder so people don't hear my voice and it sounds like an instrument more than a vocal line. It's just how I work (shameless plug http://www.myspace.com/falkensmind yeah I know, myspace, but that's where the music lives).

I'll be making more of my solo stuff soon. I have to. When? I have no idea. School is trying to take away all free time right now. But, rest assured. Falken is not going away. It's ever evolving.

Hopefully my music will spark something in a kid somewhere so that they learn to want to listen to everything they can and determine what they like.

The drive home will be great tonight, I already have my playlist ready...

...I'm here with all of my people.

I have this mix of music I listen to when I want to be in a better mood. One of my favorit tracks is My People by The Presets. It's just got a vibe that makes me happy when I hear it.

Music does that to me. I get really emotional about it. Sometimes it is happy, other times it is sad, angry, or even frustrated. Seeing as I play guitar, I think I just get in to the music. The latest track we got back from the might Dan Clark for the next am.psych album just had be in total disbelief that we wrote something so mind blowing.

If you have kids, do like I do (or don't, I don't tell people how to parent)... turn off the TV for a bit, turn on the radio or pandora/last.fm and give the kids some culture. Have them sit and listen to it. My son now can pick up and recognize melody on just about any song we listen to. My daughter is always bouncing around.
Publish Post
I'm probably going to take it to the next step and have them close their eyes and then draw what it makes them see... but then I might get called a tree hugging hippie.

oh, and if you get a chance, check out the band I'm in. We have a few shows coming up in April.... one of which we open for our friends @16volt .

http://www.vampirefreaks.com/ampsych