Gotta love the Christmas spirit! Reported by goodnewsnetwork.org:

Christmas came early to the town of Canton, Mississippi when a generous and very secret Santa picked up the tab for more than 300 layaway tickets at the local Walmart.

A donor who chose to remain anonymous approached the store’s management and made an offer they had no reason to refuse: The jolly old elf volunteered to make good on every layaway ticket they were holding for customers who had yet to pay or fully pay for their merchandise.

So awesome!

Imagine three pianos recorded one at a time, and each of them was improvised. The pianists could only react when they heard a note. The result? This is the most ridiculously chill piano song.

To me, this record has a nice, sleepy feeling to it. Something to relax into, something to take a nice nap listening to (dare I say even on repeat?).

In a world where mumblers are quarantined to an industrial treatment center, a young woman with a decimated speech enhancing device struggles to find a replacement.

I am so proud of this film score! Happy to have helped Madison Bounds put this together...

Evil Gima's ulu is a tour-de-force in ambient experimental sound. The songs themselves have no melody, no harmony (Aak And Quack excepted), and in many cases no sound that is recognizable. It was created using a number of different sound design modules and hyped to sound good at 85dB.

This isn't your suger-coated candy pop, feel good, I'm-the-king-of-the-world type of music. It's an adventure for those sonic searchers that are willing to listen to music with scruity and stoicism. Are you one of the few and proud?

Get up and SCREAM is a electronica concept album chronicling of a night of intensely vivid dreams, and it’s now available for download with tons of extras on Bandcamp.

Bonus items included:

1. Full liner notes
2. Three bonus tracks
3. Rare photos of the Sidekick performing live

Please enjoy this light-hearted, super fun and happy listen!

No matter how much of a dork you think you were in high school, I bet you can't easily beat this photo of yours truly right after voting in the 1996 presidential election:

Field Spectra is a commercial-free sound preservation project aimed at capturing sounds as they are at one moment of time. With the world rapidly changing, it's nice to have a little continuity and a sense of history.

This collection of sounds was captured in 2017 in south and central Austin. I aimed to find the moments of nature still embedded within this growing, vibrant city.

Donations are accepted of course! I am giving this one away for free because it makes me feel good to share what a particular moment in time felt like in sound.

Library Of Congress. Photoduplication Service, photographer. Chamber Music Festival. Washington D.C, 1970. Photograph. www.loc.gov/item/2017646184/

Now Available for Fire Fire Red Star Down! Subscribers Only: Synthesizer Sketches 2020-2017

I love experimenting with sound, and around 2017 I got super interested in understanding synths. The best way to get my brain wrapped around them? Tests!

All tests were presented by date, in reverse chronological order (aka from the most interesting to shittiest). No guarantees for quality! Some of these tests are embarassing, especially if I had the heart to listen closely.

Plese enjoy these songs as well as my embarassment of them!

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Photo credits:

Library Of Congress. Photoduplication Service, photographer. Chamber Music Festival. Washington D.C, 1970. Photograph. www.loc.gov/item/2017646184/

Slimline feels exactly what it's like to be in your own mind, totally aware of it, and not giving a damn whether or not anyone actually cares about it. You are deeply into your solitude, and that's all.

Musically, Slimline is a relatively noisy album but an ultimately human listen. Elements of IDM, experimental, ambient, big beats (at times), supremely layered guitars, and intensely personal.

For optimal listening, allow yourself to be over-caffeinated after the sun goes down. It's best to be around people, so go to a coffee shop that's open 24 hours and enjoy the ambiance.

Suggested activities: Write in a journal, do some programming, enjoy the process of doing some intensely detailed art. Completely ignore every other person around.

BONUS: Included is a PDF of the original name of the Double Headed Seagulls: The Arms Race. This was a document that I planned upon putting on a website somewhere, but just never happened (until now!).

Quite possibly the best reason to buy used books in a bookstore is finding whatever treasures are (unintentionally) buried in them-

Flutters Re-Released on Bandcamp! Yes! Best of all it includes tons of bonus tracks not available anywhere else. Get to hear the originals! Plus, I’ve included a ton of pictures from the recording session. Interested in seeing which mics went where, what guitars I used? This re-release is for you.

Everytime I think of Crisp Lips, it makes me smile. What a crazy movie!

My music becomes your music!

Become a patron and get all the music I've released since 2000.

That's 20 years of music-making and 25 albums.

Yours!

And you'll also get:

1. Totally humiliating photos from childhood

2. Subscribers-only albums

3. 20% discount on merch

4. Locked-in price, forever

5. Gratification of supporting me sustainably

"Cow" by maraker is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

So exciting! I am a big fan of brisket, and I also know that it’s not exactly the best for the environment to support it.

FutureFeed Pty Ltd, a company based in Australia, has just secured $13 million to start a new company that will produce a cow feed that is made of seaweed and results in an 80% reduction in methane!

Read more here:

Today's re-release is a simple, super relaxed, and super chill piano track. The Still Life was written many years ago but put together with a video when I was living in Santa Fe, NM.

When I listen back to this song (in moments of extreme artistic gluttony hahaha), It feels like time has slowed down to a crawl. The video has the same feeling. You can watch the music video for The Still Life:

Let’s keep this re-releases going!

Today's re-release is AES by Evil Gima. Evil Gima is a catch-all moniker for my ambient, dark, and experimental music collages. They tend to be great for staring out into space and relaxing into the textures.

After I moved to Santa Fe, NM, I was really hit hard by the epic cloud formations, the beautiful art, and also the cultural and historical amnesia. Read about the history of the city, and you'll be quietly freaked out.

Anyhow, AES always reminds me of that time of the ceaselessly changing skies of New Mexico.

I've also included the full liner notes of the record AND five Ableton Live screenshots of the projects. Perhaps you musicians would like that?

Here in it’s full glory: Crisp Lips!

For those of you who are unfamiliar, Crisp Lips is an absurdist comedy written and directed by Madison Bounds. Crisp Lips is the tale of when a cold sore pandemic sends the employees of a restaurant into inescapable (and hilarious) chaos. Timely and fun, the film shows what happens when we're all stuck inside our house, unable to leave (like the entirety of 2020).

Want the soundtrack?

Click the picture below for bonus materials and fun extras, or search for the soundtrack with your favorite music app.

This is a video that has a loud moan done by a group of four people, all together now! This clip is a snippet from the full-length independent movie Crisp Li...