Ondleton by The Double Headed Seagulls
Ondleton by The Double Headed Seagulls
Very, very few songs start on a half-diminished chord. They are rarely used outside of jazz because of their inherently dissonant and unstable nature. Ondleton, from The Double Headed Seagulls, seemed to need it, listenership be damned.
In context, through the development of the story of this song, the dissonance can be rather pleasing: The hardest-hitting chord ends at 31 seconds. From there the song gradually becomes more and more pleasant to listen to. If you can make it 31 seconds, you will be continually rewarded with ever more pleasant harmonies.
Ondleton wasn't designed to be an asshole at first. It just ended up being that way. It was a process to get to where this song could be shared. On behalf of all the dozens of people involved with Fire, Fire, Red Star Down record label (ha!), we sincerely apologize for this gross inconvenience of harmony. We (ha!) extort you to remember that though Ondleton first punches you in the face, it will proceed to send sweeter and sweeter kisses to make up for it.
Archive Volume Four by Grande Valley Auction Incident
Archive Volume Four by Grande Valley Auction Incident
Dripping with reverb acoustic guitars and vocals, very still and silent, but also frozen, Archive Volume Four offers you some songs for rainy days where you just don't want to get out of bed.
All these songs were written in 2004, I believe. I am not entirely sure. That’s part of the fun with Grande Valley Auction Incident. It’s a look into the way-back machine as far as what I was thinking and feeling so many years ago. I remarked to a friend recently that I felt two lifetimes away from this music. I was such a different person.
Anyhow, you can definitely hear the Red House Painters and Owen vibe throughout. There's even a little trip hop on this release, ala "Sorry Day." Very moody.
Stravinsky Fun
For those of you who have been coming back to check in on the Rite of Spring series I’ve been doing, thank you. It’s been so fun to dig into that ballet. Some things of worthy note so far:
Stravinsky makes a great use of trills in the woodwinds. Surely, the entire piece has a lot of woodwind arrangements. The color of woodwinds just absolutely overwhelms, kinda like super colorful expressionistic art.
There’s a great deal of “flickering dissonance.” Meaning, the melodies, which are meant to depict the dancing of the young virgins in the story, are simple melodies that offer a lot of repetition, grace notes, and strange melodic structures that dip in and out of the tonality of the piece.
Polytonality. After my friend David Shipps, a Nashville based orchestrator who has IMDb credits out the wazoo, hipped me to thinking about this piece in terms of different chords being combined that have no business being combined, a lightbulb went off. The entire piece makes a great deal of sense now. The effect of the polytonality is mind-bogglingly awesome and intense.
Be sure to check this series out. I’m going through the entire ballet, rehearsal number by rehearsal number.
A Warm Thank You
You are the greatest. Thank you for listening, reading, and sticking around.
-D
A very close friend of mine is the kind of man who notices other people, who observes them, and doesn’t often share what he thinks. When asked, he is both diplomatic and tactful. He is one of the few persons I will ask for a brutally honest opinion. Recently, I asked him what he thought my blind spots were. It was a dandy, firecracker of a conversation.
He told me a couple of mildly discomforting truths followed by a real whopper: I tend to act quite aloof in groups of people (100% true), I am too willing to stay silent when other people are talking (spot on), and that my desire to keep a firm distance from most social media and communicative technology has spilled over into the real world by not allowing myself to experience the world at large (disconcertingly correct).