A Declaration

A Declaration
I have often spent a lot of time, effort and brainpower into musical ideas that never make it past the conceptual stage, most often because of lack of resources or know-how - and sometimes a good idea just takes to the backburner because what seems like a better idea is at the forefront of my consciousness at the moment. Case in point - An Historic's full length record, "Ephemeral Stampede", has been written and arranged almost completely for the better part of last year, and the only thing that's stopped me from taking the album past the level of complete pen-and-paper abstraction has been the fact that I'd decided some time ago that I was going to record it in a nice studio. Obviously I don't make enough money to manage this, and the economy has made this less, not more likely since that decision was made; so some odds and ends, pieces of harmonies, chord progressions and lyrics have been sitting around, physically or digitally, waiting to be engaged again...

So finally, on Sunday, I got sick of that. Even though, as usual, I'm up to my ears in various projects right now, I decided that I'm going to self-record and release demos of most of the songs, so that they exist in some tangible form, even if only to serve as a placeholder for a future session. The first tune I did (which is nearly complete) is Ephemerer Ansturm, the title track of the album (only in German...) At the height of its activity, I had 12 tunes lined up for this project, 10 original and two traditional (including Brother, Can You Spare a Dime which I've recorded before), with something resembling flashy arrangements or the closest equivalent my abilities can provide. Details forthcoming, but this will probably exist as a CDR, and maybe, just maybe, if someone likes the demos enough to send a couple grand my way, these will be redone at a later date, somewhat closer to the way they were originally conceived. Expect updates and an MP3 quite soon.