Cats Cradle Robbers

The Story of Laudanum Escapade

noreply@blogger.com (Cats Cradle Robbers) — Sun, 22 Oct 2017 23:10:00 +0000

Laudanum Variations, our 6^th release and first EP, represents a musical and personal journey for Cats Cradle Robbers. Over a period of 7 years, this simple song born out of an improvisation in a tiny apartment has expanded to 9 versions in 9 separate styles. Like Beethoven’s Diabelli variations, some of these variants differ wildly from each other, but each retains part of the kernel of the original song, and each further illuminates the subject.

The following is the story of this evolving musical journey, told in chronological order. You can listen to the album on our Bandcamp page, or anywhere digital music is streamed or sold.

Laudanum Escapade I / Laudanum Escapade II (2010)

On Dec 16, 2010, we traveled out Interstate 90 to Issaquah, Washington, to record with Cathy Breshears. Snake had heard Cathy’s cover of the Grant Lee Buffalo song Fuzzy, and since he was acquainted with members of Grant Lee Phillips’ band, he had reached out to try to connect Cathy with the band. After some discussion, Cathy agreed to get together with Cats Cradle Robbers for a session to create something new.

The way we typically work with collaborators is to start from nothing, and to improvise new material, words and all. Having nothing when we walk in the room levels the playing field and ensures that our collaborators have the maximum impact on the music. This evening was no exception.

Cathy was nervous about improvising, so we started her out with some ideas we had for a female vocal for our hard rocker Diablita. Some of what she recorded that night are in the version of Diablita that we released together with Laudanum Escapade on Seen and Unseen. After she was loosened up, we started something new. DJSE laid down some beats using Ableton’s Brainfreeze kit, and we encouraged Cathy to extemporize over the beat.

While we played, we enjoyed takeout from Issaquah’s Shanghai Garden – you can imagine the smells of Kung Pao, Pot Stickers, and Chow mein as you read.

Eventually, we coaxed her out of her shell by dint of having Snake sing some improvised lines, which Cathy then imitated in a call and response. While we cut Snake’s prompts out of the final track, you can hear a small snippet of his voice at 1:43 in Laudanum Escapade I.

Snake has the ability to dip into his subconscious and reel out stream-of-consciousness lyrics – when he gets into the zone, he just lets it spill out with little conscious knowledge of what the words are about. First Frost in the Garden and Mydas Touch are salient examples. Laudanum Escapade was recorded while the sting of his mother’s death from lung cancer was still fresh, and the image of a woman strung out on opiates because she just can’t deal with her life probably stems from his grieving process at the time. It’s hard to speculate on the meaning of the very specific colors he envisioned while singing the original words (orange, carrot, cabbage, okra), but in later versions of the lyrics he pulled in the idea of synesthesia – specifically the linkage between sound and color. Snake had once experienced a powerful synesthesia while tripping on mushrooms, and the thick, trippy tapestry of DJSE’s beats and synth melodies together with the Chinese food and a few beers all contributed to the imagery that night.

Cathy’s dog (mochi) and her cockatiel, got into the action – you can hear samples of both animals used as percussion elements in the early versions of the song.

Ok, cool.

Nuh nuh nuh nuh…

The rain is on my windowpane

And I’m feeling no pain, no pain

Orange and cabbage colors

Carrots and okra around

And the rain is on my windowpane

And I’m feeling no pain, no pain

Nuh nuh nuh nuh…

The dog is out in the rain

Birds are flying in the rain

Worms are crawling in the rain

And I’m feeling no pain, no pain

Nuh nuh nuh nuh…

Ok cool.

When the boys got together later to start pulling together an arrangement, Snake brought some additional samples to the table – animal sounds he had recorded using his Windows phone while on a family trip to Hawaii for Thanksgiving the same year. The frogs, recorded outside Snake’s hotel room in Hilo, White-handed gibbon, recorded at the Honolulu Zoo, and Monk Seal, recorded at the Waikiki Aquarium, were used to define instrumental interludes before, between, and after sections of the song proper.

Once arranged, the original song went up on our website and we moved on to other things. When we did periodic reviews of our material, DJSE was ambivalent about the song – Cathy’s voice had a tentative quality colored by her unfamiliarity with improvisation and her concentration on following Snake’s improvised melody and words. Furthermore, the song was mostly percussion and did not have a strongly defined harmonic center. It was atmospheric and a little emo, but it wasn’t catchy.

Snake took this feedback and experimented with some harmony, adding the guitar and keyboard lines that you can hear in Laudanum Escapade II. While the overall structure of the song remains the same, the harmonic structure added by the guitar and keyboard instantly transforms the song into something more listeners can appreciate. Laudanum Escapade II went up on our website, and stayed there, side by side with Laudanum Escapade I, for 4 years. We’ve remixed these two tracks for the present collection, but they are essentially in their original form.

Laudanum Escapade (Album version) (2015)

When we started work on Seen and Unseen, the first thing we did was to listen to all of the tracks that we wanted to include on the album and have a discussion about what needed to be done with each track. We agreed that we wanted a better vocal take for Laudanum Escapade. In the time since we made the original recording, Cathy had moved – first to Southern California, and later to a small town in Oregon. We reached out to see if she was open to re-recording her vocal now that we had the parts defined. Snake had rewritten the lyric from the original improvisation, replacing the weird “carrots and okra around” with the phrase “bright synesthesia of sound.” Cathy declined, so we started looking for a vocalist to replace her lead vocal. Our first candidate was singer-songwriter Suzanne Jarvie from Toronto, another friend of Snake’s from high school times. Suzanne was excited about the project, but busy, so we kept up a correspondence while waiting for her to become available. In the meantime, DJSE met up with longtime acquaintance Eliza Heery and set up time to record with her. When they met for the session, Eliza was most excited about bringing her talents as a bassist to bear on the track, and they spent some time laying down several bass tracks. Eliza’s vocal was recorded in a single take in the last 10 minutes before she left the studio.

Our original intention was to have a new vocalist retrack the same vocal lines that Cathy had originally sung, thereby leaving the original track untouched other than an improved vocal recording. However, Eliza took a different path, improvising a new melody – more casual and jazzy, less alt-rock – and singing some – but not all – of Snake’s new lyrics. In addition, Eliza replaced Cathy’s “nuh nuh”s with the word “Laudanum”. It was beautifully sung, but a departure from the original song.

We were faced with a dilemma. We had a project to finish, and Eliza’s vocal wouldn’t fit comfortably in the original arrangement. Taking apart the arrangement to accommodate her vocal could take time and iteration and throw us far off schedule. On the other hand, Suzanne hadn’t yet found time to track her vocal rendition, and we had no other singers on tap to help. Eliza was not available to come back for a second session.

Snake spent part of the next weekend pulling the original arrangement apart to make room for Eliza’s changes. Once done, we were glad for the effort. The changes required turned out to be less than we feared, and while Snake had to chop up and rearrange Eliza’s verses, the result came out sounding natural and cohesive. Eliza’s bass lines were a strong complement to the original harmonic structure. Once we reoriented ourselves to the new version, we realized that the song had evolved and been improved as a result.

(ok cool)

Laudanum…

It’s raining on my window pane

And I’m feeling no pain

No pain, no pain

Laudanum…

Birds are tapping on my window pane

And I’m feeling no pain

It’s raining on my window pane

And I’m feeling no pain

Laudanum…

The dog is barking again

In the yard and in the rain

And I’m feeling no pain

No pain, no pain

Said I’m feeling no pain

No pain

Laudanum…

The Remix Contest (2015)

At SxSW in 2015, DJSE had the opportunity to meet and socialize with the folks from Splice.com, an online music collaboration site that we had been using for remote collaboration. Part of Splice’s raison d’etre was to allow producers to release tracks for remixing. DJSE proposed the idea of a remix contest to promote the new album and Splice agreed to create an article for their blog centered on the contest. (Read the article here)

While a number of producers spliced the track for remixing, only two producers submitted remixes for the contest. Three of the four remixes were by our own Snake, who set out to create a trap version - he failed, but wound up with some interesting and innovative work, even if it missed the trap genre. The fourth version was submitted by UK producer Lee Christian.

Laudanum Escapade (Dirty Fusion remix)

Snake’s first remix attempt is strongly colored by a teenage obsession with jazz fusion, and especially Phil Collins’ band Brand X – you can hear plenty of Phil Collins’ influence in the drums
Snake wrote for this track. Eliza’s vocal is juxtaposed with a remixed version of her bass track, and a middle section builds on her rising bass line, repeated and augmented with additional instruments.

Laudanum Escapade (Utopia Remix)

For Snake’s second attempt to bring a trap feel to the song, he authored an ostinato using the Zubi Tone Generator plugin, and pulled in an original rap verse. A multitracked “guitarchestra” adds the final touches.

Laudanum Escapade (Purity Remix)

Snake’s third and final remix of the song starts with the premise that Eliza’s beautiful vocal stands on its own. Starting on a physical instrument, Snake composed a solo piano accompaniment for the track, which he then hand-programmed in MIDI using Ableton Live’s grand piano sample pack. The final result is a beautiful interplay that comes across like a live performance.

Laudanum Escapade (Lee Christian Remix)

A late entry to the remix contest, Lee Christian’s darkly brilliant mix brings to bear his immersion in the British trip-hop scene. Check out the interview we did with Lee about his remix back in 2015: http://catscradlerobbers.blogspot.com/2015/09/producer-lee-christian-discusses-his.html

Laudanum Escapade (DJSE’s House Remix)

During production of this collection, which occurred as we were wrapping up work on our first house album Every Kitty Dance Meow, DJSE became captivated by the idea of creating a house remix of Laudanum Escapade. Snake and DJSE handed the track back and forth a few times, tweaking and adding creative touches, before landing on this final version. DJSE is especially fond of the several sets of "vocal chops" that he assembled from syllables in the original vocals.

Laudanum Escapade (Boiled)

A boil is the hallmark of any Cats Cradle Robbers album. Starting from scratch, we pick a specific location, and we create music using only materials found there. It’s a process we pioneered, and it’s a workflow that has consistently resulted in some of the most beautiful and creative work we’ve produced. This is our 6^th boil, following Salumba Parte, Boiling the Ocean, Honeydew Waltz, The Dry Sound of Atonement, and Primroses.

For this boil, we continued our tour of Snake’s house in the Dining Room. The china hutch produced a glass harmonica instrument, created by sampling wine glasses. Various plates, bowls, and other glasses contributed to the “glass forest” of tinkling chimes. Sampled thumps on doors and other architectural features laid the rest of the foundation for Snake’s voice, singing the modified lyrics , authored for the 2015 version, that have never been heard before now.

To keep things different, we set this version in 3/4 time. It’s a unique and beautiful contribution to the set of variations.

The rain is on my windowpane

And I’m feeling no pain

Orange and cabbage colors

Bright synesthesia of sound

And the rain is on my windowpane

And there’s no-one around

Laudanum

Birds are tapping on my windowpane

And I’m feeling no pain

Laudanum

Where to next?

We’re grateful for the attention that Laudanum Escapade has received – it’s the song that got us into Radio Xenu’s top 40 listing on New Year’s Day 2016, and overall one of our most popular recordings. Laudanum Escapade is still available on Splice for remixing. And we have another collaboration with Eliza already in progress – a Western-inspired track with the working title Gone Dry, which will appear on an upcoming album.

Let us know what you think about Laudanum Variations. What’s your favorite version?

Take care,

Nick and Ed, Cats Cradle Robbers

Introducing the Mango project - making music to combat cancer

noreply@blogger.com (Cats Cradle Robbers) — Thu, 20 Jul 2017 15:00:00 +0000

This February, founding member and chief sound designer Ed "DJSE" Essey was diagnosed with lymphoma. While cancer is never a welcome diagnosis, the type of lymphoma in this case is a highly treatable form with a high survival rate. Ed is currently undergoing chemotherapy as an outpatient. He's young, he's strong, and he's going to pull through this with flying colors.

The experience has inspired Ed to express himself musically, and the result is a growing collection of seed tracks that we refer to as Mango (a reference to the tumor, which was originally described to Ed as the size and shape of a mango). We want to turn Mango into an opportunity to help others struggling with cancer, and we need your help.

Here's Ed in his own words:

Please join forces with me in the Mango project. We're creating stirring music for a cause, to help support cancer research and patients in need of support.

In February 2017, I was diagnosed with a highly treatable form of cancer. I'm fortunate to have a form of cancer with a positive prognosis and for having incredible social support through amazing friends and family. Not all cancer patients are as fortunate as I am, and I want to help them.

Since my diagnosis, I've been leaning heavily into music as a form of therapy. It has been an incredibility prolific, and profoundly developing time for me as I really connect to the music through my experience.

While it has started as a personal project, I want to reach out to other collaborators to join in. I've intentionally created pieces with space for vocalists, leads, and other instrumentalists to work their magic.

Whether you have cancer, are a survivor, or have touched by cancer -- I think in this world, we all have been touched by cancer in some way -- then I'd love your collaboration on this project. Non-musicians who can help logistically, with design creative, or otherwise are welcome, too. If this project moves you, help it to move others, too. :)

I'm still searching for the right cause for the proceeds, and suggestions are most welcome.

With deep love and respect,
Ed "DJSE" Essey

You can listen to all of the current pieces in the Mango here, free of charge. Mango by Cats Cradle Robbers. Share them, like them, comment, and let us know how you'd like to get involved.

What we’ve learned about Mastering (and what you can learn from us)

noreply@blogger.com (Cats Cradle Robbers) — Thu, 01 Jun 2017 15:45:00 +0000

By Snake

Mastering is simple. And hard.

In this post, I’ll talk about the general process of mastering, and some specifics about what we’ve learned about how to master effectively in iZotope Ozone. We’re not experts by any means, but we think our experience can help others who are looking to do lightweight mastering of their own work.

What is mastering?

Simply put, mastering is the process of taking final mixed recordings and preparing them for distribution and airplay. The goals of mastering are to make the final recording sound as good as it can on the widest variety of music systems. Additionally, mastering sets the average and peak levels of the music to standard values so that they are comparable to other recordings they’ll be combined with in a set or playlist. Finally, mastering can be used to address flaws in the source recording by modifying the EQ profile, applying compression, or by exposing or hiding frequency bands that may be under-or over- represented in the track.

For a more detailed look, see the following articles. There’s lots more to read about mastering, but the following two articles are a good introduction:

- https://www.landr.com/en/what-is-mastering

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_mastering

Working the tradeoffs between “loudness” and dynamic range

One of the things that people look to mastering to do is to maximize the average volume of a track. This makes it sound as loud as possible throughout the track. This means that it will cut through the noise in the club, pop more on the radio, and so forth. However, “louder” might not be right for all types of music.

At a high level, mastering tools perform two distinct operations to make a track sound louder:

- Reducing the volume difference between the loudest and softest sounds (compression)

- Truncating the hottest peaks to allow increasing overall volume without producing clipping (peak limiting)

Here’s some examples, using our track April’s Rock Sandwich. I chose this track because it has a reasonable amount of dynamic range, while still being fairly consistent throughout the track.

Here’s what the waveform of the rough mix looks like in Audacity:

Notice that there’s a good amount of dynamic range between the average signal and the peaks: the waveform looks spiky like a comb. Also notice that in the mixing process, we left a solid amount of headroom above the peaks, so there’s no question of clipping.

Here’s the track in iZotope Ozone. For this first example, I’ve set Ozone to compress to K-12 (12DB maximum delta between average and peak level), and set the limiting threshold quite low. This is not how we typically master our finished tracks, but it will serve to demonstrate how to maximize loudness.

The second waveform in the screenshot above shows how the maximizer is responding to peaks in the music by drastically reducing the peak levels in order to smooth out the volume profile of the track.

The result is a track that is consistently loud from end to end. Here’s the resulting output in Audacity:

Listening to the track, it sounds loud, it sounds consistent, and there’s no clipping. This is how a lot of pop music – particularly EDM – is mastered. It’s a wall of volume.

What’s missing, though, is dynamic range and a feeling of space. In the original track, the transients in the guitar pop out, and the cracking sounds of the duct tape that we sampled to use as percussive elements are subtle elements that you notice if you listen intently. There’s clean separation of the instruments, and a sense of space. There’s a certain amount of rise and fall of volume and overall energy between adjacent sections of the track. The space and separation are lost to compression, along with the dynamic range.

Because our music is complex, with multiple musical voices and a variety of timbres, some subtle and some less so, we value the sense of space and dynamic range which allow the subtlety to be heard. So, we prefer a lighter touch in mastering. Here’s a more typical approach to mastering a Cats Cradle Robbers track, still using April’s Rock Sandwich:

In this screenshot, you can see that we’re still using just the Maximizer, but in this case, I’ve left the default limiting threshold, and adjusted the volume so that we’re just barely hitting the peaks of the hottest transients. In addition, I’ve set the I/O scale to K-14 to allow a broader dynamic range between average and peak levels.

The result is a track that has a good hot level, but still has enough dynamic range to allow the individual instruments to be heard distinctly. I can hear that mix that we worked so hard to get.

Our tools and approach

Here are the specific tools, systems, and workflows we’re using for mastering today:

iZotope Ozone 7

While it’s possible to build your own mastering chain from individual plugins, we find the ease and power of iZotope’s mastering solution to be everything we need and more. We’ve used Ozone for 4 out of 5 of our albums to date.

- https://www.izotope.com/en/products/master-and-deliver/ozone.html

- https://splice.com/blog/10-tips-using-izotope-ozone-5-mixing-and-mastering/

When using Ozone, we try to adhere to the following principles:

- Use K-14 metering. We’ve standardized on the K-system of metering, and we’ve decided to use K-14 because it allows us to pump up our tracks to a decent volume, while still allowing a good amount of dynamic range. If your music is simple and you value volume over subtlety, try the more aggressive K-12, or use a different metering approach. Here’s a good introduction to the Katz (K) metering system: http://www.meterplugs.com/blog/2016/10/14/k-system-metering-101.html.

- Master using the standalone app. Since all of the Ozone plugins are supplied as VSTs, it’s possible to use them in your DAW of choice (we use Ableton Live), either on individual tracks or on the master output. However, we prefer to provide a clean separation between mixing and mastering. We work in Ableton to create the best mix possible, and only when we think we have a mix worth shipping do we pull it into the Ozone app.

- Use the simplest possible chain. The Ozone plugins are extremely powerful, and each one can deeply affect the sound of the finished track. Different plugins can help emphasize or minimize various frequency bands, and either enhance or erode your mix. After a lot of experimentation, we’ve fallen back to a “light touch” mastering approach. For Every Kitty Dance Meow, we used only the Maximizer, set to the “Classic Master” preset, and we modified only the input gain, raising the track volume with the goal of having the average track volume at 0db, and only the highest peaks touched by the limiter. NOTE: simply having the plugins in your mastering chain will change the sound of your track, even if you leave them in default configuration, so we recommend removing anything you’re not planning to use. We typically use only the Maximizer, which means we need to remove the default Equalizer and Dynamics that Ozone adds when we start mastering a new track.

- Don’t change it in mastering if you can help it. In most cases, if we were tempted to make deeper changes (such as adding static or dynamic EQ to emphasize or minimize a given instrument), we wound up revisiting the mix instead so that we could make only the surgical change desired. Most mastering engineers only have access to the final stereo mix, but if you have the ability to change the mix in response to issues found during mastering, it’s often a better way to achieve your ends. Mastering can help brighten the overall sound of a mix, for example, but it’s not the best way to get your bass to pop out if the bass is simply too low in the mix, or if what you really need is to deal with frequency collisions or add sidechain compression. If you do use additional plugins, use a light touch. Even small changes can have big impacts on the music.

Is the future of mastering in the cloud?

As the indie music market grows, the opportunity to master online grows as well. A web search for online mastering pulls up a bottomless list of options. These fall into two camps:

- Professional mastering engineers who accept submissions and payment through their online channel.

- Automated algorithmic mastering

We’ve looked into two of the most popular online mastering services for our own work: LANDR and Cloudbounce. We’re using Landr for the Mango project currently.

I ran April’s Rock Sandwich through both services to see how they compared with the “light touch” mastering I started this post with. Both services produced a master that were comparable in volume to the “Loud” version I generated. The kick drum and bass were more pronounced in both the LANDR and Cloudbounce versions, but the LANDR version sounded smoother overall, with a more even frequency distribution. The Cloudbounce version was skewed towards the treble end of the EQ spectrum which made the track sound harsh. Naturally, both services allow a certain amount of tweaking of the algorithms used in mastering. Based on the comparison, some dynamic EQ to add punch to the bass elements in the track would improve our Ozone-mastered version, but I think I would still choose the hand-mastered version, even with our beginner’s touch.

Here are a couple of articles I found while researching this post that were useful.

- http://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/landr-cloudbounce-future-mastering

- http://blog.sonicbids.com/is-instant-online-mastering-worth-it

Here are a handful of the services I found while searching for online mastering solutions.

- https://www.masteringbox.com/

- https://emastered.com/en

- https://ariamastering.com/

- https://www.maztr.com/

- https://www.landr.com

- https://cloudbounce.com/

Let us know what you think – have you mastered your own work? Used an online service? What are you finding useful?

Indie on,

-Snake

Every Kitty Dance Meow - the liner notes

noreply@blogger.com (Cats Cradle Robbers) — Mon, 20 Feb 2017 16:00:00 +0000

Seattle, Washington, Feb 20 2017

Every Kitty Dance Meow is now available just about everywhere digital music is sold! (at last check, Amazon was not yet showing the album, but this should be resolved in the next few days). Check it out on Spotify or YouTube, and if you love it, you can get the full album, including the 52-minute continuous mix by DJ Zube, for just 9.99 over at CDBaby.

Here's some further information about the album, incuding #originstories for the individual tracks.

In 2014-2015, while finishing our fourth album, DJSE was busy producing house music and teaching EDM production workshops on the side as part of a house music collective he was working with at the time. After we released Seen and Unseen, He shared them with Snake who was excited to put our CCR spin on them. We envisioned a club-focused album – less quirky and experimental, more targeted to dancers and party people. This is that project.

At first we though it would be quick to produce and release an EDM album – EDM’s simple, right?. Instead, this turned out to be a massive project. The challenge was how to make recognizable, danceable house music, while still using our signature blend of electronic and acoustic sounds, pulling in sampled found objects and unique instruments. We hope the result, Every Kitty Dance Meow, strikes that balance. Some of the tracks, such as Exhale and Signs, are house AF. Other tracks, such as Primroses (a boil of Snake’s daughter’s room), or Velvet Saga (a trancey journey which starts out a placid 80bpm and escalates quickly to a blistering 160), explore the edges of the genre.

Throughout the album, we’ve used vocal samples chopped and recombined in ways that seem to act like audio Rorschach blots (DJSE calls them “Mondegreen machines”). Everyone seems to hear different words. We’d love to hear what you think they mean – hit us up on Twitter at @ccrseattle and let us know!

We’re indebted to the guidance and advice of Mark (DJ Zube) Zuber, who listened and provided suggestions that helped us tune the album to the needs of DJs. Zube’s epic “Meow Mix” recapitulates the album as a DJ set, and is being released as Disc 2 of Every Kitty Dance Meow.

Most important: Every Kitty Dance Meow is first and foremost an album of dance music, so

Get up on your feet!

Don’t stop.

You’re free.

-Ed (DJSE) Essey, Nick (Snake) Dallett

Cats Cradle Robbers

Trivia

The album cover for Every Kitty Dance Meow was designed and executed by Snake as an homage to the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ 1991 masterpiece Blood Sugar Sex Magik. The album title is an homage to C&C Music Factory’s seminal dance hit “Gonna make you sweat.”

The album was released for presale on iTunes on February 12, which is Ed Essey Sr.’s birthday, DJSE’s father. The album was released worldwide on February 20^th, which is Kent Dallett’s birthday, Snake’s father.

With no further ado, the tracks:

Balayage and a Mocha (121 bpm | 04:57)

DJSE's earliest piece of released EDM, Balayage and a Mocha got it’s start on a day when his wife was getting her hair done. DJSE surprised her at the salon with a mocha. Afterwards, he went home and wrote the main body of the track while watching a sunset and drinking a glass of wine. In keeping with this languid, pampered beginning, the track was always chill, and the first version was downtempo (per the first version on splice.com, the original was created at 110 beats per minute).

Snake enjoyed DJSE’s initial foray, and could hear a dynamic moving guitar line to go with the chill chords. He added the intricate “deedly deedly” line, played on classical guitar.

When we started out to create a collection of house tracks, we debated leaving Balayage as a chill, downtempo piece, but after some experiments we decided to boost the tempo to 121 beats per minute, bringing it into the standard house range. DJSE altered the sound design of the electronic instruments, and Snake doubled his original guitar lines using U-He’s Zebralette and Ableton’s fantastic grand piano pack to build an intricate and interlocking melody that we think is reminiscent of Mannheim Steamroller or the Trans-Siberian Orchestra.

We need to give thanks here to Radio Xenu and DJ Pip, who engaged during the Christmas holiday to debut Balayage and a Mocha as a special Christmas 2016 surprise for fans. Balayage was the second single to come out, following March’s release of Mikle High Clubbin’.

CDG (136 bpm | 05:28)

Inspired by DJSE’s inflight authorship of Mile High Clubbin’, Snake wrote the original version of CDG while flying home from Paris, France in August 2016. The title refers to Charles DeGaulle airport in Paris, and Snake further riffed on this by writing a simple melody using only the notes C#, D#, and G# in various octaves.

Snake and DJSE passed the project back and forth, adding layers and new pieces, including Snake playing the Lindsey fretless guitar. “I nailed that last one,” Snake said after one take. Naturally, DJSE grabbed that quote and chopped it into syllables to use as an additional instrument.

Exhale (123 bpm | 05:43)

DJSE's first deep house track was written during a family trip to Florida, and was one of the first tracks to gel into a coherent composition. The vocals, obtained through a free sample pack from Black Octopus and sung by the artist Siren, are intimate and compelling. This is the most true-to-genre deep house track that we've produced, and one of the few tracks that we chose not to enhance with acoustic instruments.

Feelin' Nice (98 bpm |05:22)

In 2014 and early 2015, DJSE tapped into a community at work that was interested in electronic music, and pulled the group together to form a collective. One long weekend while preparing to lead a workshop for the group in creating EDM using Ableton Live, he put together several Ableton projects to demonstrate various aspects of EDM production. This set of projects included the seeds that grew into Feelin’ Nice, as well as Join Up!, Out There, Signs, and Velvet Saga. Feelin’ Nice was designed to be a slower, downtempo track in the style of Miguel Migs.

Snake played wine glasses (i.e. glass harmonica) on this piece to bring a more organic acoustic sound. The glass harmonica sound, heavily processed, produces the descending riffs you can hear in the first half of the piece.

At one point in the development of this track, Snake added a soulful saxophone line that gave a bluesy lounge feel to the groove. We ultimately felt that we wanted the track to feel more “up”, so we replaced this with the horn section that plays call-and-response with the piano in the final version.

Join Up! (120bpm | 04:40)

DJSE created the core of this track for a u-He Bazille sound design contest. Originally called Join the Club, it was intended to be a progressive house piece. After the contest, DJSE retooled the track to use native Ableton instruments so that he could more easily share the track with his collective.

DJSE and Snake reimagined the track significantly over a period of several months while working on this album. The final piece is reminiscent of an anime or video game anthem, inspiring the name change to Join Up!

The distinctive sound of Join Up! owes a lot to the Omnisphere plugin from Spectrasonics, which we pulled in late in development to shape the overall sound design.

Mile High Clubbin' (123bpm | 06:14)

MHC was originally written by DJSE on a flight from Florida to Seattle. Break beat moments in this track were inspired by the infamous Amen Break, which led to the Palm Beach Break pattern that this song was eventually built around. Lofty pads, airplane samples, and a soaring lead help to shape the “mile high” feel.

This was the first track that we worked on together for the album. Snake pulled in some of the samples that we recorded for Honeydew Waltz (A Quirky Time for Something New, track 13) to add an acoustic aspect to the electronic matrix. Snake chose some samples specifically to produce the Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR), so don’t be surprised to feel a ticklish feeling at the base of your neck starting at around 01:04.

Mile High Clubbin’ was the first track from the album to be released as a single. We owe thanks to DJ Pip and Radio Xenu for debuting this track and keeping it in frequent rotation for several months starting in March 2016.

The Mydas Beat (feat. Sean Fairchild) (120bpm | 04:00)

When we started to get serious about making an EDM album, Snake was determined to contribute one or more house remixes of tracks from our previous albums. The Mydas beat, a thumping remix of 2011’s Mydas Touch (Abewsing the Mews, track 11) seemed like a good candidate. Sean Fairchild’s funk bass provides a solid anchor for Snake’s vocal explorations. It’s all wood, man… it’s all wood. As always, DJSE and Snake worked together to craft the initial seed into the final polished track. We need to give a shout-out to DJ Zube as well for providing valuable input on this track. He’s indicated that it’s one of his favorites, and he’s already been heard trotting out an early version for at least one Seattle-area gig recently.

Out There (123bpm | 06:08)

A dramatic moment in this song asks us to ponder: "Is there something out there?" DJSE was working through some advanced technique tutorials by talented producer AK (check out his YouTube channel here) when he created the initial seed for Out There. He took those techniques a step further to create some sickly harmonized, randomized vocal chops to create tension. Combined with a detuned melodic element, the track moves between melodic and dissonant moments. The vocal break that starts at 4:29 is one of the hottest “dance floor moments” of the album.

Signs (123bpm | 07:44)

This was a piece that DJSE prepared for his first EDM workshop: Create a Deep House track in 90 minutes. This was originally created using only patches found in the Ableton Live free demo, with the addition of a free demo download of Cory Friesenhan vocal samples. The original version of this track was created in less than 30min. With Snake’s extended arrangement, a newly written bridge, and continued reworking by DJSE and Snake, Signs evolved into a solid deep house thumper.

Things to listen for in this track include the tennis game that starts about a minute in, and Snake’s neighbors, whose drunken singing and laughter, recorded through the hedge during one of their summer parties, provides atmosphere at the opening.

The Sun is Always Shining (123 bpm | 04:19)

Julia Cameron’s book The Artist’s Way introduces the idea of the “artist’s date.” (See the concept described on Cameron’s website). For an artists’ date on March 9, 2016, DJSE gave himself 30 minutes to draw a picture based on the theme "The Sun is Always Shining." He then laid the drawing out on a grid, and interpreted it as a loop in Ableton Live. The piece was lovely and mesmerizing, and we speculated that we could build an EDM track around it. Snake finally took the original audio output of the track, and used it as the start of an EDM remix that expanded and amplified the original using EDM tropes.

You can hear DJSE’s original artist’s date on our Soundcloud page.

The title comes from a mantra reminding us that even on the darkest nights and cloudiest days, the sun is always shining, even when we cannot see it.

In keeping with the desire to mix EDM with our signature sounds, we use the 2xtar to provide unique accents throughout the track.

Primroses (feat. P-Rose) (134bpm | 04:26)

Each album we release contains a “boil.” As defined in our “Honeydew Waltz” music video, to “boil” a location is “to create music using sounds sampled from the referenced location or object.” Since we typically boil a room in Snake’s house, we call this “REAL house music.”

So far, we’ve produced and released 5 boils: one on each album. (Boiling the Ocean was the very first boil we produced, and is where the term boil originated.)

Album	Track	Room
Abewsing the Mews	Salumba Parte	Master Bedroom
Jack in the Bucket	Boiling the Ocean	Kitchen
A Quirky Time for Something New	Honeydew Waltz	Shed
Seen and Unseen	The Dry Sound of Atonement	Laundry Room
Every Kitty Dance Meow	Primroses	Daughter’s Bedroom

Snake’s daughter P-Rose specially requested that we sample objects in her bedroom, which we did in the fall of 2014 – everything from toy musical instruments to a “Love Story” music box, to a “Dignitet” curtain wire from IKEA. While we were at it, we sampled P-Rose and one of her friends, interviewing them about the process. In the interview, P-Rose admits about her room “Mom says it looks like a tornado hit it. It’s my protective layer of dirt.”

Originally written as a pop-rock track, DJSE converted Primroses to a house track during a late night planning session for the collective. Since then it has been refined repeatedly, passing back and forth between Snake and DJSE until it reached its final form.

The Best Medicine (feat. Ed Essey Sr.) (102bpm | 05:46)

The seed for The Best Medicine was written by DJSE on another trip to Florida to spend Christmas with family. He was fortunate to find an Ableton Push, a Zoom H6 field recorder, and several great software plugins under the tree, and he put them to good use sampling family members visiting the local nature preserve and playing with his baby niece. Later, Ed Essey Sr. added a guitar line that fit wonderfully into this track. Most of the sampled and chopped vocals are of various family members laughing, hence the title.

Velvet Saga (80bpm | 04:05)

The original version of Velvet Saga, conceived by DJSE as a slower, calmer piece for his wife, stayed at a sedate 80bpm. While working on the arrangement, Snake added a doubletime section to bring the energy up, and this led to the final form of the track with its transitions from calm to driving. The final version reminds us of an epic fantasy plot with quests, battles, and serene moments.

Every Kitty Dance Meow – the Meow Mix (feat. DJ Zube) (120-160bpm | 51:15)

Throughout the production of Every Kitty Dance Meow, we consulted with DJs and other producers to ensure that we wound up with a product that was unique but that would fit in a set with music by other producers. Nobody was more engaged and helpful than DJ Zube. By the time we were starting to think about the endgame of the project, we had hit on the idea of having Zube produce a set using only tracks from the album, and releasing it in tandem with the individual tracks. This 51-minute set is a continuous mix of the album by Zube. To create the set, he live-mixed the album twice in Serato, and we then spliced together the best pieces to create the final mix.

Available soon - Every Kitty Dance Meow

noreply@blogger.com (One Piece A Day) — Thu, 02 Feb 2017 07:33:00 +0000

We are proud to announce, at long last, the release of our 5th album of electronic music - Every Kitty Dance Meow.

Every Kitty Dance Meow will be available for preorder on iTunes on February 12^th, and generally available for purchase and download on February 20^th from most digital music marketplaces worldwide.

Every Kitty Dance Meow consists of 13 House, Deep House, and Downtempo dance tracks. In addition to the individual tracks, the album includes a bonus second disc by Seattle’s DJ Zube, playing a live continuous mix of the full album, and bringing his own unique and creative perspective to the album.

We've sent out a promotional download of Every Kitty Dance Meow to all of our favorite radio stations, including Radio Xenu, Rocker's Dive, and Open The Door, all of whom play our music frequently. Please let your favorite station know that you want to hear Every Kitty Dance Meow, and have them reach out to us for a free download.

What Spotify Fan Insights is telling us (and not telling us) about our meteoric rise to fame

noreply@blogger.com (Cats Cradle Robbers) — Sun, 06 Mar 2016 17:36:00 +0000

Spotify, the controversial music streaming service, put some new tools into the hands of artists recently, unveiling their new Fan Insights tool (https://artists.spotify.com/faninsights/). Timing was good for us, as we started tracking our Spotify monthly listenership as a key metric in 2015.

If you're not familiar with the monthly listening stat, you can find it on the artist profile page for any artist you listen to. It's right here in the spotify UI. (If you're not seeing it, you might need to install the latest version of Spotify).

When we started tracking, our monthly listenership was in the mid 30s, but starting Christmas 2015 it started to climb steadily. When we got access to the beta of Fan Insights last week, the pattern became clear.

For comparison purposes, we added our friend Toronto-based singer-songwriter Suzanne Jarvie to the chart. You can see that our listenership is pretty well matched prior to December.

(By the way, if you haven't heard Suzanne's debut album Spiral Road, you really need to. It's available anyplace you can buy or stream digital music, and if you're old-fashioned, you can even buy it on Compact Disc)

When we compare ourselves with other electronic artists we admire, the picture is a little more humbling, but it gives us something to aspire to. We're coming for you, FSOL! ;-)

What is Fan Insights telling us?

The new toolset is giving us all kinds of insight into our listeners. For example, we now know that about half of our listeners are over 45, and nearly all of them are men. We have a good picture of geographic distribution:

What don't we know?

Of course, a little bit of information only whets our appetite. There are a lot of things we can only guess at. Having access to a breakdown of listenership by song would be a great start: we'll get that data once we have songs that are getting over 1000 plays a month. For now, we are left with questions we can't answer:

What caused the sudden climb in listenership at Christmas?
Why are the UK and the US Midwest our top markets?
Why is our home region of Seattle and Pacific Northwest not represented in the top 50?
Why is the overwhelmingly Indonesian crowd that follows us on Facebook not represented on Spotify?
How well does Spotify map to our plays and popularity on other streaming services?
Does the uptick in plays have any correlation to our own marketing efforts?

We can venture a few guesses. For instance, getting regular play on Rocker's Dive Radio has increased our visibility internationally. Rocker's Dive has a footprint in the UK, so that might be a direct cause. Making it onto Radio Xenu's 2015 top 40 with our single Laudanum Escapade is a likely booster in the Midwest (you can hear our triumphant moment here). Once we climb into that all important 1000-play bracket, Fan Insights will be able to tell us more.

Until then, we're enjoying seeing the numbers climb. If you're a Spotify artist, check out Fan Insights and let us know what you see!

Producer Lee Christian discusses his remix of Laudanum Escapade

noreply@blogger.com (Cats Cradle Robbers) — Wed, 30 Sep 2015 09:00:00 +0000

British producer Lee Christian recently released a new remix of Laudanum Escapade, the first single from our Spring 2015 album Seen and Unseen. We caught up with Lee online and asked him about his process. You can hear his remix at https://soundcloud.com/leesmilex/cats-cradle-robbers-laudanum-escapade-feel-no-pain-remix-by-lee-christian.

Tell us how you approached this remix

i was super excited to do the remix because i had heard CCR chat about how they get their sounds [through improvisation and sampling]. When remixing and sampling, my thing is taking [sounds] and making them as unrecognisable as possible. There's loads of the song in there but almost none of it is as it was.

As i started putting [this remix] together i decided to focus on that one word [“Laudanum”] and the tiny snippet that sounded almost African or tribal: i grew up in South Africa for a very formative 5 years so am quite drawn to that vibe. I pitched [that word] down and very hypnotic - this ended up informing most of the song - and many parts that would not fit the foggy dub vibe i wrote over the top were jettisoned. i added some beats and effected and cut them up. [I pushed the limits of the music’s adherence to rhythm to imply] the delirium that the subject of the song is in - the very brink of consciousness and order, before coming back into a more familiar, secure rhythm. This… is there to guide u though her drugged state.

There are serene moments (the acoustic picked guitar passage and the end section with the layered voices) that indicate she has reached some type of nirvana. i wanted the dub vibe to ring heavy and foggy so there are tons of different types of effects to increase this vibe.

Talk some about the artistic influences behind your remix

Tricky - the maverick of the neighbouring trip hop/bristol scene [was one of the two biggest influences on the track]. [He creates] unique music that can be much braver than some of the most talented musos out there … never really diluting himself for mass acceptance. [The other main influence was] Adrian Sherwood's on-u-sound label - home to Tackhead, Dub Syndicate, Gary Clail, Mark Stewart (another local-ish guy) and most importantly for this mix, Skip McDonald's Little Axe. [Little Axe and on-u-sound] make a blues dub hybrid that has had me entranced since i saw Doug Wimbish playing for them live on tv making sounds u would not believe came from a bass! These guys were the houseband for Sugar Hill records so are true veterans of music yet still make some of the most unusual inventive music going. [Check out] Tricky's Maxinquaye and Little Axe's The Wolf That House Built.

What inspired you to start creating musically?

i picked up shitty guitars and keyboards not far off from being toys when i was a teen in South Africa. i guess [I was] inspired by Prince (who i've been a fan of since i was a little kid) but also in a strange way hindered by Prince (and only seeing jazz combos live in bars with my dad) in that i could not see myself becoming a virtuoso, so lost confidence.

Later [I was inspired by] Nirvana (revealing that a good song can be just a few chords and a melody) and seeing bands in youth centres [after moving back to England] (showing me that anyone can have a go)… i tried harder [making] demos on a 4 track tape recorder. That was also when i formed my first band [after] seeing Living Colour in Cambridge. i decided to be the singer because i was really unpopular. [I had] nothing to lose and plenty to gain in terms of attention from the opposite sex as a lead singer of a rock band. [As the singer] i could just about write on a few instruments (guitar, bass, keys, drum programming) and not commit to one! even though i was not very good at singing, i had a lot of energy and a need/ability to do something different.

i just finally started releasing solo music in earnest over the last few years, after being offered a track on a BBC Children In Need Radiohead covers compilation. i did 'talk show host' and was pleased with its reception. Smilex was originally going to be just me recording and then a dance rock hybrid Iive but after seeing a lot of people doing that and finding great players for a more traditional rock line up and visceral live show , i decided to tap into the adrenaline alternative rock gave me since the grunge era and be a power quartet. The bonus remix on Smilex's first ever EP 'beg for it' (13 years or so ago now!) is actually the original version of that song.

Is music your only artistic outlet?

i started back on writing and directing [films] after becoming more involved with making videos. i made my first short Never Walk Alone and released it for a pound a copy download with a monies to survivors trust (a victim support charity for rape and abuse). i'm in the thick of developing several scripts for feature length and shorts, even a web series. i like to work in a lot of different mediums and genres so my forays into film will be as diverse as my music is with any luck. i also dj & compere now and then and have had radio shows for the last 12 years or so - i'm currently between shows but have a hand in 'The Beatdown with Bobbee Browne' (a new comedy podcast) and am starting talks about a new show at the moment so watch this space!

i predominantly do radio shows to share good music the mainstream missed or forgot, to get use out of my extensive library of music, but it's hard to find a station as diverse as my tastes or who does not mind swearing (editing swearwords out is time consuming and not playing swearing really limits the good rebel music one can play) or who does not use a playlist. within music itself i have worked in just about every capacity one can imagine.

What’s up next for Lee Christian?

i have 7 or so albums in various stages of completion so there should be more of those soon. Other than that, more remixes, guest spots for vanilla wafa, death of hi-fi, tiger Mendoza… [plus] various acting/directing/writing pursuits. i hope to be working on new material (and of course, promotional materials) for Smilex and the Prohibition Smokers' Club (my jazz/blues/soul/folk/pop collective) over the next few months for release next year too! so just keep looking at my Facebook or twitter for info on all that as it pops up, i guess!

It's getting harder and harder for original music to get heard since scared labels are loathe to invest in anything risky… so i truly appreciate everybody that supports me (both by buying music and promoting it) in these hard times for the arts.

I wish music was reinstated to its previous position as an influential, meaningful part of people's lives, it has been reduced to background noise that no-one likes but no-one complains about. vote with your cash - it's hard earned and those that ask u to part with it should be working just as hard to deserve it.

Thanks again to Lee for the richly dark remix – please take some time to check out his projects online. Here’s a few links:

· www.leechristian.quickfixrecordings.com

· https://www.facebook.com/LeeChristianMusic

· https://soundcloud.com/leesmilex

Remote musical collaboration: Part I – the what, why, and how of remote collab

noreply@blogger.com (Cats Cradle Robbers) — Mon, 22 Jun 2015 09:39:00 +0000

The move from analog to digital music recording and production is certainly one of the most fundamental things to happen to music. We’ve moved from a world where multitrack recording required a significant infrastructure investment, to fitting an entire studio on a laptop (and increasingly, a tablet or a phone). We now have an entire generation of musicians for whom nonlinear editing systems are the norm, rather than some futuristic technology running on a dedicated desktop system at that studio you can’t quite afford to record at.

So what’s next? Well, once you have the ability for music to be encapsulated in digital files and loaded in a Digital Audio Workstation (or DAW), you lower the barrier to collaboration. However, until recently, collaboration has required carrying or mailing music on a portable hard drive or other physical media, long copy times, and sometimes hours of trolling through hard drives looking for a particular version of a file that got corrupted along the way. Chances are that if you’re a digital musician, you have people in your town, a town across the country, or another country an ocean away that you would like to share the music making process with. How do you get started and what should you think about? Read on!

NOTE: We work in Ableton Live, so we’ll be referencing specific commands and functionality that apply to Ableton, though the principles we’re discussing apply to any DAW.

Our story

For Cats Cradle Robbers, we got into remote collaboration in a roundabout, organic way. We didn’t have a clear vision for what we wanted out of the process at first. For us music was something we worked on in person, and huddling over one laptop “pair programming” was the only thing that made sense to us. At that time, we were learning how to create together, coming up with methodologies, musical forms, and ways of communicating.

As we worked together, it started to make more sense to introduce some division of labor. Snake would ask DJSE to copy a project onto a portable hard drive so that he could work on a project offline. Typically, DJSE was doing the bulk of the sound design and recording, and Snake would work on the broad structure of a track to shape an arrangement, taking the raw samples and turning them into something musically coherent. It made the best use of our individual skills at the time.

However, copying large projects was time consuming and error-prone. Files would go missing, especially before we discovered “Collect all and save,” or we’d copy more files than needed, including and ultimately duplicating portions of factory packs. It was a mess!

So, we thought about harnessing the power of the Internet. Here are some of the things we tried over the years:

Solution	Pros	Cons
Emailing .als files with changes	Simple - .als files are small, and as long as your changes are confined to the .als, it works fine.	Doesn’t work if you’ve cropped, reversed or frozen files, added new samples, and unless you are working with identical hard drive layouts, always results in having to scan for missing media files.
Real-time collaboration using videoconferencing (Skype, Hangouts, GoToMeeting, Join.me + Phone)	Good for interactive communication and show-n-tell sessions.	Doesn’t fit well with remote recording of new audio tracks (for Totally Frigid, which we started out during a Skype session, Snake was recording guitar tracks and emailing the files to DJSE for inclusion: it was a painful process)
File-sharing services (Dropbox, OneDrive)	Fine for small projects	Our projects can get to 3gb or more in size – requires long transfer times and paid Dropbox accounts on both ends to share in both directions.
Version control systems (we tried Github)	Works well for file copy of small to medium projects	We ran up against disk quota limitations when trying to use Github. We made do by stripping out factory packs, but that was a very hands-on process. Git is not fond of handling large files (something they are up front about). Also, the benefits of Git for diffing and merging text files don’t work for .als, so for this purpose it is basically a glorified FTP service.
Private FTP	Can handle arbitrarily large transfers, completely under your control. Like copying to a hard drive, but you don’t have to be in the same place at the same time.	Like copying to a hard drive, only slower.

The mote in thine eye

One key need of collaborators who are separated in space and time is a way to discuss and agree on changes that need to be made, and to track those changes to completion. Coming from a software background, we see this as equivalent to the process of filing, triaging, and fixing bugs in software. It’s also similar to the process in theater in which a director gives “notes”. In fact, we refer to these annotations as “motes” (short for Music Notes), and it’s a key part of our process: one of us renders our latest version of a shared track, and both collaborators provide their “motes” or comments on what they like and what they would like to change.

There are several aspects of this that are important:

The music has to be posted someplace where everyone can hear it
There has to be a way to communicate the motes
There has to be a way to track the status of the motes

While we have yet to find a system that fills all off these requirements, we’ve managed to make do, using SoundCloud or Splice to annotate precise points in the music that we want to call attention to, and tracking progress against those comments in e-mail and using online documents (typically OneNote and Excel Online with documents saved in a shared OneDrive folder). Nobody has yet provided a way to combine annotations with issue tracking in a way that would satisfy all facets of our workflow.

Soundcloud annotations provide a way of anchoring motes to specific moments in the track.

Online Community meets Collab Software

Only in the last handful of years has software started to catch up to the need that we’ve been filling using a series of stopgaps. Here’s a survey of a few that we’ve tried and a few newcomers that we haven’t.

Splice

http://splice.com

DJSE found the crew from Splice at SxSW this year, and the Splice software has become an integral part of our production toolkit. While their DAW support is limited so far (Ableton Live, FL Studio, Logic Pro, and GarageBand), we’ve found that their approach to project collaboration matches the way we work to a tee. We used Splice to build our latest album Seen and Unseen, and we were pleased to be featured in their blog when we released Laudanum Escapade for remixing on their site.

The features in Splice that we find most useful are:

Version tracking (every save in Ableton is tracked as a version, and you choose which versions are flagged as important. Every version can be annotated and have a separate audio preview)
Unlimited storage (with the sample-heavy tracks that we build, our projects can grow to as large as 6gb!)
The DNA player: a visualization of the Ableton project structure that allows annotation on each track

The powerful and versatile Splice DNA player, showing track-specific annotations

While Splice works for both Mac (DJSE’s platform of choice) and Windows (like Snake’s Windows 8 system), the Mac client seems more robust. The Windows client can be a resource hog when uploading changes, and the Splice window can’t be minimized when activated. We’ve also found that the version tree can get confused when working with multiple versions of the same project on one computer. Still, Splice is the closest match to our requirements, and we’re happily using it today. We’ve found the Splice team professional and receptive to feedback, so who knows, perhaps we’ll have everything we need within a few versions.

Blend

http://blend.io

The Blend.io project list

Before we got onto Splice, we tried out blend.io, another collaboration site. Like Splice, Blend works with standard DAWs – they handily beat Splice in the number of DAWs supported – and both systems allow working with raw stems. Blend supports versioning as well, though versioning in Blend is not so granular: a new version is created only when pulling the project explicitly.

Blend seems like a good choice when your main goal is to share music with the community – their system encourages sharing and collaborating publicly. However, if you are looking to collaborate privately, their hard limit of 3 private projects is a buzzkill. Also, their version tracking is confusing – it can be difficult to understand which version of a project you’re looking at. Finally, Blend uses Dropbox for storage and sync, which limits the size of your projects. If you go over the 2gb space limit in the basic account, then all collaborators using that project need to pony up for the pro account. Even with small projects, Dropbox’s file locking will block you from saving while files are uploading. If you save frequently, this quickly becomes an annoyance.

Blend offers no way to annotate the project or the audio directly, so you’ll need another method to track your feedback.

DAWs that come with collaboration build in

Ohm Studio and Soundtrap are taking a from-the-ground-up approach to online collaboration by creating new DAWs that support all of the online collaboration features you need. While we haven’t spent much time playing with these tools, the marketing materials and into videos seem compelling and for entry-level musicians, this seems like a great option for starting out. Only time will tell whether these tools evolve into something with the complexity and power of Ableton Live or ProTools. Building a DAW to meet the needs of professional producers is a daunting prospect. Ohm Studio, a client side DAW, seems closer to that track. Soundtrap is an online-only tool and seems more oriented to beginning producers who want a quick and easy solution to build loops using prebuilt pieces.

Of course, we can all hope that Ableton and ProTools come up with their own built-in collaboration system, either alone or in collaboration with Splice or another partner who can handle the storage and service layer of the system. In the meantime, we can count on companies like Blend and Splice to work hard to bridge the gaps.

Doing it in Real time

Where all of the systems mentioned so far shine is in their ability to enable asynchronous collaboration. But what about synchrony? Is it possible to link musicians in physically distant locations and work out the complexities of latency so that they can record new tracks in real time?

While we’ve tried some limited experiments, we haven’t found it necessary to move beyond asynchronous collaboration. I’ll defer to SoundOnSound for a discussion of the state of the art as of about a year ago: http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/mar14/articles/remote-collaboration.htm .

Into the future

With demanding day jobs and evolving families (DJSE is in the throes of discovering the joy of fatherhood as Snake types this article), our music is increasingly dependent on software to make everything faster and easier. Cats Cradle Robbers’ next release will be largely built in the cloud, by two busy dudes who are trying hard to snatch bits of free time when they can. Splice and other online tools will be a big part of that process.

DJSE and DJ1Z

Next up…

So you have a project and one or more collaborators. Some of you are on PC, some on Mac. One of you has a cool new plugin that the others can’t afford. How do you put it all together? Stay tuned for our next article!

What Gets You Dancing?

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Essey) — Wed, 13 May 2015 04:53:00 +0000

Hello to all of our fans! Your response to our new album Seen and Unseen has been incredible. Thank you. We want to hear from you as we prepare for our next album, where we will apply our unique style to various forms of EDM. We want to know...

***What gets you dancing?***

DJSE answered:
"I'm a huge fan of Deep House, Progressive House, Breakbeats, and Broken beats. And outside of EDM, I love dancing to Salsa, Bachata, Cha Cha, and Tango. I was a latin DJ for years, after all..."

Snake answered:
"I love to zone out when I dance and explore inner space, so anything that has a dark, throbbing beat and a trancey feel with repetitive figures and long filter sweeps really hit the spot. Drum and Bass and Trance are obvious examples."

What's YOUR answer?

***What gets you dancing?***

Reply below or tweet with the hashtag #MyDanceBeat

Remix Contest: Laudanum Escapade feat. Eliza Heery

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Essey) — Fri, 17 Apr 2015 20:44:00 +0000

As featured on the Splice.com blog: Laudanum Escapade Interview Session - Cats Cradle Robbers

The first single on our new album is fully available for remixing - both the Ableton Set and Stems. Dig in there, tear it apart, and do awesome things with the pieces.

Remix Contest: Any tracks submitted to us by May 31, 2015 have the chance to be featured on one of our upcoming albums.

Laudanum Escapade is about a bored housewife experiencing a luxuriant state induced by self-medication and finding wonder in the everyday moments of the world around her. This track is part of Cats Cradle Robbers' recently released fourth album Seen and Unseen that covers a range of experiences of the spirit, ranging from trance-like states, ecstatic visions, and sacred texts.

We're really excited to hear what the Splice community can do with the funky basslines, groovy beat, delicious vocals, and wild animal samples. New to Splice? It's awesome and free! Just sign up and get remixing.

We will feature our favorite remixes on a future album.

Full project and stems on Splice:

Original track on SoundCloud:

Cats Cradle Robbers' latest album Seen and Unseen is now for sale.

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Essey) — Sat, 11 Apr 2015 18:05:00 +0000

Our most ambitious and delightful work to date is now officially released.
You can now buy Seen and Unseen anywhere digital music is sold.

Seen and Unseen - the liner notes

noreply@blogger.com (Cats Cradle Robbers) — Sat, 11 Apr 2015 10:14:00 +0000

Seattle, Washington, April 11 2015

Cats Cradle Robbers are proud to announce general availability of our latest collection of electroacoustic constructions, Seen and Unseen. Here are a few thoughts about this album.

When we decided in 2013 to polish up and release many of our early musical experiments as albums for general availability, we spent an evening grouping our music into albums using a process called “affinities.” (See the description of that process in aprevious post in this blog).

One of the groupings, which we called “religious”, included tracks where either the title, or the mood, or the lyrics, or the idea of the track related in some way to spirituality. This is that collection.

As a part of putting together the collection, we expanded, added, re-recorded, and brought in additional collaborators to make the music new and take advantage of several years of reflection.

As always, we rely on and celebrate our many collaborators, who are partners in creating the music and who inspire us to go beyond our personal creative potential. And of course, we could not do what we do without the love and support of our families - a grateful thanks to Salome, ParisAnne, Lisa, Payton, and (soon to be born) Ed "Quattro" Essey.

The cover image was created by artist Carlie Reilly of New Jersey, the winner of our album cover contest. We love Carlie's winning cover - it made us really glad we decided to do the contest!

We hope that you enjoy this latest collection of our creative experiments in music-making!

- Nick Dallett and Ed Essey, aka Snake and DJSE, Cats Cradle Robbers

It Begins (feat. Lisa Jaffe Hubbell and Vidya Ramarathnam)

Lisa Jaffe Hubbell: Hebrew vocal

Vidya Ramarathnam: Tamil vocal

DJSE: Synth, Sequencing and effects (SSE)

Snake: Wine glasses

Snake conceived the idea of combining two of the oldest living languages – Hebrew and Tamil – each singing the creation story from their culture. We engaged Lisa and Vidya to provide the raw vocals in their respective traditional styles, and we combined them in the studio. The Hebrew text is cut into individual syllables for the initial part of the track, and both vocals are sung in full later in the track.

We use the ending of this piece to introduce elements of the rest of the album.

Hebrew lyrics (Genesis 1:1-3)

Hebrew script	Phonetic transliteration	English translation
בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית בָּרָ֣א אֱלֹהִ֑ים	bə-rê-šîṯ bā-rā ’ĕ-lō-hîm;	In the beginning, God created
אֵ֥ת הַשָּׁמַ֖יִם וְאֵ֥ת הָאָֽרֶץ׃	’êṯ haš-šā-ma-yim wə-’êṯ hā-’ā-reṣ.	The heavens and the earth
וְהָאָ֗רֶץ הָיְתָ֥ה תֹ֙הוּ֙ וָבֹ֔הוּ	wə-hā-’ā-reṣ, hā-yə-ṯāh ṯō-hū wā-ḇō-hū,	And the earth was without form and void
וְחֹ֖שֶׁךְ עַל־ פְּנֵ֣י תְה֑וֹם	wə-ḥō-šeḵ ‘al-pə-nê ṯə-hō-wm;	And darkness [was] on the face of the deep
וְר֣וּחַ אֱלֹהִ֔ים מְרַחֶ֖פֶת עַל־ פְּנֵ֥י הַמָּֽיִם׃	wə-rū-aḥ ’ĕ-lō-hîm, mə-ra-ḥe-p̄eṯ ‘al-pə-nê ham-mā-yim.	And the spirit of God moved on the face of the waters
וַיֹּ֥אמֶר אֱלֹהִ֖ים יְהִ֣י א֑וֹר וַֽיְהִי־ אֽוֹר׃	way-yō-mer ’ĕ-lō-hîm yə-hî ’ō-wr; way-hî- ’ō-wr.	And said God let there be light and there was light

Tamil Lyrics

Tamil script	Phonetic transliteration	English translation
கல் தோன்றி மண் தோன்றா	Kal thondri mann thondra	Before stones and sand were discovered
காலத்தே முன் தோன்றிய மொழி	kaalathey munThondriya mozhi	Before stone age, this language was born
எம் தமிழ் மொழி	yem thamizh mozhi	our tamil language
அகம் என்றும் புறம் என்றும்	Agam yendrum puram yendrum	The right way of living our life both within (inner well being) and external ( outer well being)
வாழ்வை அழகாக வகுத்த மொழி	Vaazhvai azhagaga vagutha mozhi	were artistically written and followed through this language
எம் தமிழ் மொழ	yem thamizh mozhi	My tamil language
எம் செம்மொழி	yem sem mozhi	Our great language
நம் தமிழ் மொழி	nam thamizh mozhi	Our tamil language

Everyone Loves a Martyr

India: meow

Snake: oven door, guitars, piano, flute

DJSE: piano, guitar, SSE

In our early days, we used to try to feature cat sounds in every track. This is one of the last pieces that followed that guideline (listen to Racoonba Persistante for another example).

Dark and cinematic, this piece features Snake on slide guitar and DJSE on the piano. The ending section was recorded with a single mic and features DJSE playing one guitar while Snake plays a guitar with one hand and the piano with the other.

Laudanum Escapade (feat. Eliza Heery)

Eliza Heery: Lead Vocal, Bass

Cathy Breshears: Backing Vocal

Snake: SSE, sampled frogs, monk seal, white handed gibbon, guitar, synth

DJSE: SSE, sampled parrot, dog

(ok cool)

Laudanum…

It’s raining on my window pane

And I’m feeling no pain

No pain, no pain

Laudanum…

Birds are tapping on my window pane

And I’m feeling no pain

It’s raining on my window pane

And I’m feeling no pain

Laudanum…

The dog is barking again

In the yard and in the rain

And I’m feeling no pain

No pain, no pain

Said I’m feeling no pain

No pain

Laudanum…

Laudanum escapade was originally recorded in a tiny apartment that Cathy Breshears shared with two kids, a dog, and a bird in Issaquah, Washington. Cathy was nervous and unused to improvisation, so the original vocal of this track was created by Snake improvising lyrics and singing them call-and-response style with Cathy. We cut Snake’s voice out for the first version of this song. Later we asked bassist and vocalist Eliza Heery to contribute her own jazzy style to the vocal, and we kept Cathy’s original vocals for the haunting “no pain” refrain.

Everything is embedded in DJSE’s brilliantly composed drum and bass track, to which Snake then added a guitar and synth chord pattern. Eliza’s bass puts the finishing touch on the instrumental tracks.

Aside from Cathy’s dog and bird, which can be heard in the final fade, all of the animal sounds were sampled by Snake while on a trip to Hawaii in November 2010. The frogs were recorded in Hilo on the Big Island. The white handed gibbon calls were sampled at the Honolulu zoo, and the monk seal snorts at the Waikiki aquarium a few blocks away.

Laudanum is a highly addictive opiate compound that was a popular ingredient in patent medicines in the 1800s, and is just the sort of thing that a bored housewife might have used to dull the pain of a humdrum lifestyle.

Seen and Unseen

Snake: Dih, fireworks, berimbau

DJSE: SSE

In 2011, when we recorded the first version of this track on Snake’s back deck, Snake was studying the Brazilian martial art form capoeira, and the unique rhythmic character of capoeira music colored this track from day one. As the piece evolved, we brought in explicit samba rhythms to carry forward the Brazilian sound. The berimbau, the single-stringed musical instrument that is specific to capoeira, was an obvious – but late – addition to the track.

The night we recorded this, we had a pile of leftover fireworks, and the sounds of crackling firecrackers is one of the unique elements that works its way into the background of the music.

Introducing the Dih

The instrument that Snake calls a “dih” is any small wire-stringed instrument where the strings are detuned enough to make the slinky sounds you can hear several times in this track. The idea of a “dih” was invented by Snake (aka Steve Peanut) and Larry Genuth (aka Eric Butter) as part of their music comedy duo Peanut Butter in the early 1980s. This particular instance was a small overhand dulcimer, in itself an unusual instrument, created by luthier John Lindsey of Lindsey Guitar fame.

Seen and Unseen was originally dedicated to Jeremy Roberts, our first fan.

Racoonba Persistante (Sharpie's Revenge)

Sharpie: snuffles

Agent K: meows

DJSE: SSE

Snake: Guitars

One night while we were working at DJSE’s erstwhile bachelor pad at the Mosler Lofts in Belltown, Snake’s wife called to say that there was a raccoon lying on the back deck. It didn’t appear injured or sick and was just hanging out and not going away. That was the night we started this track.

At the time, Snake’s family had a cat named Darien who had been banished to the back deck after too many things were ruined by cat urine. Sharpie (as we named the raccoon) became a regular visitor. She would wait for Darien to be fed, and after he had eaten his fill, she would swoop in and clean out his bowl. When Sharpie gave birth to a litter of kits, she started bringing them by to visit. The snuffling sounds in this track were recorded one night when Sharpie brought her kits to visit.

DJSE’s cat Agent K was one of the original members of the band and can still be found on Facebook. Agent K has since retired from music. In this track, he tries in vain to find that darned raccoon.

For this version of the track, we added the (live) guitars and (synthesized) theremin.

Downward Daffodil (feat. Sharanya Viswanath)

Sharanya Viswanath: vocal

Vidya Ramarathnam: vocal

Joe Breskin: Guitar, Moon Lute

DJSE: SSE

Snake: Guitarron, vertical marimba

This track has been through many iterations on its way to this (final?) form. The first published version was called “Gravity Schmavity,” a title that came out of a long series of word associations between DJSE and Snake. Another, very different, version of the track was called Demitasse. The original samples were recorded at Joe Breskin’s Port Townsend home, and included Snake playing Joe’s guitarron, Joe playing a Vietnamese moon lute, and both Joe and Snake striking long rosewood beams that we hung from his ceiling (Snake dubbed this the “Vertical Marimba”). Joe then played a long electric guitar solo over the groove we created using these elements. We’ve excerpted only small pieces of each of these things in this version.

The Vertical Marimba

The main rhythm of the piece lumbers like an elephant (which is what spurred the aforementioned series of word associations leading to “Horton taunts Newton: Gravity Shmavity!”), and our association between Elephants and India is probably what prompted us, when presented with the opportunity to work with Carnatic vocalist Sharanya Viswanath, to ask her to improvise to this track.

The result is something we would like to think could accompany yogic practice, hence the also word-associative name Downward Daffodil.

DJSE setting up shop at Breskin's

Breskin in full effect

Sharanya, relaxing between takes

Tamil Lyrics:

Tamil Script	Phonetic transliteration	English translation
ஓ அன்பே எனது உயிரே	Oh anbe yenadhu uyirae	My dear, my life
நீயும் ஒரு குழந்தை	Neeyum oru kuzhandhai	you are my child too

Joe on the Moon Lute

Truesetto

Snake: Lindsey fretless tenor guitar, Bookmarked guitar, electric dih

DJSE: SSE, Trombone

Dating from 2009, Truesetto features the Lindsey fretless tenor guitar and the electric dih (which has almost no relation to the acoustic instrument of the same name mentioned above). You can read all about the creation of this track in this blog post from 2009. http://catscradlerobbers.blogspot.com/2009/07/truesetto-reflections-by-snake-on.html

There is also a video of this tune on our YouTube channel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnDydCBHDH8

Listening (feat. Janet Dallett)

Janet Dallett: vocal

Michael and Jane Engle: wine glasses, voices

Snake: guitar, berimbau, piano

DJSE: speak n spell, SSE

Snake’s mother, Jungian Psychologist Janet O. Dallett, passed away in June 2010. A few days after her memorial service in Port Townsend, her nephew Michael and his wife joined us for a session at Snake’s house. We talked and played with water and wine glasses, and started a track we called Funk Back.

Back in the 1970s, there was a consumer advocacy show on TV called Fight Back with David Horowitz. Snake once overheard his mother and her friends joking that the show should be called “Fuck Back” instead. We modified this to Funk back to make it more musical and less PG-Rated.

DJSE had a Speak & Spell that he brought along to the session, and you can hear it saying “funk back” periodically in the final mix.

We worked on this track on and off for a month or two and never got very far with it. Then Snake got the idea to make it an explicit homage to his mom by bringing in phrases recorded at a reading of her book Listening to the Rhino: Violence and Healing in a Scientific Age, as well as other snippets of conversation recorded during her last months. This formed the backbone that we used as the center of the final piece.

How much longer?

And if longer, how long?

Today is the time of the rhino

(funk back)

If you dismiss it, become possessed by it, or try to destroy it, it will surely annihilate you

It is vastly more powerful than our little egos

I have very complicated eyes

Today is the time of the rhino

He offers his roomy, ancient skin for us to grow into

Do it - it is urgent

Diablita

DJSE: SSE

Snake: guitar, vocal, fork and nutcan

Cathy Breshears: vocal

One day, Snake arrived at DJSE’s place armed with his Gibson L6 electric guitar and Roland Jazz Chorus amp only to find DJSE burning to do something with a hard rock sound. He had built the first pieces of Diablita in Ableton before Snake showed up, and Snake put his Gibson to good use.

In China, they say that the ideal woman has 天使般的脸,魔鬼身材, or “Angel’s face, Devil’s figure.” We played on this idiom in this track, taking advantage of the fact that Snake, in the last stages of a cold, temporarily possessed an unnaturally deep voice.

This track has gone through several phases, including one in which Cathy sang several verses that we co-wrote on the same evening that we wrote Laudanum Escapade, but this mostly instrumental version is the one we liked best.

Angel's face

Devil's body

Saving grace

Salumba parte

To-cha-mo

Are you ready for me?

One of our most frequently used instruments, the Nutcan.
Snake scraped it with a fork for this track.
First Frost in the Garden and The Immortal Bottle both feature a quarter spun on the lid.

Saints (Feat. Danny Shih)

Danny Shih: violin

Snake: electric guitar, vocal

DJSE: SSE, vocal

Danny was a co-worker of DJSE’s, and revealed one day that he played violin. In 2010, we were looking for somebody to replace the synthesized violin on Swan Station 5 (released on Jack in the Bucket), so we headed to Danny’s for a session. We spent some time on that track, and then decided to start something new. Snake picked up Danny’s electric guitar, and Danny contributed some beautiful violin lines to the beats DJSE laid down. The result is one of our all-time favorites.

Danny is a New Orleans Saints fan, and the scant lyrics on this track (Amen. Amen. Saints. / Feelin the Brees.) were taken from the framed newspaper article on the wall, celebrating their recent superbowl win.

The Dry Sound of Atonement

Snake: Maytag washer and dryer with various inclusions, glassware, cabinets, fuse box

DJSE: SSE

On Saturday, September 14, 2013, DJSE came over to Snake’s house for a boil. A boil is a special type of session that is near and dear to our hearts. Named for the first such session, Boiling the Ocean, a boil is a session in which we take a specific location, such as a room in a house, and wring as many sounds as we can out of items we find in that location. We then assemble a piece of music using only those sounds, straight up or electronically processed.

We often refer to the music thus produced as REAL house music. Get it?

In this boil, we attacked Snake’s laundry room. You can hear some AA batteries, a rock, and some dryer balls cycling around in the dryer, the washer filling up, and various cabinet doors being slammed. Snake sings into the dryer, and we created a virtual gamelan from various pieces of glassware that are stashed in that room. The beeping sounds created when the washer and dryer are turned on and off supplied a built-in melodic focus. The overall mood is trancelike and focused, and we tried to honor the idea of atonement, given that 9/14/13 was Yom Kippur that year.

Acid Washed Dreams

DJSE: SSE

Snake: nutcan, flute, tin whistle, balloon, vocals, berimbau, shaker, classical guitar, Lindsey fretless tenor guitar, Gibson L6 electric guitar

Salome: laughter

Acid washed dreams started with Snake wanting to reverse-engineer a Bhangra beat. We took some time to lay out this traditional Punjabi folk dance rhythm in Ableton, and then we started to add sounds into the mix. The heavily processed sound you hear at the beginning started life as a tin whistle. A balloon sounds a bit like a DJ scratching. The traditional Cats Cradle Robbers percussion staple, the nutcan, came into play. A tabla sample appears. DJSE samples his then girlfriend, now wife’s laughter. Eventually we added synthesized violins, some real guitars, berimbau, and vocals.

The lyrics present an imagined scene, tripping on mushrooms in the rainy streets of Mumbai after a night of clubbing during monsoon season.

It's not raining, it's steaming

Urchins blaspheming Shiva

And in weaving these visions

To believe is to leave her

Cars and bars and whores amid the Bollywood nights

The lights and the stars making the boulevard soar (sore?)

'Til they lock the doors and it's just me, alone

Walk in the warm rain

Steam rising from the street, in the heat

To be alive in the city of flowers and songs and mycelium dreams

What About That Pasta (Feat. Steven Harry Markowitz)

Steven Harry Markowitz: Piano

Snake: Guitar

DJSE: SSE

Steve Markowitz and Snake, under the name Polyrhythmics, performed improvised music at various open mic nights in the Seattle area in the early 2000s. In this track, we relive those moments with a pair of free improvisation bookends around an electronic piece tying together their duet with DJSE’s beats.

Steve is a brilliant composer and improviser, and his own music is well worth a listen and can be heard at his page on last.fm.

We have a winner!

noreply@blogger.com (Cats Cradle Robbers) — Sat, 28 Mar 2015 07:26:00 +0000

When we started talking about Seen and Unseen and what we wanted to do with the cover, we weren't quite sure what to do. Neither DJSE nor Snake had any brilliant ideas.

It was DJSE who had the idea of running a cover contest. We weren't sure we would get any submissions at all. But thanks to Instagram, thanks to Twitter, and thanks to IndieNation putting the contest on their front page, we wound up getting 8 submissions, including some really nice ones that we had trouble choosing between.

And the winner is...

Artist: Carlie Reilly

Carlie submitted an early version of this concept as a slightly blurry photo in black in white. After reading our feedback, she added color, manipulated the drawing digitally, and submitted a new version with a sharper photo. The art plays like an homage to 1960s psychedelia, and we were knocked out by the detail and especially the hand-drawn version of our logo. The overall style is bold and it looks right at home next to the rest of our covers. CONGRATULATIONS, CARLIE!

But we had 7 other submissions which deserve to be seen and celebrated, so here are the 7 submissions that did not make the final cut:

	Artist: Sergei Nitchenko Sergei's submission was simple and striking, with strong colors, and a really nice integration of our logo. We liked the way the text in the title fades in and out of visibility.
	Artist: DJSE and Salome Ann DJSE and his wife spent an evening creating inkblots, and this striking and delicate blot was the best of the lot. This one was a strong contender (but we liked the winning entry even better.)
	Artist: Ajesh Palelil The detail in Ajesh's black and white line art is really striking, and we felt some connection in this shot to our track "Diablita". Cropping it square and adding a vignette helped to make it more like an album cover.
	Artist: Brett Tiff Brett's entry is stunning, and this execution reminds us of some of the early Wyndham Hill records. We love the art at the top, and enjoy the way our logo balances nicely in the middle.
	Artist: Daniel Burkert Daniel's spare line drawing nicely captures the idea of being seen and unseen, and plays on the latin character of many of our tracks, especially the title cut.
	Artist: Dustin Simpson This cover concept captured the album theme very well - the lava lamps, hidden buddha and partially obscured logo really nailed it.
	Artist: Lianna Langkamp Lianna took one of the photos from our Jack in the Bucket album release party, and made it into line art. We loved the cartoon versions of ourselves, the yowling cat, and her responsiveness to feedback - she produced three versions of this in response to requests.

In the end, everybody wins.

We were very pleased with all of the submissions we received, and everybody who entered will receive a free download code for the album once it's available. Carlie will get 5 download codes for Seen and Unseen, plus a video interview, plus we'll spam her name all over twitter and instagram - all very well deserved. And of course, her art will grace the cover of our all-digital album in every digital marketplace and streaming service. A great big THANK YOU to all of the artists who participated!

-DJSE and Snake.

The Album Cover Contest is ON!

noreply@blogger.com (Cats Cradle Robbers) — Sun, 22 Feb 2015 19:30:00 +0000

Attention Artists!

For our upcoming album Seen and Unseen, we are soliciting art from our listeners. If chosen, your art will be used as the album cover for the all-digital release, and will appear on ITunes, Amazon, Spotify, and everywhere else digital music is sold.

What will you win?

If your art is chosen, you will win the following:

Your art will be used as the cover art for the all-digital release of Seen and Unseen
5 free download codes for the album
Promotion for you and your art on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, including posts promoting your work through our marketing partner IndieNation
A video interview about your art on our YouTube channel

How to enter

- Post your original artwork to Instagram or Twitter with the hashtag #ccrcovercontest OR post directly to our Facebook wall, OR post using the form on Indienation here.

Additional rules and restrictions

Contest starts February 22^nd 2015 at noon and ends March 21^st 2015 at midnight
Final artwork must be an image least 1400x1400px square and high resolution. (Images posted for judging can be any size sufficient for our evaluation.)
Image must be your original artwork and copyrighted by you
Submission to the contest gives Cats Cradle Robbers the right to use your submitted image for promotional use in any format and in any media in perpetuity.
Our rights are non-exclusive – you retain the right to use your image or transfer non-exclusive rights to your image to others.
No promise or guarantee is made or implied that there will be a winner or that a contest entry will be used as the cover art for this or any other album.

Tips and Hints

The theme of the album is transcendant experience, including religion, spirituality, drug induced euphoria, dreams, and psychology.
Listening to the album is a great place to start. Our works in progress are in a Soundcloud playlist here: https://soundcloud.com/catscradlerobbers/sets/seen-and-unseen
You can represent one of the tracks on the album, the overall concept, or just do what you’re inspired to do
Your art should incorporate the title of the album and our band logo (or provide space for us to add them)
Check out the covers of our existing albums to see what we’ve used in the past!

Good luck!

- Snake and DJSE, Cats Cradle Robbers

SoundCloud: http://soundcloud.com/catscradlerobbers

Instagram: @catscradlerobbers

Twitter: @ccrseattle

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsRn7PraSc2p2LtHzmPEiUw

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/catscradlerobbers

Adventures in social media marketing, (or How IndieNation is saving the world)

noreply@blogger.com (Cats Cradle Robbers) — Mon, 12 Jan 2015 01:27:00 +0000

Folks who follow us on Facebook, Instagram, or Spotify are aware that we're engaged in a battle at the moment. (UPDATE: Thanks to everyone for voting for us - we came in second place in the Rock/EDM/Alternative battle)

No, it's not a legal battle. It's not even a music battle, though it's couched in those terms.

This is a social media battle. Sponsored by IndieNation (makers of the Indie Nation App), this is the second battle in a series of events designed to help Independent musical artists leverage social media to grow their fan base, with the ultimate goal of breaking big in the music world.

There have always been independent artists, playing in local scenes everywhere, and often invisible or limited to small niches. What's popular is not an indication of who is the best - it's just who has the best marketing machine behind them. In the past, indie artists printed their own records, they worked the road (Snake spent two years touring the Southwest in the early 1990s and can tell you that it is fun and rewarding, but a really lousy way to try to make a living)

Anthony Barksdale, the mastermind behind IndieNation, understands that music marketing is not what it used to be. The old system of big A&R departments, top 40 radio, and corporate marketing campaigns targeting carefully selected musical niches is crumbling. Cheap and easy access to music on the Internet means that profit margins for large multinational music machines are eroding. That means we need a new model for musical artists to make money - a model that is still in the formative stages.

What has changed? Well, the independent artists haven't gone away. Financial success in music is still determined by popularity and marketing, not by talent. BUT, the playing field is more level, more open. It's now up to individual artists to market themselves, and they have an unparalleled global stage to do it on. Musicians may still be discovered by an A&R exec ploughing through a pile of demo tapes, or by a promoter visiting a small smoky bar, but they are also breaking on YouTube through viral social sharing, or being promoted one message at a time on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Spotify, or sites dedicated to independent musicians - sites such as SoundCloud, BandCamp, blend.io, RadioAirplay.com or IndieNation and its affiliates Indie Speaks and UnsignedArtists.club.

How are Cats Cradle Robbers responding? We're learning! The past week participating in the battle is teaching us more than ever before how to leverage our social network to get votes. Here's some of our key learnings out of the exercise:

Getting people to see your message is the first challenge. On Instagram, that means leveraging relevant hashtags such as "#electronica, #edm, and #seattle to get our message out of our narrow channel and into the public eye. On Facebook, that means using every trick in the book to get each message shared and liked as much as possible so that Facebook will show it to more people with higher priority.
Enlisting help means personal interaction. Figure out who your champions are and get them on the phone to call their friends. If you run into a friend on the street, grab their phone and enter their vote for them (with permission, of course :-)). Make it impossible for people not to help! One of the vocalists on our battle track It Begins is phoning all of her friends in Chennai, India and asking them to vote every night while the rest of us are asleep. Friends like that are your key connectors, and their help is vital to success.
The content is not important. We posted a recent work in progress somewhat at random, and used this as our battle song. With social media marketing, you are not trying to engage people based on the quality of the material - you are leveraging loyalty and goodwill to develop a mutually trusting relationship with your audience.
Feedback to your audience is important. When they vote, thank them. Show them the results of their actions, and make them feel like they're making a difference. Create excitement and encourage others to share that excitement.

What does this mean for our financial success? So far, the results are not yet in. Marketing and publicity professionals will tell you that building a social platform and finding an audience that is engaged and active is the most important precursor to marketing success. For us, at this point we're working to build visibility and acceptance for our unique brand of electroacoustic recorded art music.

With your help, we can win this battle.

Once we make that milestone, we're hoping that IndieNation can help us win the war.

Keep voting!

-Snake and DJSE

A Quirky Time for Something New

noreply@blogger.com (Cats Cradle Robbers) — Mon, 15 Sep 2014 00:46:00 +0000

Release date: 9/11/2014

Third of three albums to date, A Quirky Time for Something New features material from the last few years. Darker and more atmospheric than our previous releases, it still maintains the eclectic mix of electronic and acoustic sounds you’ve come to expect, and as usual the music is all over the metaphorical and literal map, evoking sounds from Africa (Papa Pi), feelings from Syria (Damasculated), and ideas from Hungary (Vörösszem), among others.

As with all of our music, we start with improvisation and continue through an iterative process of composition and construction using samples from the original improvisation, sometimes adding sounds and additional artists along the way. We share thanks and writing credit with our guest artists P-Rose, Dean DeCrease, Joe Breskin, Sumit Basu, Court Crawford, Steve Markowitz, Matt Pickard, and DJ Essey’s dad Ed Essey, Sr, not to mention Snake’s lovely wife ParisAnne for forcing us to clean that shed.

The creative process is split pretty equally. DJSE does the bulk of the hands-on construction in Ableton Live, but we regularly hand projects back and forth or work in parallel on two laptops. DJSE builds out most of the percussion loops, often using samples we’ve captured using found objects. Snake often takes the lead on harmonization. DJSE takes Snake’s melody lines, chops them and recombines them so they are a product of our interaction. The process we simplify down to the three terms “Synth, Sequencing, and Effects” is a creative task that encompasses everything from building drum loops to complex composition to audio envelope manipulation and filtering.

Mixing and mastering was done by DJSE in the Jaguar XKR Mobile Editing Suite (aka The Mes).

Without further ado, the tracks:

Neuroverdrive (Ch'min'ter) (feat. P-Rose)

DJSE: Synth, Sequencing, Effects (SSE)

Snake: Vox, Lindsey fretless tenor guitar

P-Rose: slide whistle

Neuroverdrive is the first of two tracks recorded one October weekend on a trip to Port Townsend, Washington. We tracked this the first night in our room at the Palace Hotel. The lyrics and name came about in a fun word game over a sushi dinner before our creative session. Snake made effective use of a heavy-duty room fan by singing into it for built-in FX.

Neuroverdrive

Ch’min’ter

Neuroverdrive

Ch’min’ter

Ba Ba

Neuroverdrive (3x)

Ch’min’ter

Neuroverdrive

P-Rose lays down a slide whistle take

Marking the Lindsey’s fingerboard to facilitate playing the solo harmonic line in the latter part of the track.

One N Anette

DJSE: SSE

Snake: Ukulele, Lindsey fretless tenor guitar

A lovely floaty thing featuring Snake on ukulele and Lindsey guitar. Several different motifs on the uke are combined in different ways over DJSE’s spare percussion.

At the Top of the Stairs

DJSE: SSE

Snake: Lindsey fretless tenor guitar, throat-singing, handrail, violin, door handle, wine glass

Dean DeCrease: Vox, bones

Somewhere in Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood, a nondescript door leads to a large open and irregular space, a sort of oversized anteroom leading to bathrooms, utility rooms, and a concrete stairway to the parking garage. The large empty space produces a natural reverb that we wanted to put to our nefarious purposes. We set up shop here one evening after work. Snake brought the Lindsey guitar, a violin, and a couple of glasses to go with a nice bottle of Tempranillo he had been saving. DJSE set up shop on top of a case of toilet paper borrowed from the utility closet.

Snake took advantage of the space by bowing the Lindsey guitar, and we balanced that decision by sampling the violin pizzicato. Throat singing, an improvised glass harmonica, and a nicely resonant handrail down the stairs rounded out the samples.

Recording At The Top Of The Stairs on a makeshift editing table

Preparing to bow the Lindsey guitar

In a later session at Cats Cradle East, Dean DeCrease provided some vocal samples and played a set of pork rib bones against the backing beat. These found their way into the final track as well.

Sporking Battalion (feat. Joe Breskin)

DJSE: Piano guts, guiro, SSE

Snake: Piano guts

Joe Breskin: Guitarron, Guitar

Joe Breskin and P-Rose, spork war

The same trip that started with Neuroverdrive found us on the second day at Joe Breskin’s Port Townsend wonderland. Since our last trip to Joe’s, he had acquired the strung plate from a discarded piano, and had it standing upright on his front porch. We set up mics and explored this with sticks and mallets, sampling individual notes as well as glissandi. Ed laid out a Latin beat, including both a sampled guiro and one he played live. Joe played guitarron and guitar.

At some point in the afternoon, Payton challenged Joe with a plastic folding spork. Joe countered with a titanium spork, and the battle was engaged, giving us a handy title for the track. Working titles rarely stick with us, but “sporking battalion” has survived unchanged from day 1. (As has Neuroverdrive – that was a magical trip).

In post processing, we chopped Joe’s guitarron track into note samples and Ed built this into the back half of the tune.

The resonance of the plate and the sympathetic vibrations of the strings in the middle portion of the track make for a really magical ambience.

Ed, sampling the piano guts on Joe’s porch

Breskin tickles the Guitarron.

Quirky Hour for Something New

DJSE: SSE

Snake: Guitar

It was about 2 AM, long after the appointed time to leave the studio. We were done – done, dammit, and in the wake of a newly finished track, DJ Essey started whipping together a new arrangement.

Snake was incredulous – it was a weekday and there was work in the morning. It was his house and he was ready to go to bed, but DJSE was onto something, creating something really catchy. It was so cohesive and complete that it took us several sessions and many months to find a way for Snake to weave in his musical voice, playing on his Yamaha classical guitar. We really like the result, and hope you will too.

We like to think the release date for the album – 9/11 – is a quirky time for something new and creative. Snake’s daughter P-Rose was due to be born on September 17^th 2001, and the attack on the twin towers had he and ParisAnne wondering if it was a good time for a child to come into the world. Quirky Time indeed.

Heavy Mike

DJSE: SSE

Snake: electric and acoustic guitars, piano, electric bass

This simple track has been the source of many an argument between Snake and DJSE. DJSE would love to make music as simple and melodic as this. Snake thinks it’s been done – “too commercial” he says. “Not breaking new ground”. In the end, we’re both attached to it. It’s pretty and has just enough of our personalities to keep it interesting. It’s a little bit grunge and a whole lot of pretty.

The original track consisted of the A/B pair of progressions that makes up the head of the tune. The minor section that follows is something Snake made up when we started putting this collection together.

We would love for you to imagine a deep backstory to the title of this track, but the reality is pretty silly. Ed had recently made two purchases – a nice new microphone, and a pretty flimsy mic stand to go with it. The mic was all set up to record the rhythm guitar on this track, we turned our back, and boom.

Heavy Mic.

Vörösszem (feat. Sumit Basu and Court Crawford)

DJSE: SSE

Snake: 2xtar

Sumit Basu: Piano

Court Crawford: Upright bass

Smashing together the Hungarian words for “red eye,” Vörösszem is another piece fit for the darker side of time. Shortly after Snake returned from a trip to Hungary, and on the birthday of Nick's friend and co-worker Attila Voros, Sumit joined CCR in the cradle for the third time (following his previous contributions on Jack in the Bucket and Toasting More often). Flush from a few shots of Palinka, we loaded a deep ascending A Hungarian Gypsy scale on synthetic bass, and began weaving wicked stuff around it. Later we invited the immensely talented Court Crawford to add his upright bass to the mix, and this drove yet another reinvention of this track. Bowed, plucked, and struck 2xtar drives the undercarriage to make bodies move.

Damasculated

DJSE: SSE

Snake: 2xtar, banjo, slide guitar

On September 1, 2013, US President Barack Obama announced that he was seeking approval to take military action against Syria in the wake of alleged chemical attacks against Syrian nationals. On September 3, we met for a music session. Snake brought the 2xtar, and we were inspired by feelings of fear and uncertainty about what would happen in Damascus.

This track, with the banjo and the fife, and the deep warlike drone of the 2xtar, feels like an American battle cry – marching to war in yet another nation as the peacekeepers of the world. There are mixed feelings of nationalism and sarcasm in the result – and over it all a feeling of being helpless to further or to stop the violence.

Jaanaap Conspiracy (feat. Steve Markowitz)

DJSE: SSE

Snake: Vox, Electric guitar, Wine glass, electric dih, electric bass

Steve Markowitz: Piano, Sarcasm

This ethereal, after-dark jazz piece features irreverent jazz pianist Steve Markowitz. Did Steve’s dog actually go to Juilliard, or was he just throwing us a metaphorical bone? I’m not sure we’ll ever know for sure.

“Jaanaap” is an invented word that refers to a mixed time signature in which multiple instruments are aligned on the beat, but playing different numerical cycles. In this track, the drums are playing in 3/4, the piano and bass in 4/4, and the electric dih in 5/4. Nick Dallett refers to this as “eighth note pulse” in his book The Musical Experience, and uses it as a structuring mechanism for improvisation. Jaanaap is distinct from Hemiola, in which the time signatures align on the length of a bar.

The Trinity Paradigm (feat. Matt Pickard)

DJSE: SSE

Snake: guitars

Matt Pickard: guitars

Matt was visiting us from Vancouver, WA, and took some time to duet on guitars with Snake. Matt then overdubbed additional guitar parts. The thing that really makes this track is the interplay between the guitars and DJSE’s hypnotic tapestry of synthesized piano parts. This is an exceptionally tasty track.

Matt strategizing between takes

Up To Go Down (Feat. Ed Essey Sr.)

DJSE: SSE

Snake: 2xtar, guitar

Ed Essey, Sr.: guitar

Before we started assembling this collection of tracks, Snake started work on a track on his own. It was in his favorite time signature – 5/4 – and it was intended to feature the 2xtar. When we were nearly done with the album, it was clear that the 2xtar would be a major part of the album. Snake suggested bringing the new track along to round out the 2xtar-focused project.

Snake lays down the original track

About this time, Ed’s dad visited and we brought him into a session to show him what we did. We let him play some guitar riffs along with the new track. We liked what he played, so we added them into the final track.

Esseys Junior and Senior

Papa Pi

DJSE: SSE

Snake: Guitars (Gibson L6, Yamaha classical, Lindsey fretless, Ron Ho steel string, Dobro)

Papa Pi was originally recorded on Snake’s deck back on July 15, 2011.

DJ Essey had been researching sub-Saharan African rhythms, and Snake had always wanted to try to build a multi-guitar afropop track. After several years resting, and remixing with some new electronic sounds, the final result is an afropop-flavored construction with our own unique electronic twist.

Left to right: Gibson L6, Dobro, Ron Ho steel string acoustic, Lindsey fretless tenor guitar, Yamaha classical

Honeydew Waltz

DJSE: Candy cane tube, spray can, paint tray, volleyball, SSE

Snake: 2xtar, lawnmower, glass lightshade, saw blade, drill, circular saw, jigsaw, flex hose, wonderbar, mayonnaise jar

ParisAnne: motivation

Who wouldn’t love a power-tool waltz line? In this latest in the series of real house music (following the tradition of Salumba Parte and Boiling the Ocean), we took to Snake’s shed for a new boil. Christmas decorations, power tools, and all manner of home improvement miscellanea found their way into the paws of the creative duo, who managed to create a hip, modern dance number while checking a big task off of Snake’s todo list.

Introducing the 2xtar. (pronounced two-by-tar). While boiling the shed, there were enough power tools in place that we could build an instrument with found objects. This instrument strings heavy wire across a length of 2x4. Since this was home-improvement wire, not instrument-grade strings, we had a lot of slack to take up, and we wedged two camping-sized propane tanks to form a dual bridge. To capture and resonate the low frequencies, we screwed on two large cement mixing buckets. The 2xtar was born! This instrument, with its squealing high-end, distinct percussion shrieks, and resonating bass that adds the signature sound for most of this album. Check out themusic video to see the 2xtar get built!

Snake plays the 2xtar to DJSE’s beat at the release party for Jack in the Bucket, March 2014 at Row House.

Zzik'kundz (feat. Court Crawford)

DJSE: Quarter and nutcan, Jar of change, SSE

Snake: Egg shaker, Ukulele, Electric bass, Berimbau, Piano

Court Crawford: Upright bass

One of the swingingest tracks on the album, Zzik’kundz’s core is an interplay between Snake on ukulele and Snake on bass. The spinning quarter on an empty nut can is a throwback to First Frost in the Garden. Court Crawford’s upright bass and a wicked battle between Snake’s electric uke and DJSE’s synthesized trumpet round out the piece.

We hope you enjoy these 14 tracks! Please reach out and let us know what you think - here or on our facebook page.

What we did on our summer vacation

noreply@blogger.com (Cats Cradle Robbers) — Sun, 31 Aug 2014 23:04:00 +0000

Here in Seattle it's Bumbershoot time - the biggest music festival of the year, and the last big bash of summer before kids return to school. Seems appropriate that we're nearing a big musical milestone of our own.

We're delighted to announce that we're weeks away from the album we've been working on since Spring - A Quirky Time for Something New. As you can see from this snapshot of our project tracking page, we're down to finishing touches on the Hungarian-inspired track formerly known as Voros Nem, and working on cover art that will feature the 2xtar - the unique instrument that we invented during the Honeydew Waltz session and that is featured on a number of tracks on the new album.

Musically, we think we've outdone ourselves with the new material, and we're looking forward to hearing what you think!

- Nick "Snake" Dallett, and DJ Ed Essey

Introducing Jack in the Bucket

noreply@blogger.com (Cats Cradle Robbers) — Sun, 09 Mar 2014 18:40:00 +0000

(or, Why Sacajawea has to work on the side)

Cats Cradle Robbers are very pleased to present our second collection of electroacoustic constructions, Jack in the Bucket.

This album collects together material spanning our first seven years of making music together, from the very earliest tracks (Kelley’s Loss, Attempting Electronic Reprisal) to material that was significantly developed expressly for this release (Lita, Mille Boba). We’re very proud of the music that has resulted from our eclectic bag of stylistic tricks, and we hope you will too. Here is some insight into the material on this record, which is now available for digital download on Amazon, ITunes, Spotify, and many other channels.

All music is by Nick “Snake” Dallett and Ed Essey, except for Electrullabye (DJ Essey’s solo) and Ujjayi (Snake’s solo). Also, because all of our music starts with improvisation by the participants, guest artists share in the glory or shame of their tracks, and therefore writing credit can also be imputed to Sumit Basu, Steve Markowitz, Joe Breskin, Tomo Hoku, as well as to Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones, and John Bonham from whom we borrowed riffs to build Mille Boba.

Many thanks to our wives for putting up with this madness twice a month plus snow days.

DJ Essey mixed and mastered it all.

Jack in the Bucket (feat. Sumit Basu)

DJ Essey: Trombone, SSE (synth, sequencing, effects)

Snake: Trumpet, Dobro, Vox, breaking glass, keys

Sumit Basu: Trumpet, Vox, champagne bucket

On June 25^th, 2009, Michael Jackson passed from this earth. On that day, we had already planned a Cats Cradle Robbers session at DJ Essey’s Seattle bachelor pad (aka Cats Cradle West). Microsoft Senior Researcher Sumit Basu joined us to see what we were up to. He and DJ Essey became acquainted at MIT, and Sumit was playing with an automated music authoring software project called SongSmith.

At the time, our production process was still in its infancy, and we were more focused on the creative process than the final product. For example, rather than using headphones, we were playing a burgeoning track through speakers on a loop, and recording additions live in the room. Each track has the rhythm tracks playing in the background, which adds a certain ambience to the track, but this is any audio engineer’s nightmare. Luckily, everything fell together, and this track happened in the space of 2 hours, from initial drum loop to final configuration – practically “live” from our perspective. These days, we use headphones and proper isolation techniques that allow us greater freedom in how we use and modify samples in our constructions.

Inspired by Michael Jackson, Sumit sang a variation of the chant “ma ma ko, ma ma sa, ma ma ko sa” first used by Manu Dibongu in his 1972 song Soul Makossa, and later used by Jackson. The lyrics on this track were ad-libbed and are prone to subjective interpretation. Here are the lyrics as I understand them:

Ma ma se Ma ma sa ma ma ko sa

Champagne bucket a bucket a buh

mamase makossa

Champagne bucket a bucket a buh

mamase makossoft

Jack in the pocket it’s just a question of time

You got a rock in the pocket you got a rock in the rhyme

Jack in the bucket, you got a question of time

You got a rock in the pocket, you got a rock in the rhyme, gotta

Sacajawea she got to work on the side

(unintelligible)

Sacajawea, she got a working design

(inscrutable)

Mille Boba

Snake: Dobro, SSE, Vox

DJ Essey: SSE

Sometime in 2007 or 2008, the band went for a pre-session dinner at Szechuan Noodle Bowl and unexpectedly ran into DJ Essey’s friend David and his wife Millie. We combined forces, and after dinner wound up at Gossip, where Millie introduced Nick to Bubble tea (aka Boba Tea) and thus forever immortalized herself in song.

Originally entitled “Immigrant Millie Bobo”, the track was our first experiment using miked samples and was released on our website in its original form in 2009. Snake played two classic rock riffs on his dobro – Jimi Hendrix’s gorgeous melodic line from Third Stone from the Sun, and the ostinato from Led Zeppelin’s Immigrant Song – and we mashed ‘em up, adding an original guitar line, both straight up as Snake played it and diced up by DJ Essey. The track remained in that state for about 5 years until we pulled it out to include on this album. Snake added bass and rhythm guitar to harmonize the melody two new ways (once in E major and again in C# minor), and we replaced the original Immigrant guitar part with the same ostinato using a piano sample. The final song title came about through our typical associative process, dropping a word here, changing a vowel there. The result, “Mille Boba”, is a Sino-Italian portmanteau that translates to “One Thousand Breasts”. Make of that what you will.

Something We Ate (feat. Steve Markowitz)

DJ Essey: SSE, breath

Snake: guitars, wine glass, SSE, breath

Steve Markowitz: piano, words, breath

Snake’s association with composer and improvisational pianist Steve Markowitz (as “Polyrhythmics”) predates the formation of Cats Cradle robbers by several years. We always have a lot of fun with Steve – he’s playful and uninhibited, and we share a nice musical chemistry.

This was the first of several sessions with Steve. We got together at Cats Cradle East, where DJ Essey captured Steve’s improvisations and singled out the loop that forms the backbone of this track. We followed that up with a number of versions that progressively added new layers, new sections, and finally led to what you hear on the album.

Electrullabye

DJ Essey: SSE

DJ Essey’s first solo outing for Cats Cradle Robbers started as an experiment in animating pitch in Ableton.

He built that seed into a lovely electronic lullabye that aspires to answer Philip K Dick’s titular question.

Hush little baby

Don’t say a word

Poppa’s gonna buy you

A mockingbird

Swan Station 5

DJ Essey: SSE, leaky shower

Snake: Bottom drawer, ceiling fan, piano, bass, SSE

In May 2009, DJ Essey joined Snake’s family on a trip to Port Townsend to experience the Rhodedendron festival. The band set up shop in Essey’s room at the Swan hotel where they proceeded to disassemble and sample everything in sight. The bottom drawer of the dresser became a bodhran, the brass ceiling fan a tabla, the screen window insert a shaker, the dripping shower an alarm bell, a disassembled curtain rod an agogo. Did Snake play the ceiling fan with chopsticks or with his bare fingers? Snake remembers it one way and DJE another.

Several tracks began on that trip, but none harnessed Essey’s inspiration like this tango-flavored construction. Featuring bandoneón, viola, and cello samples, we also took the time for Snake to learn and record Essey’s sequenced bass and piano tracks verbatim using real instruments.

The Swan hotel, combined with a common preoccupation with the first season of LOST, inspired the title.

Ujjayi

Snake: Piano, classical guitar, SSE

Snake’s solo outing, like Essey’s Electrullabye, started as a learning experiment in Ableton Live. Snake took a simple loop and added live guitar and piano samples to evoke a trancey yoga mood. The ujjayi (oceanic) breath is approximated by a found shotgun sample and lots of reverb.

Attempting Electronic Reprisal

Attempting Electronic Reprisal is based off of our very first Ableton Live set, called Attempting Electronic, made during our first jam session with Kelley Vice. As Snake and Kelley played, DJ Essey created electronic loops to accompany the guitars. The second set made during that session, The Tyranny of the Drum Machine, has been lost to time (and a dropped laptop that clobbered the harddrive). Attempting Electronic Reprisal is one of only three tracks that survived the lost hard drive (the other two were La Voie Lactée and a track called Spirit Hole Skydive which was our first experiment with a live instrument).

Stealing Candy (feat. Joe Breskin)

DJ Essey: SSE

Joe Breskin: Guitar

Snake: Guitar, Lindsey guitar, Big Bad vocal, SSE

On another trip to Port Townsend, Snake, and Port Townsend guitarist Joe Breskin took guitars and recording gear to the Boiler Room for an impromptu performance. This track started with a couple of samples from that evening, but the main action revolves around a guitar riff of Breskin’s called “theme from the Pfeiffer River beach”. Joe discusses the creation of that tune on his website (search the page for “Big sur” here).

Stealing Candy also features an experiment in Augenmusik (“eye music”). The synthesizer break partway in includes a MIDI track in which the notes are laid out to spell the name of the track. This results in a series of tone clusters and glissandi that underlies the more composed melodic chimes. The effect of the combined tracks sounds like a summertime ice cream truck, or candy truck perhaps.

Kelley's Loss

The original sessions that led to the formation of Cats Cradle Robbers were conducted in the summer of 2007 on the back deck at Cats Cradle East, and included a third founding member: guitar virtuoso and technical writer extraordinaire Kelley Vice. Kelley lasted two sessions and was a no-show for the third, when we put together this loop. Were we bitter? Is the title a little passive aggressive? Maybe. But we’ll see how Kelley feels when the royalties start pouring in!

Kelley remains a friend and we stay in touch on Facebook, but he hasn’t participated in a session since.

Weftovers (feat. Tomo Hoku)

Tomo Hoku: ili’ili

DJ Essey: SSE, pu’ili

Snake: Bass, ukulele, flute, dobro, harmonicas, uli’uli

Tomo Hoku is a friend, Japanese translator, hula teacher, tour guide, and world traveler. She also happens to write a column for a Japanese language periodical out of Chicago called Prairie Magazine. She came by Cats Cradle East in 2009 to interview the band and see how we work. She brought along some traditional hula instruments for us to try out - little did she know she would get roped into participating. For the Japanese speakers in the audience, here’s the resulting article.

La Voie Lactée

Another one of the early “spirit holes”, this loop also started life as an Ableton exercise – this time focused on animating tempo. The base loop does not change anything but tempo –starting off at a moderate walk, increasing to a brisk trot, and finally tailing off to nothing. The name comes from a surrealistic French film by Luis Buñuel – for reasons lost in time, Snake was reminded of the film by the track or the process.

This track is notable as well for including the melodic phrase that became – either by subconscious suggestion or by coincidence – the opening melody for Boiling the Ocean.

Boiling the Ocean

DJ Essey: SSE, frying pan, chips, ice, coke, salsa, toaster, vitamins

Snake: wine glasses, bottles, steaming flask, knife on steel, kettle bass

Snake dreamed up a project when he was leading improvisational ensembles in the 1980s, which involved taking a group of improvisers through somebody’s house, playing music in each room using only objects found in that room. While this was never accomplished using live musicians, the project is being realized by Cats Cradle Robbers under the name “Real House Music.” Boiling the Ocean is the first track from this project. It was built by sampling sounds produced by items in Snake’s kitchen, and the process was documented in a video which you can find on YouTube. We have since “boiled” Snake’s bedroom (Salumba Parte, released on the album Abewsing The Mews), Shed (Honeydew Waltz), and laundry room (The Dry Sound of Atonement).

Lita

DJSE: SSE

Snake: Lindsey guitar, Gibson L6

In 2008, DJ Essey's love of tango and salsa dancing had him out late dancing nearly every night of the week. He'd come home, late, and still fired up from a night out, and put his hands on the keys. Those were very much bachelor days, when the Cradle West kitchen was a full time music studio with amps, mics, and control surfaces hooked up everywhere.

With blood still pumping in his veins and beats in his limbs, the DJ would sit down at the control surfaces and build loop-based scenes. One was based off of a dance fantasy conceived as Lia… but since the piece was so small, and the vibe inspired by Latin vibes, she was dubbed Lita, a very spunky little seed. Most of our seeds never go anywhere, but this seed was so vibrant, Snake had to work with it. Snake picked up his guitars and laid down a few riffs. They were a totally different direction than DJ Essey had planned to take it, and the piece would lay dormant in creative tension for years.

Sometimes Lita came out to play, only to be put away with little progress made. Magical forces happen when a team agrees to "stop starting and start finishing," as when Cats Cradle Robbers applied kanban principles to our music. As Jack in the Bucket turned from an EP into an album, we were committed to raising Lita together, and she sprouted into the piece released today. As with most of our tracks, this collaboration led to something that neither of us would have created individually, proving that one and one can equal three for very large values of one.

Production Management the Cats Cradle Robbers way

noreply@blogger.com (Cats Cradle Robbers) — Mon, 17 Feb 2014 18:39:00 +0000

**NEW**: have a look at the updated version of this article on Snake's LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/production-management-cats-cradle-robbers-way-nick-dallett

In our day jobs, DJ Essey and Snake are both Technical Program Managers for major Seattle-area software companies, and we bring that toolset to bear when producing music. Having a common language for project management has helped us to communicate effectively and to put structure around what we do. This in turn helps us to separate the project management aspect of the band from the creative aspects of making music. Along the way, we’ve developed language to talk about the unique ways we work: terms like “jaanaap” (a made-up word describing a specific way of mixing time signatures), to "boil" a location (making music using only found objects from that location) or “freakout” (a particular type of melodic development), as well as our own taxonomy for describing the current state of a given track (seed--> draft--> mix ready--> master ready--> final).

As an example, let's walk through the process that led to the release of our new album, Jack in the Bucket.

This project started as a 5 song EP, and was all finished and waiting for sales of our first album to reach a carefully chosen point before publishing, when we had a sudden realization.

We realized that we have a lot of more recent material that we are very proud of, and that are in various stages of not-quite-complete, just waiting for us to be inspired to work on them.
We realized that the only milestone that we recognize as “done” is having these tracks published and available to the world.
We realized that the growing pile of unfinished projects was a psychological burden that was preventing us from fully enjoying our work.
We realized that waiting for each album to pay for the next was not working and that we needed to invest more in a steady stream of releases in order to gain listeners.

In light of this epiphany, we instituted a new strategy: starting now, we are working full bore towards having our backlog of material published and in distribution so that YOU can purchase and download everything we do in its final form. Jack in the Bucket is the first release in this new strategy.

Step 1: Organize

We met at “Cat’s Cradle Westerer”, DJ Essey’s lovely home in Seattle, armed with markers and post-its and laptops, to execute the first stage of the new strategy: grouping all of our unfinished tracks into albums-to-be.

To do the grouping, we performed an affinity exercise. This methodology is typically used to organize the results of brainstorming into high-level concepts. In my time at Microsoft Office, we used this exercise at the beginning of each release cycle to bring customer feedback and new ideas together to define release themes.

In this case, the data items – the list of about 60 unfinished tracks – were already present, so we started by listing these on post-its.

(The color in this case was not significant).

Next, we started to put the post-its on the kitchen cupboards. As we went, we tried to place things in ways that seemed to go together. This happened iteratively over a period of about 20 minutes, many of the stickies moving several times as we grouped, regrouped, rethought, had epiphanies, and grouped again.

Initially, we each worked autonomously, without discussion. Towards the latter stages, we started to discuss the patterns that were emerging, and formed concepts around the groupings. This resulted in some additional tweaks.

At some point, we realized that several of the collections naturally coalesced into 13 track groups. Since our first release, Abewsing the Mews, was a 13-track album, we decided at this point that each of the albums should have exactly 13 items. We tweaked a bit more to enforce this new rule.

Here are the collections that emerged from the affinity exercise:

Jack in the Bucket

This collection started with the original 5 tracks from the Jack in the Bucket EP (Jack in the Bucket, Electrullabye, Swan Station 5, Ujjayi, and Weftovers), and added tracks that we felt hung together with the other tracks. One pair of tracks – La Voie Lactee, and Boiling the Ocean – were always destined to be together, as the repeated melodic motif in the former track was – by complete coincidence – recapitulated in the opening melody of the latter.

The New

This collection contains some of our newest tracks, plus older tracks that have the same cohesion and poppy freshness that has been coming through in our most recent efforts.

Religious

A number of our tracks relate to collective or individual religious experience – everything from hallucinogenic visions (Acid-washed dreams, Laudanum escapade) to settings of sacred texts (Nandapoorian Daystallian). These became our third collection.

Un--

The 20 remaining tracks defy categorization. Time will tell what happens with these.

Step 2: Prioritize

The next step was to decide which collection to work on first. Jack in the Bucket was clearly the closest to done. We had already finalized 5 out of the 13 tracks. Of the rest, most were fairly well along in development. We took each track and labeled it according to its progress along the continuum from “seed” – some ideas and samples, but no final structure – to “final”. Most tracks were either “draft” or “mix ready”, meaning they all needed mixing and leveling, and some needed evaluation and restructuring. Lita was still a seed – some cool ideas, but in need of development and structure. For Lita, we wound up writing a whole new B section in a minor key and recording new parts for that bit to tie the track together and give it more direction.

Step 3: Divide and Conquer

In order to make progress quickly, we split up the remaining tracks and tackled them in parallel, working on two laptops. We’d each move a track forward – arranging, writing new parts, adding effects – and then swap headphones to exchange “motes” – music notes – so that we kept the collaborative nature of the music.

Step 4 – publish

On February 8^th2014, the day that it snowed and Seattle came to a standstill, DJ Essey was at Snake’s house in Kirkland (Cats Cradle East) to put the finishing touches on the album. Because of the snow, he was unable to return to Seattle, and this provided enough time for the pair of us to finish the project. February 9^th, we published Jack in the Bucket to our online distributor, CD Baby, and it is slowly making its way to the various digital music resellers that will carry Jack in the Bucket to the world – check it out on ITunes, Spotify, and Google Play, or wait for it to appear on Amazon, Napster, Xbox music, and more.

Step 5 – repeat

The next project on our list is the collection we labeled “the new.” Retitled “A Quirky Hour for Something New” after one of the tracks in the collection (DJ Essey started this track late one night, long after the coach had changed back into a pumpkin, and the title was taken straight from Snake's bleary-eyed comment), we’ll be working on this for the next few months and hope to have it out before the end of the summer.

We have an album!

noreply@blogger.com (Cats Cradle Robbers) — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 03:32:00 +0000

We've been a couple of very busy geeks. Just 2 short years ago, we put the finishing touches on a very special project. We now are very happy parents of Abewsing The Mews.

2 years? Yeah, well, I guess neither of us realized how very busy we've become. But we finished editing and mastering, and our all-digital album is now the best kept secret on Amazon, ITunes, Spotify, and about a dozen other online retailers. Shhh... don't tell! But do go buy the album - as quietly as possible.

Here's that link again to Abewsing The Mews. Go. Now. Quick before they're all gone!

Without further ado, here's what you'll find:

Corruptional Facility

A tray full of crayons is used to great effect to simulate the transformation of childlike innocence into an army of mindless drones. Any resemblance to our own education or Pink Floyd's The Wall is purely coincidental. This track includes possibly more found objects and random samples than any other track we've done, including sawn wood, a towelful of silverware, an alto recorder, a crushed terarium, and a Bertleman slide, among many others.

The Possum and the Pea

Furry and cheerful, this community of small mammals works happily throughout the day. After dark they let their hair down at a rave, nibbling tiny mushrooms.

Salumba Parte

From the Real House Music series. Filmed on location in Snake's bedroom. No small children were harmed in the making of the samples. Not badly, anyway. Check out DJ Honey Badger's wicked snowglobe remix.

BassBanjBone (feat. Sean Fairchild)

Emmy-winning bassist Sean Fairchild of the Seattle band Chi:Child carelessly posted a video to Facebook of him practicing the bass track to his song Seattleites. He hardly recognized what we did with it.

Toasting More Often (feat. Sumit Basu)

Microsoft Researcher Sumit Basu is a frequent collaborator with the band, and a key contributor to this track in Snake's favorite time signature.

Back in Angel Parking (feat. Allen Jordan)

Allen is a former school chum of DJ Essey, and kept us just distracted enough with his wandering synth fingers to help us shape this iconic track.

Totally Frigid

dedicated to his Fiancee Salome, DJSE's goal here was to create a track that she would want to listen to. Success! She hates this track almost 15% less than our other material. We like this track because it leads the listener on a musical journey. Where do you wind up?

First Frost in the Garden

Adam eats an apple, and can't sleep all night thanks to nightful frightmares.

The Immortal Bottle

MC PaytonRose cameos here in the intro with a bevy of very nonhumansounding cetacean sounds. Snake spends the rest of the track beating a wine bottle with a hammer. No really - he pounded on that thing for nearly two full sessions before he finally got it to break.

Fall's Scents

Just when you thought we couldn't create anything lovely and lyrical, along comes this little gem. But don't let that lull you into a...

Mydas Touch (feat. Sean Fairchild)

Sean was so distrustful after that whole riff-stealing incident that he decided he needed to keep a closer eye on us. So, he came by Cats Cradle West to lay down this little ditty in which Snake shares what a few things in his life have in common.

The Way of the Ancient Robots

Snake wandered Belltown with a portable recorder for about an hour looking for something - anything - he could use to ruin this otherwise completely lovely piece of electronica from DJSE. He found about 10 people who were angry enough to lay on their horns, and a couple of girls just looking for someone - anyone - to buy them a - BOO!

That's the Shit

One of our oldest, sweetest, and shortest loops. Yeah... that's the shit.

Enjoy! Tell your friends! And, as always, just say no to boring music.

- CCR

CCR should be seen as well as heard

noreply@blogger.com (Cats Cradle Robbers) — Sat, 07 Jul 2012 21:46:00 +0000

Snake has been hard at work processing footage of our various sessions, and he's published several videos now to his YouTube channel. The approach is an amalgam of music video and documentary that attempts to entertain while giving some insight into how we create our musical constructions. Here's what we have so far:

Boiling The Ocean

Our first "boil" - in fact, this is the track that inspired the name of the process of "boiling" a room (sampling sounds that can be made using items found in that room, and making music with those sounds). DJSE and Snake take over Snake's Kirkland, Washington kitchen.

Weftovers

Journalist and hula expert Tomoku Hellman came by Cats Cradle East to research an article on the band, and wound up getting involved in the creation of this track. Snake took this excuse to play around with digital compositing techniques in Adobe After Effects. Don't miss the exploding guitar!

Truesetto

This video features Snake playing the one of a kind Lindsey fretless tenor guitar - one of our favorite instruments, which was made for Snake by luthier John Lindsey of Port Townsend in the mid-1980s. Also featuring the Electric Dih (an original creation of Snake circa 1981), and the bookmarked Gibson L6. DJSE plays phantom drums.

Toasting More Often

Sumit Basu is one of our favorite musical collaborators. This session features Sumit on ukelele and trumpet, as well as a sampled collection of junk from Snake's shed. Snake's favorite time is 5, and you can hear it in his playful bass line.

2xtar solo

The most recent Sumit collaboration is something called "Voros Nem Magyar", a work in progress which we filmed. During the session, Snake recreated the 2xtar, an instrument invented during the "Honeydew Waltz" session. Here he plays a solo on this unique instrument.

Honeydew Waltz

Snake allowed us a sneak peek at this video in progress. Honeydew waltz is our most ambitious boil to date, and he's working his way through all of the footage to create a richly layered impressionistic experience. Here's the first part of the video-in-progress.

What's in a name? - Cats Cradle Robbers demystified, by Snake

noreply@blogger.com (One Piece A Day) — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 05:42:00 +0000

People sometimes ask how we came up with the name Cats Cradle Robbers.

When I was a kid, we used to play this game with string that you may be familiar with. Cats cradle involves forming a figure with a loop of string between your two hands. Your partner then takes the string in a specific way and forms a new figure through the act of taking the string. This is a creative back and forth cooperative process; a game of digital capoeira if you will. Really good players can make up new figures as they go.

The Robber in Cats Cradle is the person who takes the string away and turns it into something new and surprising. I don't know if this is a common term, or just something we made up - I haven't been able to find any reference to it online. I like to think DJSE and I play a sort of Cats Cradle game with music as we pass it back and forth, taking turns being the Robber and adding something new and surprising with each pass. So, we're the Cats Cradle Robbers.

You're welcome.

-Snake

Tone Poems

noreply@blogger.com (Cats Cradle Robbers) — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 21:47:00 +0000

A lot of the time we start out a session with no agenda – Essey lays down some beats, or I start some riff or other. The mood of the piece evolves as we add more sounds. Sometimes, the music starts to suggest a story or an idea, and we follow the suggestion. Other times, we start with a specific idea in mind. This week, we spent a Saturday afternoon working on a Bhangra-inspired construction whose working title was “One Thousand Lawyers” (more about how we come up with track names in a future post).

Bhangra is a form of music from the Punjab region of India. Its origins are in folk dancing, but the infectious rhythms and the unique sounds of the folk instruments have spawned a whole genre of Indian house music. I wanted to see if we could replicate that sound and add our own stamp to the format, pulling in a funky bass line, and atypical instruments such as the Afro-Brazilian berimbau and our usual assortment of found-object percussion.

My typical attitude towards vocals in music is to treat them as musical elements, not as lyrical elements. The actual words, if there are words at all, are often an afterthought. But as we evolved the Bhangra construction, it seemed to call for a vocal, and so we started scribbling down lyric ideas, starting with a melody and a rhythm, and trying to fit vowel sounds to the shape of the music. What we came up with evoked the idea of stumbling home in a monsoon rain through chaotic streets after a night of clubbing in Mumbai. Here are the words, starting at 2:52, to what we’re currently calling “Acid-Washed Dreams”:

Here are a few other examples of constructions that started with no specific idea and evolved into stories:

The Possum and the Pea
Whimsical woodland creatures go about their oddly anthropomorphic business with a happy demeanor. In the evening, they go to a rave.

Nice Driveway
A down and out Slavic musician belts out a traditional Russian folk tune on the street outside a seedy bar after too much vodka.

Corruptional facility
Students are routinely brainwashed at a school staffed by jack-booted fascists (I imagine this is the same school we met in Pink Floyd’s “another brick in the wall”).

First Frost in the Garden
Adam tosses and turns through the longest night in Eden, his head filled with disturbing dreams, while Eve is off on a sinister and unprecedented errand.

That's all for today, cradle critters. Enjoy!

-Snake

Hot off the press - the new Weftovers video by Snake!

noreply@blogger.com (Cats Cradle Robbers) — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 08:01:00 +0000

DJ Essey and I have been hard at work constructing new audio works - check out the media page at http://catscradlerobbers.com to see what's new (I'm particularly partial to Dewy Iris, and our latest track "1000 Lawyers" is a Bhangra-inspired sketch that should grow into something really interesting in time).

I work a bit slower in the video department, but I've finally completed the music video for Weftovers. This started with footage shot during the initial session with Tomo Hoku at Ed's place, and I took off from there, using this project as a testbed for a number of advanced digital compositing and animation techniques I've been learning in my spare time.

So, for example, I augmented the original footage with shots of myself practicing Capoeira, my daughter and I on the trampoline, and a number of shots taken against the orange and green walls of my living room and front hallway. On the evening that Ed arrived at my place to create "Fall's Scents", he walked into an improvised green screen studio where I coerced him into lip-syncing his own poem in order to build the facial morphs for the poem sequence in the video.

Enough chatter - on to the video. Enjoy, and please post feedback!

- Snake

CCR goes international with a feature in Prairie Magazine

noreply@blogger.com (Cats Cradle Robbers) — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 18:11:00 +0000

Our good friend Tomoko Hoku Hellman writes an occasional piece for the Japanese-language Prairie Magazine. We were delighted when she wanted to do a piece on the band. For those of you who can follow along in Japanese, the article is online here:

http://www.sumutoko.com/chicago/prairie-backnumber/hoku/2009/0910/0910.htm

For those who prefer English, here is a rough translation:

Construction of Sound

Cats Cradle Robbers

Boiling the Ocean

Weftovers

Hoku

Nick

Hoku

Nick

Hoku

Nick

Hoku

Nick

Kickin’ in Rio

Hoku

Nick

Jack In the Bucket

Toasting More Often

Hoku

Nick and Ed

http/catscradlerobbers.com