It’s pretty good solid indie-pop, and thus I’m sharing…

Chris Koza‘s Live at the Pearl album was released yesterday. The session was recorded a few weeks ago and showcases songs that Chris wrote and performed while on tour with Stephen Kellogg, Tift Merritt, and Brandi Carlile.

iTunes pre-order and stream link.

New remix from Chicago production duo The-Drum of Bird Call’s “Phantom Limbs.”

Here’s the video for the title track from Okta Logue‘s forthcoming “Transit” EP (out 5/14 on Columbia).

In the absence of experience using other ambient music engines that run in the background creating entirely original music on an infinite loop, I have to say I’m impressed.

Via Ross:

I have created an organic music system that takes random data and converts it into music. The system performs itself, will play for eternity if left on, and will never repeat the same sounds twice.

There is something to be said about the ethereal nature my work has taken on through this process; through the disorder and chaos of randomized synthetic technology, I have created an organic life form that understands the order and poetry of human emotion.

To sum up Sleeping Dragon in one word: foreboding.

Here’s a 45 minute example from Ross himself. Hit play and keep reading:

Back here on my machine, I’ve tried playing around with chromatic, ionian, locrian, octatonic and the other scale structures the program lets you select. For each scale, I switched between A, C, D, G, F# and D#. Then I sort of forgot about it and let it run in the background doing it’s own thing.

After 90 minutes of just letting my computer craft the music, I have to say I’m kind of freaking myself out. If you’ve ever found yourself in a gallery…say, like a science museum gallery exhibit about planets or quarks or plasticized body parts (something more or less foreign). And say you’ve found yourself in that gallery and you look around and you’re all by yourself and it’s quite cold and you realize you have to go to the restroom but aren’t sure where it is and if it’s worth bothering to ask anyone. So you’re looking around this cold exhibit with all of that going on.

You know that moment, right? We’ve all been there. And right at that moment, if you listen closely, this is the kind of music that’s playing in the background.

Oh, and there may be a murder that’s about to occur. But that was a given this entire time.

Here’s a quick video tutorial of how the software works:

And frankly, the music Ross has in that above sample is 500% lighter than the stuff coming out of my speakers right now. I’ll keep playing with the settings until I can pull some pinks and greens out of this. Right now it’s all black, gray and crimson red.

And I may need to sleep with the light on tonight.

Download links for Mac and PC

Update: I got a note from Ross that he didn’t use his software to create the above clip. That’s a relief. And now back to your regularly scheduled ambient music software…

Stream their entire LP at Bandcamp.

On a bit of a punk kick this week.

And yes, the singer plays a cello on stage. How very punk.