Lost Sessions is Tired of Dreaming’s first release since 2009’s Three Pass System. One of the reasons there’s been such a lag in released material is that I lost a lot of recordings when a computer went kaput. This is also why I have a number of my personal releases with “(Lost Session)” in the title as a marker. Unfortunately, Tired of Dreaming had material that was not spared from this fate. But three of ToD’s songs were in good enough condition for release… down in California… on a CD-R. CD-R’s often acquire scratches, so I was a little worried until I had it in hand!

Luckily, it was in perfect shape. We added one more song (A Wasted Life), and there you have it: our Lost Sessions EP. Take a listen! :D

This album can be downloaded for free on Bandcamp. It is also available on iTunes and Spotify!

-Brian

Just taking a moment to say I’m thoroughly enjoying Garbage’s new album, “Not Your Kind of People.”

I sometimes wonder what it would be like to bring a person from the past to our future. What would it be like to experience a future that was inconceivable? But I’m starting to realize that it works both ways. Even though I know (to an extent) how our ancestors lived, I cannot conceive of what it must have been like. I’m constantly barraged with things competing for my attention. Smells, sounds, visuals, stories, theories, etc. Even the lights in my house pump into my optical cells, well beyond what nature intended, screwing up my circadian rhythm. I’m fucking tired, dudes and dudettes. And I find myself stepping back more and more, evaluating wisdom that lays in our past; natural wisdom that we’ve lost touch with. When was the last time my feet touched real ground? Too long, that’s how long.

THE MUSIC

Like Isabelle, my last release, the lyrics for Little Sister go way back. The truth is, I probably would have recorded this song five years ago if not for one nagging fact: the chorus and verses use the same chord progression. I kept putting the song on the back burner, just in case I found some way of switching it up that I liked. But every time I played through it, Little Sister would tell me, “This is right. This is how I’m supposed to be.” I finally wised up and listened to her; not surprisingly, she knew what she needed.

The only other thing I can think to say about this song is that it has my love of Neil Young and Oasis proudly shining through.

THE ART

A lot of my music stems from my subconscious; a lot of my lyrics know something about me before I do. Some of them are even written in my dreams. Little Sister isn’t really one of those songs, though. Sure, it most likely represents a wide range of relationships with friends and family that I’ve had over the years, and my subconscious has probably evaluated, compared and learned from them, leading to the distillation that is this song… but the lyrics don’t offer up much mystery. The cover, on the other hand, does.

What this cover means, I can’t tell you. But something inside said it was right for this release (drawn ~2010, I believe). I haven’t tried to decipher what I’m telling myself with it… not sure I ever will.

This song is available for free here and should be on Spotify soon. It’s also on iTunes.

THE MUSIC

This song is definitely one of my more experimental ones (thus far), and I’m not so sure it’s for everyone. The lyrics sat in a notebook for years, waiting to be put to music, and the original concept, which can be heard in the song’s beginning moments, waited in my head. The time eventually arrived where Isabelle NEEDED to be explored. So that’s what happened. It was supposed to be a fairly easy song to record, but like so many of the “easy” ones, it spiraled into a monster. It took a lot of time. It took a lot of time, AND I don’t think many people will enjoy it that much… but I’m proud of it. :)

Also, this song is the recording premier of The Doctor, a guitar given to me by my good friend, Alice.

THE ART

The artwork goes back many years (~2003?). In fact, it was my first attempt at painting. It’s drab; a perfect cover for Isabelle.

I like George Lucas, because he doesn’t give a fuck what you think.

After some time off for holidays and power outages (the weather was pretty crazy recently), I’m happy to say new material is on its way! SOON! :D

I have been reading Man and His Symbols, which was edited and partially written by Carl G. Jung. This is my first introduction to Jung’s work, which deals a lot with the psychology of mankind, especially in regards to archetypes and dreams. I plan on writing more about his work in the near future, but I wanted to take a moment to observe how absolutely BIZARRE it is to be psychoanalyzing my dreams from childhood. It’s both exhilarating and scary to discover aspects of my psyche that I wasn’t very (if at all) consciously aware of. I’d imagine this is how Bastian felt in The Neverending Story (a movie full of archetypes!) when he realizes the book he’s reading is about himself. I had to take a break to process all of it, and to enjoy a truly rare breed of adventure. Exciting times, indeed. :D

As the year comes to an end, I find myself reflecting on what 2011 has brought into my life. The truth is, it has, without a doubt, been the most consciously formative year of my life.

I found out during the summer that, for lack of a technical term, I was sick. I was waking up close to clinical hypothermia every morning, which was the result of a massively slow metabolism in recent years, and for making me feel like shit, both physically and mentally. I am currently in the process of recovering. But even though I felt like shit, my life was slowly getting better, and the discovery of some root causes was a natural progression of that.

But what’s the lesson I learned from all of this? It is that living with a system that is unsustainable is no way to live at all. It doesn’t matter if it has to do with relationships, finances, nutrition, work, or physical and mental health; an environment that is not symbiotic will continuously unravel towards failure, all the while causing the degradation of its keeper.

This being said, I guess I’m getting to the real point of this blog entry: my New Year’s resolution. I don’t think I’ve ever made a REAL New Year’s resolution… I mean, one that I’ve REALLY been intent on seeing through. But given my growing appreciation for the peace and harmony that results from a self-sustaining system, I think it makes a lot of sense to consider the topic of adaptability.

In 2012, I hope to become better at adapting. But that doesn’t mean letting others’ crap-beliefs about what I should do, or be, influence me. Adapting, in the truest sense, means changing for the sake of one’s well-being. Letting others dictate to one about one’s life just creates that many more unsustainable systems. When mental health is compromised, physical health is compromised, and vice versa; neither of which is good for the individual OR society.

I hope you all have a wonderful year to come with many, many more. Happy 2012, People. :)

THE ART
I’ve always been fascinated with special effects in films. One of the greatest techniques that’s ever been used is to simply make a model, and that’s exactly what I decided to do for the cover of this single. I went to my local Home Depot, kinda-sorta pieced something together on the spot, came home, and made it happen. Some pictures of my prop robot coming together follow.

The Start! Coffee included!

Springy feet!

Arms!

Head!

Tanning!

Tanned!

Hanging out!!

BZZT? BZZT?

Photo shoot!

Annnd… the final product!

THE NAME
The name I chose for this one is Alien Robotics… Or Robotic Aliens (abbreviated, ARORA sounds better than RAOAR). I always enjoy naming instrumentals, because the simplicity of a name can say so much, much like a sutra. As for the meaning behind the name, I’d like to leave it pretty open to interpretation. But the one thing I will say is that I’m often interested in concepts that are widely discussed but never defined by consensus. Some examples would be God, love, and consciousness.

THE MUSIC

The music for this one is definitely more experimental. And I can’t say I’m really that surprised given how it was recorded. The summer of 2005 would find me in a hotel room in Lake Oswego, OR, for three days. I was determined to record an entire album’s worth of material in my time there. The drapes were closed, the lights were off, the A/C was blasting, and I was coming down with a serious case of cabin fever from a small room and the claustrophobia of headphones. The results sounded like someone losing their mind. Most of this song was recorded in that 3-day binge, but I did add some guitar, a touch of theremin, and some sound effects afterwards. The end result, in my opinion, is a track that is intense but somehow manages to have a quirky sense of humor. I hope you enjoy it, and I hope it makes you dance like a robot.

My music can be found for free on Spotify and right here. It’s also available on iTunes.