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Archive for the ‘Salon De La Guerre’ Category

My Next Alt-Rock Album, ‘Stereoisomer,’ To Hit The Market Soon

Posted in Music, Salon De La Guerre, tagged , , , , , on March 20, 2022| Leave a Comment »

Stereoisomer

Salon de la Guerre is releasing its 32nd album in a few weeks. It’s titled Stereoisomer, and I’m sharing the title track and a few others on Soundcloud today.

Most of the album is unabashedly loud, raunchy, guitar-driven hard rock. After releasing my previous album in November, I set about trying to get a brighter guitar sound than I’d previously achieved with my home recording equipment, and I finally found the magic formula. After that, I knocked out most of the basic tracks in a couple of weekends in December. But then I had to figure out how my voice was going to get around all these bigger electric thrashing sounds (a problem I’ve heard discussed by rockers as diverse as Sting and Iggy Pop). There’s a practical reason heavy metal singers use loud, overblown voices, and I’ve gradually figured out what it is: Big Guitar doesn’t leave much room in the sound picture, and the best singers have to float above it. Then there are people like me who have to fake it.

I also had to figure out which lyrics best suited this particular instrumental attack I’d come up with. That took me a few months. As it happens, there are plenty of things in the world to be angry about (I’m looking at you, Russia) and turning your despair into angry expression is an emancipating act that sometimes only art affords you.

“Stereoisomer”

I shed the costume and now I’m chased by snow drops
Had to shed my parachute gear
Had to let go of the octopus gravity
A Dutch girl crying wish you were here 

Blown out face of a Jugendstil building
Looks like we landed in the zone
I’m a nationless man finding the pins in keyholes
A traitor with a rubber for a soul

Wore a pig costume
Hair done page
Now I enter the metafiction stage
Don’t know love from rage
The human cell is acting its age

Behold the age of aromatic polymers
Benzene rings and nylon legs
Sometimes it’s scary the way things crystallize
Show you the girl, the life you left behind

Did you hear the propellant stop burning
That’s when the V-2 started to fall
See it etch the tomato sky of morning
Hope we live to be amazed by it all

Wore a pig costume
You’re on my cape
Never left the re-entry stage
But the eukaryotic cell plays
Plastic man in a plastic age 

And when I broke, broke through the wall
I found a chemical lab and scored it all
Please send word to Truman
I’m sorry that I’m AWOL

Copyright 2022 Eric Randolph Rasmussen

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My First Music Video: ‘Lanternfly’

Posted in Music, Salon De La Guerre, tagged , , , , on November 23, 2021| 2 Comments »

Salon de la Guerre has released its first music video. It’s for the song “Lanternfly,” which appears on the album Wings Made of Cash. The video was directed by yours truly.

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My Latest Album, ‘Wings Made of Cash,’ Now Available

Posted in Music, Salon De La Guerre, tagged , , , , , on November 16, 2021| Leave a Comment »

Wings Made of Cash

I’ve hit a couple of milestones recently in my musical career. One is that I copyrighted my 400th song. I’m also starting to put together what will be my first music video–a mix of animation and photography.

And last but not least is the fact that Salon de la Guerre’s 31st album is available as of this week! It’s a 20-song cycle of pop, rock and electronic silliness about money and obsession and money obsession, as well as the various ways people flail about trying to make themselves happy and follow their own existential bliss.

The album is called Wings Made of Cash, and it’s out on Amazon, iTunes, Spotify, YouTube and other places where music is still sold.

I spent the summer recording this album (along with two classical albums and an ambient album) after getting my hands on Apple’s Logic Pro X software. As I’ve mentioned previously, this was my first time working with a musical score editor, and now that I’m writing in musical notation, I’m finding myself more prolific than ever. Part of my philosophy of music, after all, is to keep things new by changing the approach every so often. I once put Sonic Youth sounds to marching band rhythms. Later, I tried mixing Maybelle Carter’s guitar strumming with Thurston Moore’s alternative tuning. I once tried to mix country music with avant-garde microtonal experiments. I have an album called Yipano in which I improvise a bunch of songs on my son’s keyboard and let the audience in on the intimate and embarrassing fact that I’m very much learning to play the piano in real time.

Sorry to sound like I’m shilling for the late Steve Jobs, but the Apple software has opened a new and magical window in my brain that’s let me conceive many different new musical ideas that I’ll likely be investigating well into the future. For my next act, I’ll likely start plugging real musical instruments into the program (I used only MIDI instruments for this and the three other albums I made over the summer) to see what different sounds emerge.

Wings Made of Cash was composed, arranged, performed and produced by yours truly at my home studio in New York City during the summer of 2021. I also designed the cover. The male model photo is by an artist named “FatSprat” that I came by on a photo service.

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A String Quartet For Your Dog

Posted in Music, Salon De La Guerre, tagged , , , on November 3, 2021| Leave a Comment »

Dog photo by Irina Kashaeva

I know that I promised you a pop music album, and damn it, I’m trying to live up to that promise. But in the meantime, I’ve managed to string together another classical piece.

The Dog Opus is my 30th album, and it just hit the virtual shelves. It was conceived as a string quartet but synthesized on my computer. I was inspired by Sergei Prokofiev’s “String Quartet No. 1” (Opus 50) and “String Quartet No. 2” (Opus 92, “Kabardinian.”) I used the two violin synthesizers on Apple’s Logic Pro X, as well as the electronic viola and cello. I am not sure how well these would transpose to actual instruments, but I do have the score, and maybe someday in the future if I found amenable musicians … who knows? I’ll leave smarter people than I to decide what key I’m playing in.

Why a dog quartet? Well, I was running out of the family members I normally put on my classical works.

The Dog Opus, released under the name of my musical act Salon de la Guerre, is now available on Amazon, iTunes, Spotify, YouTube and other places where music is streamed and (still) sold.

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Cold For Mars

Posted in Music, Salon De La Guerre, tagged , , on October 1, 2021| Leave a Comment »

In a few days, I’ll be releasing another album on the major music platforms. This one’s an ambient album and it’s called Cold For Mars. I’ve avoided making ambient albums in the past because I felt they were too easy to create, and if I were to pursue that line indefinitely, I could be making 20 albums a year and producing even more noise pollution than I do now. That’s not to say I don’t greatly admire acts like Four Tet and Bonobo and Oneohtrix Point Never. And I love Brian Eno’s ambient albums, of course. Furthermore, I understand the great need people have for albums with a hallucinatory effect and their need to chill out to them.

I suppose I could have called my album Golem Vs. Duende ambient, but it was closer to industrial and I’m not sure it’s something anybody chilled to.

In any case, I’ve released the latest album early on Bandcamp, and you can find it there if you’d like to sample it and decide if it’s your thing.

As usual, I composed and recorded the album myself at my home studio in New York City. I conceived of, recorded it and mastered it over the course of eight days. (My other albums this year took quite a bit longer, that includes my next album, Wings Made of Cash–a pop work that is taking a bit more time to fuss over.)

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‘The Black Sheep Symphony’ Now Available

Posted in Music, Salon De La Guerre, tagged , , , on September 28, 2021| Leave a Comment »

Check out The Black Sheep Symphony, a modern classical work I composed over the summer. It’s now available now available on iTunes, Amazon, Spotify and YouTube and appears under the name of my musical act, “Salon de la Guerre.” This is my 28th album and my fourth symphony. It was composed, arranged and produced by yours truly.

It’s a sequel of sorts to my albums Gravitas: A Life, The Widowhood of Bunny and Infinity Boy.

I’ve got a couple of other albums following close on the heels of this one if this isn’t quite your bag. One’s pop and one’s ambient. If you’re into it … enjoy!

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The Black Sheep Symphony

Posted in Music, Salon De La Guerre, tagged , , , on September 18, 2021| Leave a Comment »

In the next few weeks, I’ll be putting out a crazy amount of music, including my 28th, 29th and 30th albums. The first one is another contemporary classical piece called The Black Sheep Symphony, part of a series of sorts I’ve developed around a fictional family and their individual biographies (it started in 2016 with Gravitas: A Life, followed by The Widowhood of Bunny in 2017 and Infinity Boy in 2019. The new work continues with some of those same musical themes, but also allowed me the opportunity to get familiar with my new music software Logic Pro.

I have no mission statement for this music nor theory of tonal or microtonal music to discuss, just an abiding love for Prokofiev and Stravinsky and occasionally the mercurial Harry Partch.

The album that will follow this one is a 20-song collection of pop music, but I’ll leave that discussion for another time.

Like many people, my family has endured a bit of turmoil over the past 18 months (though our issues were not directly related to the Covid-19 pandemic). I even thought I might have to stop making music for a while. But then I found a lot of time at home with a new computer and new software–whose musical notation function has allowed me to compose every day and done wonders for my creative flow.

Again, if you’re into it, here’s a sample of The Black Sheep Symphony. As usual, it was composed, arranged and produced by yours truly. (Photo credit: Tatyana Maximova.)

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My New Album is Punky

Posted in Music, Salon De La Guerre, tagged , , , , , , , , , on May 17, 2021| Leave a Comment »

Salon de la Guerre’s 27th album, Digital Moon, is now available on Amazon, Spotify, iTunes, Pandora, and other sites where music is streamed or sold. The new album is mostly punk and alternative rock influenced by the likes of the Ramones, Husker Du, the Replacements and the Pixies.

As I say on my Bandcamp page, it’s a work on the themes of politics, futurism, environmentalism, the desire for outer space and how we’re also still chained to more worldly human desire. The album considers the ramifications of the plastic that we are shedding into our breathable air, the spirituality that is either gained or lost by our automobiles, the desire to orbit the Earth and the yearning for things such as robots and Real Dolls that sometimes free us to live to our spiritual potential and sometimes hold us back.

I made the album at my home studio in New York, and it features instrumental guitar performances alongside a lot of electronic tomfoolery.

As always, the album was written, performed and produced by yours truly.

Here’s a sample of the latest album:

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My New Album ‘Hugs For Mountains’ Is Now Available

Posted in Music, Salon De La Guerre, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on May 13, 2021| Leave a Comment »

The 26th album by Salon de la Guerre, Hugs for Mountains, is now available on Amazon, iTunes, Spotify, Pandora and other services where music is streamed or downloaded.

The album is a melding of electronica and folk music, gothic rock and New Wave, inspired by acts such as Four Tet, the Talking Heads, Lene Lovich, Gia Margaret, Public Image Limited and Throbbing Gristle. I’ve previously used aggressive sampling and noise in my albums, but generally limited that to experimental instrumental albums such as Liberty and Golem Vs. Duende. In Hugs for Mountains, I add lyrics and put these noises and samples in pop and folk music contexts. Some of the samples are of musical instruments (like my now returned rented saxophone), while others are developed from household items like notebooks and vacuum cleaners and my own breath.

I made this album concurrently with my next album, Digital Moon, which I hope to release next week. As always, the songs were written performed, produced and arranged by me, and I recorded them in my New York City home studio on GarageBand for iPhone.

Check out a sample of the new album at Bandcamp:

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My New Album, ‘Hugs For Mountains’

Posted in Music, Salon De La Guerre, tagged , , on April 22, 2021| Leave a Comment »

Salon de la Guerre has two new albums coming out in the next couple of months. One of those, Hugs for Mountains is an experimental album inspired by gothic rock and ambient music. There are no instrumental tracks, but there are abundant samples and sound collages, some soothing, some aggressive.

The album takes the sampling and experimental classical approaches of my albums Liberty and Golem Vs. Duende and adds pop lyrics to them to see if something new and interesting happens.

As always, the album was written, performed, produced and arranged by yours truly at my home studio. Copyright 2021.

Here’s a sample. Enjoy!

“Someone Else’s Night”

You can’t say it’s yours
You know it’s not right
You won’t take her home
It’s someone else’s night

And when there’s 10 of you
There’s going to be a fight
The armbands come out
It’s someone else’s night

It’s an incel army
They can’t express their love
They do the opposite
They’re going to push and shove

And find someone to blame
For hogging all their light
The hate mongers come out
It’s someone else’s night

And you walk alone
You ain’t got no place
Morals got no home
Morals got no face

Terror strikes your heart
Cause hate consumes the light
No place to call home
It’s someone else’s night.

Copyright 2021. Eric Randolph Rasmussen

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