I am very proud to announce that my 45th album, a rock-pop work, has just hit the streaming services.
It’s called The Green, Green Gas of Home and it’s been released under the name of my musical act, Salon de la Guerre. I recorded it over the summer. It’s a New Wave-y album with environmental and apocalyptic themes that touches on issues of dementia and memory, things that have affected those near to my heart. It’s got a little soul and a little krautrock.
A lot of the album was recorded with my Logic Pro software instruments, though I snuck in a guitar performance for sonic texture. As much as I loved working with my collaborator Christina E., who did some vocals on my last album, the latest work is, once again, all me all the time in my one-man-band mode.
I describe the album this way on my Bandcamp page:
“Salon de la Guerre’s 45th album is a mix of uptempo pop, rock and electronic songs with apocalyptic overtones about environmental calamity, mental decline, and the economies that emerge from civil collapse, as well as the toll these phenomena take on our families and interpersonal relationships. It’s also got a dose of hope.”
For those of you counting, I now have 586 songs in circulation. If you’re asking, “Does this guy have some kind of weird obsession with counting his songs in the hundreds, and is he excited somehow to say that he’s written almost 600 songs?” The answer is yes and yes. Asked and answered. Sue me.
You can now find The Green, Green Gas of Home available for streaming on services such as Pandora, Amazon Music, Apple Music, Bandcamp, YouTube and Spotify, among other many other platforms both domestic and global. (I still don’t offer physical media like CDs or vinyl, though I can always dream … one day … maybe … )
As usual, the album was written, arranged, performed and produced by me in my home studio in New York City. The album’s cover photo of the child in the gas mask is by Lisa5201.
I am very proud to announce the release of Salon de la Guerre’s 38th album, a work of electronic music with futuristic themes called How Do You Bleep? As of today, the album is available on all the major streaming services, including Apple Music, Amazon, Spotify, Pandora, YouTube and Bandcamp.
As I say on my music page, the album is a work of electronica and dance numbers with lyrics on futurism. The songs are often about robots and their attempts to live like humans in a world where humans are noticeably absent. The album imagines a future of both plenty and scarcity and ponders when feelings (such as love) are both natural and programmed.
Why this? Why now? After all, just four days ago I put out a classical album, and the week before that a slate of folk songs, coming on the heels of a garage rock album a couple of months ago and another classical album a month before that. I’m starting to sheepishly feel as if I’m watering the world with too much music, released in a schizophrenic genres, to the dismay and consternation and possible irritation of my few fans.
The answer is straightforward: A lot of this stuff had simply been backing up.
In 2022, I consciously decided to stop making music for a while. I’d just put out a garage rock album I was quite proud of and thought it might represent the height of my abilities; I thought maybe I should turn my attention back to fiction. Because I can’t help twiddling, however, I decided to put a bunch of electronica bleeps together with my wonderful Logic Pro X software, inspired by Talking Heads songs and some other acts. Rather than rush to finish it, I asked a friend if he’d like to collaborate. He’s a busy guy, so he toyed with one song but otherwise had to go back to his many other more fruitful endeavors.
So there my electronica album of goofball bleeps sat for two years gathering dust. After I finished the first draft of a novel in 2023, I started thinking of music again, especially when my son said he wanted help with a music project. So I pulled out my prized RODE shotgun boom mic, the same one my wife and I used to shoot The Retributioners. Real musicians laugh at me, but I used this mic for a decade to record all Salon de la Guerre vocals. I liked its sound. I also didn’t want to plunge $400 into a dedicated studio mic, one that might not plug into my iPhone. (Again, I jam econo.) But last year my RODE finally died and I had to slosh around some funds so I could purchase better gear. That took some time to iron out.
At the same time, I’d started gathering together some folk songs, since I tend to write songs so often these days I’m often doing it in my sleep. Here, too, I was frustrated because the very old guitar my late mother had given me developed a buzzy fret. It ruined the sound of some of my fragile folk numbers. I was looking at either spending a lot of money to fix a very old instrument or replacing it altogether (I don’t get sentimental about much anymore, but I make an exception for this workhorse dreadnought acoustic guitar. … Did I mention my late mother bought it for me?) I walked the thing down to a basement in the Village, where an old longhair whose workshop was not much bigger than a walk-in closet gazed over my acoustic guitar, threw it into a vise, gave it two or three sharp thwacks with a hammer, and immediately removed the buzz. He said he didn’t need cash but instead offered to take possession of a broken practice bass I’d brought along. It was the most 1960s transaction ever.
By the end of last year, I had all the gear I needed to not only dive back into new material but to finally yank my electronic album out of mothballs and finish the vocals.
Sorry for the long story.
How Do You Bleep? was composed and performed by me in my home studio in 2022 and 2024. I produced all the tracks except for one: “Lead Me To Your Robot Heaven in the Mountains,” which which was co-produced by my brilliant friend Christian Montalbano. Christian thought the Logic Pro sounds in my original version were a bit cheesy and he switched them out for better instruments and offered a more fluid beat, for which I’m eternally grateful. You can check out Christian’s amazing music here.
I also provided the cover art for this one. You can listen to a sample of the new album here:
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.
Eric R. Rasmussen is a novelist, composer, journalist and filmmaker. He is the author of ten novels, including the three-volume work The Ghost and the Hemispheres. He is the sole force behind the musical act Salon De La Guerre. And he is the writer/director of the online Web comedy series “The Retributioners” starring Stephanie Faith Scott.
Beauty is Imperfection 