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:
Beauty is Imperfection 