monthly digital single

The Old Becomes New, And Then Immediately Becomes Old Again.

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Hello people:

The October Frogtown is now online! Sorry: no special pumpkin spice version this month, just the usual crunchy frog flavour.


A couple other new things have been posted this month in addition to the new Frogtown monthly digital single:



Freshly rescued from oblivion is the irr. app. (ext.) / R K Faulhaber collaboration ‘Corriente Trifásico‘. This project was created between 2007 and 2008 with the intention that it would be released as a set of three 7″ records: a format that seemed appropriate given the paired nature of the tracks. To start with, Mr. Faulhaber and I both created new tracks around 5 minutes long; we then exchanged the tracks and reworked the other’s material into two new tracks, and then exchanged the reworkings and reworked them again into two more tracks. Manufacturing vinyl has always been a bit beyond my resources and I couldn’t get a label interested in releasing the set, so the project has been languishing in my digital dungeon ever since. 13 years later, it is finally breathing the sweet air of freedom in a wider and wilder world.

Hey! Take a gander at R K Faulhaber’s very own Bandcamp page: rkfaulhaber.bandcamp.com. Tell him Boris sent you.



Also new this month is a digital version of the very limited single-sided LP + single-sided 7″ release from 2011, ‘The Other Side Is Blank‘. This record was inspired by a vivid dream and is dedicated to David Jackman. Some other out-of-print archival releases are still in the process of being prepared for digital downloadableness, but this one was basically ready to go already so it got bumped to the front of the line.

happy fall to all,

–msw

Autumn Arrives In Frogtown

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Hi Everyone,

The new Frogtown single has been posted! This month’s installment has a special guest appearance by Joy Von Spain on all three of the tracks. Joy is a multi-talented creative powerhouse that works with the bands Eye Of Nix and To End It All, as well as doing her own varied solo and collaborative projects. Here are some of her BC links:

joyvonspain.bandcamp.com
eyeofnix.bandcamp.com
toenditall.bandcamp.com

For the single, I primarily made use of some vocal sources from one of her new tracks, although they are frequently made to sound somewhat un-voice-like. In exchange, I’ll be contributing a remix of the track to a forthcoming release.


Also fresh on the slab is ‘Auspur‘, a mini-album of brand new material. The nature-oriented themes used for ‘Exhausted Bee’ have carried over into this one, and I suppose both could be considered as part of a series.

More soon! More later!

Happy autumn to everyone!
–msw

Bees & Frogs & Junk

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Hello all:

A new batch has been posted for this month’s Fee-less Friday.

The new Frogtown single features very special guest Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson! Siggi sent me a large batch of sounds to work with, and some other collaborative projects between us are in the works. Track one features some of his vocal loops & sounds transformed into backing for brain-damaged easy listening free-to-the-point-of-indecency jazz/dub/rock. Track two is a multi-purpose instructional soundscape constructed entirely from Siggi’s diverse sources.

The second new release is ‘Exhausted Bee‘, a heartfelt tribute to an intrepid pollinator that just couldn’t endure the unusually hot temperatures in Oregon this year. The graphics feature several intimate portraits of this fallen voyager, and the audio includes some of the activities of his comrades.

The third item is ‘Skran‘, a boisterous thump-fest that owes a debt to a syndicated dream from the previous century.

As always, more is in the works. And another special guest will be featured for the next visit to Frogtown!

best wishes to all,

–msw

Another Bandcamp Friday

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Bandcamp has resumed its fee-less Fridays, so, as before, I have delayed the release of the monthly single to coincide with that day. As of one o’clock this morning, the new Frogtown is now available.

Also posted today, just minutes ago, is the new narrative/conceptual project ‘The Hairless Communiqué‘, an examination of the peculiar history of an implausible individual. Copious graphic & text materials are included with the download to aid in your understanding.

Next month’s Frogtown single will feature special guest artist Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson, and some other very special guests are already lined up for the remainder of the series. Next month I hope to have some other pending projects completed, and will also finally get started on the task of cleaning up all the sources for the first irr. album from 1997 {along with a number of bonus materials).

all the best to all,

–msw

Frogtown Heatwave

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Once again, I’m a bit later with the Frogtown single than I had planned… I always seem to end up on the first Friday of the month now regardless of whether Bandcamp is having a no-fee day. I was fully on schedule to get it posted on Wednesday, but these tracks turned out to be particularly challenging to mix properly, and I’d rather do the best I can and be a little late than do an inadequate job just to get it out on time. They’re also a bit longer than the usual Frogtown tracks. There might be something extra thrown in as well.

The special guests featured this month are the fabulous duo of Andrew & Melon Liles. Modifications of Andrew’s sounds form the foundation of track 1 before all the goofy hoopla was added on top, and they figure into all of the other tracks to some extent. Melon’s voice was used to create all of the non-instrument sounds in track 2, and most of the time Andrew’s sounds were employed as the means of modifying it. Derivations of her voice are used in all the other tracks as well, in obvious or subtle ways. Huge thanks and big, froggy love to the Lileses for agreeing to participate in this project!

best wishes to all
–msw

May Frogtown Finally: New Advanced Formula With Added Faulhaber!

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Hi all,

I finally got the Frogtown MDS for May finished and posted. It took a few days longer than I had hoped, but some external impediments and internal variations slowed me down. This installment features guest contributor R K Faulhaber, who allowed me to use some of his sounds for the ‘R K Froghaupper’ portrait track; the original track took an unplanned detour into drone-rock neverland, so I decided to do a second track that is exclusively derived from manipulation of the RKF source material. I already had a good alternate selected from the ‘Froghaupper’ portrait shoot, so it seemed appropriate — maybe even preordained. Anyhow, apologies for the delay, and hope you enjoy the new single. More guest appearances are lined up for next month’s single, and a few more are planned for later in the year!

–msw

A New Batch

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Hello all:

A new batch of irr. releases has been posted to coincide with possibly the final Bandcamp fee-less Friday.

First is the new ‘Legends Of Frogtown’ monthly digital single. This is perhaps my favourite of the series so far. It’s unnerving to think I’m already close to halfway through.

Second is the second installment of the ‘Isolation Fragments’ series. The post includes the original 22-minute version plus the 6-ish minute version edited for use as the video soundtrack. The video can be found on my YouTube channel here.

Third is the electronic/tonal/textural fable ‘An Imaginary Machine Dreams Of Becoming Meat’. This album is maybe a bit closer to old school electro-acoustic music than I usually get.

Last in the new batch is ‘Gently Easing A Lifetime Of Apprehension Out Through A Bathroom Window And Into A Shrub’, a meditation on the ever-shifting nature of existence that moves between pastoral interludes, dense object clusters, and situational incidentuaries.

I’m really pleased with this particular batch! I really enjoyed making all of these. There are a couple more ongoing projects that I couldn’t manage to finish in time, but I should have those ready in tandem with the next Frogtown single.

Thanks to everyone for their ongoing support!

all the best,

-msw

Frogtown in Spring

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Hi All,

The Monthly Digital Single for March has just been posted! There are a couple other projects in progress that I’d planned to launch this Friday, but I just couldn’t get them done in time…

A sneak peak into the future year: I recently completed a remix of ‘Rock ‘N’ Roll Station’ for a forthcoming reissue of that very same classic NWW album. A number of exciting (but also fairly obvious) guest voices were enlisted to stunning effect. It’ll be a while yet before that reissue will be ready, so nothing further to say about it right now. Just very excited about how the remix turned out.

Happy Spring and all the best to all of you!

–msw

February In Frogtown, New Site Design

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Hello all,

Entirely by coincidence, the February installment of ‘Legends Of Frogtown’ has been posted just in time for this month’s fee-less Friday on Bandcamp. O, happy happenstance!

Also, you may have noticed a change to the appearance of this site. I’d been limping along on the old version for years, always intending to fancy it up a bit but never getting around to it… I’ve recently paid for an upgrade (well, there was a substantial discount code…) and have started to overhaul things to get them closer to what I’d originally wanted. A couple of these improvements have already been done: a ‘featured playlist’ media player has been added the the main page, and a page has been created for a ‘featured gallery’ of selected artwork. Both of these will be changed periodically. I’ve also embedded one of the videos from my YouTube channel, and more of that will be added soon.

The next big modification I need to tackle is the shop listings. I’ve had to de-activate all of the international purchase buttons because my shipping rates were so severely out of date. Some tedious hours are going to have to be dedicated to getting all the postage totals current again. Also, most of the home-made jewel case CDR listings are going to go away soon, so if you’ve been wanting one of those, best to get them soon. I’ve looking to replace the drab jewel case packaging format with something else, but have not yet decided what that will be; perhaps fully handmade editions like I did for ‘4 Orphans’, but hopefully something simpler & quicker to assemble. In any case, I’ll have to keep the editions fairly small — which is entirely appropriate for my small audience, anyhow. Most releases stop selling entirely after about a year… I’ll have to think carefully about what to keep in print. The interest in physical vs. digital is still wobbling back and forth and I’m not really sure where it’s going to land. I prefer CDs myself, but they seem to be on a non-stop rail replacement bus service headed to Obsoleteville. If I had a good label to work with I could consider vinyl editions, but on my own it’s not really plausible… and I don’t think it would a worthwhile investment for any label out there in the current economic climate.

If anyone is experiencing any problems with the new site format, or has any useful comments in regards to that (please note the word ‘useful’), feel free to contact me at irrappext@gmail.com.

More thrills are lined up for next month, along with the regular Frogtown report.

Hope you are all keeping safe and sane!

all the best to all of you,

–msw

Welcome to Frogtown

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I’ll make this quick, since I yet again had to pull an all-nighter to get things ready in time for Bandcamp’s fee-less Friday. I really need to find a way to manage my time better!

The first installment of the new Monthly Digital Single is now available! This year’s series is called ‘Legends of Frogtown’, and was inspired by a project I started last year, documenting the incredible variety of colours & patterns of the frogs that live in the Rock Creek Tributary (I’ve been intermittently posting some of them on my Instagram page). Every month I’ll be posting 3 tracks to accompany 3 of my frog portraits. The series is off to a pretty good start, I think. I’m approaching this year’s MDS differently from last year’s: I’m trying to avoid using any of my sound processing tricks and instead am just using the computer to capture performances done in the studio with whatever equipment & materials I have on hand.

Also available is ‘Isolation Fragments 2021-01-26‘ the soundtrack to a spontaneous video project I made at the end of January. It’s a very simple video — just editing together different images of snowfall in the Rock Creek Tributary — but it was a good excuse to motivate myself to start developing some basic video editing skills. The full version of the soundtrack and the mix/edit made for the video are both included. The video itself can be found on my YouTube page.

More news soon, but sleep first.

best wishes to all,

–msw