My Views on Streaming

…are probably not what you expect.

I seem to be an outlier among independent artists when it comes to streaming my music versus the purchase thereof in that I WANT you to stream my music more than I want you to download it. To my fellow independent musicians whose hackles are immediately raised by that statement: please let me mollify you by saying I’m only talking about my music. I’m not at all invested in trying to convince you what to do with yours.

Feel free to stop here. Keep reading if you have the time and inclination but I warn you that I get wordy.

I recognize that streaming rates are abysmal and that corporate greed abounds – he says, glancing sideways at a certain DSP who shall not be named – but in my opinion the model itself is sound. I did “the math” once long ago … and I’m sure the numbers have shifted slightly since then … but when I last wrote at length about this subject I directly earned about as much from a single download of one of my original tunes as I did 71 streams of the same song. Still, I would prefer that 71 people streamed my music – or the same person streamed it 71 times – than a single person downloaded it.

You might well ask “Why?”

A simple answer, but not the only one, is the maintenance of an online presence, a continued existence in the personified eyes of the almighty algorithms. If you were to purchase a download or physical CD of my music it would be deeply appreciated but it’s a one-time thing that you could listen to multiple times daily but would be a single brief blip that barely registers on the algorithmic radar before quietly retiring to gather digital dust in some quiet corner of the Internet no matter how many times you’ve popped it into your personal player at home. And, let’s face it, once there’s a copy of it floating out there in cyberspace there is an infinite number of possible additional copies extant, copies made without any additional sonic degradation and freely available to anyone with the slightest bit of online competence. I can tell you from experience that there is a multitude of sketchy sites that offer those same exact songs, pirated, for a pittance and the artist never sees a penny of those sales. The streaming business model actually helps put a damper on such piratical sites. That said, I’m well aware that it costs more per click to advertise digital music than it pays for streams of digital music – so repeat listeners are an absolute must – but this also goes back to my remarks about a brief blip on the algorithmic radar.

Another thing that seems to get seldom mention is every stream of a song on one of the DSPs also carries with it the possibility of additional royalties for the same streams from such entities as The Mechanical Licensing Collective and SoundExchange as well as songwriting and publishing royalties from your performing rights organizations (ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, etc.) Yet many independent musicians among my friends and acquaintances refer to such organizations as being “too much trouble.” These accounts are not all that high maintenance and are pretty much “fire and forget” except for registering the new tunes as they come up. Granted, none of these royalties amount to very much separately (unless you hit the magic “viral” button) but it astounds me that people can conflate getting more money with musical success while at the same time leaving money on the figurative table. I also suggest that if it’s “too much trouble” to claim what’s yours in terms of royalties but it’s not too much trouble for you to complain about not getting those royalties then perhaps remaining “independent” isn’t your best course of action as a musician.

This seems like a good time to segue into the subject of engagement. This information was presented to me by MS’s “Copilot” AI but I just wanted a quick snapshot of the current stats and I’ve no reason to doubt its veracity: “On average, people worldwide spend 18.4 hours per week listening to music through subscription audio streaming services . . . 82.1 million Americans are paid subscribers to on-demand music streaming services . . . Americans stream an average of 75 minutes of music per day . . . Gen Z (age 13 to 23) is the most likely age group to use music streaming services globally . . . In the U.S. 52% of 18 to 24-year-olds and 40% of 25 to 34-year-olds enjoy streaming music and podcasts . . . The age group that enjoys audio content the least is 55 years and older, with only 31% saying they enjoy online music or podcasts…” I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again (yes, I am quoting myself): “One can’t legitimately complain about the musical tastes of the younger generations while simultaneously refusing to engage them on their preferred platforms.”

Additionally, one’s musical purchases are delimited by one’s disposable income. It’s always been that way for some of us; many of us can remember our younger selves standing at the record bin with only enough money to afford a single album and agonizing over which one to choose as we flipped through the seemingly endless possibilities. So, sure, vinyl is indeed making a comeback in a lot of ways but it is still only a one-time payment to the artist – as I mentioned above – limited by the amount of money people are willing and able to spend on music, and a minor ephemeral blip in cyberspace when the UPC is scanned. Furthermore, I’ll bet most vinyl purchases today follow on the heels of the music being previewed by the prospective buyer on a digital streaming service anyway, perhaps music they first heard on a streaming service in the same manner that we older folks heard something on the radio that caught our attention in the previous century.

“Begin the day with a friendly voice, a companion unobtrusive…”

The video content below offers some interesting counterpoints – and I actually agree with much of it – but I am unswayed in my assertion that I’d actually prefer my music was often streamed in a manner analogous to radio airplay.

Also seemingly contradictory to my assertions, one of my favorite quotes follows and it bears reflection:

“We say music is important but we circulate it for free, accord it no significance, fail to listen to it when we are in its presence, and ignore it in a century which, paradoxically, there has never been more of the stuff on tap … Music is now everywhere . . . Maybe this sheer profligacy has dulled our senses . . . No longer an event, it may exist only as background music. It is increasingly moving from foreground to background by dint of the sheer density, the sheer volume of material . . . Music abounds. Everyone can now make a CD in his bedroom, and the problem is, everyone does. With no quality control, conscience, or suffering, the stuff oozes out from under the bedroom door; a blind slime looking for approval . . . the entire system is constipated, overfed, and unloved.”

– Bill Bruford, The Autobiography


…but, again, it’s really always been that way. The gatekeepers and tastemakers of years past have morphed into influencers; artists and artisans must adapt to an ever-shifting digital environment.

Here’s some recent good news, at least for US-based independent musicians. I was unaware of this when I made the original blog entry and added this bit on September 25, 2024: “In March, U.S. Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Jamaal Bowman introduced the Living Wage for Musicians Act in partnership with artists and industry laborers in the United Musicians and Allied Workers organization. The bill proposes a new streaming royalty, to be paid into an Artist Compensation Royalty Fund, which would ensure artists receive at least one cent per stream. It’s a direct payment from streaming services to artists, with no middlemen.”

I excerpted the above text from this very informative article about how Spotify pays streaming royalties; I think this should be required reading for all independent musicians: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/news/you-use-spotify-to-listen-to-music-here-s-how-money-from-ads-and-subscription-fees-flows-to-artists/ar-AA1pIRML

Quicksilver Night 2022-2023

Looking Back

On March 16th I posted “I hit 2.3K monthly listeners on Pandora a few days ago and now it’s begun to subside a bit. I’m fairly certain this will be the peak for the year; I’d love to be wrong about that.” I was right, however, and it was indeed the high point in our Pandora listeners for the year, no doubt due to three different tracks from the “Asymptote” album serving consecutively as “featured tracks” on Pandora, but I’m just fine with that. I hope to surpass that with this 2023’s forthcoming releases. 🙂

On April 12th we hit 10.7K monthly listeners on Spotify and that was our peak for the year as well and, in fact, the all-time high for Quicksilver Night … so far. 🙂
We released the digital-only single “Existential” and its lyric video on August 30, basically to provide some new and exciting music in 2022 and hopefully maintain an online presence while we continued to diligently work on produce yet more new songs for forthcoming albums.
 
Here, above, is the official lyric video for Quicksilver Night’s “Existential” featuring the blazing vocals of Hadi Kiani and some searing guitar solo work from Farzad Golpayegani. Hard-hitting rock music in a classic vein enhanced by some progressive elements reminiscent of Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple, “Existential” passionately articulates the dread we all sometimes feel against an ominously throbbing tribal backdrop. #rotorvideos #fazadg #hadikiani
 
“Existential” is available for streaming and download at digital retailers everywhere via https://quicksilvernight.com/existential/

Some Year End Validations

I was happy just to be nominated for a Friday Night Progressive “Inde Prog Award” but am immensely gratified to learn that Quicksilver Night was awarded third place in the instrumental category. This is no mean feat, especially in consideration of the ridiculously high quality of the other entrants across the board.

Here’s one of two screen shots from my 2022 “Spotify Wrapped” that I’ve chosen to share here.

…And here’s the other. 🙂

Looking Ahead

Quicksilver Night has a LOT of new music in the production queue for 2023.
#quicksilvernight #QNP #sandcastlerecords

“Ptichka”: Almost exactly a year ago, on December 13th, 2021, I announced a collaborative project with the enchanting Olja Karpova (“Dikajee”) on “Ptichka”, a song nearly eight minutes in length that, although perhaps it could be labeled as “progressive” in the broadest sense of things, touched upon several genres. Then I was doubly pleased be able to announce several days later that Andrew Negustorov (“The Andrew N. Project”) had agreed to provide his signature fingerboard-burning fretwork to the piece as well. Then on February 24th Russia invaded Ukraine; this aggression and ensuing sanctions by seemingly the entire rest of the world threw several spanners into the “Ptichka” works but we eventually got things back on track. The song “Ptichka” was originally slated for release as a digital-only single destined be later included as a bonus track on the forthcoming “We Are Also the Dreamt” album but the project has evolved. The song “Ptichka” is now slated to be the title song of a five-song EP of the same name that will span almost 30 minutes and be made available on physical CD. Please allow me to share here a couple of video clips that I imagine will spark your interest far more than any narrative I could supply, below.

#dikajee #marcoiacobini

“Seven Cities Blue”: There are a lot of moving parts to any collaborative project and it took us most of 2022 to finally get the “Seven Cities Blue” train properly set on the tracks. As 2022 comes to a close I am pleased to say that we’ve made very significant inroads into recording the four-song “Seven Cities Blue” mini-EP. About a year ago I announced that I was “set to include four tracks of hybrid jazz/blues/rock in the vein of 2020’s ‘No Contest’ and I have the usual collaborative suspects – along with a surprise guest or two – in mind for it.” Nothing’s changed except the timing of the thing. I can unequivocally state that all four songs of the mini-EP will feature Jeff Saunders on saxes and that my good friend Jason Cale has agreed to reprise his role as co-producer of all four songs as well as serving as featured guitarist on two of them. I am delighted also to share again that local guitar legend Jay Rakes has agreed to apply his fretboard skills to the title track. We’ve already begun the recording process for the songs “Seven Cities Blue”, “Shorten Suite”, and “Edifice Wrecks” and plan to hit the ground running in January with “What You Think”. Our immediate goal is to lay down and pre-mix all the guitar parts into the bass and drums guide tracks before we set to recording Jeff’s saxophone parts. Then we’ll go about coordinating with a couple of additional guest musicians. #jasoncalemusic

Featuring my friend Stephen Speelman as “The Unified One”, let’s not forget the digital-only single “Quintus Interruptus”. We finished our demo version of the song and dumped audio of the project into Steve’s lap right as things were ramping up for the holidays and it’s not a surprise that it’s had to take a back seat to some other ongoing things, especially when one considers that the song has some unusual qualities that don’t allow for a cookie-cutter approach to songcraft  A guitar-driven odd-meter rock instrumental, “Quintus Interruptus” would have been right at home on 2021’s “Asymptote” album; beginning as a joke, the working title “Quintus Interruptus” stemmed from a recurring bar of 4/4 that interrupted the 5/4 groove. We just sort of collectively shrugged and decided to go with it. You shouldn’t rush creativity even if you could and I am looking forward to the day it all clicks together.

I am being intentionally coy about this but I have written two additional songs that will see release in late 2023 and I’ve got two stellar vocal talents – and excellent songwriters in their own right – on board to collaborate with me on each of them. We will officially announce this two-song project in April or May and there are a few of you that might be surprised by it when we do but it’s very unlikely that any of you will be displeased by the content of that announcement. For those of you doing the math, that’s 12 Quicksilver Night songs across four releases in the production queue for 2023 so far. Here’s hoping. 🙂

Quicksilver Night 2021

Looking Back on the Previous Year and Ahead to the Next

We released five new songs as Quicksilver Night in the first part of the year, two as standalone advance singles and three as a digital-only mini-EP, and this was meant to keep things moving until we could release the full-length “Asymptote” album later in the year. Those songs were Hephaestus the Cuckold (in March) and The Galactic Edge (in August) – both featuring Farzad Golpayegani – and all three songs of April’s “Mr. Wizard” mini-EP featuring Jason Cale: Mr. Wizard; Power Curve and Parallel Play. All five of those songs were originally intended for “Asymptote” and all of them wound up on that album, either re-released or as bonus tracks, so I qualify that particular part of my plan a success.

Those songs are responsible for Quicksilver Night surpassing 5K followers and, at one point, nearly 8K monthly listeners at Spotify as well as gaining some significant traction on Pandora Radio. It was my hope and intention to have “primed the pump” for December’s release of the “Asymptote” album

We finally released the “Asymptote” album – the day before yesterday as of this post, actually – and it’s been a long time coming. “Asymptote” seems to have been well received so far and initial reactions have been greatly encouraging. It’s a little early to tell how it all might play out and the year is very nearly over but I suppose this is what I get for releasing new music in December. 🙂

As it says on the “Asymptote” discography page: “I laid down the bones of the album long ago and but it’s fair to say that we began actively recording tracks for ‘Asymptote’ right on the heels of 2018’s ‘Symmetry’ album. It’s been a long time coming however one might look at it; this figurative machine had a lot of moving parts to begin with and things were further complicated by the COVID-19 pandemic, notably for associated travel restrictions and for the detrimental impact on warehousing and physical distribution of CDs. It’s here now though, in all its glory!”

So, now let’s look ahead … I already posted about my plans for upcoming releases in 2022 and 2023 last May in a separate blog entry and those plans haven’t changed much but I’ve refined them a bit and here’s how things look for Quicksilver Night in the coming year:

We will begin laying down audio tracks early in the year for a vocals-oriented full-length “We Are Also the Dreamt” album that we hope to release in 2023. I have previously posted something of my plans for this album back in May but it should come as no surprise that the project has evolved since then (and will probably continue to do so). I’ve made some conceptual changes to “We Are Also the Dreamt” since I last posted and the primary shift has been to remove a couple of songs – including both instrumentals – from the programming of that album. In its current form “We Are Also the Dreamt” will be comprised of ten vocally driven new songs spanning nearly an hour – including the 10-minute “Somnium Liminalis” – plus two bonus tracks totaling about 12 additional minutes between them.

Listen to Dikajee at https://dikajee.bandcamp.com

I also have plans of recording and releasing a digital-only mini-EP in 2022, “Seven Cities Blue” is set to include four tracks of hybrid jazz/blues/rock in the vein of 2020’s “No Contest” and I have the usual collaborative suspects – along with a surprise guest or two – in mind for it. I’ve also arranged and licensed cover versions of Til Tuesday’s “Voices Carry” and Missing Persons’ “Words” – we’ve already begun recording both – and I am not entirely sure how we’re going to proceed with them but I guarantee that they’re coming in 2022 as well. As fun as they might be I view this mini-EP and the two cover songs I just mentioned as something of placeholders, not because they’re getting anything less than my full attention but because the “We Are Also the Dreamt” album, my primary goal, is dauntingly ambitious. There was a gap of nearly three years between Quicksilver Night’s “Symmetry” and “Asymptote” full-length albums and I am glad we dropped a few digital-only tracks in between those two albums to fill the void. I hope to repeat and refine the process this time around and provide more new music before “We Are Also the Dreamt” sees the proverbial light of day.

Stay tuned!

“We Are Also the Dreamt”

… a closer look at this upcoming album

The next paragraph is background information; skip to the one that follows if you like.

It’s a known fact that I constantly write music as Quicksilver Night. Some time ago I decided to release much of my instrumental music in one fell swoop (the forthcoming “Asymptote” album) and intended to later follow that with an album of my vocally driven material (“We Are Also the Dreamt”). Then we found ourselves having to adjust to the COVID-19 pandemic and its fallout, notably including its detrimental impact on warehousing and physical distribution of CDs. As a result of this I opted shuffle things around and ended up releasing two separate three-song mini-EPs in digital-only formats: “No Contest” on November 27, 2020 and “Mr. Wizard” on April 20, 2021. We also released the song “Hephaestus the Cuckold” as an advance single from “Asymptote” on March 5th. We have been busy. We are finished with the tracking phase of the “Asymptote” album and will finish mixing it this summer for release early this fall. We will release another advance single from the album (“The Galactic Edge”) prior to that and we’ll also include the three songs of the “Mr. Wizard” mini-EP as bonus tracks. Watch for it!

But this isn’t about “Asymptote”; this is about “We Are Also the Dreamt.” As I publicly posted earlier today, “The music is already written and the guide tracks recorded. I need to dig deeper into the album programming and make some decisions about editing and song order.” I’ve been listening to those guide tracks and making some notes. I’ll share them here for anyone interested but I have to admit that I write these thoughts down primarily because it helps me to keep my thoughts organized:

These are definitely going to be on the album, not necessarily in this particular order except for the opener:

1) “Canon/We Are Also the Dreamt” (4:49) – the title track and obviously the opener, it begins with a melodic four-part interwoven vocal canon before bursting into a driving prog rock song with tribal-sounding toms. It’s rhythmically interesting in that it has a recurring bar of 3/4 mixed into the otherwise 4/4 phrasing but I think it feels organic to the song rather than contrived. After we’ve completed the final mixing of “Canon/We Are Also the Dreamt” we’ll need to go back bounce a version of it without the vocal canon intro and release it as a separate single for the streaming-only crowd with their generally shortened attention spans. The song would then be more likely to garner a broader audience than those that might be initially put off by a small choir of monastic-sounding voices. Hopefully some of them would then turn to the album to see what other goodies it might hold. 🙂 In response to “We are the music makers and we are the dreamers of dreams” comes “We all stumble, often blind to the truth that we’re caught in a web; we’ve all forgotten in the minds of our gods we are also the dreamt.”

2) “Camera Obscura” (6:03) – will most likely be the second track on the album. It’s my usual brand of distilled prog but with some classical nuances. The focus here is on the vocals throughout; there’s not much in the manner of guitar heroics as such but there’s some nice harmony and interplay between the guitar and the piano balanced against some straightforward rock sections. The lyrics speak to the often-illusory nature of human contact via the Internet. “Bathed in pallid light … flicker through the night … window to the soul … through a billion eyes … Do they see?”

I will program the songs below into some sort of logical order to follow the songs above as the ‘We Are Also the Dreamt” project progresses.

3) “Desiccant Grains” (5:11) – is an attempt to describe my experiences as a US Soldier in Iraq in 1991 and again in 2003 in general terms that almost any service member could understand and hopefully relate to. It’s difficult to describe the edginess of long-term tedium in a pervasive environment of anxiety; I guess time will tell how well I did in doing so. The song itself is, unsurprisingly, my usual brand of distilled prog but with some different flavors and textures. “Sunrise on an ocean of sand … dust, flies, and a gun in my hands…”

4) “Monochrome Memories” (3:41) – is more or less straightforward rock in general terms but interestingly syncopated as the two intertwined but individually dynamic basslines lend it a subtle complexity against its broad, almost lush, chord voicings. The song is about a traitorous lover long gone suddenly returned and seeking absolution. The song was composed with a melodically soaring guitar solo section in mind and I have several different hugely talented friends that would fit the bill nicely. “Lies, as they burn, ringing in my ears now return, stinging all those years…”

5) “Revenant” (3:42) – has an almost Celtic feel to it due to the compound meter but it’s very much rock. It lyrically speaks to the feelings of anomie and dissociation that sneak up on all of us sometimes. If you ever had one of those dreams in which you were falling and awoke before you hit the ground then but then spent the day uneasily waiting for the other shoe to drop, metaphorically speaking, then you’ll know exactly what I mean by the line “abide today braced for an impact.”

6) “Somnium Liminalis” (9:58) – is, in its current form, both the longest song I have written to date and probably the one that is closest to being purely progressive rock in the classic sense of the genre label. I meant for it to be Latin for “the threshold of sleep” but I was also playing with the idea of a god of sleep being at the door. It’s an instrumental-only so far but various vocal lines keep popping up in my head for it and certain sections of it might benefit from an inventive soloist so I’ll leave those possibilities open.

7) “Panorama-Eigenlicht” (3:48) – is an interesting creation, an instrumental song mostly in quintuple meter that is somehow melodic without there being a specific melody that I could point to. To my ear it sounds somehow simultaneously both alien and familiar. The title literally means something like “All-Around Self-Light” in German but since I mean eigenlicht as the uniform dark gray background that many people report seeing in the absence of light it’s very much open to interpretation. I might incorporate some flute into the piece later in the production process.

8) “Xenolith” (5:33) – is also an instrumental song in mixed meter with some very cool things going on. It is stylistically reminiscent of several of my works – including, notably “Camera Obscura” above – but also very much different than the others. I’m currently of the mind that we should record it as-is and then, once the final product is in the analog domain, slow down the playback so that it sounds a full step lower to give it that “Strawberry Fields Forever” vibe.

9) “Untitled 2020#15” (4:06) – is a hypnotic piece with four clearly melodic lines in gorgeous harmony and counterpoint for which I’ve yet to come up with a single meaningful lyric couplet. I expect that when the words finally come so also will a suitable title but for now I only hear the notes as nonsense syllables. I tell myself to be patient but, frankly, it’s driving me crazy.

10) “Solar” (5:31) – is a working title that I might just ending keeping for want of something better. Poetic imagery, almost elegiac, delivered by a five-voice choir against a distilled prog rock backdrop, it feels to me like a solid closer for the album. I might invite a guest soloist but I’m going to wait until after recording everything else before deciding if it’s desirable for me to do so. It seems an excellent candidate to close the album. Sample line: “As he rises to depart from this place silent angels bear cold witness in effigy … Watchers made of stone raise their eyes to the sun…”

The ten songs above together span about forty-seven and half minutes in their current form, a complete album. Nonetheless, I have several other completed songs from which to choose that would thematically fit into the album, notably including the two below:

11) “Headlong” (5:07) – mostly in quintuple meter, a vocals-oriented song broadly about the choices we make in the face of our apparent freewill and the consequences thereof. This song was originally meant for the “Reliquary” album but somehow slipped through the cracks. It would fit right in on “We Are Also the Dreamt.” Sample line: “Surface ripples form and fade as the skipping stone strikes then away, free from Earthbound gravity, flying high…”

12) “Litany” (4:40) – another song about choices originally meant for “Reliquary” that slipped through the cracks and would nicely fit here, “Litany” is mostly in 7/8 and very much based in Middle Eastern modes. The lyrics of “Litany” relate more to regrets and waiting. Sample line: “Unconcerned, as we waste our lives carelessly…Dream deferred, as we wait to find some other time, some other day…”

What I don’t have yet is any concrete plans for album art and I suppose I should begin searching around for suitable works to license. That probably won’t pan out because I’ve got a vague idea to incorporate some of the album’s lyrical themes in some sort of surrealistic setting and I might just as easily end up commissioning an original piece but I suppose we’ll see. I am open to suggestions in this regard.

In sum, that describes the current state of Quicksilver Night’s “We Are Also the Dreamt” full-length album. We’ve already laid the groundwork and should begin actively tracking the next steps in the process beginning late 2021 after the release of the “Asymptote” album. I’ll be sure to provide any significant updates throughout the process.

All content above, as applicable, copyright by me either as myself or as Quicksilver Night Productions, ASCAP

A Snapshot of Ongoing Projects July 2020

“Into the Valley” 2018 by R J Hembree Photography
“Into the Valley” 2018 by R J Hembree Photography

1.) I officially announced the full-length “Asymptote” album in May of last year – sixteen months ago – saying that the all-instrumental album was “a hugely eclectic offering that I hope to release both digitally and on CD later this year” but, obviously, that didn’t happen. The project continued to grow in scope and complexity and I announced in my “2019 Year-End Update” that I intended “to make a trip out to Nashville in April and return with a completed album mixed to the premaster stage” but, again obviously, that didn’t happen either, primarily because of restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic. As things currently stand I have all the audio files for fifteen programmed songs on the album and am merely waiting until I am able to spend two or three quality days in Nashville at the mixing console with my co-producer Alex in order to finish things up properly. For the record – and I can’t stress this enough – I am also waiting the physical distribution channels to properly reopen before I complete the album.

These are the fifteen “Asymptote” songs that are already effectively finished, approximately 66 minutes of music, in alphabetical order: “Ameles Potamos” feat Ony (Greg Onychuk); “April Covenant” feat The Unified One (Stephen Speelman); “Brookside Interlude” feat Anne Epperly; “The Chase” feat Jeremy Barnes; “Continuity” feat Gormuzik (Gordo Bennett); “Dream Sequence Gunmen” feat Nazim Chambi; “Emelya Durák” (Емеля Дурак) feat Andrew Negoustorov; “Galactic Edge” (لبه کهکشانی) feat Farzad Golpayegani; “Hephaestus the Cuckold” feat Farzad Golpayegani; “Mister Wizard” feat Jason Cale; “Parallel Play” feat Jason Cale; “Power Curve” feat Jason Cale; “Quicksilberdrachenlied” feat Milt Gore; “Stare Con Te” feat Marco Iacobini; and  “Trompe L’Coeur” feat Nazim Chambi & Anne Epperly. I have two more songs “on deck” for “Asymptote” but at this point I’m not concerned if they’re ready for this album or not.

*****

Original photo copyright 2019 by Pete Feds Photography

2.) I had always planned on recording and releasing the three song “No Contest” mini EP separately from the “Asymptote” album and in digital-only formats but since production of “Asymptote” was held up we pushed forward with production of the “No Contest” mini EP. As I’ve described them elsewhere, the “No Contest” mini EP is “an eclectic trio of saxophone-driven songs overlaid with hints of jazz, blues, funk – and even a touch of progressive – but are straightforward rock at their core.” All three songs are driven by the superlative saxophone work of Jeff Saunders and all three songs are currently in the capable hands of veteran drummer Jae Sinnett so he can track live drums in place of the current MIDI-generated placeholders. We’re producing the EP locally here in Virginia and there aren’t any restrictions that might affect digital distribution so we fully expect to have the “No Contest” EP out sailing the digital seas by the end of September. Wish us luck.

*****

“I Kissed a Girl” cover by Randall Lee
via digital manipulation of one of Cara’s original photographs, used by permission

3.) As it will say on the release itself, “I approached Cara Isadora in February 2020 about singing the vocally driven songs of my forthcoming full-length ‘We Are Also the Dreamt’ album, a heavily prog-tinged affair full of operatic and madrigal nuances. During this discussion we discovered that we both had widely diverse musical tastes and decided to record a licensed version of my straightforward rock arrangement of Katy Perry’s 2008 hit ‘I Kissed a Girl’ just to test the waters of our musical compatibility and have some fun doing it.” It’s a harder edged, heavier version of the song than the original and we’ve finished recording all the tracks, including a killer guitar solo and embellishments by the virtuosic Milt Gore. I’ve already purchased all the necessary rights for downloads and streaming. Just like with the “Asymptote” album above, however, I have to wait until I am able to make a brief trip out to Nashville so I can sit at the mixing console with my co-producer Alex in order to finish things up properly. This would be a much briefer trip than the “Asymptote” sessions and physical distribution is not an issue so I hope to make it happen sometime within the next several weeks.

*****

ALSO IN THE WORKS:

“Hephaestus” digital painting
by Farzad Golpayegani, 2020

If I can make the “I Kissed a Girl” session happen sometime soon, and if scheduling allows for it, I intend to release a preview version “Hephaestus the Cuckold” featuring Farzad Golpayegani from the “Asymptote” album at that time. I will make it available exclusively via bandcamp but there will also be an accompanying video available solely via the Quicksilver Night site.

*****

In addition to the full-length album, the mini EP, and the standalone single I mentioned above – projects that should all see the proverbial light of day in the relatively near future – I have been also spending a lot of time working on the music for the full-length album “We Are Also the Dreamt” but I don’t plan on beginning the tracking phase of it until 2021, after the official release of the projects I wrote about in the above paragraphs. I also have plans to record and release another cover song with Cara on vocals in 2021 but I’ll keep it under my hat for now. We’re making progress on all fronts, however annoyingly incremental that progress can sometimes seem.  New music is coming soon, I promise.