Revolution Void

The R.V. track Weekend Amnesia is featured in this excellent jazz/hip-hop podcast: Urban Cocktail Hour 03-07-07

Here's a link to the MP3 directly: Download

And a description from the site:

Take some smoothed out lounge music, add a splash of hip hop, and stir in a little jazz for mixer and you have got an "Urban Cocktail Hour!" If you like your cocktail hours loungy and your hip hop jazzy, you'll love this mix!

For this month's mix, I found myself inspired to play music with a little more acid jazz and hip hop influence. I marked it "Explicit" because there are a few random curse words but it is far from offensive. There are plenty of sultry melodies, great vocals and smooth rapping to fill out this sexy hour long episode.

Labels: hiphop, jazz, mix

This is a track I did with bass and piano VST instruments. I still prefer acoustic instruments but VST instruments make it easy to create songs with a wide variety of instrumentation not otherwise available. I recorded this track in 2 takes, first the bass and then piano improvisation on top. This track is released under an Attrib license which means you can use it for anything you want (including sampling from it and/or using it for commercial purposes). The reason is that it only took me slightly longer to record this song than it takes you to listen to it, so I am happy to let people use it for whatever they like. Incidentally, I'm focusing more on releasing Attrib-licensed music recently, putting out tracks that are alternate takes, improvisations and unfinished songs. I will probably put out Attrib-NonCommercial licensed music in the future for songs that I put more time/energy/effort into. That is, if I have to hire and/or enroll the efforts of many musicians, I use the NonCommercial license to protect my right to license the song for payment (e.g. in film, TV or video game soundtracks). But, in many cases, if the commercial endeavor is a very interesting project with a small budget, I will allow the music to be used for free. So, look forward to more Attrib licensed works in the near future and don't hesitate to ask if you want to use an Attrib-NonCommercial licensed track in your commercial project. We'll work something out. :)

Labels: jazz, piano

I posted a couple of energetic Latin / fusion jazz mixes last summer. I find that listening helps shake off the winter blues. I don't know how the weather is where you live, but Seattle is quite grey in winter and it's easy to get lulled into dreariness. So, put on some uptempo Latin jazz and dance those blues away!

• Latinesque I (60 MB 128kbps MP3)
• Latinesque II (73 MB 128kbps MP3)
• Tracklists

Labels: jazz, mix

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Syncretic Beliefs is a solo jazz piano album released December 2006. It is available online in its entirety through the Creative Commons under a license granting free distribution as long as attribution is given.

The album is comprised entirely of jazz compositions. Save for one Hammond organ track, the songs are performed on acoustic piano.

Listen to the track Myriad Ways.

Stream Full Album

VBR M3U (Hi-Fi) (flash)

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Download Full Album

64Kbps MP3 ZIP (11 MB)
VBR ZIP (33 MB)

All files: FTP HTTP

Links

• Album page at revolutionvoid.com
• Album page at the Internet Archive
• Album page at Jamendo
• Album page at OurMedia

Description

This album contains a selection of recordings from 2005-06. I decided to release this album in the jazz idiom because I am an avid listener of jazz and have been improvising on piano and keyboards since I was 16 years old. However, until this point, I have never released a jazz recording. Partly this is because my main focus has been on electronic music (and 'jam' music ala Medeski Martin & Wood), but the bigger reason is that I have not felt I had anything to say, so to speak. I have focused on learning to speak the language of jazz, but now I feel that I can begin to "put together sentences" and express concepts, to continue the metaphor. So, with that, I invite you to listen to my latest album. The recording quality is not the best, since these tracks were mostly recorded ad-hoc at a number of locations and were originally intended only for personal use. Regardless, I hope you enjoy listening to the album as much as I enjoyed playing it.

Thanks,

-Jonah Dempcy

1. Azurescent
   
   This track makes for a mellow opening to the album. It follows a simple chord progression of sus4 chords with light improvisation, giving it a somewhat "floaty" feel.
   
   
2. Lumen Arcanum
   
   Because this tune follows an A-B-C form, the changes have a circular feel. The tonal center starts at B minor for the A section, goes to A major for the B section and then shifts to Eb minor for the C section, an unusual and surprising chord change (Eb is the exact tonal opposite of A).
   
   
3. Myriad Ways
   
   Like many of the songs on this album, this song was recorded in the first take as an improvisation, without any pre-determined song structure, melody or chord changes. The chord changes follow a simple 8-bar pattern alternating C minor and Eb, the relative major.
   
   
4. Upsurge
   
   A bright, cheerful 12-bar blues. I like 12-bar forms because most of the music I listen to has 32-bar forms, so I grow accustomed to it and sometimes get stuck in the rut of only composing 32-bar forms.
   
   This song stays pretty much true to form for the 12-bar blues. It has a few jazz-blues on-the-fly reharmonizations ala Charlie Parker, but for the most part, it is true to form. However, some 12-bar blues tunes, such as Brad Mehldau's London Blues, have been reharmonized and modified so much as to be barely recognizable as a blues form at all. But, something about the 12-bar form resonates with our unconscious. David Valdez pointed out that there are 12 notes in the scale, so on a higher level of magnitude, 12-bar forms are expressing the progression upwards through the 12 notes of the octave. For more information about this, read David's wonderful post on the topic, Undertones as Rhythm and Form.
   
   
5. Humans in Universe
   
   This is an improvised jam on the Hammond A-100 organ. It has a bluesy sort of feel as well, but follows a looser form that progresses in 4, 8 or 16 bar patterns.
   
   I also include fills which are 2-bar patterns inserted where the 1st bar would normally go. This is something that is much easier to do solo than with a band, though if agreed ahead of time, you can pull it off with a band by cuing them when you want to go to a fill. Good bands to listen to for on-the-fly cuing of fills include Medeski Martin & Wood and James Brown's classic band, The J.B.'s. In particular, the James Brown songs "Payback" and "Hotpants" have great fills.
   
   
6. Reticulating Flux
   
   Another improvised experimental jam. This one gets pretty out there! It is somewhat sloppy but I keep the following maxim in mind: If you aren't making mistakes, you aren't experimenting enough!
   
   
7. Mother Matrix Most Mysterious
   
   A ballad whose title is borrowed from James Joyce. This one is played somewhat a-rhythmically at first, but develops into a slow ballad.
   
   

Labels: jazz, piano