.:gabino:.

About the video:
When I saw the 1954 film "3rd Ave. EL", I immediately thought that it would fit nicely with the music. This wonderful film was shot just a few years before the line was demolished. You will be amazed to see it cut right through neighborhoods and zoom past windows. Directed by Carson Davidson.

About the music:
This was improvised in one sitting under an hour (further time was spent mixing but the music remained unchanged). Basically a few synths with chaotic 'live' drums. It has a driving momentum that inspired the title's pun.

DOWNLOAD available at:
http://music.gabino.org/track/speedrazor

Hello!  I am pleased to announce that I have released my second album titled DEVOTEES. To celebrate, I am releasing the song DEVOTEES as the third single.  I say third because PETAL FROM THE ROSE and I HEARD YOU, MALACHI made the album and have been previously posted.  The album mixes, however, trump the old mp3s so grab a new copy of each.  I will continue to release tunes from the album as time passes. 

Soon, you will be able to purchase mp3s or the CD online from the usual places (Itunes, Amazon, etc).  In the meantime, you can buy a copy directly from me for $7 and if you want it bundled with INJURED then it is $10.  I will also autograph DEVOTEES however you like. Payment is via PAYPAL only and will ship internationally.
 
I had digipaks pressed (you have seen one: cardboard outer with a plastic tray for the disc) and they look great.  Here is a mini pic of what it would look like open in your hands:

Gabino - Witness (The Trial mix).mp3

This is a new remix (a little shorter, a little harder) of "Witness" for use in a music video. All visual material comes from "The Trial" (the 1962 Orson Welles film based on the novel by Franz Kafka) and is public domain. Many thanks to Andrew Lyman-Clarke for the video edit.

One word and they'll hang you
One word and they'll hang you
You're never going to get away
They'll never let you get away

Witness to crimes unknown
Weakness when I'm all alone
Sweetness, forgive me

Okay.  Today I will finally post a song that has been in the making for a few years now.  I guess it took so long because early on I combined two melodies that I had been working on.  It was nice a moment when I was playing one in my head and then the other started playing in the right place - it just needed a key change to make the puzzle fit.  That was nice except that I had already begun sequencing the two bits.  It is not an easy thing to merge two sessions in Cubase (my sequencer), but in the end it was just laziness that made it take so long.  The good thing about waiting was that by the time I merged them, I had the song entirely composed in my head, so putting down the arrangement actually went smoothly.  Now it was time to record the vocals, which I did about two months ago...ugh.  First off, I don't really know what I am singing about.  Don't ask.  In the end, I guess it is about contradictions within myself.  The form is sort of weird because of the fact that I combined two pieces of music.  I don't really know how I feel about this one because it took so long to complete.  It is a bit anti-climatic I suppose.  You all let me know, please.  And by the way, not everything takes forever with me though it seems that way.  "Witness," a favorite of many, was done, start to finish, in about two weeks.  Afterwards it left me with an empty feeling inside as though I had just puked up all my inspiration.  I guess I did. 

Without further ado...

Gabino - Petal from the Rose.mp3

Like a petal from the rose
Falling on your grave
Like the ashes from the smoke
In your blackened lungs

It's such a crime to waste your time
by smoking your mind dry
It's so easy to think you're crazy
when you're young you're not
It's all aligned for when you find your gift
It's up to you to lift others on up

I should have been banging down doors
Crawling on all fours
Screaming out my name

We're all worried where the next bomb will threat ***
Where the next train will wreck
Where's that storm that washed away your dreams

It's such a crime to waste your time
by drinking your mind blind
And it's so easy to think you're crazy
when you're old you are
It's all aligned for when you find your gift
It's up to you to lift others on up

I should have been banging down doors
Crawling naked on floors
Screaming out my name

*** I do realize that bombs threaten and do not threat.  But it works musically and it rhymes in a hip-hop sort of way. The line always bothers the linguistic sensibilities of my girlfriend and I am sure she is not alone. Forgive me.

Slacking off with the posts but hey, I am a musician.  I have been writing songs on the piano for the last year and sequencing tid bits of music here and there.  I know a few of you just want me to get on with it and record the damn things.  I feel the same way but I have been waiting and saving to upgrade my equipment to a professional level.  I deserve as much if I may say so.  While it may be a slight sign of procrastination and self-doubt,  I did have a friend test my newly acquired mic and mic-pre versus my old gear.  After he heard himself on my "Injured" setup he said, "Where did my sexy voice go?"  Or something like that. Yes, a good mic pre and microphone do make a big difference.  I can't wait to record my sexy voice for all of yous.  If I can kill off that nagging voice in my head that says 'you can't sing' .... speaking of which.  There was one song that didn't make it on the Injured album. I even had it mastered but it didn't fit anywhere.  Of course, now I don't care for albums and it all seems silly.  I think I started to work on this around 2002? Not sure.  It is heavily arranged which made it difficult to mix.  Harps and guitars (thank you Matt R.) and bassoons and accordions and chimes and drums and basses and me and etc.

Gabino - Talking to Myself.mp3

I have a lot of older music.  I have been doing electronic music - proper - since around '99.  I first heard great drum and bass when I moved to Manhattan in '98 to go study music composition at a university.  I used to love going to Konkrete Jungle, which even back then billed itself as the longest running weekly drum and bass party.  It is still going on to this day.  Anyhow, I soon got hooked into the underground party scene and continued my education in electronic music.  What I learned was that I hated techno or anything close to it.  But I digress. What I never liked about jungle or drum and bass or what you want to call it is that it was always "dark".  I call it soulless. So, it became my mission to write drum and bass that was infused with musical goodness inspired by twentieth century French and Russian composers.  I have kind of moved on from that aesthetic but a few weeks ago I managed to open an old session of a track I did called UpsideDown.  This was right before I started to experiment with singing with my music which turned into me learning how to actually write songs and thus what became the album Injured.  The filename says 10-19-02 and I know I arranged this quickly - like a few days which is something I don't often do.  It is a very cute and fun piece of music.  However, I didn't have the skills then to mix it properly so I was never satisfied.  I remixed it, meaning I added compressors and a better sounding reverb, but the arrangement is true to what I did back then.  Enjoy.

Gabino - UpsideDown.mp3

Hello.  I am trying to live up to my promise of putting out more music so here something I did in February of this year.  It is a drum and bass instrumental that was really just me testing out my new quad core setup.  I always like to push a new computer to its limits.  This has 12 softsynths and a sampler running with every channel utilizing compressors and EQs.  There are probably a few effects being used too.  All of this can be played back in realtime...barely.  That's about it - enjoy. 

Gabino - Octo.mp3

NUDE (FOR ALL TIME)

Here is a quick summary of the re-arrangement of Radiohead's Nude song that I did.  The band released parts of the song on April Fools day for those who don't know.  The only joke about this is that you had to buy it through iTunes and work with compressed audio!  I know of another band currently holding a remix competition through last.fm that actually gave you 24bit 44.1 files!  Very nice to work with..not that I did..ooppps. 

Anyhow, I scrapped the bass and drum parts and only kept one guitar phrase for the climax.  I also reharmonized some of the chords by starting it on a major key instead of a minor one.  It makes for a much more uplifting experience IMHO.  I added a few wispy synths here and there and of course a deep ol' skool analog bass synth and some light, tasteful drum samples.  I like it. 

For those whose minds work a bit differently than the norm...mron eht naht yltnereffid tib a krow sdnim esohw esoht roF. 

(EMIT LLA ROF) EDUN

Ok, it's not that bad.  I have had some problems here and there which is fine as they seem to be going through growing pains. However, I was greatly annoyed to discover that they alter mp3s that are uploaded. I don't mean the obvious re-encoding but the volume level is dropped.  I think they RMS normalize all the music they have which means that all the tracks played should sound more or less the same loudness.  However, what happens is that my mp3s are 6-7db quieter than what they should be.  Keep in mind that a 6db increase is perceived as twice the volume.  There is no mention of this anywhere when you go to upload music.  I had to accidentally discover it.  So, all the time I have had free downloads available through them, people have been getting inferior versions of the tunes.  EVERY musician pays for somebody to 'master' their music which is basically carefully maximizing the loudness of the music.  Good amounts of money are spent on this process only to have it compromised with their system.  But, it's okay.  It just means I will have to host the mp3s and at a higher bitrate because I can!  This is how it should have been all along anyways.  So, just go to gabino.org and then to music to find them.

Well, it has been awhile since I last blogged.  I am not really a man of words so we will chock it up to that.  I've decided to let everyone in on what I have been up to in case somebody actually cares. 

I used to live in New York City and did the whole music school to gigs to corporate shit job to losing my soul and mind routine.  It took me nine years but I decided to move back home where I could live MUCH more cheaply and work on a follow-up album.  The album Injured took me about 3 years to complete with the little spare time I had.  The idea was to move to Texas and not take so long this time.  So it seems that I should have something complete this year :) However, I am starting to believe that no one actually buys music or really gives a shit about it.  It is all free for download and who cares if Mr. Obscure Indie Artist spent a thousand hours to put it together.  I am okay with this and therefore will be releasing my music for free.  This approach has made me realize that I don't need to wait to release it all en masse.  I can do it one song at a time if I desire. I am in control.  I have never sent a demo cd to a record label because I have wanted that control.  In the end, it benefits you dear listener.

So, to kick off this little experiment, I present my first song that I have finished since arriving.  It is a song about a man named Malachi Ritscher.  A frustrated individual struggling with his conscience while watching the United States plunge into wars.  On Novemeber 3rd of 2006, he doused himself with gasoline and lit himself on fire during the morning commute off of the Kennedy Expressway in Chicago. He left a sign that said," Thou Shalt Not Kill." Despite being one of a handful of Americans who have self-immolated, his story went largely unreported.  If you would like to learn more, check out the website that introduced me to his story: IHeardYouMalachi.com

I encourage others to find a way to tell his story if you support his message.  For me, music is my gift and so I used it as such.  However, as helpless as we sometimes may feel, we all have the power to do something meaningful if we are just willing to be still and listen to the heart.

Now for the tune in 192k mp3 glory:
Gabino - I Heard You, Malachi.mp3

You never wanted to pretend
You couldn't even in the end
So what do you say?
What do we do now?

You doused yourself in liquid hate
To save the world from the war and its fate
So what do you say?
What do we do now?

Malachi
I Heard Your Cry
and I am not the only one!