Tag: inflatable hippies

Love in the Time of Pandemica

My newest album, Love in the Time of Pandemica, has just gone live. These days, I’m mostly recording under the name Inflatable Hippies (which my wife hates), but this album is under the band name UDK (short for Upside Down Kingdom). I’m not going to use this name again; it’s only for this album (and, yes, I realize this is totally a dumb marketing move in terms of [not] building up an entity–but that’s not exactly my goal here).

I didn’t write these songs for my grandmother. My specific audience for them is epic fantasy readers who shop at thrift stores, like Dvorak’s New World Symphony, and are mildly irritated with Jim Butcher for not writing a sequel to the Aeronaut’s Windlass. A very well-written and crafted book.

Anyway, these are all rock/alternative songs, mostly dealing with mortality, meaning in life, fate, providence, totalitarianism (particularly “Time to Run” and “Dark Stories”). “She’s Got Fangs” is in honor of all the excitable people who made themselves greatly known in the last two years of the pandemic/shut down/the great oddity (whatever you want to call 2020 and 2021). “Feel Just Fine” is an old, stripped down, fairly raw version of a song that ended up on the soundtrack of the indie film The Fellows Hip.

I love writing and recording music. The process is intensely creative with almost immediate gratification. At least, it seems immediate in comparison to writing books (several weeks versus months upon months). A regular dose of creativity keeps me sane. I figure on putting together an album’s worth of music at least once a year. Probably do an electronica instrumental album next.

You can hear all the songs in the new album for free at my HearNow site. If you like them, feel free to buy them on Apple or Amazon, or stream them on Spotify, Pandora, etc. The songs are pretty much everywhere digital music is sold.

Love in the Time of Pandemica

One of my main creative outlets these days is writing and recording music. It’s faster than writing books, in that I can sit down, write and record a song over the space of a couple hours. Walk away with a finished piece at the end. I can’t exactly articulate it, but there’s a certain psychological satisfaction in that. Finishing something that becomes its own entity.

Anyway, I’ve finished recording an album of ten songs with the Inflatable Hippies. That’s the occasional music group I’m part of. IH floats between electronica, folk and rock. This album is just rock. The songs seem to exist somewhere in the space between Seattle grunge and the Cranberries. Plus some odd folk influences here and there.

The title is (tentatively) Love in the Time of Pandemica and should hopefully be easier to get through than Love in the Time of Cholera. I still need to do the final mixes and mastering, and then get them up on all the streamers, Apple, etc etc.

Wake Up Dead by Inflatable Hippies

One of the songs from the new Inflatable Hippies album “Love in the Time of Lunacy.” I was invited to join the IH several years ago. Quite an honor, I must say. I don’t fully agree with their 20-year plan of subjugating the galaxy with their weird dadaist-music-as-life propaganda approach to devising a grand unified theory, but I’m along for the rest of the ride. I can’t argue with their foundational philosophy that all matter equals music. I doubt even James Maxwell would disagree; heck, he would’ve probably asked to join the band. Matter can be articulated by mathematics, which means that matter can be transposed into music. When we look at matter–the slag from an asteroid strike zone in Siberia, for example–we’re merely experiencing it in a non-musical key. But, any non-musical key can be transposed into any musical key of choice. I would guess that slag might end up as a minor key, though that might just be my narrow human perspective talking.

Anyway, here’s Wake Up Dead.

Project Update

The new Christmas album is done, of course.

12th draft just finished of the super secret script project. Not my idea, but my execution. Based on an idea thought up by an old friend. Fairly mind-blowing.

2/3 of a new epic fantasy done. 160,000 words and counting. It’s turning into a doorstop.

First song finished and recorded for next Inflatable Hippies album (just think of all those hippies floating through the sky–what a pastorally atmospheric sight, particularly during a beautiful sunset). Not a Christmas album at all. This one is more of a protest album. There’s plenty of things to protest on this, the third day of the new year. And the list will grow.

Every dream has got an end,

wake up in your bed.

But the light’s gone gray,

is this day

or are we dreaming instead?

Every story’s got an end

you know it in your head.

But the pages turn,

is there time to learn

before we wake up dead?

I’m kind of going in a Linkin Park meets Green Day, but in a more sensible fashion.