A short film of mine premiered last night at St. Paul's Northern Spark festival, with the short film group I contribute to called MNKino. The theme was "arrivals and departures," and I had no idea what I was going to make until midnight the night before it was due. I was browsing archive.org and found a disturbing, but fascinating 1940 film documenting experiments on reviving dogs from the dead.
My cousin Joe Graves' songwriting skills somehow flew under the radar in my family, until he finally performed some of his songs this past Christmas. In Composer Quest Episode 36, Joe plays and talks about the music he wrote for his band Goodnight Gorillas. He was inspired to make dark music by his older brothers Matt and Nate (Ep. 4), but he's been developing his own singing and songwriting style. Joe shares some of his lyrical inspiration, including a story about a famine in North Korea that forced some people to dig up dead bodies for food.
Metal isn't for everyone, but guitarist Devin Earlywine is okay with making music 90 percent of listeners won't enjoy. In Composer Quest Ep. 27, Devin talks about how metal isn't all about doom and gloom. He even admits his band Idiopathic Necrotization started as a joke to have fun with the ridiculousness of the gore death metal genre. In most of his music, Devin tries to avoid thinking of his audience at first, so there are no roadblocks between the purest musical idea from his brain to the finished song.
Luke Friedrich was too young to carry a musket when he joined his Civil War reenacting unit, so he picked up the fife and drum instead. Now, he plays in more bands than would seem possible, including Crimes, Strange, Rupert Angeleyes, Flowerstalks, Secrets, ThoughtTalk, and his primary songwriting endeavor, Squares. We talk about performing, the music business, and his fascination with horrific lyrical topics.
I talked with my cousin, Nathan Graves, who fronts the band With a Gun for a Face and writes solo music under the name Kurtz. Nate's music is usually pretty dark and dissonant, but strangely catchy. The more I listen, the more I like it.
Demented, sugary chaos - I guess that's how I picture this new song written by my cousin Nate Graves (aka Kurtz). We started working on it back in April, but we got stuck trying to add percussion. I originally thought a steady Radiohead-esque beat would work, but it felt kind of plodding to me. So Continue reading...