Now one of my songs has become soundtrack to a short movie:
https://youtu.be/n6oDFmE9O6o
Animeaux sans frontiers/ Gwendolin makes short movies about animals and
pollution; this one is from the Öresund beaches around Helsingborg,
Sweden.
(In german, with english subtitles.
Download “Nobody said its gonna be easy“, the B-side to “121212”) here,
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As easy as it is today, anybody can pile 40 channels or more onto their songs, making todays computer power and the huge pletoria of software heaven for every musician and producer.
However, sometimes the challenge lies in some limitations to enhance your creative process. Probably you heard of Peter Schmidt and Brian Enos deck of cards, “Oblique Strategies“, wich is one way to push your creativity into new directions.
One easy way is however to limit the amount of channels or instruments you’re going to use in a project.
This is how “the Challenge” was born.
It was between Out Of Focus, Carl Arsenic and me.
The Challenge was to make a song with at most three instruments and five drum sounds. OOF also wanted a song track; as a result you can hear me “sing” for the first time…oh, well.
After the challenge was set I realised that Carl had and huge advantage, with his history in several renowned punk bands… so here we are, after one thing and another finally you are agle to enjoy the results, all three in different styles.
You have links to OOF and Carls songs above, here you have my contribution: one original version, and one produced by Assemblage 23/Tom Shear.
Listen, download, enjoy and comment!
Commuterpop Hitmusik Maschine at Museum of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden
This is a lovesong to, and a parody of, german music; from Karlheinz Stockhausen and Conny Plank, to Kraftwerk and Rammstein, who all have had an influence on all modern music and musicians.
One version is produced by the futurepop/Industrial/electro icon Assemblage 23/Tom Shear; the idea started out in his crowfunding project.
This song is very different compared to what I have done earlier, and I bet this will surpise you in more than one way;
One thing is that I “sing” solo on an recording for the first time, also that I’m a into the land of EBM/industrial with some guitar combo. Inspired also by Ultravox, themselves inspired by the german krautrock scene.
The song started out as my contribution to “the Challenge” (read more about it here)
Listen, download, enjoy and comment!
Hitmusik aus Deutschland – original version
Commuterpop feat. Assemblage 23 – Hitmusik aus Deutschland
Yes, it’s true.
The futurepop/Industrial/electro icon Assemblage 23/Tom Shear will produce my next release.
This started out in his crowfunding project:
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/help-support-the-new-assemblage-23-album#/
The song in itself will serve several surprises compared to my earlier releases, så stay tuned here, the newsletter and/or Facebook!
A very calm song, suitable for a quiet evening, or perhaps relaxing.
I wrote and palyed it just tonight, and first I wasn’t shure wether it should be lika this or develop, but after some thought I think it should stay calm.
As I declare it to be only a test you’ve got the chance to affect it 🙂
Listen, download enjoy – and sign up for the newsletter!
Finally some new material!
Speedy is a classic catchy song – commuterpop style.
Originally I started working on this song in 2007. For some reason I really couldn’t move beyond the first parts, even though I really liked the idea. I’ve been listening to it on and off through the years without finding that divine inspiration that was there the first time.
Sometimes you know that if you don’t force yourself to do it, it will never be finished and that was the case with me and this song, so here we go.
Also, Bear from Out of Focus had some ideas to develop it to a more classical pop song instead of the dance music arrangement. I’m waiting eagerly to hear the result – it will be posted here.
Listen, download and enjoy!
Also, check out Commuterpops page at Soundcloud!
As I wrote here, I was working on mixing and some remix versions of “Värdighet” (Dignity in swedish) for the band Out of focus.
When I was ready with the dance version I forgot to post, so…. here’s your chance to listen to and download the song – enjoy!
I had the great honour to mix and remix of Out Of Focus‘ song “Värdighet” (“Dignity” in Swedish – they also have a lot of songs in english, so check them out!).
First, we mixed the original version, totally separate from each other, with very different result as you can hear. A practical lesson in how much the mixing process and different mixing engineers can influence a piece.
Then I couldn’t resist to make some more, so the result was “Värdighet – andra låten på B-sidanmix” (second song on the B-side mix).
Also a pleasure to do and, as those remembering physical records, those B-side songs or remixes could be quite freely arranged or really out there, so hence the name, and – as you can guess – I did it quite in a spontaneous way.
I highly recommend it to you music makers out there, as it gives you a feeling of total freedom! 🙂
Also, there is a dance remix on the way…expect more news soon.
EDIT: I forgot to post it, you can listen/download the dance mix here.
Out Of Focus is two very talented musicians who has worked together since the 80s, and it was a real pleasure to do this with them. Their style could perhaps be described as pop in 80’s arrangements but modern sounds, and the lyrics… are they dark humour or unhappiness for real?
You can never guess what’s in the picture!
Following my date tradition, I follow up the singles “101010” and “111111” today with “121212”
The track “121212” (Click the triangle to listen) is a upbeat, funky song with horns, hammond and swingy percussion on a solid bass drum bed.
Actually the beginning of the song saw the daylight a couple of years ago, and enhanched with some rearanging tips from my extremely multitalended brother in law Carl Arsenic
Nobody said its gonna be easy (Click the triangle to listen) is a path I will discover more, somewhere in the borderlands between cinematic music and experimental.
The title refers to the listening experience of the song…. 🙂
If you prefer to download both, with cover art included, as a zip file you can do it by following this link.
As always, comments are welcome, both below and on Facebook
You can also connect on Twitter
Enjoy!
Yes, I follow the tradition of releases on even dates, although it will not be at the time 12:12….
Meanwhile, don’t forget to check out my pages at Soundcloud and Facebook and welcome back tomorrow!
New song out!
I made a song for the Ultravox competition, made out of loops, samples and snippets from Ultravox songs, no own parts added.
Before it gets posted to the Ultravox page you can enloy it here:
http://soundcloud.com/commuterpop/ultravox-sonata-no1
Enjoy!
At 11-11-11, 11:11 this new single was released.
Two songs, “11-11-11” and “How about our dinner invitation” in one convinient zip package including cover art, ready for you to download and enjoy!
If you want to hear them first, just click the arrows in front of the title.
“11-11-11” – first tryout is a bit funky thing, however not yet really finished. Consider it a work in progress.
commuterpop.com/cms/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Commuterpop-How-about-our-dinner-invitation.mp3
“How about our dinner invitation” i a moody, chillout ambient song with some lightharted quirky sounds to complement it.
It was originally published in 2009 on the now closed Tunited site, Midge Ure’s project of nurturing bands into the business, and the title was a humourus way of reminding him that he hadn’t answer our dinner invitation when he and the rest of Ultravox was coming to play in Stockholm…:-)
Here you have it: the first two published songs on this site:
1) Techno for grownups
and
2) 101010
Consider it a single; haven’t had time to make a cover, but I’ll keep the time limit, todays date is 101010….:-)
Techno for grownups is a “tounge in cheek” take on modern dance music, arranged in a more “traditional” pop way.
It has been described/compared toYello, Orbital amongst others.
Other peoples responses to your own music is sometimes quite surprising! 🙂
101010 is a slow, moody, ambient electronic track, suitable for a dark evening in a sentimental mood, perhaps.
It has been described as early John Foxx, urban futuristic, the Orb amongst other.
Download and enjoy!