the porpoise principle

an entirely new version of the track the porpoise principle was created on 20th february 2011. the only thing this shares with the october 2010 version - other than the title - is the sample that gives the track its name. regular readers of our blog may remember that we recycled the rest of the october 2010 version into our november 2010 track anhedoniac.

edit, 15th may 2011: this february 2011 version is the one on ascending a line in the sky to sothis.

logos free track of the week # 4

our latest logos free track of the week is a version of the track manunkind.

this was one of the first logos tracks, created back in june 2010, and features voice by darren francis and words by e e cummings (the poem 'pity this busy monster, manunkind') . we did a radical edit of this track in january 2011 for darren francis' myspace page. this current mix, a compromise between the 9'24" original and the 2'17" edit, was created on 18th february 2011.

download it - and other free logos tracks - here.

god thing

darren francis' spoken word album god thing is now available to download for free here.

track listing:

01. w9gfo
02. black olives
03. fissure king
04. god, love, money and other snares
05. will i dream
06. scarecrow
07. the hills are alive
08. hollowed be thy meme

this material was created between december 2009 and march 2010, and its probably fair to say that without it there would have been no logos.



Click the widget below to listen:

manunkind

you can hear a version of the track manunkind at darren francis' myspace page. this track features darren francis reading the e e cummings poem pity this busy monster, manunkind with music by logos, and was one of the earliest logos tracks, created back in june 2010. this version is a massive edit of the original, and omits the seven minute instrumental introduction. we expect that one version or another of this track will feature as a logos free track of the week in future.

at darren francis' myspace page you can also hear some other tracks featuring df's voice, including tracks from the god thing spoken word-with-music album. god thing was created in spring 2010 but df was then side-tracked by logos and never finalised the mix. god thing will be finished and available very shortly, and we'll post details here.

logos free track of the week # 3

today's logos free track of the week is a track we likely won't be making available anywhere else (for the foreseeable future and in this form at least).

canticle was the second logos track created and we're still fond of it. it very nearly appeared on gehenna now. though it sounds a world away from where we are now in some respects, here it is if you want it.

why didn't it make the gehenna now mark? a sample, pure and simple. obscure but recognisable - to us at least - and we didn't feel comfortable releasing it. giving it away is a different matter.

note that this draft is the demo created way back in april 2010. we did consider re-working it before putting it out today but opted not to. so you get the original, warts and all.

http://logosnexus.bandcamp.com/album/logos-free-track-of-the-week

db00215

another new shamania track, db00215 was created on the evening of 22nd december 2010, with some reshaping and remixing on 30th december 2010.

edit, 25th october 2012: this track was cut from the final track listing of shamania. it remains unreleased.

logos free track of the week # 2

we've uploaded another free logos track for you to download, an alternate version of hollow hills of london. this version completely restructures the track and massively truncates the eight minute introduction to the original.

download it here - http://logosnexus.bandcamp.com/album/logos-free-track-of-the-week

we've decided we're going to keep previous free tracks of the week up for a little longer (the original plan was that as soon as we uploaded a new track we'd take the last one down) to enable people to download them if they've not had a chance to yet.

news update

things have been rather quiet on planet logos this month - publicly at least. aside from our being busy with personal (non-musical) concerns, we're finalising the mix of our second album ascending a line in the sky to sothis, which we intend to have out by the end of this month. we're also about to release our second logos free track of the week, which will be an alternate - and much-shorter - version of hollow hills of london. more news on both of these very shortly.

[ + ]

another new shamania track. its difficult to pin this track's date precisely; the foundation is taken from the track enoch's ladder (which we have now scrapped), but it was finalised in this version on 11th december 2010. in early december 2010 there were one or two other tentative drafts, but we don't have a record of the dates. no matter.

edit, 25th october 2012: this was cut from the final track listing of shamania as we didn't feel that it fitted with the flow of the album. it remains unreleased.

tattoo

on 4th december 2010 logos' darren francis had a tattoo done based upon/inspired by the logos avatar beastie. herewith a photo:-



yes, the tee-shirt is a bit of shameless advertising for another band (the rather wonderful she wants revenge) but we like the tattoo so much we can forgive df that.

[ - / + ]

another new shamania track, created on the evenings of 30th november and 2nd december*. we think shamania is shaping up to be our favourite logos album.

we'll be finalising the ascending a line in the sky to sothis mix this month, and hope to have that completed and released by the end of the year.

edit, 25th october 2012: this track was re-named hypoboy for the final shamania mix.


* although this track appears in the shamania track listing we gave in an earlier post, at that stage we only had a preliminary mental sketch of it and hadn't actually created it. the same applies for several other tracks in that listing.

here is the love that lists where it will

herewith, the current track listings for our shamania and everything we ever were albums, and the current cover art*. we are working on both concurrently. whichever gets finished first will be released first.

why do we post this? post details of works still in progress, still mutable? partly to give you an insight into the process, partly to record for ourselves. snapshot of a procedure. you won't recognise the names of some of these tracks because we've not finished them.

* both cover images - which we think fantastic - are by our friend debb rooken-smith.

everything we ever were

01. the side effects of october
02. desert star 1
03. he knows the use of ashes
04. deepblue2519
05. dreamer
06. lend you
07. crepuscular
08. friends
09. thursday to wednesday [into the void]
10. be with me
11. sunday to tuesday [no one calls]
12. everybody goes
13. tesseract [deepblue2519 reprise]

shamania

01. anodyne
02. [ / ]
03. db00215
04. [- / + ]
05. fire in the mind
06. [ - ]
07. anhedoniac
08. [ + ]
09. [ # ]
10. hypoboy
11. hypogirl
12. shamania
13. bipolar binary

due to the duration of some of these tracks, this will be - at least - a double CD-length album.

[ # ]

another shamania track. at this rate, shamania may end up being finished before everything we ever were. we jump between the two projects, as and where we are taken. our intuitions lead; we follow.

this re-works the main elements of our track lie to me into a new and rather different beast. as such now consider lie to me extinct. it works much better in its new context, we feel. but then we would say that. the more we shape shamania, the better it slots in. the more we shape everything we ever were, the less of a home it has there.

edit, 25th october 2012: this was cut from the final track listing of shamania as we didn't feel that it fitted with the flow of the album. it remains unreleased.

anhedoniac

more shamania, created on the evenings of 23rd and 24th november 2010.

this track recycles many elements of the porpoise principle - as such, consider that track now scrapped. it was something of an orphan anyway, created for ascending a line in the sky to sothis but we could never find a satisfactory way to slot it into the track listing for that album and it's been adrift since then. no matter; a home has been found here.

edit, 25th october 2012: this was cut from the final track listing of shamania as we didn't feel that it fitted with the flow of the album though we did put a version of it out as a free track of the week.

fire in the mind

we mentioned in an earlier post (on 28th september) that we'd renamed the track fire in the mind (to the looming tower) because we wanted to use that name for another track we had planned.

that track - the new fire in the mind - is now done, finished late into last night, and is set for our fourth album shamania.

creating new tracks with more than one project in mind, switching between them as we go, isn't new for us. ascending a line in the sky for sothis was all created at the same time as we were working on gehenna now, as were a number of other tracks which we don't have a home for yet. it's just the way we do things. the shamania and everything we ever were tracks are very different in style and what we work on depends which way our mood takes us on a particular evening.

edit, 25th october 2012: this was cut from the final track listing of shamania as we didn't feel that it fitted with the flow of the album. it remains unreleased.

the owls are not what they seem

although this is an old track, for some reason we've never put details of it on this blog - likely because we worked on it on and off over quite a long period - so thought we would rectify that.

it was one of our earlier tracks; in fact it's based on the backing track used for darren francis' podcast binary (which pre-dates logos), featuring df reading his short story of the same name. we re-worked it into this much longer and more elaborate piece in mid-may (we don't have a note of the dates, but remember it was at the same time as we were working on conduit closing and unified field object, both of which this track share a sibling relationship with). we went back to it several times after that; the most recent mp3 of it we have - which would have been the day we last worked on it - is dated 29th july 2010.

[ - ]

further shamania. is this even music? who knows? it tickles the parts of our neural networks that need to be tickled right now. *

to do our usual butterfly-pinning: first draft 11th november 2010, take we're for now content with 19th november 2010, some noodling between, additional noodling due.

edit 28th november 2010: 'additional noodling' done today.

edit, 25th october 2012: this was re-named bipolar binary for the final shamania track listing.

* for those with a yearning to tell their friends about this track and wondering how it's pronounced, we like to pronounce [ - ] 'ahhhhh'.

friends

another newbie track, friends is destined - in its jejune way - for everything we ever were.

created tonight, 17th november 2010, seeds sown in sound-sketches from the past few days. it needs a further tinker, which we'll do the next time there is sleep that won't come and walls that need to be bounced off of.

our latest tracks, we should say, follow one of two paths. there are those bound for album three, everything we ever were - which are pert and pertinent - and those intended for the album which will come after. which we're not even sure constitute 'music' in any sense of the word. the themes of that (planned, still mutant, still doodling) album are bipolarity, creativity, medication, hypomania, anhedonia, on top of the world looking down on creation. that album will be called shamania.

in the meantime, we're also working on the ascending a line in the sky to sothis mix. we still intend to have that completed by the end of the year; watch this space.

everybody goes

another new track though still very much in draft form, everybody goes was created on 16th november 2011.

not me / he knows the use of ashes

two new tracks, not me and he knows the use of ashes.

both feature voice, both clock in at less than three minutes, and one (not me) even features some percussion! fear not, a return to our conventional ten minute plus moody meanderings will be here ere long.

not me was created today, 14th november 2010. he knows the use of ashes is a little older. we did the first draft of that on the laptop in the red lion pub in avebury, wiltshire, on 15th october 2010 (at that point it was called the side effects of october; we've reassigned that title to another - as yet incomplete - track), revisited it on 30th october 2010 (looking back, we did a lot of music that weekend; desert star 1, tesseract, lie to me, another track called be with me that we've still not finished, and this one, along with finalising gehenna now), and finished it off yesterday, 13th november. all the tracks named in this post are destined for our third album, which will be called everything we ever were and will be out early next year.

ascending a line in the sky to sothis

herewith, as promised, details of our second album ascending a line in the sky to sothis, which will hopefully release next month if we finish the mix by then. at the bottom of this post you'll find the cover art, which is by our friend debb rooken-smith and which we like very much.

current track listing:

1. sothis rising (8.12)
2. to please the moon (10.13)
3. sun king (22.05)
4. do you love? (9.11)
5. the opening of the mouth (18.28)
6. coming forth by day (9.45)
(total time: 1:17:51)

timings are approximate until we finish the mix, but we doubt they'll vary much. all tracks were created between june and august of this year (at the same time as we were working on the gehenna now material). you can hear preliminary versions of some tracks on our myspace page.

why sothis? and why so sirius? those of you who know what sothis means, and dog-days, and their significance to darren francis, shouldn't have to ask.