Paint- Axis Mundi

Round about Aught 8, Jeff wrote another album called, Axis Mundi. Let's hear bout it.

Where Esuna was sometimes schizophrenic, an experiment by a songwriter finding his footing, Axis Mundi marked a sharper focus. Instead of writing whatever came into my head, I tried to achieve a specific sound and aesthetic. The result is a collection of songs that is dark, ethereal, and sometimes, tribal-- heavy on the keys, and light on the guitars.

Later Blamers's standards, "Nocturne" and "Lights Go Out," follow opener "The Tyger," which pairs lyrics from the famous William Blake poem with  frenetic Sufi-styled vocals and hand drums. Also featured is an updated version of "Summersong," a track that debuted on Esuna. My other favorite is "Monday Nights," which is a momento mori focused on the mating habits of fireflies, built upon a repeating koto riff.

The recordings are still a bit rough, as I was still grappling with the mechanics of home recording, but overall, the songs are fun and worth a listen or two. Axis Mundi is a record of a songwriter staking a claim and unstretching his wings a bit.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/2jmdlmndhdb/Axis Mundi.zip

Paint - "Esuna"

 Way back in Aught 7, when Jeff was known as "Paint," he wrote a little album called Esuna. This is it's story. 

Esuna represents a time when I was still finding my footing as a musician and a writer. I had given up on songwriting for a few years at the time, thinking that my future was leading me down other pathways. I was studying Art History, and though I loved it, I was starting to feel foggy and empty, always writing about other people's work and never producing anything creative myself. For me, Esuna represented a taking back of a past from which I had cut myself away, deliberately or passively. 

Esuna takes it's name from a staple spell from the video game series, Final Fantasy. In these games, you can cure all the negative spells effecting your characters, such as "slow," "poison," "blindness," by casting "esuna." For me, writing the album was a metaphorical wiping away of the spells telling me I couldn't do it; an unlearning of the things I learned that kept me from music. 

The songwriting is flawed, the recording, abysmal, but there are a few things I am proud of. My favorite is "La Fin d'Octobre," a waltz sung in French about a guy who is being haunted by his dead lover, who visits him in his dreams, but only if he drinks enough du vin. Fans of The Blamers will be interested to hear an early and zygote-like version of "Summersong," which has become a live staple for the band. Other stand-outs are the tribal opener, "Incantation," a dark and wickedly morbid duet with Future Pat called "The Magic Number," and "All out War," a blues song about the spirit of war personified as a red-haired and ultra-violent beauty (à la Neil Gaiman). 

Anyway, give it a listen if you feel so inclined. Sometimes, its nice to remember where one comes from. 

http://www.mediafire.com/file/nz0zhnmuktm/Esuna.zip

Come on, little life-giver. Give your life.

This blog post is about Joanna Newsom. Her new album, Have One On Me, which came out a couple weeks ago, is really fucking awesome. Seriously. Drop what you're doing and buy it right now. Worbs cannot describe...

Due to my unrelenting love for this person - whom I've never met and from whom I probably subconsciously rip off musical ideas - I will, so as not to appear overly creepy, withhold the discursive and pleonastic disquisition about her beauty and genius which has been percolating in my thinking-head for some great time now.

I've really only got one thing to say:

On April 3rd Joanna is playing at the Vic. So help me God, The Blamers, if we book a show for that Saturday night I will not play and probably take the opportunity to finally quit the band and become the first non-Jesuit to hold the Guinness record for slow-falling and abstract heuristics plagiarism. Fair warning, oh my brothers.