Viva la Vida CoN Remix
Interviewed On The Drop
What’s in a name? Naming a new album is one of the most difficult parts in the process. How do you encompass months of work and emotion into a couple of words? But first, where did this album come from? Unlike the previous album ‘Before Third Stage’ that was a reaction against religion, Apparent Horizons is a reconciliation with the world through the maturation of a new found faith. As in all art, the result is the result of the artist growing. So why ‘Apparent Horizons’? An apparent horizon is a term in physics that describes invariant properties of spacetime that are observer dependent. Observer dependent is key. This is how I view the world.
Making an album is a very deliberate act. It requires hours upon hours in the studio and while there is creativity, once there is an idea, that idea needs to be executed on with vigor. It’s been 3 years since ‘Third Stage Ignition’, so at the outset it was decided to comb through the hundreds of ideas accumulated during that time and find a theme. Finding the themes turned out to be very simple. The themes were:
- Reconciliation of my life and faith with how I know the world to be, not with how I was taught the world is by well meaning sheltered ignorant Christians.
- I need to let go of the guilt.
- Find beauty in my life as I struggle to maintain my goals with a rediscovery of faith while experiencing life the way the creator intended.
That seems to be quite a bit for a single album, but as it turns out, it’s not. This album is about reconciliation and moving on. For once you have moved on, you can experience life.
Track 5, ‘Finding Life’ nicely sums it up, if I may quote my own lyrics, here goes:
Find my life again
Find my fire within
And I’m running down a path that is bombarding me with sin
But it is so beautiful, my life is full, and so is my soul
I hope you enjoy the album. It will be out soon.
I know that I have been MIA for the past few months, and I have obviously not delivered on the new album. But I just wanted anyone who cared to know what is going on.
Right now I am working on a new interim project with a friend of mine of just pure unadulterated dance music. We are working on some tracks and will hopefully have a 5 song EP out before summer. This isn’t an SDO thing because SDO is kind of a more experimental thing for me, ie, little chance of commercial success 
. The music I am writing for this project is good, but I can’t really claim I am blazing a trail or anything. However, I must admit, making dance music can be fun.
I am glad I switched to ProTools before Logic was fully Steve’d. Some may say they like Logic 8, but that just indicates that they’re probably simple and were too dull to be Logic users in the first place. I had been using Emagic software since the Notator days, was angered when Apple bought them and dropped PC support for Logic 6, feared they would GarageBand the app, and it’s happened. I am sure all the stuff I used to use is still there, but it looks like a hybrid of Final Cut and GarageBand, and they busied the crap out of the GUI, and to top it all off, they didn’t fix the reason why I switched—it still sounds like muffled crap when compared to ProTools. Rant over, it’s just sad seeing Apple homogenize something that was so unique and wonderful.
First, a recap of this summer; the 2007 whirlwind tour of west coast weddings. From wine country to LA to multiple trips to Seattle and throw in a family reunion in Idaho for good measure, this was a busy one. The sad fact is that I live in Pasadena, and not once made it to the beach this summer, between all my trips and moving into the new studio, I was just tired when I wasn’t busy, I just veg’d out. I won’t complain, this was an excellent summer–I am just glad that it’s over because I am ready to begin the next chapter.
