Thursday, August 30, 2007

Get your freak on.

So, this week is the week that I'm officially releasing "Vicious Cycles", Son of Rust's second (and way awesome) album, and supposedly a review will be showing up 0n VampireFreaks.com . They also claim they'll be doing a feature on the main page. So, in order to grease the wheels a little, I thought I'd go ahead and do an exclusive remix that will only appear on my band profile over there and would appeal to their own interesting slice of americana. I guess they probably have vampire freaks from other parts of the globe, too, so maybe americana isn't quite right... oh, who gives a crap, nobody reads this thing.

"Nobody reads this thing" is also my excuse for why I'm posting an exclusive remix that will only appear on my vampirefreaks profile here on the blog. So I'm fudging the term "exclusive" a little. Sue me.

In order to appeal to Vampire Freaks of all kinds I decided to make this the "hardest" remix I've ever done. It's all screaming distorted synths and crazy drillish sounds and brain-piercing vocoded vocals. I know that's not my usual deal but I think at least one of you will probably like it.

To compensate I'm spending the next two weeks working on a down-tempo, chill out sorta groove thing that will create balance in my universe. Therefore, if you absolutely hate this remix, you'll probably like next post's thing. Don't give up on me just yet, is the gist of what I'm trying to get across here.

Keep an eye on vampirefreaks.com for the review and the feature which will hopefully be happening soon! Also, buy the damn CD if you haven't already (www.sonofrust.com), I'm getting sick of eating ramen and old shoes.

See you in two weeks!

Thursday, August 16, 2007

Lift off.

If you found this, you probably already know me. I'm Justin, the guy from Son of Rust (www.sonofrust.com). I'm a computer geek, tried and true. I also happen to love music - and I'm really into the lyric-driven structured kind. Pop music, modern rock, alternative, you name it. I call the kind of stuff I do "geek rock", hence the name of this blog.

Stephen King's "On Writing" is really a must read for all you creative types. There are a lot of great tidbits in there, and one was "Force yourself to write something, ANYTHING every night. If your blocked on your current story, write a poem, write a short story, write something. The artistic mind is like a muscle in a lot of respects, you've got to keep it in shape." This may not be a direct quote, but it's close.

"Stagnating" is probably the right word for my particular creative muscle, so I've decided to get myself on a workout program. That's this blog. Bi-weekly I'll be posting a new song. It could be a remix, a possible Son of Rust track, a taiko-drum based dance track with a rippin' accordian solo, a cover of a Bing Crosby single, literally anything. My plan is to write whatever the hell I'm in the mood to write and throw it up here on the old inter-web. The quality will likely range from decent to barely listenable, but that's not really the point. The point is to stay in shape.

Some tracks will be free downloads, others I'll be begging a dollar for. If you want to support this effort and keep me from having to sell my soul in corporate america, throw a dollar my way occasionally. Hey, a barely-listenable track by yours truly is probably still better than the weird off-brand batteries you can buy at the Dollar Store.

The first thing up here, "Drive", is a resurrection of an ancient ditty by the band Lakeshore Driving. They're my buds and I happen to know for a fact that this particular band will likely never exist again, so I decided to take their catchy little pop tune which I happened to still have the vocals for and do a little CPR. That's Cameron Cartier on vocals, the original track was written by my live keyboard monkey, Micheal Pacheco. Let me know what you think!

See you in two weeks, dear listeners.