Liner Notes - Darling - D2R

1. Clown on Fire
   A rollicking and incessant runaway that was a true joy to write, Clown on Fire may be the definitive example of my eccentricity as a composer. There is much of my everyday disposition here too, I think.
   
   The hilarious carny riff from a torturously overdriven calliope sets the stage for a series of wildly disparate shifts of feel, timbre, tempo and meter. The song’s frequent humor and jaunty momentum aside, there is something disquieting here… a kind of abiding malevolence with a familiar face. A bit like candy laced with poison. Bonbon anyone?
   
   
2. Black Rhyme
   A simultaneously dark and daft song for the enhancement of your Halloween experience. Black Rhyme is a tribute to some of the rather ominous classical music that I first heard as a child while watching cartoons. It has an easy directness that is a touch different than most of my regally festooned over-productions, but I’ve included a number of musical variables to keep it interesting.
   
   With respect to instrumentation, there are precedents for music with a "sinister" bent. They’re often quite effective, so I’ve used a few of them here. Pipe organ, brittle pianos, horns that growl and strings that slide conspire to establish the atmosphere.
   
   
3. Prom Vomit
   Here’s a song about school day memories that we all share. What a wonderful time it was! I responded to innocence with impressive cruelty and felt free to ridicule things that I did not understand. Arguments about pizza toppings would only occasionally come to blows. My narcissism was positively resplendent, when in reality my face was an enormous festering pustule.
   
   The memories are fading, but the best of them always involve drinking. Especially when it was someone else doing the drinking. I’m simply saying that on some level, we all went to the same school... and prom vomit was there.
   
   Anticipation... euphoria... stupor... dementia... a musical interpretation of each. And it comes in at under three minutes! Best enjoyed with a tall, cool glass of the fermented and/or distilled beverage of your choice.
   
   
4. Where Seraphs Despair
   This one is unquestionably sad, nearly despondent, yet I have very little concept of its subject matter. Sorrow in a generalized sense, perhaps. One of the most interesting (if somewhat disorienting) things about composition is that you often don't know where you're going until you get there. Sometimes music just reveals itself from the sanctuary of the subconscious mind. I think that’s what happened here.
   
   I've got it! Let's say that it’s about the current state of the music business, that always makes me want to blubber and yowl.
   
   
5. Rope of Sand
   This is a song assembled from a few discarded remnants of other compositions. The musical residue in question was not renounced due to innate shortcomings. It's just that some of the material I write doesn’t work within the context of its original design. A few things had to be seriously modified to accommodate their new musical framework, but what the hell. There are no meter or tempo changes in this one. Considering the way this track was put together, that’s nothing short of a miracle. A good thing too, as I’m usually not clever enough to get by without them.
   
   The title refers to the rather tenuous logic I employed to justify such an improbable compositional method. Could it be that I am just impossibly lazy, dull-witted, and remiss? You bet it could.
   
   
6. Aggressive Biological Behavior
   Taken as a whole, probably the heaviest music I have ever written. From a player's perspective, it's a challenging piece as you've really got to be jolly on the spot with those syncopated accents in the 9/8 section (or "locomotive thing" as we use to refer to it). It's great to be in my forties and playing music like this. It makes me feel like I’m doing something terribly wrong and getting by with it somehow.
   
   The title comes verbatim from a biopsy report describing the growth characteristics of a cancerous tumor.
   
   It was fatal.
   
   
7. An Unsettled Score
   Beginning its life as a simple arpeggio, the majority of this piece was written in a single four hour session. By my standards it was finished very quickly, as I typically make the compositional process a needlessly arduous ordeal involving screams of profanity, excessive consumption of beer and cigarettes, and the explosive destruction of expensive musical equipment.
   
   This piece was created electronically, and I'm not concerned with making you believe that it is a genuine symphony orchestra. It represents my first real attempt at a classical structure, and I hope that you will allow me the pleasure of this indulgence.
   
   
8. Run
   Here is a song that was once a part of a much larger scale work that was never finished. This is a moody and multifaceted piece that for me, at least, imparts an almost tangible sense of motion. Like falling down an elevator shaft onto a pile of sharp and filthy scrap metal. Sorry... actually it’s much more like "moving through" something. Like the passages of pain and euphoria I experience when I run.
   
   Afire at times, but also fairly restrained and gentle, this one demonstrates quite a range of musical intensity.
   
   
9. Dog Dreams
   There is a very pleasant little pub in Omaha called the Homy Inn. They serve a good selection of English ales and I go there quite frequently. Sometimes I’ll bring manuscript paper and sketch rough drafts of whatever musical ideas happen to be rattling around inside my skull on that particular day. The basic piano and bass parts of Dog Dreams were written in this way.
   
   By the time it was finished, its overall character reminded me of the way my dog would twitch and snort as she dreamt of crushing the life out of all the small, furry animals unfortunate enough to occupy her domain. It may be the world’s first example of canine jazz.
   
   Now excuse me while I alvum exonerare in the neighbor’s yard.
   
   
10. A Breach of Species One through Five
    Here is a simple counterpoint exercise that I created to audition sounds in my studio. I didn’t expect to release it, but it’s very short and spontaneous, and as such provides an aspect that I rarely reveal.
    
    Obviously a candidate for an extended dance remix, as I’m certain that my music will soon become the centerpiece of that tremendously innovative genre.
    
    
11. Mr. Smith Shows the Children How to Smoke a Cigarette
    Starting its life as a kind of trenchantly perverse, non-triple time, bastardized bolero, I soon realized that my approach to this one was unacceptably calculated. I condensed to an agreeable length the material I had written (stolen) for the first section, and proceeded to assemble the much less derivative and much more satisfying second passage. I don’t know why the pizzicato and flute figure comes next, but it seemed like a fine idea at the time. Such are the weighty ruminations of this dynamic paragon of the musical craft. I then hit the time-honored brick wall and moved on to other projects.
    
    A few months later, I wrote an altered reprise of the second section that I really liked, but soon results fell well short of expectations once again, and I left in frustration. Several months and a thousand beers later, the ending manifested itself as a very compact review of the song’s primary themes.
    
    The resulting musical animal is remarkable if only for the fact that it was written in order, from beginning to end. Remarkable only to me perhaps, but I get to write the liner notes. So there.
    
    
12. Asunder
    This is a song about dangerous things, and the wisdom to be found in the acknowledgement of their existence. I am not a fatalist, but it is difficult to deny that this life often gives and takes what it will with casual indifference. One must control what one can, because there is so much more that one cannot.
    
    I’ve long fancied the idea of writing a piece that is, in effect, a warning. So here I present the commencement music of manifest folly, replete with all the thunder and menace that I could muster.
    
    If music is catharsis, and for me it often is, then I suppose the real value of this piece is that it will always be an intensely personal reminder that arrogance and ignorance are offenses that carry their own punishment.
    
    Insert your own sarcastic rejoinder here.