Pinkeye

Here's our latest song with François and Binesh.

I just got done reworking it...
"remixing" and "mastering" are too big words for
something so raw that we laid down in just a couple of takes.

Music and lyrics are all from Francie's tainted soul,
some snippets:

"Sail the ship with no name"
"..backwards walking in
to love dressed up as sin
the cure for your purpose"
"chasing piece of mind
will soon be left behind"

Maybe he's been listening to too much Mars Volta lately.

Francie was going for the Pink Floyd melded vocals sound.
I tried to embellish (read "bury") our voices with effects.
But we just might need a real singer.

This song is radically different from our first, Houroub which
is more of the east-west fusion i really love.

Speaking of which, i recently discovered an amazing Iranian-American
singer/songwriter. Her name is Haale. This is what the NY Times wrote about her:
"Percussionists provided driving rhythms...over which Haale's warm, supple voice unfurled like a curlicue of smoke. Her band's amplified rumble served as a reminder of the extent to which rock bands like the Doors and the Velvet Underground turned to the East for their most hypnotic efforts; here their borrowlings were reclaimed with interest."

There are numerous uncanny parallels with my Iranian-Spanish friend Atisu and our jazz-folky band during my student year of living in Toulouse, France. I'll try to dig up some of the tapes from a couple radio shows we played and post them up here for you to check out.

Ok, enough digressing, here's our latest, Pinkeye!
Let me know what you think!

Soccer Team Work

Our indoor soccer team is dragging along this season.
The league screwed us up so consistently it
looks intentional. First they caused us to miss
an entire season and then they stuck us in the last
division on a different day that we had requested.

For our game last night, 5 players (out of 10)
didn't show up, some with good reason but most
just didn't turn up, leaving the team severely depleted.
The ragtag team still managed a win but it wasn't pretty.

At least there is still is some inspirational soccer
out there: selfless and flawless. Enjoy:

10 Year College Reunion

Old Friends, Many Beers and Old Bay Crabs

SoCal Trip

A week-long jaunt around Southern California started on a
great note we scored a free upgrade to a convertible red mustang.




In LA, we toured the sights such as
the Frank Gehry designed Disney Concert Hall:




The Getty Center with its views of LA and somptuously
designed grounds was not to be missed either:




I had to take the obligatory picture on Hollywood's Walk of Fame
and pay my respects:




What's a trip to Cali without nice long walks on the beach...




We visited several beer locales, the original Pizza Port
of Solana Beach was terrific and not only because I
rocked the pinball machine there ;-)
The best was hands down Stone Brewing in Escondido
for its expansive tap and bottle beer menu, great food
and a fantastic outdoor rock garden.



Check out a few more pix here:

200704 SoCal Trip

Houroub

After months of delays, here finally is a song we recorded with a bunch of friends. I had been waiting to re-record and mix it better but it seems we never can find the time or when we do, we end up going off on tangents and playing other stuff.

This particular song is inspired by a personal fave, the group Niyaz.
This was our second take with one mic in the middle of the room.
No post-processing, the reverb comes courtesy of my brother's basement.

François on bass, is from South Carolina. As our resident philosopher and muslim scholar, he anchors the band with most of the writing when we're not just making stuff up as we go.

Binesh is our guitar shredder who can pulls off any Satriani, Vai and David Gilmour (Pink Floyd) licks you can think off. You can see why I gladly deferred the guitar duties to him. He brings peace and balance to us through his Nepalese Buddhist infused hair metal acrobatics.

Ahmed hails from Morocco. He's the only one who's actually classically trained, in middle eastern music theory. He plays the beautiful oud, pictured below.

Cheers and let me know what you think of it.