You might have noticed already, but this website is now completely Web 2.0. I'm just missing the lens flare and very important kitty on the side column (read: web designer's hell comic), but I'm excited about everything that's been going on, and others seem to be too. If you have a Facebook profile, please recommend my website to your friends and associates by pressing the "Like" button at the top of the front page. The publicity really helps and is appreciated. I'm currently working on refurbishing IDMf with the hopes of seeing more creative solo artist output from the netlabel along with plugging away at my own music, so I am very busy lately, and would love if the people who already enjoy what I do could tell their friends about me. This means you! Thanks in advance for the love. I'll put it in this post just in case you have a fear of clicking your mouse button too often.
I don't have much else to say this time, except that music writing has been going rather smoothly. I'm happy with my output these days. I refuse to preview any of my work publicly because I don't want to my release to be full of has-been music from me. I'm looking forward to the fresh sound (it's fresh for me anyway) and I would like to fully develop it before spreading it around. How about instead I give some of my musical meanderings to hold you off in the mean time! I can say that you can expect more mixes from me in the not too distant future.
THINGS I ARE CURRENTLY LISTENING ABOUT:
As per regular programming of this website, I'd like to point you to the things I've been listening to quite often as of late. I'm like Pandora, except with better music and even less personal choice. Pssh, who wants to seek out music anyway when there are people like me to choose it for you. </pretentious> Prepare for a link orgy!
03 Coax's latest dark ambient and dub release titled Selant, hosted on Bandcamp and completely free to download. Be prepared to feel like you're stranded on some physics-defying alien planet (not that you aren't already)
06 Jazzyspoon's Circle When Finishedwas just released on Bandcamp earlier last week. This is a must own. It is worth way more than $5 but that is all you have to shell out to download it. Even if you don't want to buy it, you can stream every track from the afore-mentioned link. This is easily one of my favorite albums of 2010. The guy is an incredible song writer, one should expect nothing less from Seattle, WA. What do they put in the water up there?
Also on a semi-comical note, I've been grooving on this track for about a year or so (Hover and play). The music video reminds of a certain 80s track many Adult Swim lovers might know. </hipster>
I don't feel like I covered even half of what I've been listening to lately on here, but blogging tends to bore me after awhile. Feel free to hit me up with your own musical suggestions. I love to know what is slamming people's ear drums.
If you're a Burial fan, I know what you're thinking: "Um, took you long enough." Ok, well, you're right. If you haven't heard of Burial, this is not a blog entry about my dedication to cremation coming into question.
Burial's eponymous debut album came out in 2006. I listened to it practically the day it came out and hated it. It was critically acclaimed in the electronic music world, but I (along with a lot of other folks) just couldn't fathom what attracted people to it. Then Untrue came out a couple of years later and I elicited the same reaction: "Meh." His work with Four Tet never got me riled up either, and I always just thought I would never understand the attraction to his sounds.
I recently moved to downtown San Francisco, and for an audiophile like me it's a sonic wet dream. One of my next projects is to stick my condenser microphone out my window and catch all the sounds coming out of the alley below my bay windows (I'm on the second floor). All kinds of sounds are constantly bouncing off the walls of the tall buildings and reverberating and echoing in the most fascinating way -- the general whir of engines and machinery, the piercing sirens, homeless people rummaging through rubbish for food, drug addicts gurgling and crooning as they stumble over the curbs, bar patrons yelling for cabs and being accosted by street evangelists. Just the overall ambient tensions caused by all these sounds fusing with one another and flooding my ears is like a waking dream of being under a sort of "liquid air", a [mist of insanity] that in many ways is soothing. It's difficult to explain, and living in Sacramento my whole life, even the inner city, I never fully understood what it meant to be fully immersed in sound.
This is why I now understand Burial. It's a controlled liquid air, all of the fusions of city sounds brought into musicality, and it completely sucks you in and holds on to you through its duration. He demands that you stay suspended in the ambience he creates, and it's just like city noise: sparse but coherent and all the while breathtakingly powerful.
I highly recommend that you pick up his albums if you haven't already. The perfect time to listen to Burial is before you go to sleep or go out into the urban wilderness... put his albums on to your MP3 player and explore internally and externally. There's an odd synchronization between his music, the fast-paced environment of a city, and the pulsating motions of your brainwaves. I urge you to listen to Burial under headphones, at least for the first time. It's controlled and molded to build into a beautiful barrage of sounds that fit together perfectly, and what I'm writing here probably won't make sense until you are fully immersed in it under a set of decent earphones and a cleared schedule on a pretty day.
Here is a mix to explore space by. From celestial atmospheres to driving low frequencies, this is a powerful hour of drum and bass.
In fact Ferdinand Magellan himself rocked a more primitive version of this mix when scouring the oceans for the spice islands. Long before that, prehistoric Easter Island dwellers listened to an even more archaic version of this mix while using their Polynesian alien space crafts to haul the giant rock carvings to their current positions, looking out onto the setting sun.
I put a lot of love into this one. I sincerely hope you enjoy it.
Tracks:
Francis Travis - Requiem For Soprano, Mezzo Soprano, Two Mixed Choirs & Orchestra
Nebula - Prototype Chords
Naibu - Opium Lady
Electrosoul System - Textures
Bachelors of Science - Sugar
Oscillist - Ethereal Drift
Klute - Ambient Hell
Sub Focus - Follow the Light
Teebee - Liquid Light
Seba - Blaze and Fade Out (Maxi Version)
State of Mind - Sunking
Calibre - Out of the Box
Duo Infernale - Lost in the World
Apex - Emo Funk
Overturn - Turn Off The Light (ESS Remix)
4hero - Morning Child (L.A.O.S. Remix)
Utah Jazz - River Theme feat. Atlantic Connection
Bachelors of Science - Jah No Dead
Join me in partaking in this bass heavy and variety driven dubstep mix I put together! Take one down pass it around. Share it with your homies!
I am available for elderly picnics and cubicle parties. Enjoy this here chill-to-dance-y dubstep mix. Perfect for when you're doing things like bathing your chinchilla or roller blading off into the sunset, just press play and let the fun begin!
Oh yeah and here is a track list, only sort of important right?
Tech Itch - "Baalzamon"
16bit - "Toxic"
Balkansky/Temper D - "Passing Through"
Boxcutter - "Sidetrak"
Eleven Tigers - "Sparkle"
ZXYZXY - "Hinode (Fidelium Remix)"
2562 - "Dinosaur"
Toronto Is Broken - "Pressure"
16bit - "Shallow"
Raytrace - "Heaven On Earth"
Tom Encore - "Recoil"
Milanese/Virus Syndicate - "Dead Man Walking (VIP)"
Broken Note - "Crux"
Pure Phase - "Rising Up Like Fuck You Towers"
God Tank is the upcoming Fidelium single, featuring mystical fists of fury slamming on beat conquistadors. The version you will be listening to here is actually already an old version as of today, as this is all just a work in progress and merely a taste of what's to come in the final cut. I'm pretty excited for this track, and it's going to be one of the key tracks on my album I plan on finishing before moving to San Francisco. Here it is:
I will also be submitting this traditionally to our next IDMf compilation, 009 (yet to named). I haven't even submitted a track to IDMf since 001. Kind of funny submitting to your own label, I actually don't even know if my track will make it on considering some of the other artists I am competing against. Synaecide, Julien Mier, Jazzyspoon, and Anodyne to name a few. How nerve-racking.
In personal news, I completed my audition at SF State to get into their prestigious classical music program. Cross your fingers for me that my playing of Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" was impressive enough to at least get into the program. It would be nice... A nice excuse to move to San Francisco, as if I need one anyway.
2010 is a great year for music already. Easily better than last year. I've heard so many albums released this year that are just fantastic. Autechre's Oversteps is coming out on the 23rd of March and judging from the Youtube previews I've watched it sounds like it's going to be amazing. Man, I love IDM, or whatever it's called. These guys are musical pioneers, I demand anyone reading this to download/retrieve a copy this album upon its release on March 23rd. I mean just look at the cover:
This level of minimalism is such a contrast to the complexity of their music. I've been looking forward to this release since WARP announced it, and it sounds like I won't be disappointed. I'm by no means a fan boy of Autechre, let alone anything, but what I do get excited about is fresh, new, amazing music, and this is going to be cycling on my computer for a long time.
All right, now that I'm done circle jerking all you braindance freaks, I now segue this conversation by mentioning that I love free music. I run a label/forum that boasts its output of great electronic music, all completely free. I even released an album on New Years Eve for free. Sure, it's cool to charge sometimes (probably most of the time, I don't want to serve/bartend for the rest of my life), all musicians need to make money, but there is a certain type of beauty that I attribute with the fact that something is free. It's like the musician is saying, "I made this music, I put a lot of effort into making it and the only thing I expect in return is for you to listen to it with open ears." Eat your heart out, ASCAP. That said I want to point you to one of my favorite albums of the year, so far, and it is completely free...
ZXYZXY - "C.A.B. "
Man I love this guy. ZXYZXY is consistent. Consistently good, consistently emotional. His music conveys so much, and it feels like he gets the exact message across that he wants you to hear, especially in his latest album. Released only a couple of weeks ago, this has been on constant rotation in my winamp. As he told me, this is the type of album that draws you in. It's listening music, it will grab you by the hair and rip you away from whatever you are doing and force you to listen. I'm not sure if it made him very happy when I told him this but this album has a very Explosions in the Sky/Godspeed You! Black Emperor/Mogwai sort of feel. I mean that as a compliment since all of those bands mean a lot to me. Also, releasing your music in FLAC form gets a double thumb raise.
Download ZXYZXY's "C.A.B." here.
CANDLE NINE - "MUSE IN THE MACHINE"
Of course, not all good music is free (and not all free music is good :D). I just received Candle Nine's latest and debut album from Tympanik Records (residence of Access to Arasaka, another project I've been listening to lately). It's... pretty. Lots of beautiful string arrangements, dark drum patterns, and glitched out beats. It's driving and mental at parts, then slow and sentimental at other parts, "sonically balanced" as someone once put it. It's just as much as a journey as C.A.B., just less organic and more futuristic sounding. Modern sci-fi flick quality. Worth the money you would be spending on getting wasted tonight anyway. Sit down, huff some glue out of your junk drawer, maybe break out the celebratory cough syrup from the cupboard, couple of shots of Listerine should help get you in the mood too, then put this album on and you'll TRIP BALLS. Especially on "Penumbra" and "Raison D'etre". Stellar tracks. This is pure energy, worth every cent and then some.
That's all you get for now. Check back often. New music of my own is in the works. However, I was accepted to San Francisco State University as a composition major. We'll see how that goes... it just means I will be going through a major move/life change later this year. I'm still making music, just extremely busy with a lot of crazy things right now. Thankfully, everything is going great.
Broccoli,
Fidelsticks
P.S. My studio has gotten a little better since my first post here... picture on the right. As you can see I no longer am sitting on the ground staring at a CRT monitor that is resting on a milk crate. However, my nice hand-built monitors are sitting on top of Tom Clancy/Tom Wolfe books, since that is all they are really good for these days. Cheers!
Believe Me This Is Home features epic chord progressions, driving rhythms, and innovative melodic lines, building up and down in intensity. Normally placed in the IDM category, this album also draws influence from ambient, breaks, classical, film music, and rock. Enjoy!
//Tracks//
1. How To Mic A Smile (4:57)
2. Peace Rest In Peace (3:34)
3. Holographic Field Shimmers Waves (6:25)
4. Fibrillated (4:34)
5. What's The Point In Waiting (4:00)
6. Believe Me This Is Home (4:27)
(27:57)
//Credits//
All music written, recorded, mixed, and mastered by: Wayne Baker
Cover Art: “Robot Head, Robot Hand” by Matt Sesow. Copyright 2004 by Matt Sesow. Used with permission.
Full credits page
THIS ALBUM IS FREE BUT SUPPORT ME THROUGH DONATION! CHECK OUT THE PAYPAL BUTTON AT THE BOTTOM OF MY FRONT PAGE AT IAMFIDELIUM.COM!
Just wanted to drop in a generic "Happy Holidays" to everyone who checks in every now and then. Expect some new music coming soon, very soon, along with the remasters of my two unreleased albums.
On that note, the newly mastered Believe Me This Is Home EP will be released for purchase from my website by Christmas. I'm setting that date because it means it's time for me to finally sit my ass down and do it.
I don't have much else to say this time, except that music writing has been going rather smoothly. I'm happy with my output these days. I refuse to preview any of my work publicly because I don't want to my release to be full of has-been music from me. I'm looking forward to the fresh sound (it's fresh for me anyway) and I would like to fully develop it before spreading it around. How about instead I give some of my musical meanderings to hold you off in the mean time! I can say that you can expect more mixes from me in the not too distant future.
I recently moved to downtown San Francisco, and for an audiophile like me it's a sonic wet dream. One of my next projects is to stick my condenser microphone out my window and catch all the sounds coming out of the alley below my bay windows (I'm on the second floor). All kinds of sounds are constantly bouncing off the walls of the tall buildings and reverberating and echoing in the most fascinating way -- the general whir of engines and machinery, the piercing sirens, homeless people rummaging through rubbish for food, drug addicts gurgling and crooning as they stumble over the curbs, bar patrons yelling for cabs and being accosted by street evangelists. Just the overall ambient tensions caused by all these sounds fusing with one another and flooding my ears is like a waking dream of being under a sort of "liquid air", a [mist of insanity] that in many ways is soothing. It's difficult to explain, and living in Sacramento my whole life, even the inner city, I never fully understood what it meant to be fully immersed in sound. 
This level of minimalism is such a contrast to the complexity of their music. I've been looking forward to this release since WARP announced it, and it sounds like I won't be disappointed. I'm by no means a fan boy of Autechre, let alone anything, but what I do get excited about is fresh, new, amazing music, and this is going to be cycling on my computer for a long time.
album on and you'll TRIP BALLS. Especially on "Penumbra" and "Raison D'etre". Stellar tracks. This is pure energy, worth every cent and then some. 
Fidelium // Believe Me This Is Home EP (2004-2009)
