Everything Far From Words has ever recorded is now available
The entire collection of everything my former band has ever recorded is now uploaded and available on bandcamp. From the original demos recorded in 2003 to the recent re-recordings by Nick and myself, the collection spans 30 tracks and nearly 10 years of material.
The collection includes:
The 13 original demo recordings
The 4 track Be Nameless EP
The 5 tracks from our unfinished album
The studio recording of This Moment
The 3 recent Retakes
And several bonus tracks
Stream the album here:
And the Murnau releases come to a close
The last collection of Murnau recordings is now available on Bandcamp. As the name states, With a Mouth Full of Nails, is a collection of demos, unfinished, unreleased and random outtakes that are now available for the first time. It's definitely not a starting point for Murnau listening, but if you're wanting more, this will show you some of the songs that were left on the cutting room for or we just never got around to recording a proper final version we were happy with. It starts with an incredibly early live demo that was one of our very first songs and ends with the project we were last working on based on FW Murnau's Faust.
Here's a sample from the collection with Chapter 2 from our Faust project.
Get the whole collection here.
or check out the Music Library page for all sorts of things to download!
Murnau’s self-titled, full-length album is now on Bandcamp
The one and only full-length album recorded by Murnau has now been posted on Bandcamp. Seven tracks in length, this album was the culmination of the past several years of writing and playing Murnau material with some songs being nearly 3 years old by the time they made it onto this album. Also, unlike our previous material, this album was recorded live with little to no overdubbing giving it a much rawer sound than usual. It's also the first appearance of Mat Endress who added the sound effects and samples you hear throughout the album.
Overall, the album took over a year to complete with some songs taking weeks just to get a take we were happy with. In the past, we'd be satisfied with a decent take and then go in and make it better with editing and overdubbing. This time, knowing we wanted to edit as little as possible, we played songs over and over again, waiting for a take that embodied what the song should be.
Click here to listen to the track Shadow.
Or stream the entire album here.
And don't forget to check out the Music Download page for more material.
And here’s a second Murnau release, the Un Chien Andalou EP
After our initial demos, the next project Murnau embarked on was to create a series of songs that we're each inspired by sections of the 1929 short film, Un Chien Andalou. The EP is not necessarily meant to be exclusively a soundtrack as the songs we're written to stand on their own but they do time up with the 4 or 5 major chapters of Salvador Dali and Luis Bunuel's Un Chien Andalou. A youtube video with our music is posted above.
In addition to the Un Chien Andalou tracks, we also included a single song, We March On, that was written during the same sessions. At the time it was a major change of direction for Murnau as its shorter length and reliance on a more traditional verse and chorus structure were not the norm for us at the time. It remains one of my favorite Murnau songs and we even messed around with recording a music video here.
Here's a couple samples from the EP:
Part Three: About Three in the Morning
You purchase the full EP here.
And don't forget to check out the music library for more downloads!
And here are the original Murnau demos in one handy collection
As mentioned previously, I'm working on going through a lot of old recordings from previous bands and projects, doing a tad bit of re-mastering and re-posting them so they're once again available online. This Special Edition collection of the Murnau demos is the first of four Murnau related releases with the final set being a lot of material that's never left our laptops or mixers since our final recording sessions a year or two ago.
Going through these old recordings has been a treat as I haven't listened to most of this material for several years. I estimate most of this first collection was recorded around 2006 and while the recordings are a little rough as were pretty new to the whole home recording thing, I still can't imagine Murnau sounding any different as we were always big, simple and ugly with just vocals, a downtuned guitar and drums.
Here's a couple samples:
I haven’t updated in awhile
It's been almost sixth months since I last updated this site and unfortunately I don't have a good excuse. Trust me, I did try to think of one but after several weeks nothing came to mind.
I do have some updates to post like the above video which was inspired by the purchase of a slide projection device I found at a local Goodwill. I'd been wanting to make a video to at least one of the songs off of Rabbit and after taking this baby home and obtaining some random family's slides I proceeded to make a video to Dawn. It's about how watching slides can motivate someone to make toast.
Speaking of Rabbit, the album has been out for over a year now and I'm very appreciative of everyone who has taken the time to download/listen to it and give me their thoughts. If you haven't heard it yet it's available to stream over at alexriggen.bandcamp.com and you can purchase the whole thing for a dolla'. Holy hot gravy, that's cheap!
As for Veil, it's definitely still being worked on, albeit slowly, as I re-work some things and figure out the best mechanics and process for me to release an episodic game that accomplishes what I want it to and on a timely basis. The artstyle has been overhauled and I've tweaked some of my original designs, but I haven't had a lot of time to make progress because...
..I've been working mostly on a follow-up album to Rabbit. The album is nearly halfway complete and I have a goal to have it finished and released by Winter this year. While it's too early to really tease what the album will be like, it's definitely not more of the same. Rabbit was a very stripped down album with minimal guitar, piano and drums and this time I've added a lot more to the recordings with multiple guitars and vocal tracks. If you take the song Hold Tight and mix it with Rabbit's sound you may get an idea of where it's going.
And the last update I wanted to mention is my plan to get lots of old music posted here. There's a lot of solo material and music I've recorded with several bands and projects that I'd like to make available. Starting with my last band, Murnau, I'll be regularly posting complete sets of all the music that's been recorded over the past decade.
And I promise to keep this updated more often. A lot of my time is spent running Sega Addicts so feel free to hope over there occasionally and say hi.
Hold Tight is a song that has been newly recorded
After spending a lot of time with an acoustic guitar for Rabbit, it seemed like the right decision to go back to my lonely electric and give it some attention. I wasn't really planning on recording anything for awhile after finishing the album but... it appears I did. So, the song is called Hold Tight and it's not for anything in particular. I don't have plans for a full album in this style but I may do a couple more songs and bundle them as a EP or single or something. It's quite different from the material on Rabbit with the electric guitars and multiple vocal tracks and all. Now, without further adieu feel free to take a listen and show it to all your friends!
My new album, Rabbit, is complete and available as of right now!
After many many months of writing and recording, my first full-length album is complete and available for purchase off of bandcamp.com. 10 tracks in length and comprised of some acoustic guitar, bass, piano and a drum machine this entire album can be yours for the low price of $2! Man, what a deal. Just skip getting that McDonald's breakfast burrito one morning and you've got the extra cash you need for 10 tracks of pure bliss. Note: I do not guarantee any sort of bliss being obtained from the purchasing this album whether it be pure or unpure bliss.
You can sample the entire album below and feel free to share this player anywhere you want. Just click the share button and it will give you options for sharing on your personal blog, Facebook page, etc.
If you like what you hear click here to purchase the entire album in a variety of digital formats from FLAC to high quality mp3's.
This is Dawn, the first track off of an album which is forthcoming
After many months of posting nothing but the occasional "I'm still alive" update, it appears that I finally have something worthwhile to post. As of today, I've finished recording, mixing, mastering, etc. the full-length album I've been working on for the better part of this year. In the next few days the entire album will be available for purchase on the pay-what-you-want and all around amazing site, Bandcamp. As a little teaser I've uploaded the first track from the album. Please, enjoy.
And don't forget to visit the music download page for more files that contain music.
Four months later…
It's probably about time I stop neglecting this site.
There's not a lot to post here as far as major updates on the progress of Veil and musical projects. Right now, I'm going through a bit of an overhaul of the Veil visual and audio aesthetic. The game itself as far as plot, setting, and gameplay is still the same but I'm not completely satisfied with the style I've originally created for the game. There's two major reasons for this:
1) The tone is a too dark and realistic for what I'm going for and while there are some moments of the game that that would work for it doesn't work right for the majority of it. It also isn't quite as unique visually as I'd want it to be and therefore I'm working on an art style that hopefully sets itself from other games of the genre.
2) The style I'm using right now takes way too much time to get anything accomplished in the amount of time I have to work on Veil. The world of Veil has a decent amount of locations and characters and I can't be spending months getting one character and one location completely modeled, textured, and animated and expect to get the first episode completed in the next 10 years. So, along with this new art style a major goal is a to create a way to streamline the process while keeping the characters and locations detailed and engaging. It's a challenge but necessary and I'm getting close to something I think that will work.
In other news a lot of my time has been going towards recording a full-length album of solo material, which, is coming along nicely with 6 of the 10 planned tracks fully recorded. If all goes as planned I should have it completed and ready for public consumption in the next few months. Most likely I'll be releasing it on the "pay what you want" www.bandcamp.com but who knows maybe I'll have it sold exclusively at Wal-Mart.
And last but not least how about an unreleased track originally intended for Veil? Download it here.
And remember to go to the Music Library page for other downloads. In the next few weeks I'll be attempting to build up the downloads there with some more tracks from the past.