The new album has been out for a couple weeks now and there is something else being shared with fans and supporters who have contacted us or made an effort to help promote what we do. This other thing is a 10 song successor to Zero Cliff and is promptly titled The Ledge Beyond The Edge. It’s intended as a kind of semi-promotional bonus and was created while we were still putting the final touches on ZC. Those final stages were rather strenuous to us and sometimes we just felt like we had to put it on hold and work on some other stuff for a little bit. This is what became of those little bits. It could technically be considered a B-sides or a compilation of songs that didn’t make it to the new album as the title track Zero Cliff replaced Vitriol Syndrome – the final track on The Ledge Beyond The Edge – and despite all this The Ledge holds its own and feels like a complete project of organic quality.

Now in the aftermath and promotion of Zero Cliff we find ourselves a few steps closer to putting on a live show. Hopefully we’ll have some more detailed news on this in the coming months. Until then check out our Soundcloud page to hear a preview of one of the tracks from The Ledge performed live in the studio. A taste of things to come.

Also in the works is some soundtrack work which we hope to share sometime in the fall and re-releases of the Neuron Dreamtime back catalogue onto Bandcamp.

Exciting times, stay tuned!

LM

Pre-orders available now at
http://neurondreamtime.bandcamp.com/album/zero-cliff
Five more days…

On Saturday July 6, 2013 pre-orders will be available exclusively through our Bandcamp page. It will include the first five tracks for immediate download and stream upon ordering.

CD will be $11 USD
Digital album will be $7 USD.

Note that a physical CD purchase entitles the download of the digital album too.
On July 11th a link will be emailed to download the full album and physical CD pre-orders will be shipped out.

See you there.
Smile.

Well, it’s done.
The new album is no longer being tweaked or mastered.
The time has come to allow the gears of publication and CD replication to revolve.
We stand at the edge of the cliff, setting up the reception and establishing the best angle of view.
Once all that is said and done we’ll pull back the binary curtain and have a party.
We’ll remember those who didn’t make the journey and dream of those who are yet on their way.
Most of all we’ll have grown and added a bit of our spice to the collective flavor.
The winds are calming.
The wait is almost over.

In just a few days from writing this I will have quit my uninspiring and draining day-job to focus on my art and the few important projects I’ve almost finished. Soon after I will be taking commissions for pieces ranging from card sizes up to 9′ x 12′ canvas backdrop, all in the style of my pen and ink pieces. My wife  and I will also be taking commissions for our Mad-Hatter style hats like the one I wore at our Mad Tea Party. (See neuron-dreamtime.deviantart.com then Gallery>Photography)

The plans are well into play and all is coming to a head. The new album is looking mighty fine, still some tweaks left before its all wrapped up, my time with it as producer has taken a backseat for a week or two as I prepared to leave the restaurant I’ve worked at for five years.

I know that the life of an artist is hard as far as making a living, even making ends meet, but I feel deep down that this is the right move. I see it like this, I can either stay where I’m at and complain about it ever increasingly or I can do something about it and make the change. It’s an easy choice that I maybe should have made sooner. I know I will be happier putting my time into work I love for people who like the work I do and would appreciate a custom piece or who listen to the music and buy the albums. Instead of doing work I don’t much care for for people who are ungrateful and unappreciative for the meal and service provided to them. There are already a couple preemptive commissions for friends lined up so I can get into the swing of things. I also have the bills covered for a month and have some basic outdoor work lined up for the summer. A summer I will be able to enjoy with the wife, family, and friends.

To all who read this, to all who will support and do support the arts and their practitioners
my sincere and humble thank you

-LM-

Also, recently added to the website menu under “Sight and Sound” is “Desktop Wallpapers“. More to come.

Here’s to many more!

Another silly promotional video.

This time you may notice the audio is a little weirder.
It’s from an improvised bit by the above mentioned birthday boy during a Zero Cliff recording session months ago.
He talked into an FX mixer and I backed him with a synth.
We don’t take ourselves too seriously.
There’s always room to be ridiculous.

-LM-

As mentioned in the previous post this current project has been an outlet for our experiences, thoughts and ideas during the course of 3 years. Matt was the one who suggested the album name for our growing collection of songs and an underlying meaning that derived from a book he and I read, a 1921 dystopian novel titled “We” by Yevgeny Zamyatin. Which is why I’ve felt as though this was a little more his project than mine compared to previous ND creations. We usually collaborate in two ways: the first is a back & forth collaboration of music files, tweaking and adding with each transfer and the second is the sit-down studio/recording time and discussions. But right now he is devoting his time to his college engineering courses and subsequently moved his association with ND from an active composer to a final producer of sorts. This isn’t the first time this kind of thing has happened, I doubt it will be the last and I’m sure we’ll pickup our collaborative ways further down the road. I am still in a position to continue what we’ve started and spend quality sit-down time with this project but the timing can be unpredictable and haphazard. But, now that I’ve received his blessing to do whatever I deem necessary, it will be full steam ahead when the moments present themselves. Relief washes. The waves can be heard. Approaching ever closer.

Bringing us to the agenda. As before, there are lyrics… words… narration in the works. That’s all the recording that needs done. Once they’re all mixed, mastered and ready there will be a two month long PR phase to prepare for the release.

More updates as they are manifested.
The mix is almost perfect.
Be patient.
-L-

In case you missed it.

I usually start such writing with a nice warning that I’m pretty horrible with grammar and punctuation. I don’t claim to be good at it or even pretend, but this is for the new year and an outlet of thoughts.

As the new year comes and goes within a day I usually use it to reflect upon the past year and formulate some finite page of words to convey what it is that I’ve learned. I haven’t written one of these in a long time and Facebook doesn’t seem like the proper place to store them.

After each year I like to say I’ve learned a lot. I’ve learned about myself and other and progressed any slight understanding of the universe that I may have. The one that comes through the most are my dogmatic perceptions, melancholy view of the world, and dealing with death.

Being dogmatic has proven to be detrimental to my own mental health. It’s counter-productive to the question that I constantly ask myself. “How can I further my understanding of things that make a human being feel human?”. Leading into the new year, I’ve found that I have moved back to this question. To me, this is extremely refreshing as it gives me a chance to remove the blinders. I fear stagnation but am afraid of failure which turns into quite the conundrum.

My current resentment comes from my experience being a student of engineering. I’ve gotten so disgruntled over the past years with the adopted philosophy that seems tolinger in the halls and among student minds. “Why build it when you can just buy it?”. Now, I can understand this if you’ve been building electronics and components for years and have a understanding of how stuff works, but as a student how can this be the best course of action to pushing yourself?

This philosophy is what interlocks with my melancholy view of the world. I’m around computers and information all day, every day. It really becomes overwhelming and I can’t seem to separate myself from them. I intake mounds of news a day and really only focus on the absolute negatives. My eyes find their way to news of war, greed, murder… everything inhumane. My significant other told me that I focus far too much on the negative things. I think this is mostly true as I cannot see the good from the evil, in my moral standing.

To tie the previous part together I turn towards death. I’m pretty unfamiliar with it and this past summer and fall I’ve experienced the suicide of an old friend and friends uncle. Regardless of their position in my life it has all had a profound feeling. One can imagine what death is like but one cannot produce the feelings that occur with its presence. It drapes over every living being’s flesh, fur, and scale like a cape. I’ve tried to turn my head around to maybe catch the glimpse with no success but it can be felt.

These are merely short ramblings of the things that are in question with respect to reality. I’m gracious that Lew and I can share an outlet. Our music has been taking turns over these many years and it all sounds different. While it will probably be awhile before Zero Cliff becomes physical, we are taking some time and putting the music under a different light and playing with it. It is a slow process and I feel that I hold it up a bit being in school, but it will be a reality with other things as well.

All these things have found their way into Lew and I’s work. The next album we speak of it telling the story of our lives over the past few years. It’s incubating and slowly becoming a reality. We carry a deep proud feeling of our newest work and has motivated us beyond anything before. When the time comes we hope that we can share our story with you and maybe the intent will shine through. I think it will.

For now, enjoy your new treadmills and new years resolutions for the next two weeks. Taco Bell and McDonald’s are just a short drive away.

As we greet the winter solstice and the light of a new year begins to shine, the mind recalls all that has happened this year. Birthdays, marriages, and funerals. All the ups and downs of the year form a horizon line of data and experience that will form the basis of the impending layer of change.

Neuron Dreamtime is inseparable and nonexempt from these changes of ebb and flow.

We, as individuals, are still pouring our hearts into our crafts and our lives. We are diligently following our own paths while sharing our experiences and the things we’ve learned. As much as I wanted to have the new album ready for a December 21st release date it’s obvious that this won’t happen and it’s for the best as there is a lot of polishing to do. We’ve pretty much got the track-list down with some ordering still needed. The tracks themselves are well into their final mixes with only a few songs needing vocals recorded and then they’ll go through a tumble in the mastering mechanism. After that it’s off to duplication, packaging, then the full-blown release.

As mentioned here a few months ago we’ve also been eyeballing the options and obstacles of bring Neuron Dreamtime to the realm of Live performance. We’re exploring a MIDI controller and how to interface it with our creations in a such a way that they have a uniqueness from their studio counterparts and so they can be tweaked on the fly with a bit of ease.

All of this, the new album and the live incarnation,  should come to a head near the second quarter of 2013.

Until we have more to share… watch this.

-LRM