7 posts from August 2009

Educate your ear holes....

This is important to know. Enlightening too. Read the articles, especially the ones on the recent Metallica record sounding better in Guitar Hero than on the release cd.



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She Said Blew My Mind...

And Your Bird Can Sing has always been my favourite, but She Said Blew My Mind. Typical. There we were during the Mad Masters mixing sessions, at the end of a long day's mixing. There we were sat behind the API desk and ProAc monitors, listening to Beatles records. Typical. Typical but transcendental : the euphoria of it, hearing that sound in that listening environment. Hearing the songs working at their deepest levels : mecahnical, structural, melodic, semantic, instrumental. Performance, recording, mixing all blending into one. Intent and purpose revealed on every level. She Said blew my mind. Time and space didn't matter anymore. And Your Bird Can Sing has always been my favourite. She Said blew my mind.


She Said : "I know what it's like to be dead. I know what it is to be sad."

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About New Song Echo And Narcissus, The Inspiration And The Greek Myth

This song takes its deeper inspiration from the tragic Greek myth surrounding the Nymphs 'Echo' and 'Narcissus'.

In short, Echo was a nymph, cursed by Hera (Zeus's wife) for distracting her with conversation and stories while Zeus had affairs behind Hera's Back. Her curse was to stop Echo's ability to speak freely, and only enable her to copy what others said. Narcissus was a vain hunter who treated women and their approaches with disdain and contempt dude to his vanity. Echo falls in love with him but can never tell him how she feels. After his rejection of her, Narcissus is finally cursed by Nemesis to fall in love with his own reflection. When he realises the desperation of his situation, he kills himself.

Echo was a mountain nymph, who loved the sound of her own voice. Zeus, married to Hera, was known for the many love affairs that he had behind Hera's back. Echo sometimes would distract Hera with conversation and long stories while Zeus took advantage of the situation and ravished other mountain nymphs. Hera, having discovered the situation, cursed Echo by taking away her voice, her ability to speak was limited to copying what others said (hence the modern day term used to describe certain sounds 'Echo' ).

Narcissus was an exceptionally beautiful and vain youth, hunter and son of blue Nymph Liriope, known for his cold and harsh rejection of any girl who loved him. Echo fell hopelessly in love with Narcissus but could never tell him how she truly felt, because of the curse and her inability to speak freely. Nemesis cursed Narcissus to fall in love with his reflection which he came across one day in a pool of water. Narcissus, eventually realising that it was himself that he saw and fell in love with ended up beating his own life out of himself in desperation.

"One day when Narcissus was out hunting stags, Echo stealthily followed the handsome youth through the woods, longing to address him but unable to speak first. When Narcissus finally heard footsteps and shouted "Who's there?", Echo answered "Who's there?" And so it went, until finally Echo showed herself and rushed to embrace the lovely youth. He pulled away from the nymph and vainly told her to leave him alone. Narcissus left Echo heartbroken and she spent the rest of her life in lonely glens, pining away for the love she never knew, until only her voice remained.

Nemesis heard this prayer and sent Narcissus his punishment. He came across a deep pool in a forest, from which he took a drink. As he did, he saw his reflection for the first time in his life and fell in love with the beautiful boy he was looking at, not realizing it was himself. Eventually, after pining away for a while, he realized that the image he saw in the pool was a reflection of himself. Realizing that he could not act upon this love, he tore at his dress and beat at his body, his life force draining out of him. As he died, the bodyless Echo came upon him and felt sorrow and pity. His soul was sent to "the darkest hell" and the narcissus flower grew where he died. It is said that Narcissus still keeps gazing on his image in the waters of the river Styx . "


Echo And Narcissus is streaming for a few more days at myspace.com/karimfanous

Credits:
"Echo And Narcissus" is track 3 on the forthcoming Mad Masters EP .
Written by Karim Fanous
Voices, Acoustic Guitar, Electric Guitars, Bass Guitar, Keys, Programming: Karim Fanous
Instruments recorded and programmed by Karim Fanous .
Vocals recorded (and trickery added) by Thomas Juth at Kensaltown.
Mixed by Thomas Juth in the API suite at Kensaltown.

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About New Song "Lament For Jackie"...

"Evil hides in pretty places.

Evil hides in honest faces."

The best thing to do with this one is listen.... Lyrics and story : read here

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Time delay processing problems...

My causal relationships are misaligned in the temporal dimension at the moment. It's strange. Somebody fix it please..

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Mad Masters is here...

"Don't talk about that ; I am glad to have left it behind me and escaped from a fierce and frenzied master"

'When your desires lose their intensity and relax, you get a release... from a lot of mad masters'

- The Republic

"I've got to keep moving... there's a hellhound on my trail"

- Robert Johnson


As part of the run up to the release of the Mad Masters EP, each song will be playing in full for a week over the next five weeks on myspace.... The first track : Mad Masters is up right now and will remain until Monday when it's time for track two...


Mad Masters was recorded by Steve Honest and Karim Fanous in various locations and mixed by Thomas Juth in the API suite at Kensaltown.  Many thanks to Steve Honest, Eliza Wren Payne, Jamie Barclay and Thomas Juth for their special contributions.

Credits :

Written by Karim Fanous
Produced and Arranged by Karim Fanous

Vocal, Acoustic Guitar, Bass, Percussion : Karim
Vocal : Eliza Wren Payne
Lap Steel : Steve Honest
Programming, 808 and additional arrangement : Jamie Barclay
Mixed by : Thomas Juth

There was serious voodoo involved in making this track... when I was at Jamie's studio and we were working on the arrangement, that low keyboard drone that you hear from the beginning literally started playing by itself out of nowhere on exactly the right note and exactly the right sound. We were discussing something else when it happened. It freaked us out, but sounded so right. Hope you can feel it...

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The Stillness... again.

The stillness has found me again.

I find myself thinking.... about freedom, the universe, about humans. About why? About why I need to know? About purpose...

For three hours we cycled around the lake valley on rickey old bikes. For three hours we plunged our minds with abandon into putting the world to right, into understanding history, human nature, into considering how such vigorous cruelty can prevail and how shallow values have engulfed our culture. For three hours we were surrounded by overwhelming landscape, magnificent beauty. We were thousands of miles from home, thousands of miles from anything that was familiar, thousands of lifetimes away from understanding the scale of it all.

Freedom. Sensitivity. Which is more noble? Which is more selfish? Is it a blessing or a curse, to feel the energies of the earth and to know the deeper emotional frequencies of our existence? Is it a curse when the result is a marauding sadness, an inevitable resignation to the chaos of it; a hopeless juxtaposition of purity and peace with desperation? Is it a blessing when a glimpse of it is enough, when there is something to be celebrated. When there is hope.

Freedom... a word abused? Is it an excuse? What does it mean?

Purpose. Can you help me? Maybe I can amuse you: When you come across a wild dog on your travels, when it cocks its head at you and flicks its ear and when it gives you a look and then ignores you, will you wonder - was that condescension? Does it know something I don't? 

Perhaps not, but entertain the thought and it might entertain you.

The stillness has found me again, I need a remedy.


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Karim Fanous

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Karim Fanous
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