Come in and make yourself comfortable! All compositions in this site were written and recorded by me, and are available for free download. The tracks are all in 160 kbps MP3 format (or better), so you can be sure that, at least, the sound quality will be acceptable!
This site, along with all the tracks, is being kindly hosted by Mr. Graham Dawson in his server. Many, many thanks to Graham for his support. If you don't know it, he is one of the administrators of The Groening FanWorks Central, the place in the Internet that, indisputably, holds the highest quality Simpsons and Futurama fanfiction you'll ever find. No kidding! Forget "fanfiction.net", slash fics and 100-word fiction by 13-year-olds. I'm talking about quality fanfiction here. Browse through the stories reviewed by readers and other writers, review the stories you read, communicate with the writers in the Forum, and have your own stories read and reviewed by writers willing to help you improve your skills! What can be better to Simpsons and Futurama fans than that?
ONE MORE THING BEFORE YOU GO ON: if you use Winamp to listen to this tracks, check out MP3splice, a little output plug-in that completely eliminates the little, annoying gaps between MP3 songs that should seamlessly flow into each other - like several of these tracks do, especially in albums such as The Binary Sounds Of Nature and Big Robot, Little Robot. It's a short download, it's really effective, and it will improve your listening experience. It says the plug-in works only for Winamp 2.xx, but it works for Winamp 5.xx as well!
On with the show...
No, that's not a typo: Musics For Highways is the first full fledged album that I wrote, even though it wasn't my first experiment with music writing. It's a concept album, inspired by the highways that unite the town where I live (Porto Alegre) and the coast. I love listening to music while road tripping (who doesn't?), and back in 2001, I proposed myself the challenge of composing an album to be heard while road tripping. After numerous changes and polishings, the final version of the album was completed in 2003, containing 13 tracks that flow like the passage of a day - a truly original concept to me, way before I first heard Days Of Future Passed. But anyway, among all finished albums, this is the one I like best, and it does contain some of my finest compositions - in my opinion - which are 'A Landscape In Red', 'Warm Breeze' and the ballad 'Somewhat Late'.
1 - Raging Yellow Sun (2:07): Day kicks off with this upbeat rocker based on a very simple idea and a rhythm section that goes back to the early days of U2.
2 - Blue And Grey (5:31): A charming, lightweight pop tune, that leaves space to a few unpredictable twists later on, keeps on with the sunny, cloudless day.
3 - Tranquility, At Last (4:52): The first ballad - a introspective, nostalgic piece based on a very simple, but very effective sequence of keyboard chords, without neglecting a melody.
4- Passing Time (4:11): The result of putting together two extremely simple guitar chords, this 'electrified' version was the second one to come out. A fast-paced rocker, perhaps the hardest in the album.
5 - Lone Rider (2:38): A bit of a riff-rocker for you, this one is a sort of evolution of some older ideas of mine, featuring bass and drums solos and whatnot.
6 - A Landscape In Red (5:14): Another ballad, this time painting a crimson scenery by the sunset - another simple idea that works very well. A personal favourite of mine, it marks the end of "side one" of the album.
7 - Passing Time (reprise) (1:32): The "acoustic" version of the fourth track, this one humbly unites "side one" and "side two" in its three-chord glory.
8 - Warm Breeze (3:49): The base for this atmospheric song is a powerful strings section and a very sparse bass work. Another simple idea that works well? I think so.
9 - Somewhat Late (6:50): My favourite in the record. A not-so-simple idea that works, nonetheless. Of course, it was just a matter of time before the Lisa Simpson fan included a saxophone solo in the album!
10 - Silvery Light (5:50): Yes, night has fallen, and the music gets darker. It would have to happen, eventually, and this rocker sets a slightly grim tone to the trip.
11 - A Landscape In Black (2:08): I sure would have liked to have Brian Eno or Jean-Michel Jarre record this one to me. But since that didn't happen, anyway, you can keep the cacophony of voices and rubber toys before the crescendo of synthesizers and pianos.
12 - Throttle (4:31): I imagine a carpet of red lights speeding through the highway with I hear this one. The fast speed and the urgent piano line help set the mood here.
13 - Tranquility Again (3:40): Another day begins, and things are quiet and tranquil in the highway... but it's just a matter of time before things start again. Don't be scared by the blast of noise you'll receive after a brief pause at the end - it's supposed to be that way. It is the entire album compressed into 30 seconds, backwards. If you can't have a 'Her Majesty' ending to your album, at least you can have this!
My second album, this one grew out of a 23-minute composition titled 'Down In The Valley', but it is hardly the only worthwhile thing in the album. It features fewer tracks than in Musics For Highways and is even longer, but it isn't Prog Rock. I ended up with something less ambitious, but that still manages to make a statement. It has 'Water', possibly my best song ever.
1 - Down In The Valley, "Descent Into Unknown Territories In 8 Parts" (23:30): This whole song practically grew out of a very simple idea developed on an acoustic guitar in a couple of seconds. As soon as the main theme was established, the song slowly began to take shape until it was finished. You have it all - a gentle, acoustic intro; a really fast "overture" of sorts; guitar solos; a blast of dissonant piano bashing; in all, a more-or-less complete package. When I played this song to my cousin, she said "it's good, it's not boring to listen to." I felt quite proud, because I guess that's more than what she would have said about 'Echoes'...
2 - ppoolk, "Translating Dreams - Intermission?" (4:01): A letter translated into Morse code is the base for this track, that soon grows into a little acoustic ballad. As the subtitle suggests, this can be your break to go get a cup of coffee or something... or, you can try to decode the Morse message. Go ahead, do it, you know you want to. This track isn't here just to take up space...
3 - The Spirit Of The Tree, part 1, "The Victory Anthem" (7:21): "Victory Anthem" because I almost lost the MID file of this song in a computer crash. But it was there, safe, and motivated me to keep on making the album. It's a grandiose, sweeping anthem of sorts... or something less pompous. You decide. This might be a concept album, but there isn't just one specific imagery for each song. The flute melody and the guitars might give you some better ideas.
4 - The Spirit Of The Tree, part 2, "Forests So Dense..." (7:19): ... you could fly over them. Well, at least that's what I heard in the Discovery Channel advert. But this track is pretty much a fast riff-rocker that tries not to stand at the same place for too long...
5 - Water, "Peace, Disturbance and Storm in B flat" (9:20): Piano. This possibly has my best piano score ever, and it all came in a surge of inspiration that felt like I had this melody in the back of my head for years, even without knowing the definition of an augmented chord. Nonetheless, this track was "salvaged" from my first, failed experiment with making an album. Easily my favourite track in this album. Even my mother likes it. Hey, she likes 'Us And Them' by Pink Floyd, too.
6 - The Spirit Of The Tree, part 3, "Infinite Jungle" (7:07): Another idea that came to be in a sudden flash of immense inspiration, this little riff was what sparked the entire 3-part composition, and the third part manages to pack the riff, an invigorating upbeat rhythm, a couple of flute melodies and a full guitar/drum/bass battle. Well, if Rush won't do those battles anymore, I can, can't I? If I can't, well, bad luck. It's done already.
7 - Rollover, "Origins Unknown, Destinies Unimagined" (6:58): This track wasn't destined to end in any album, until I saw that it fitted well at the end of The Binary Sounds Of Nature - and that kinda explains the subtitle. Of course, including the track would mean increasing the running length of the album to 66+ minutes, but hey, if Oasis can make their seventy-something-minutes stretches of non-stop distorted guitars, why can't I make a long album? It's my album, I do whatever I want. I like this melody, the guitar solo, and all.
8 - Zero Hour, "The Thin Line Between Dreams And Realities" (2:20): And it ends, again leaving you for your own interpretations. Was the album a dream or a reality? Or was it both? While you squeeze your brain for an answer for this fascinating, pseudo-philosophic question worthy of Herman Toothrot, I'll just say this is a short ditty that is tucked on there to give a smoother ending to the album. Presto!
My biggest work ever. What can I say? This one was born out of an idea for a computer game song, requested by a friend of mine, Sheana Molloy. It resulted in a four minute song that was far different from any of the songs that appeared in my albums, and after a while, I felt that I could make something bigger out of that song. The result was this. It is like a collection of thoughts, ideas, fears, hopes, notions and memories taken from my mind and portrayed as music. In spite of being presented as four separate tracks, this piece is one song only that goes on for seventy-five minutes. It is not totally instrumental - it presents speeches (both in Portuguese and in English) and a Latin chant, with lyrics courtesy of Christina Nordlander (yes, it is real Latin and has a real meaning). The vocals are all mine, and all the sounds and instruments were recorded by me. You can download the four tracks below. The whole piece is subdivided in smaller sections, though the subdivisions are purely theorical. These individual sections are displayed within the MP3's, on their respective tag. The names of the sections and even the titles of the four parts might give you hints on the various things that influenced the album.
The title is longer than the album. Indeed, the album didn't turn out short due to lack of ideas: I intended to make a short album, shaped like an LP, after the monstrousity of Concerto Schizophrenia II. The result is this thirty-nine minute album (in theory - explained below). The title is an irony, and I hope it's blatant enough. The title "Better Than The Beatles!" was decided even before the album gained shape, and it was taken from a music board years ago. As for the second part of the title, it was taken from a children's TV show, named "Jakers! The Adventures Of Piggley Winks". For this work, I "adopted" the four main characters of the show as members of a band that plays with me in most tracks: Piggley is the guitarist, Fernando Toro plays drums, Dannan O'Mallard handles the bass guitar and Molly Winks plays percussion.
To me, working with an "imaginary band" was a fascinating idea. Unlike many artists, I'm not fond of working on my own. Not only that, but the band gave the album a lot of the "pretend human touch", which was badly needed. Since most instruments are electronically generated, the album possesses a quality that makes it plainly unlistenable for certain people. The band completely erases that feeling, moving the album to the land of make-believe, and giving it a unique quality. The album itself is already completely removed from everything I've done so far. The five songs are unrelated to each other, but they all seem to share a common trend of trying to pinpoint exactly what's real, what's fake and what's imaginary in music.
1 - Thunders (15:47): Among the songs I've heard in my life, I don't think there has been any openly anti-rain song - at least not so openly so as this one. One thing I can guarantee, though: these lyrics weren't written in a vain attempt at being "original", nor do they represent post-modernist irony, or anything. Half of them are absurdist humour, half of them are sincere. They are here as a written registry of some of the very first thoughts that can appear in my mind in a moment of irritation. As for the music, half of it was played by the band, the other half was performed entirely on an old Casio keyboard that belonged to me during my childhood. It might give the music a very haunting, distant, artificial atmosphere. It might not be organic or realistic, but the lyrics are there to counter that. Halfway through the song, you can hear yet another excellent poem written by Christina Nordlander, and the end of the song is marked by the audio recording of a bizarre TV vignette. It's the voice of "God" speaking down to its children, and at one point, it says: "are you sure you did everything you could for your peers? Think again, for someday we will meet."
2 - I'd Rather Be Home (3:49): It's really just a pop ballad, and not much more. The vocals come in more than halfway through the song, and the lyrics might carry multiple interpretations and meanings. It wasn't even written with one specific idea in mind. Still, the lyrics relate to very palpable and real feelings I had during my childhood. But it's a pop tune, and not much more. Before the song starts, you can hear the sound recording of a TV "calendar" vignette, aired in June 18, 1989. The static lettering of that vignette is every bit as creepy (if not more) as the audio you hear.
1 - Pompous And Pretentious (7:35): Entirely played by me, on my electronic keyboard. It's a piano solo, mainly based on chord sequences only. The playing is very raw, especially since I was sitting on the floor with the keyboard in front of me, also on the floor. I was arching my back while I played it. It's the most emotional and humane song in here, and that might compensate for the almost total lack of melody, and the pretentiousness of the feeling being transmitted: headache and discomfort.
2 - Tetralogy (6:33): The most interesting aspect (if not the only) aspect of this song is that it is a palindrome, in the full sense of the word: if it's performed backwards, it will sound exactly the same. Also, several isolated elements of the song are palindromic, like the repeating percussion pattern, the bass riff, every piano lick, and most of the solos. The percussion is entirely made with househeld objects. It ends up giving the song a very mechanical, clockwork sound - but not electronic.
3 - All Full Of Nine O'Clock (5:29): Back with the full band, this song is entirely based (i.e. ripped-off from) traditional rhythms and motifs from the southern region of Brazil, where I live. The accordion might even give it a bit of a zydeco feel. Originally, it would have spoken words on top. The idea was scrapped. Instead, there's a recording of the sounds of conversation from the kitchen, and (fully purposeful!) feedback caused by the headphones being held before the microphone, recording the song itself as it played. After the song ends, as a gift, you get to hear what many consider to be the spookiest vignette ever made in Brazil - and maybe one of the scariest ever in the world. It's the closedown sequence of a TV network from many years ago, aired normally on Sundays, late at night - caused many a nightmare, for sure. On top of the evil music and the depressing voiceover, you get to see the black silhouette of an operator before a screen, which zooms in to show Brazil, isolated from the rest of the world, floating over pure blackness, invaded by a satellite and its green rays from HELL. Of course - you need to imagine the scene done with pre-historic, low-budget computer graphics to truly capture the feeling. And after such a nightmare ends, you're left with the loneliness of the endless beep and the colour bars on the screen, and a digital clock, reminding you that you SHOULD be sleeping, even though you'll never be able to anymore. If you can create such a scene in your mind, be afraid - your mind is evil.
The looping beep of the colourbar at the end of the album is supposed to represent a locked inner groove on the record, and while it only loops for thirty seconds in this MP3, it goes all the way until the very end of the CD - the eighty minute mark.
Endless thanks to Ivan Odilstoff and Fábio Marckezini, who together made available the "Darkness Man Countdown" vignette, and even more thanks to Dr. Zecão, who made available the virtually impossible to find "Jesus Guy" vignette. Also thanks to whomever made available the "Disimbodied Calendar" vignette. Special thanks to Christina Nordlander, who presented yet another brilliant poem to enrich my music. Without all these contributions, I wouldn't have had so much fun and satisfaction making this album.
An album with a meaning? Not much, perhaps. One thing is for sure: whatever meaning this album might have, there are no lyrics here to make it explicit. This album is entirely instrumental, with not one word or lyric anywhere in sight. A "return to form", if so to speak, though what form? Well, the "concept" of the album is fairly easy to follow. Each and every track here is vaguely based on and/or inspired by a different character from the British cartoon Little Robots. Knowing the cartoon and the characters might clarify the idea of some songs here, but not all. Sometimes, the song is obviously based on the character; sometimes, the "inspiration" is as subjective and oblique as it can possibly be. Is there any particular reason for that? Not really. I just felt like using something concrete and external as the basis of this album. As such, the shape of the album is focused on that. These songs have no real titles - only characters associated to them. But I don't want a two-way association between the cartoon and the album. The album depends on the cartoon, but trying to make it vice versa would be amazingly dumb and preposterous of my part. This album isn't aimed at fans of the cartoon, or at children - or much less at adults. It's just an underlying theme, and nothing more.
As for the music, the idea of associating characters to songs takes the idea of a "song cycle" very close to Pink Floyd's The Wall: the album is a continuous loop of music. So, there isn't any theoretic beginning or end to it. You can start the album in any track and let it roll on repeat, uninterrupted, until you want it to stop. Thank the digital technology for that! Yet, the tracklist is divided so that you can split it in two sides, for an LP, for example. And as such, the "optimal" side A/side B division is offered here as an "official" track listing. The songs themselves were all written, arranged and recorded by me. All sounds are entirely sampled or synthesized as usual, and... well, so, on to the songs!
1 - Scary (6:08): The funny thing is that the initial idea for this track sparked the whole album - yet, it ended up replaced. What you have here is a solo piano piece - a prelude, if you will, in sonata form (!!) - with little in terms of tonality and much in terms of facetiousness. It sounds fairly like a soundtrack to 1920's silent movies, yet whacked around on the head a little. It's intended to be more goofy than scary - much like the character - and NOT to be taken as a "serious" classical piece. The whole playing is sampled, as it should be obvious.
2 - Noisy (5:57): Surely makes justice to its character. This is sort of like an electronic marching band (from Hell), led by frantic, highly atonal violin (it's not out of tune: that's microtonality! I suppose...) and guitar solos. The whole thing ends up with a festive Brazil-flavoured melody twisted up and bent around the corners in Dorian C. The crazed noise you hear in the beginning is all songs from the album played at the same time and destroyed in brutal ways.
3 - Sporty (5:18): Breaking up the expectations completely, this is one of the "multipart" songs here. Kicking off as a gentle, flute led ballad, it suddenly turns itself into a tuneful samba. Only in the end, the song becomes something more "obvious" sounding, with a mechanical synthesized beat and chime sounds sprinkled all over it. This introduces one of the few "recurring themes" in the album.
4 - Tiny (3:37): Not exactly "tiny", but this is something of a slowly building drone, again with the chimes, and a single, repeated flute melody supplying some grounding. Tension seems to mount towards the very end, but maybe without being fully resolved.
5 - Messy (1:59): The chimes reveal their dark side. This sounds like some previous works of mine, which I haven't placed in this page. This is something like a pastiche of "modernist" (impressionist) music with a bit of late Autechre (no offence to Booth & Brown meant) thrown in on the left speaker. Try not to be scared.
1/2 - Sparkies (3:45): The Sparky twins rightfully get two tracks, but interestingly, they're played simultaneously, one in each speaker, and they're virtually the same - a continuous quasi-improvisation of bass and synthesizer in Aeolian G. Breaking the expectations again? Probably.
3 - Spotty (4:21): This song miraculously ressurrects one of my earliest compositions, with a revamped sound and tighter structure. It's a stab at a pounding, goofy electro-reggae with a buzzy riff, sawtooth synthesizers, and a closing solo performed on full tone scales. This is somewhat closer to a "visualisation" of the character in question.
4 - Stripy (5:44): The cute, expressive ballad makes its triumphant entrance, with sudden, abrupt climaxes, chords taking left turns everywhere, and the chimes stealing the spotlight at times. This might be a bit too melodramatic for the character, but I think it fits fairly, and I like the tune.
5 - Rusty (6:06): This would be pretty much a continuation of the previous song, were it not bookended by a very "fairground music" waltz, with brasses and woodwinds and all. The inner portion, though, sticks to the dynamics between the "droning and quiet" and the "jumping out of the speakers". Not quite Mogwai, but hey, we can leave the full bandwagon jumping for later, okay?
6 - Stretchy (3:03): On the initial, mental sketches of this album, the end of the previous track and the beginning of this one would be a sort of spoof on the transition between Neon Lights and the title track of Kraftwerk's The Man Machine (or Die Mensch Machine) - fairly appropriate for this character. What you have here, though, is a faint remnant of that idea, with a bouncy, electric, square groove peppered by a spiky synth solo overdosing on microtonality (either that or it's overheating).
The Groening FanWorks Central: Yes, I mentioned this site already, but still, here you go again. It's maintained by Steven Scott and Graham Dawson, the one who's hosting this page you're looking at now. Don't miss their site if you have even a passing interest in The Simpsons and/or Futurama, for you'll find some excellent works of art there.
Sir Mustapha's Album Reviews: These are my own (re)views on albums by artists including Mike Oldfield, Jean-Michel Jarre, The Residents, Pink Floyd and Talking Heads. It has the bands potrayed as South Park characters!