Here’s a new illustration from Derek Van Gieson for the Star School Project Web site I’m working on. This one was used for the contact section, but it needed to be edited to fit the format of the site.  The full image is shown here.

“Comet” by Derek Van Gieson.

Here’s another teaser from an upcoming site called TwizLand that I’m working on for a multi-medium artist named Michael Pickard. The more I see of his work, the more I’m enjoying it. This one in particular caught my eye as I was building a gallery for him.

“Leaf Land” by Michael Pickard.

As I mentioned last month, Unwed Sailor has a new album out which, as usual, means that my Web duties increase. But as I’d been running around doing that stuff, I hadn’t actually stopped to listen to it until recently. I now think it’s my favorite album of theirs since The Faithful Anchor oh so many years ago. It’s not quite as structurally complex as that one, but Little Wars has a full slate of pleasant instrumentals, one of which is called “Aurora”, which you can listen to here. The band is also on tour right now, so if you like what you hear, take a look at the tour page on the official site to catch them live.

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“Aurora” by Unwed Sailor. Photograph by Jaret Farretusco. 

I’m currently in the stages of putting together a Web gallery of California-based multi-medium artist Michael Pickard’s artwork, and as I was going through the files this came up. Dear heavens…I don’t really know what to say. Just look.

Image by Michael Pickard.

Here’s a brief animation I created for the Star School Project called The Corn Will Become Milk. Derek Van Gieson made the illustrations which I then adapted and animated for a concept Kim Keiser wrote up. I’m still awaiting the music track from Kim, but you can view the animation here in the meantime if you’d like!

Screenshot from The Corn Will Become Milk.

Normally I don’t post anything very personal here, but on this occasion the piece of music I’m sharing has a significant backstory that gives it a different sort of meaning when listened to.

For five years and four months I dated a girl who I’d wanted to write a song for. The main problem in doing that was the fact that both she and I had an extreme aversion to things that are cheesy and sappy. Hence, I couldn’t just pick up my acoustic guitar and write an “I love you, baybuh” four-chord pop song (nor did I want to). Add to that the fact that in all my years as a musician I haven’t ever really written anything happy (that wasn’t also comical), and I had quite the challenge on my hands.

It probably sounds like a simple enough task to many musicians, but for me, figuring out how to depict a sort of joy that wasn’t totally cheap sounding was something very new to me. So it was a difficult process, and one that spanned probably about three years from start to finish. That’s not to say that I worked on it constantly — I worked on it in spurts as I was able to add new pieces. As the relationship became more serious, I was able to progress more rapidly, and on March 3rd, 2008 I finally completed it and presented it to her.

In a large dose of tragic irony, only about an hour after receiving it, she decided to cut the relationship off. A whole messy series of events and detailed nastiness followed, but that basic, tragic irony of having finally finished the song I’d struggled for years to complete on the day she decided to finish the relationship is something I think makes it a lot more interesting to listen to. It’s not ridiculously complex, but I think I achieved what I was aiming for, which was creating the most genuinely happy piece of music I’ve written to date, which, of course, was an expression of what she meant to me. This wasn’t intended for any album or release, but what am I to do with it now? Why, I’ll allow you to bask in the glory of my personal tragedy! Whoo!

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“With Hopeful Eyes We Struggle Onward” by Justin Norman. Photograph by Jonathan Hague.

Is it a pretentious-bastard-prick move to name your latest song with an image rather than the usual, boring text? That’s for you to decide. Below is the latest, colorized version of the greyscale illustration I posted last month. This Sunday, the composition will be performed at Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan. If you’re in the area, stop by the Market Auditorium in the Howard Music Hall at 3 PM to hear the latest Make-Believe Machines composition!

This is the title of the latest Make-Believe Machines composition.

My two youngest brothers had a non-staged accident while trying to make a stop-motion video of one of them dunking on a lowered basketball hoop. The result was captured in this YouTube video, which comically enough has received over 90,000 views on that site, as well as ridiculous numbers on other sites. It’s been copied and posted by others simply because of its popularity, and now I’m finally posting it here because today seems to be about the only day that I feel comfortable posting something possibly lower-brow than “Tod and Bob” shorts.