A lovely piece of music from a fantastic ambient band, Stars of the Lid, paired with a minimalist video timelapse by Ryan Manning. I can’t quite put my finger on why, but Stars of the Lid have been one of the few bands whose music I would characterize as “healing.” A nice way to start October.

From a Growing Community, Iowa’s Homeless Youth editor Danny Heggen just released a folk music EP on iTunes called For the Sun. Have a listen at the Seedlings MySpace page to check it out!

Amidst all the book promotion, I got the opportunity to talk about Make-Believe Machines as well recently. I was interviewed on 106.3 FM in Des Moines, where I got to talk about various musical projects, and the homeless youth book, as well as play a few songs off Moral Calculus.

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Justin Norman interviewed on 106.3 FM by Daniel Bosman.

Another band I’ve worked for over the years, Unwed Sailor, has a pretty sizable fall tour coming up, and I’ve just recently updated the site to give out the details. The tour will also feature bassist Johnathon Ford’s new band, Native Lights. In brief, here’s what’s coming up:

12/1/09 – The Ten Eleven – San Antonio, Texas
12/3/09 – TBA – New Orleans, Lousiana
12/4/09 – The Spanish Moon – Baton Rouge, Lousiana
12/5/09 – The Bottletree – Birmingham, Alabama
12/7/09 – Propaganda – Lake Worth, Florida
12/8/09 – The Engine Room – Tallahassee, Florida
12/9/09 – Redlight, Redlight – Orlando, Florida
12/10/09 – Caledonia Lounge – Athens, Georgia
12/12/09 – The End – Nashville, Tennessee

The release of Pick ‘n’ Aul’s fourth full-length album is on the horizon, but for now I’ve just updated the official Books site with a few new tour dates. Check out the tour section to see if they’ll be playing near you soon!

For those of you who have not yet heard of The Books, they are – in my humble opinion – one of the most innovative bands currently active, and I’ve been had the pleasure of working with them on animations and web media since 2005. Their sound is difficult to describe, but I usually term it as “techno-folk” with highly manipulated instrument and spoken word samples playing a heavy role in nearly every composition.

As part of our new “Make-Believe Machines Cares About Community” program, we have decided to exploit homeless youth in order to draw attention to our incredibly awesome band. But in reality, we really are giving away free albums if you support the homeless youth shelters. Anyone who purchases the book, “From a Growing Community, Iowa’s Homeless Youth” this week and uses “Terrorhawk” for their middle name when ordering will receive a copy of our album, Moral Calculus absolutely free. “Ravenhammer” is also acceptable.

www.SowSomethingMeaningful.com

For those of you who haven’t already read the copious amounts of posts about the book here, it’s a compilation of stories from homeless kids all around the state of Iowa, where Justin and Rob grew up. The book also includes artwork and photography by Make-Believe Machines cover artist Wesley Norman and, of course, myself. $10 from the purchase of each book goes to shelters to prevent more tragedies from occurring.

P.S. “Beakwound” is also acceptable.

Photograph by Blake Brown.

The Longbottom Leaf album, The Everyday and the Unknown is out August 15th. I performed extensively on the album, and Wesley and I did the artwork together. Those beautiful photos are Wesley’s doing.

Artwork by Wesley Norman and Justin Norman

Almost immediately after completing my work on the Make-Believe Machines album, I was invited to hop on board a new rock project by my former Cardboard Canary band-mate, Blake Brown. He and Erik Brown (of Grimfeather) had begun a new band called Longbottom Leaf, along with drummer Jordan Krohn. My part of the album included writing and recording vocals, bass, and composing strings, along with recording other members of the band and mixing the project. The result is a 41-minute debut album called The Everyday and the Unknown, set for release at the first show at the Vaudeville Mews on August 15th. Much of the album consists of older songs which were written from 2004-2007, but a notable exception is the track, “Aporia”, which was written recently. I’m posting it here for you to listen to early. More tracks will be available for listening soon!

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“Aporia” by Longbottom Leaf. Cover art by Wesley Norman.

Amidst my work on the homeless youth book, I’ve also found time to write and perform with Make-Believe Machines, the orchestral group I formed with Rob Ogden in summer of 2007. We had been scheduled for a few months to make an appearance on the Scented Vinyl show with Daniel Bosman, but we hadn’t planned on performing until just recently, when I met local violinist Becca Smith. She bowed her strings. I plucked my bass. Rob strummed his guitar. And then we all took the electronica train to Rowdytown. Population: three badder-than-ass classical composers and one crow. Things blew up. Stuff happened. Rowdy stuff. The kind of stuff captured by Mr. Daniel Bosman on his radio show, which you can listen to below.

Photographs by Wesley Norman.

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Interview and “Damp Triangulum” live by Make-Believe Machines.

Hello again, friends!

As we begin writing our second album, tentatively titled Crow Apocalypse 2: The Loins of Hell we have simultaneously started a freaking media blitz. Do you hear this? It’s going to be @*$%ing insane. This Monday we will perform a live interview with Daniel Bosman at Mars Cafe and press the play button on our CD and look awesome as we stare at the spinning disc and nod with a smug look plastered across our faces to indicate, “Yes, that is us you’re hearing.” 7pm. Mars Cafe. Des Moines, IA.

Second, riding the wave of intense arrogance that this has brought on we will send this link to you about an article published in a local juice-enthusiast magazine. The writer apparently believes we gorge ourselves on mangos in our free time. He is right. We do this. Read the full article here.

Third, we have created a @$*%ing Twitter page. Now that we are becoming intensely famous we know that you will all want to know what we are doing at every moment of the day. Just look at this example of our status messages:

“Hunting mechanical grouse with wooden forks.”

Who wouldn’t want to read something like that every day? Subscribe your asses now.

Also, Justin completed bass/vocals/strings work on the new Longbottom Leaf album and Rob is finishing up a novel. Damn we’re awesome. We’re going to ride this wave of glory all the way until reality tears off our smirking faces! More on that stuff is soon to come!

Article by Joe Lawler. Click to enlarge.