Silent Sci-Fi, Volume I Release!

It is with great excitement that I announce the release of Silent Sci-Fi, Volume I! The album is now available for free download at Bandcamp.com, and will soon be up for streaming on our YouTube Channel. Feel free to download the album and invite friends to come bask in the glorious weirdness thereof.

This has been an excellent adventure, and would not have been possible without the help of the fantastic musicians who lent their talent and creativity to the project. My deepest thanks to all of you for joining me.

Silent Sci-Fi will return, in January 2017. Watch the skies, listeners...

Artist Profile: The Guys from Ipanema

Name/Band Name/Pseudonym: The Guys from Ipanema

Real Name: Judd Ellis

Instruments Played: Guitar, Bass, Drum Machine, Keyboards, Sound Effects

Influences, Musical or Otherwise: Too many to count. Rush, Led Zeppelin,
Pink Floyd, Joe Bonamassa, Derek Trucks, Joe Satriani, Al Di Meola, Victor
Wooten, Michael Dowdle and lots of others in many different styles.

Bio: I’m the lead guitarist, keyboard player, occasional background vocalist, and
waffle-maker for the rock band The Guys from Ipanema (While my band didn’t
participate in the Silent Sci-Fi project with me, I’m still shamelessly promoting
them here). I love music in just about any form and play it constantly, whether
shredding some Rush tunes with my band or playing in a jazz combo, it seems
that I’m always playing music of some sort.

Thoughts on your experience participating in Silent Sci-Fi: This was a
really cool and challenging project! I had a great time looking for ways to take
inspiration from The Forbidden Planet and create an instrumental piece that not
only reflected my own artistry but pushed some boundaries for me. It was
definitely interesting to watch the whole movie on mute, and led to some great
bad lip reading moments, but there were also moments that just stood out and
were calling out with musical ideas. The final product that I came up with has
three distinct movements, each evoking its own imagery and ideas and inspired
by the open canvas of a muted 50s Sci-Fi movie.

Contact Info: My band (The Guys from Ipanema) can be found at our website,
guysfromipanemaband.com, which has links to our YouTube page, upcoming
gigs, and other info. Check back at our website soon; we’ll be posting demos
within the next week!

Artist Profile: Dynocerous

Name/Band Name/Pseudonym: Dynocerous

Real Name: Clint Lantz

Instruments Played: Guitar + computer + mouth

Influences, Musical or Otherwise: I am often influenced by forbidden planets.

Bio: From the streets of SLC I grazed and grew. It wasn't until after I graduated high school that I got a guitar and started writing songs. I played with some friends for a couple of years and did what all old people do: I got married and had some kids. In the blur of it all, I put the songs and sounds on hold for the most part. I dream of jumping back into it with greater dedication. I recently discovered MIDI which allows me to work on compositions from my home computer at any given hour. Who knows, maybe one day when Brian Anderson is famous he will take us all on tour to perform songs from this hit album!

Thoughts on your experience participating in Silent Sci-Fi: While watching this entire - LONG - movie silently I couldn't wait for it to end...so that I could make some music. As I watched, I jotted down notes as to what the plot was. I would often pause the film to start translating my thought into music. Once I got my message across, I would jump back into the Forbidden Plane and take additional notes. The process of watching the film probably took me two weeks, as I kept deviating from watching in order to write. It didn't help that my kids would wake up at night to pull me away from it. 

This was a cool idea! It was a push that I needed to get working on songs again. I'm excited to hear what others come up with.

Contact info: My name is Clint. I'm always available telepathically, but you need to hone in on the right frequency in order to reach me.

Hit me up on this blog if you want to talk to me.

Artist Profile: Hardwire Steamcoaster

Name/Band Name/Pseudonym: Hardwire Steamcoaster

Real Name: Dave Comstock

Instruments Played: Guitar, drum machine, bass, GarageBand app on a MacBook

Bio: Frontman for White Collar Caddy, spends his spare time looking for goofy noises to bring to shows, and fry cooking at Harmons.

Contact info: Get ready for White Collar Caddy's first EP! "The Howling Garage" Coming sometime in August....

Artist Profile: Beanbag Skratchbob

Name/Band Name/Pseudonym:
Beanbag Skratchbob

Real Name:
David K. Moser

Instruments Played:
Piano, Percussion, Guitar

Influences, Musical or Otherwise:
Anabolic Frolic, Nine Inch Nails, Chicane, Yanni

Bio:
I am just a guy that enjoys making music. I write all my stuff from scratch using FL Studio, and have more than 40 songs self-released over 3 CD's. Classically trained, but I just do what sounds good to me.

Thoughts on your experience participating in Silent Sci-Fi:
It was extremely difficult for me to watch the entire movie on mute! I kept wanting to unmute the movie so that I could hear what the various sound effects were like, but I just had to imagine it in my head. The  experience left me...cold? I also kept thinking about a great sci-fi book that's one of my favorites: Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon. That book gave me some similar emotions. I can't imagine the directors of the movie intended it, but to my special-effects-spoiled eyes, so much of the world of the movie was both simultaneously plain and fantastical. The result is music that has a metallic, robotic base, with an overlayment of vast wonder and a creeping sense of unease.

Contact info:
I'll be rebooting my Facebook and ReverbNation profiles in the next little while, so just search for me on there. I'm happy to give out most of my music for free.

Artist Profile: Let Them Eat Cake

Band Name: Let Them Eat Cake

Real Names: Sara Dunbabin, Celia Christensen, and Katy Anderson

Instruments Played: viola, alto saxophone, penny whistle (the penny whistle is silent)

Influences: Hall and Oates, Marie Antoinette, Joshua Chamberlain

Bio: First performed at a baptism in 2014. 

Thoughts: This was hard. The goal was to compose an overture of different themes for the movie. We came up with two of them. The main theme is the Forbidden Planet theme and the love theme. We hope you enjoy!

Artist Profile: Corsair to Midnight

Band Name:  Corsair to Midnight

Band Members:  Abby Anderson (piano/vocals), Scott Anderson (guitar/vocals)

Influences:  Andy Mckee, Jon Schmidt, David Lanz, Keldian, Symphony X, Collective Soul, Imagine Dragons, and many others!

Bio:  Corsair to Midnight is the sonic outlet of two lifelong music enthusiasts.  Enjoy. 

Silent Sci-Fi Project Notes:  This has been a great project to be a part of!  Writing an instrumental song inspired by Forbidden Planet (watched with the sound on mute) was a fun experience.  What a cool, weird, old movie!  Our song was inspired by the opening scenes, where an intrepid crew is riding along through space toward the “forbidden planet”.  There are some great views of stars and the planet as seen through a viewport on the spaceship’s bridge.  The interior of ship has some classic, retro-futuristic feel to it.  The only difficulty in completing this project was with my recording setup.  The last time we did any audio recording was in June of 2013!  Some software updates must have must have really messed things up on the computer we had previously used to record.  We used an M-Audio MobilePre 2-channel interface but it wouldn’t work properly for playback or recording.  So we had to install our recording software, Pro Tools 8.0.3 SE, on an older computer to get it done.  New to our gear collection is an ART Tube MP preamp, so that took a little fine-tuning to dial in.  But despite those technical issues, we’re very happy with the song we created.  We hope you like it too!

Band Links:

Listen to the title track of our album “Living Color”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cq_CSQlE8E

Music available for free download at https://corsairtomidnight.bandcamp.com/

 

Subscribe to our YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDhcfCJ8YNAfjIx3hct494A

The Deadline for Submissions is Here!

Just a quick note to inform everyone that today, July 1st, is the last day to submit recordings for Volume I of the Silent Sci-Fi Project! Please submit them via the aforementioned Dropbox link. If you have submitted a recording but have not yet signed the release or sent an artist profile, please take the time to do so, either by Dropbox or by emailing them to silent.scifi@gmail.com.

Now the real countdown begins- the album drops July 8th! We'll be posting artist profiles and other news on the blog in the days leading up to the release.