Album-A-Day, finished

I got it done within 24 hour limit! I got 3-4 hours of sleep (that's counted in the 24). So I'm somewhat affected by that now. I was really happy when it was done, after the intense effort I put in. The last song is called "Album Release Party" and it reflects my bouyant mood. I was really surprised by the quality of the results. Maybe I'm biased having been in the thick of it for the last day but a lot of it sounds very good to me. You can judge for yourself. My favorite track is "The Place Where the Hallucination Peaks", it's transcendent (at least to my sleep-deprived brain). Kazoo glissandi, who knew? "The Place Where I Start Hallucinating" and "Joke's On You, Now Could You Lend Me Fifty Dollars Man?" are teeth-grindingly catchy pop songs, and "King of Kazoos" and "Granny Can Still Lindy-Hop" are nice-sounding instrumentals, the former pretty, the latter bouncy and experimental. Those are the best, but the rest aren't bad either.

The songs are ordered in the order that I wrote / recorded them. With the last few I was running out of time and so they're much more thrown together, but still they have some value. For most of the songs I would sort of keep developing them until I got tired of them or the creative part of my brain got tired, and at that point I would start figuring out how to wind it up; for this reason they may sound a bit abortive. One of the songs ("Lots of Fun") has the lyrics, "Going to sleep now / See you next week now" -- this was the last thing I finished last night before I decided I wasn't going to stay up all night.

That was all I was doing and thinking about for the last 24 hours. It felt like ages. I still feel giddy that I accomplished it. It's pretty remarkable that I did it considering how slowly I usually progress with my music. It really helps when you don't have to worry too much about the results because it's not a "serious" project. Besides working faster, I also tried a lot of experimental ideas that I would be less likely to try normally, with good results.

When I was done I couldn't think of a title until several hours later. It was hard to sum up the range of styles and emotions in a single title. I came up with "I Was Able To Find Something Beautiful". I wanted a name that would do justice to the significance the album has to me, and how I felt on listening to it. Maybe the title's too sentimental or weighty... whatever, I had to come up with something. I don't like being flip all the time anyway. Argh, I hope I don't regret the title later.

Here's the link! http://www.archive.org/details/IWasAbleToFindSomethingBeautiful