"The Barking Eye"

     Over the past few months local guitarist/ song writer Mike Cliffe and I have been working on music material that we are releasing at random for anyone who cares to listen to it. Mike and I have mutual friends but oddly have never met. Our music creations together happen purely through the internet.  If Mike has an idea, he sends it to me and I add parts or if I have a suggestion, he retools the idea.  It's been a fun experience.  We use similar software that allows us to exchange sound files which we place in our own specific software. It sounds more complicated than it is.  The result is the ability to create music with other people without ever leaving your own house or moving one tiny bit of gear.  I LOVE IT.   Mike and I have musical tastes that are what I'd like to call "out of the box". This simply means, it's not your normal sounding music.  Mike and I have a common theme in our individual original music that requires a listener to be open minded as this "stuff" is not always like the warm  fuzzy music you hear every day on the radio.  It is what you might call "abstract art".  We have done a few songs together with more in the works and we've also included another online artist "Karin Beckerus" for vocals and keyboards on a song called "Bad Regime". Karin has written tons of material and also enjoys collaborations with other musicians.

Our newest song is called "Dog's Breakfast" and features Mike Cliffe on guitar and guitar synths and me, Glen Thomas on drums, bass and keyboards.   The song is based on an idea by me for a prog rock song with an old 70's flavour.  We wanted some odd time signatures in it and some tempo changes.  A lot of prog rock songs back then sounded like a bunch of short stories tied together to make one giant song.  This is kind of that idea but squashed into a 4 minute song.   The guitar riffs are Mike's creative edge as I suggested he try and come up with some tight machine type rhythms for a certain part. Mike spends a lot of time writing so he can come with an idea in the blink of an eye.  It's uncanny. :-)  We attained the machine type rhythm by having the drums and bass follow the guitar riff for each picking part Mike did.  Sure, we could have made it even tighter like todays "perfect" sounding music but honestly, we wanted to attain some realism here. ;-)   To soften the edge just a bit but add some growl, I played keyboards over top of this part using some great Native Instruments software that produces one of the best sounding Leslie "Deep Purple" like organ sounds you can buy without dropping thousands of bucks on a real one. |O|   Mike added some underlying guitar synth sounds in the background to help blend the parts together and again, give it the 70's prog rock feel and sound.  Neither Mike or I know how the finished product is going to sound as we put it together.. We just send ideas back and forth and see if they work.  We add and subtract parts and see what clicks or for the most part, sounds interesting together. ;-)

We hope you enjoy the music we create and we do understand if you don't "get" what we're doing.  Creating this music is just a lot of "brain candy fun" for Mike and I and if it's not your cup of tea, that's totally fine.  Most music in the progressive rock style has to find it's audience and it's not always easy.  If you like what we're doing, let us know as there will be more music coming soon.

Here is the link to our 2 latest songs.

Dog's Breakfast - Mike Cliffe & Glen Thomas
http://www.reverbnation.com/tunepak/2897543

Bad Regime - Mike Cliffe, Karin Beckerus & Glen Thomas
http://www.reverbnation.com/play_now/song_4671010