Joshua Van Tassel

It’s here! It’s April 14th new release day!! Nighttimer is officially official right here

Watch this space throughout the day; I’ll be putting up pictures, some video, some sounds that didn’t make it, some bad jokes. etc. If you like what you hear, talk to me, and if you don’t like it be constructive with your criticism and talk to me too……

update #1 where and why and how

We all know that things have changed a huge amount over the past 10 years in terms of how records are made. The fact that I can make the music I do here –

– is pretty great. A lot of people complain about the fact that when anyone can have access to recording equipment the amount of “bad” music that gets made exponentially increases and the market gets over saturated. I’d like to think that rather then a huge influx of bad stuff, there’s some much more innovative music out there getting made, things that record companies and management people would never want to take a chance on due to lack of marketability. It allows me personally to make music in a relaxed place like my home and take all the time I need to make things sound the way I want them to, whenever I want which is why this ep was fun for me to do.
These tunes were some of the more interesting things that came out of some very late night experiments. As a musician, I get home late quite a bit, and generally aren’t quite ready to go to sleep right away. The world (especially in east end Toronto) looks a little different after midnight, and sounds a little different too. The tunes kind of reflect that time of day and how it feels to be looking at it and being in it.

Look yourself right in the face and say that, and it just may happen. It’s already a good day for me though, because I saw this finally -

Ooohhhhh it’s going to be great.

Also, not as exciting, but I got some good work done on some new music yesterday. Here’s a very fresh sampling of something that came out.

Every time I finish a project I always feel ready to get right back at it, which is how I feel now. I have some good people that are going to be helping me promote the Nighttimer ep ( that now has some art and is loaded and ready to go) and I’m sure it drives them crazy that I’m already on something else, but that’s how us flaky artists do it I suppose. I learn a ton from everything I work on, and I want to apply that knowledge right away. I think it makes sense.

There’s an alarmingly large number of posts on my blog involving raccoons, about raccoons, songs written for raccoons, etc, so I figured it’s high time to learn a little bit about these fun filled creatures who flip flop between being completely lovable and terribly annoying.

First off, the word raccoon itself comes from the Algonquin word ahrah-koon-em, which translates to ” one who rubs, scrubs and scratches with its hands”. This makes sense, seeing as raccoons have five hyper sensitive fingers on each of their front paws, and more then 2 thirds of it’s brain is devoted to it’s sense of touch. Wikipedia also tells me they can hear the movements of earthworms underground, but I’m not sure about that one.

As most of us know, if you put your little green bin outside the night before compost collection, you may as well just dump it all over the sidewalk yourself, and save the raccoon the trouble. They will get in, and they will make a very large mess. A study in 1908 by a scientist named H. B. Davis showed raccoons were able to open 11 of 13 complex locks in less than 10 tries. I have problems opening my front door after a gig at night, and I have a key. Impressive.

Anyway, that’s my little infomercial for the day. Want to see some video of some Toronto raccoons versus the green bin? Check it out.

Annnnnd here’s some music that I’m working on. I think this may turn into something soon.

Are they our friends? Not when they scream like howler monkeys outside my screen door all night. This guy was looking for the sneak attack from the tree last night, but I’m on to him.

So the past couple of days have been spent at Canterbury Studios mixing the Outlanders record with the band and Jeremy Darby, the fantastically talented, big hearted, and dirty minded engineer. It’s been a lot of fun, but also a a lot of work, more then some people realize. Over the course of a few hours we came up with this analogy to help anyone who hasn’t gone through the laborious process of listening to themselves over and over for 2 days straight understand what it’s all about.

So you’re about to go out for the evening with that special someone for possibly date number 2 or even 3. you’re excited, you’ve spent enough time together to know that it’s got the potential to be really good and long lasting. You want to look your best obviously. So, call up four of your friends and a make up specialist. Get a giant not only full length mirror, but one that magnifies your every blemish, mark, pimple, tiny scar, everything by 100 times. Next ask each person in the group what they think would help fix the blemishes, one by one. Now, chances are, they’re all going to have differing opinions about what to do. Some will make sense, some will be totally ridiculous, and chances are someone will have been on the phone or writing an email and need to have all the options repeated to them again. It can get messy, or sometimes everyone agrees on a little bit of cover up ( reverb), a little something to smooth out the skin (compression), and voila you look great.

Does that make any sense? Here’s a something that’s just been started yesterday, unmixed mind you. This is like going outside in your Budweiser t-shirt with no pants and cigarette hanging out of your mouth to get the paper on a Saturday morning.

These headphones cost more then my rent. For 2 months. They make me nervous.

I’m very lucky to have written some music for a great play called Norway Today, put on by everyone’s favorite independent theatre company Theatre SMASH. It’s a very affecting play revolving around the stories of two people who meet in a chat room and decide to kill themselves together by jumping off a very very large cliff in Norway.

Sound bleak? It’s not actually. The cast and direction bring out all the humility and humor the subject matter could offer, and the sound design and usage of video really sew things up. Anyway, enough with the commercial, go see it at the Tarragon Theatre at Bathurst and Dupont starting Tuesday the 9th. Here’s a clip of one of the pieces I wrote, and a shot from the first run I saw….

got married this weekend – (and yes I’m aware this picture is pretty bad, but it’s the only one I have….)

let me hang out with their babies –

….and fed me some cucumbers they grew in their garden.

I also spent some time producing a tune with the lovely Sarah Kurtis the other day, and we’re working on a sweet sounding little thing that goes like this so far….

[audio:

…to all the people who bought the album this weekend and sent such nice emails. I really appreciate it. It was the most comfortable cd release party in a while, wear as much or as little as you want, talk as loud as you want while the music’s happening, turn it off if you want, hear a tune over, whatever you wanted to do could be done without embarrassment or shame.

Here’s a tune that didn’t quite make the cut. I had posted some parts of it hear before, but here it is in a somewhat finished form, just so I can feel like we’ve had some closure, and don’t start calling it up in the middle of the night trying to figure out why things just didn’t work. Was it the song? Was it something I said? Who’s really to blame??

I’ll be out of town for the next few days and avoiding computers and cell phones like they were diseased infested monkeys, and I’m an explorer deep in the jungle with no hope of antidote if I get bit.

Here’s a piece of a tune from this album I keep talking about though – - I swear it’s almost done….in fact check back here next Friday May 23rd for the release of the first single from it on a shiny new webstore that will be going up very soon……until then have a great long weekend…..

……..will happen in June, sometime…….I’m not totally sure when…….but I’ll definitely let you know when it does. It’ll be a small thing with probably about thirty physical copies, and after that it’ll be banished to be only available here on the website…the tunes are coming along, just a few more little things to do and we’ll be set. Devon Henderson came by yesterday to do the last of the bass, and made some wonderful sounds for me. Here’s a bit -

Due to modern technology, all of us have now been given the gift of foresight, or in pop culture terms spidey sense. We know when our cell phones are about to ring. How? Any electronic device that we happen to be within 4 feet of that has speakers starts to buzz like a swarm of angry hornets, and we immediately look around at the people close to us and everyone makes a very overused and generally terrible joke about whose it is.

It really isn’t enough to put your phone on silent; I have a good friend not only turns his phone off at concerts/events, but actually takes the battery out. That’s dedication, or, a paranoid obsession. either way, I think it’s cool.

I however am not usually that clever, and while working on music this morning my phone began the pre ring which went directly into the track I was recording. As my homage to the phone gods and radio waves, here’s a short kind of annoying piece using that buzz. I’ve learned my lesson and have been listening to the same sound in various forms for about 45 minutes. Check it out for 1:30 and give yourself a reminder.

They’re in your phone and they want out.