I was interviewed for the Runtime Expectations internet radio show while at 360|Flex in Denver. It was great chatting with Adrian and we touched upon many subjects over the course of the interview. Some of the topics discussed during the interview include: music composition, book and tutorial authoring, the AEL and ACP programs with Adobe, mobile development, teaching technical subjects, and the sad state of tech journalism.

I encourage anyone interested to  check out the other interviews from 360|Flex including John Wilker, the Nielsen Company, and Mollie Rusher of On3!

What is Runtime Expectations?
Join Ben Farrell, Adrian Pomilio, and Bucky Schwarz as they broadcast live from Cuban Revolution in downtown Durham, NC with a beer in one hand and a mic in the other.  They’ll be covering all the aspects of software development that compel them to put a beer in that first hand. Shows feature both live guests and call-ins.

Follow Joseph on Twitter: http://twitter.com/josephlabrecque
Follow Adrian on Twitter: http://twitter.com/adrianpomilio

The recording is intentionally “quiet” and bass-heavy. If listening on a system which produces inadequate lows- you won’t be able to experience the half of it!

Silent Night by Fractured Vision Media

Track listing:

1. To Lead You Down
2. Strangling Strangers
3. Atrophy
4. (still) So Crushed
5. Alice
6. If Only

6Threads is the first EP release from An Early Morning Letter, Displaced since 2002. I remember when I completed the August EP in 2000, how relieved I was that it was over and could not imagine the work it would take to complete a full length album. Over a decade later, we have two LP releases and will soon have three EPs along with involvement in a number of compilations, remixes, and covers.

A short-play disc allows a bit of a breather in between full collections. I didn’t want to go 2 to 3 years (again) until a new album after Shudderflowers, but still needed to have a time for recollection and the formation of new ideas. This compact format allows me both.

6Threads runs a little over half an hour and contains a balanced sampling of work that spans the history of An Early Morning Letter, Displaced from our beginnings in 1999 to the present day:

Spanning over a decade of work within the space of a six track EP; 6Threads includes three entirely new recordings which continue to showcase An Early Morning Letter, Displaced as a luminary of powerful, impassioned music. Alongside these new tracks are alternate versions of “So Crushed” from A Prison of Oneself and the original (long) version of “Alice” from Shudderflowers. Rounding out the album is one of the earliest recordings from An Early Morning Letter, Displaced – “If Only”, an unpublished piece from 1999.

The version of “So Crushed” on this release is a remastered version of the original recording with an alternate sound bed and new vocals. “Alice” is the original, longer version with extended ambient and incidental sequences. “Strangling Strangers” was (in it’s original form) part of the Strangling Strangers project before it was dissolved and a nearly identical version is included on the community compilation, Emergent Collective One. “To Lead You Down” is the opening track and embodies the spirit of this collection, while “Atrophy” is a return to to style closer to the recordings on A Prison of Oneself and even Through Darkened Eyes.

This is a digital-only release – I’m afraid the physical compact disc is all but dead.

Joseph Labrecque
August 20th – CodeBass.net

360Flex – An awesome night of nerd made music!! 360Flexapalooza!
August 18th – 360|Flex

DU programmer moonlights as electronic musician
July 16th – DU Today

Also, it’s been almost a month since Emergent Collective One was released. Here are some posts about the collection:

• Emergent Collective One Community CD Released
• “Emergent Collective One” – All the Little Pieces…
• EMERGENT COLLECTIVE released, the community rejoices!
• Emergent Collective One
• Emergent Collective One
• PHP The Anthem
• Pique Web Episode 3 – Sessions, accounts, and the PHP Anthem
• Cyberpunks Released
• PHP Anthem
• PHP song by Emergent Collective One, and it ROCKS!
• and many, many more… just Google it!

Emergent Collective One

Formally known as the “community compilation CD project”, Emergent Collective One is now available for download. As detailed in the original call for submissions, this is a community effort and is quite free for those who wish to acquire a copy. Released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported license; you may download, distribute, and make as many copies of these materials as you like, so long as you perform no modifications and retain attribution to the artists involved.

A few extra notes…

• Something you’ll notice immediately when visiting the website, is that you can view the entire booklet online as an interactive SWF. I did all the layout for the PDF version of the booklet using Adobe InDesign CS5 and it was quite simple to perform an additional export to Flash like this. Pull or click the upper corners to flip through the booklet.
• I recommend burning a copy of the release to CDR. If you’ve never had to burn a CDDA disc image before, they are distributed as a set of files (primarily BIN/CUE) which retains all track data, CD-TEXT, ISRC codes and so forth. Lots of applications can be used to burn this to CDR. I recommend ImgBurn for Windows users.
• You can download a collection of 320kbps MP3 files as well as the CDDA image.  The MP3 files heard through the web player are only 128kbps…
• The iWebTunes web player is based on the Open Source Media Framework and was authored by Lee Fernandes (also a contributor).
• Printable CD cover and tray inlay artwork is included in each download as high resolution TIF.
• The cover image is adapted from a piece of scrap-art assembled by my wife, Leslie who is also involved in the wide community of Joomla!/PHP.
• The generative thread art contained in the booklet was created using the HYPE Framework which is just so much fun to play with.
• I cannot thank our contributors enough.  Without your submissions we would have nothing.  Now that we have a finished collection on hand, I really cannot see how any one of these tracks could *not* be included. Awesome work, all around. I am thrilled with what has emerged!

Lastly, thanks to everyone who supported this effort – please continue to spread the word and support your fellow community members!

Just so you all know- I’m holding myself to the deadline as well and my submission (above) just needs a few final tweaks before July 1st has come and gone…

I never expected anyone to go out of their way and create new material for the compilation and have been floored at the amount of work others are putting into their submissions. The community is truly awesome – the expression of this fact is really the point of the entire project. I thank all of you who have submitted material. Thank you.

After July 1st, I’ll go about arranging the tracks and doing what I can to create a cohesive compilation release. A final track listing will be published as soon as I determine how things should be arranged and I may be contacting individual contributors for more information, images, or anything else that is needed in the weeks ahead.

So what about the booklet and cover art? I’ve been in talks with someone from the Joomla! community who will be collaborating with me on the cover art. The booklet will be designed by myself and made available along with the final disk images.

Thank you again. Amazing response!

An Early Morning Letter, Displaced: Shudderflowers

2009 Fractured Vision Media

Shudderflowers reflects upon themes of fervent self-destruction and the fragility of the female mind. Tortured soundscapes pierced with the bones of shattered dreams. A nightmare concert filled with the anguished cries of broken children, delivered with a sweeping stiletto… and a whisper.

1. Shudderflowers
2. I Am Consumed
3. Fever-Drenched and Burning
4. Fearless
5. Waning Flower
6. Searching, Lost
7. Beneath White Stones
8. A Cleansing of Bones
9. Where Dead Girls Lie
10. Alice (the bones)
11. Drowning Past The Sky
12. Threadbare
13. Shudderflowers (reprise)

I want to note here a few interesting facts regarding this release:

• This is the 4th formal album from An Early Morning Letter, Displaced.
• This is the second full-length collection from that same body of work.
• The synthesizer elements were all produced via software synths. My hardware synths were only used as MIDI controllers this time around.
• As was the case for the previous release, samples were taken from violin and processed into the mix. No guitar, this time.
• A reworked version of the unreleased track She’s Fallen (2001) almost made it onto the release. It ended up going in the wrong direction and was abandoned.
• The track Threadbare is originally from the abandoned Stillborn release from 2003/2004.
• Fever-Drenched and Burning was actually composed and recorded last Winter when I was suffering from intense fever!
• The beginnings of many of the lyrics for this release were composed stream-of-consciousness on Twitter.
• An alternate version of Fearless can be found as soundtrack to the short film “The Fearless Man” 2007
• This is the first release which contains vocal material that is not solely produced by myself. Alice (the bones) and Beneath White Stones feature the additional vocals of two girls, respectively; one living, one dead†. The dead girl’s voice having been recovered from an old telephone answering machine.
• Alice (the bones) also contains samples from various sources, including the Švankmajer film “Alice”.
• The original (long) verison of Alice (the bones) was written as background noise to a Hallowe’en party.
• The cover art is adapted from a painting I completed in 2004 titled “Neck Zipper” and inspired by a sweater my girlfriend (now, wife) was fond of wearing:
  
• This may be the last physical release I produce. Sales of A Prison of Oneself were okay, but (if the numbers are any indication $$$) people seem much more interested in digital distribution… and it is certainly less of a headache for me.
• I may try something new after this. I have an additional project called Strangling Strangers that I might start working on again. Its a lot less ambient… more coarse and noise-based.
• Samples from this, and all An Early Morning Letter, Displaced releases can be found at the Myspace Music page.

I Am Consumed falls at track #2 on the new release and represents somewhat of a departure in style.

I Am Consumed
this fear consumes me
memories of long forgotten corpses
their silver blood falls to the leaves
“would my lips give you any comfort? at such a time of peril?”

consume my flesh
consume my fear
consume the desire that still burns
and extinguish my life

This fear consumes me
memories of long forgotten nights
and the petals now fallen to the earth
and the precious, still moments that will never be.

Shudderflowers is scheduled for release this month through Fractured Vision Media.

Waning Flower falls at track #5 on the new release and is very similar to previous work. The styles on this collection vary a bit from what has come before and they will all have representatives over the next few weeks.

Waning Flower
fevered sleep deprives the child of these waning flowers
seal these things within burning memories
conflagration of the soul

Shudderflowers is scheduled for a September release through Fractured Vision Media.

Shudderflowers

2009 Fractured Vision Media

Shudderflowers reflects upon themes of fervent self-destruction and the fragility of the female mind. Tortured soundscapes pierced with the bones of shattered dreams. A nightmare concert filled with the anguished cries of broken children, delivered with a sweeping stiletto… and a whisper.

1. Shudderflowers
2. I Am Consumed
3. Fever-Drenched and Burning
4. Fearless
5. Waning Flower
6. Searching, Lost
7. Beneath White Stones
8. A Cleansing of Bones
9. Where Dead Girls Lie
10. Alice (the bones)
11. Drowning Past The Sky
12. Threadbare
13. Shudderflowers (reprise)