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)

2000 Fractured Vision Media

Primarily dealing with issues of loss and abandonment, August remains a collection of work that is inescapably raw and unwavering in discourse.

1. taken
2. hairline fracture
3. interlude
4. tired child
5. lamenting sky
6. the waves
7. gripping
8. an august night

2002 Fractured Vision Media

Mostly instrumental in composition, Through Darkened Eyes revolves around themes of misapplied guilt and the loss of innocence, a sophomore effort.

1. condition: imperiled
2. a room with one window
3. as through a mirror darkened
4. by willful habit
5. all little girls end up like this
6. everything. momentarily
7. in reflection

Why should I make these released available for purchase now after 2 years of free distribution through Fractured Vision Media? Well, that’s exactly it. No one knows FVM. People Know iTunes, Napster, CD Baby, et cetera. FVM is a very narrow conduit and these other vendors cast a wide net. This means more exposure for An Early Morning Letter, Displaced and now is the perfect time to do it- on our 10 year anniversary.

Hopefully, this will also seed the landscape in preparation for the physical release of “Shudderflowers” later this year. Working in this environment, one needs to change his way of thinking, every so often.

The organization spent 14 months from the initial entry date to screen all the music and narrow down the field. JPF uses a unique mix of judges that come from the music industry, fellow artist and songwriter peers and music fans. “We feel that those groups mixed together make for a balanced and compelling process which identifies a lot of music that any one group might miss.”

So what is the criterion for judging all this music? “One simple question: Does the music move you?” Whitney explains. “I was an active musician, songwriter and most importantly music lover myself before starting this and when I went to write the instructions for our first awards process back in 1998, it occurred to me that people often use strict and rigid measuring sticks to judge music. That seemed unnatural to me. People listen to and love music that moves them… It either moves people or it doesn’t.”

For a complete listing of this year’s nominees and more information, please visit www.justplainfolks.org.

An Early Morning Letter, Displaced is the ambient recording project of Joseph Labrecque. Founded in 1999, this expressive project combines elements of dark ambient, ethereal, and touches of atmospheric neo-classical to form a unique sound. Releases are distributed through Fractured Vision Media, LLC.

Fractured Vision Media, LLC is a new media production company located in Thornton, CO specializing in rich internet technologies such as Flash, Flex, and AIR, as well as more traditional website design and development along with audio and video production and distribution services.