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8-13-13 The instrumental version of Somnia is nearly done. Most of the album is, as you probably gather from the previous sentence, instrumental mixes of the songs that were on Somnia. There are going to be three new tracks, though, and at the moment they don't have names. If you'd like to help name them, you can listen to samples of them here, and submit your own ideas for their titles. 5-1-13 Congratulations to Damien Mills and Audrey Rischmueller, winners of the autographed Somnia drawing in March! 3-1-13
You can 1-31-13 Congratulations and Thanks to the video contest winners, Garreth Davies and Derrick Ogletree! Here are their entries: 11-21-12 There's a video contest coming up, and you can start creating entries now. Five autographed copies of Somnia are the winners' prizes! 8-22-12 The third full length album, "Somnia," has been released! All the details are on the Releases page. 2-24-11 "Broken Down" is the newest single, featuring ethereal vocals by Meredith Ruduski. It's in the the Facebook player, and up at a iTunes, Bandcamp, CD Baby, etc...head to the Releases page for links. 10-4-10 A new single, "The Maid of Culmore", is now streaming on Last.fm and Grooveshark, with an instrumental remix available as a free mp3 download at Last.fm. See the entry on the Releases page for links and background about the song. 4-17-10 "TumbleReed" (available for free download here) is a short song that I worked up with the the group that ended up on OtherSong, but I didn't think it's tone really matched the rest of the album. The primary melody instrument is a melodica, which sounds sort of like a cross between an accordion and a harmonica. Not cooincidentally, these instruments are all members of the "free reed aerophone" family - there's a good wikipedia article on the subject if you're curious. I'm releasing this song under a Creative Commons license, which means that you can do pretty much anything you want with it except sell it...of course, that's an oversimplification, so here's the legalese:
2-4-10 A brief update...Lately, I've been spending most of my "music time" learning Irish tunes and attending Irish Trad sessions. While I've been playing the tin whistle on my own for years, I only began to actually participate in the Irish music community (which is dominant musical style in which the whistle is used) in the past few months, and I think it's helping me gain a fresh perspective on music. I've spent so much time alone in the studio over the past few years, that I've become hyper-focused on textures, frequencies, and other technical elements of music production. Though my emphasis has shifted, I have been spending a bit of time in the studio. I have, perhaps, half or a third of an album's worth of songs written, but only one or two are in a listenable state of production. It's far too early to know how this next project will turn out in the end, but at the moment it's shaping up in an Ambient Pop direction. I expect to collaborate with a number of musicians, mostly vocalists. 11-18-09 Pandora Radio has added OtherSong to their system - go try it out by creating a Longing for Orpheus station.
11-2-09 Morpheus Music has posted a great review of OtherSong, and an interview about its making. 9-14-09 Thanks to Tom Bingham of WCVF FM in Fredonia, New York for including "CopperSea" on the latest edition of General Eclectic. 9-10-09 I've started a new blog about the creative arts the relationships between them at dsmootz.blogspot.com. Longing for Orpheus will likely be only a small part of what I talk about, but it will be part of it. 9-9-09 Both Skye and OtherSong are now available in CD form through Amazon 8-28-09 Thanks to the following for including Longing for Orpheus' music in their shows: The College Witch podcast is using tracks from Skye as intro/outro music, the DaleCast podshow played "CopperSea" on show 605, and the Audiosyncracy show on El Paso's KTEP 88.5 has spun multiple tracks from OtherSong. 8-24-09 By the power of Google, I've discovered that some songs from OtherSong were featured on the August 16th edition of Ultima Thule, a widely syndicated Australian show. It looks like a podcast should be posted shortly - I'll link when it's in place. UPDATE: There's still no link on the official site, but deductive reasoning indicates that this will be it.
5-21-09 OtherSong has made its way onto iTunes. 5-11-09 OtherSong is now officially for sale at CD Baby and Kunaki, making today the de facto release date of the album. 5-7-09 The first batch of OtherSong copies arrived at CD Baby today - it shouldn't be long until they get it into their system, and out to the various mp3 stores. 4-28-09 You can now hear previews of the entirety of OtherSong on Last.FM! You can listen to a few of the songs in full (the rest are 30 second previews at the moment, and are incorporated full-length into their radio stations). Also, thanks to New Age & Celtic Classics radio on Live365, the first to put songs from OtherSong into rotation. 4-23-09 I'm listening to the final master disc of OtherSong as I write this. If it contains no audible errors, I'll be uploading to the replication plan within in the hour. I'll likely be posting a few songs from the album in the next few days. 4-8-09 The mixes are finally done for the new album. Its name is OtherSong. Now comes the Mastering phase, then on to pressing some CDs and publishing some music! 3-30-09 The website has gone through a minor graphical redesign. Hopefully, it will be friendly to a wider range of screen resolutions. Thanks to George Bosela and Sara Nevalainen for the use of their photography in the new design (links to their Stock.xchng pages at the bottom of the page). Work on the new album continues - I'm in the final mixing stages, making very minor tweaks to a few of the songs. I hope to finish up by the end of April at the latest, then it will go off to the Mastering house. 3-16-09 As you may guess from the update hiatus, the previous concept album didn't take shape in a timely manner. That project started evolving in a different direction (and very slowly, at that), and while something will probably come of it, it may be under of a different name. Another album is under way, though! I'm deep in the mixing and production process of a set of mostly instrumental tracks with a bit more rhythmic orientation. I think of it as a move in the "Chillout" direction, thought it's certainly not an abandonment of the first album's style. 5-17-07 Just a little teaser as the next album begins to take shape: classical poetry. 3-20-07 I'm not sure exactly when this was released, but I just discovered that Skye is on RJ Lannan's list of the Top 10 Recordings of 2006, over at the New Age Reporter. Needless to say, RJ, this is deeply appreciated. 3-5-07 There have been no big events to report recently, but rather than let this page languish, I'll just give a general update. First, I've added some stories about Athar and Release to the Album page, so have a look. Generally, I've been preoccupied with live, community musical concerns, rather than the electronic frontier. I just landed a part in the chorus of Ruddigore, produced by the Gilbert and Sullivan Society of Austin. I'm also now webmaster for the Hill Country Singers, a community choir with which I'm singing that had no web presence. Finally, a new Longing for Orpheus album is beginning to take shape. It will probably be an EP, rather than a full album (six to nine songs), and will consist primarily of lyrical, verse-chorus songs, in contrast to the instrumental, mixed-form composition of Skye. More details once I have them worked out... 12-20-06 Check out the Longing for Orpheus remix of State of Grace's Christe Redemptor over at AcidPlanet. 11-28-06 At long last, Skye is available through Amazon. Well, its actually been available there for a while, but now I'm selling it myself, so you don't have to get scalped for $40. 11-20-06 Take a look at the "Album" page. There's now a "Stories" section that explains the meaning and history behind some of the songs from Skye. 10-11-06 The "Blog" link in the menu to the left is new, and the new Weblog is already far-better populated than the one on MySpace. 6-27-06 RJ Lannan has given Skye a glowing review - read it at The New Age Reporter. 3-12-06 Skye is now available for purchase in MP3 form at Soundclick.com. 3-12-06 Brian Douthit, of Eyes of the Poet radio and PerfectlySaid.com, wrote a very positive review of Skye. Brian is a poet, and contributes greatly to our artistic community. I encourage you to visit his sites: 2-15-06 As you can see, the new site is up. I'd love to hear what you think of it. As the final news item at the old site, I alluded to a remix of Conjure One's Face the Music. There's a link on the "Media" page that will take you right to it. Finally, the album is now available at CDBaby. |
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Longing for Orpheus | After Enigma |
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| Copyright 2006-2009 Derek Smootz | |||||||||||||||
| Photographs by George Bosela and Sara Nevalainen | |||||||||||||||
. Also, thanks to