Uploading for a best friend who left us, this was his favorite track off our last record.

Saint Sophia - Forgetter City

Uploading for a best friend who left us, this was my favorite song we wrote together for our third album, .Magnetcars.

Saint Sophia - In Explode

The last track on the last Saint Sophia record, music by my departed friend Brendan, lyrics by me, where I weirdly had him sing from the perspective of a ghost describing the exact moment of leaving his body. Very peculiar now.

Saint Sophia - Early

For the 5th anniversary of the Get Played podcast (formerly How Did This Get Played?), for which I wrote something like 120 different theme songs, here is the original. This is the very first mix of the song that I would rewrite over 100 times, and in the first version it's a little different, there is an extra linking bit in the main verse and the bridge is almost a turnaround rather than its own section. All created in ProTools (unclear why I insist on MIDI programming within that inhospitable program), all software synths, almost entirely Arturia's keyboard collection and Pigments, drums are probably Native Instruments Battery. As far as I can tell, I started with a blank slate at 7:15pm on Dec 13, 2018, three days after we recorded the pilot episode, and I had this first version bounced by 9:05pm, very efficient. My fellow producer Kevin Bartelt was the one who suggested trimming the linking bit and making the bridge more of its own section, which is how I eventually finished this first version. But really, the song didn't take what I consider to be its classic shape for about 5 or 10 further iterations of the theme, really once I had built this to be able to accommodate Michael Jackson's Moonwalker or be elastic enough to be turned into heavy metal for Duke Nukem Forever, then we were off to the races. It's very funny to me that I have an entire body of work consisting of this one song rewritten over 100 times. Well, for the 5th anniversary, here's where it started!

GET PLAYED - Theme 1 Version 1 (Dec 13, 2018)

An afternoon improv, several layers of a locked-gate Moog arpeggiator sequence, each layer 0.5 BPM slower than the one previously, so that they are seen to spin in and out of sync with each other. Live modification to each layer, some editing after the fact in ProTools. Three such improvs were recorded Monday February 15, 2016, the folder containing them was named "Lizzys" at random, so that may become the title of something or not, why worry about it?

Devon Torrey Bryant - Samaritrophia

From the forthcoming Painkiller The Pigeon boxset "Invisible Decade (2003-2012)", collecting all the (non) hits, (imaginary) b-sides & (they're all) unreleased tracks from 10+ years recording story pop polaroids for my own amusement. This anti-corporate pep talk of a song was conceived in Chicago IL in 2005, re-recorded and abandoned in St Paul MN in 2010 and completed last Sunday, September 2016. All of the writing & instruments by Devon Torrey Bryant, brilliant image by Laura Suzanne.

Painkiller The Pigeon - The Beginner's Guide To Birds (2016)

I originally recorded this cover of Billy Bragg's classic spiky love song (Top 5 Songs I Wish I'd Written, easy) in the spring of 2008 in my bedroom in Brotown (I know, I know, but that's what we called it). For some reason, I've always believed it to be terrible. I brought up the ProTools session on Sunday and discovered that it was not terrible, it was good, the vocals just needed to be redone. So I redone them. I adore this song, and I think I did it justice.

Painkiller The Pigeon - Greetings To The New Brunette (Billy Bragg)

Somehow, nearly five years after the last brand new Painkiller The Pigeon song was completed, a new one appears out of nowhere in a single burst. A guitar part found itself on a Saturday night and, although I'd been invited to several parties, I opted to write a song about how sorry I was that I would not be attending any of them. How very meta. "I stayed up late just crushing through Luke Cage, which I know sounds kinda lame...but still I'm sorry I skipped your party."

Painkiller The Pigeon - Sorry I Skipped Your Party

A live run through of a set of bits I created in between loads of laundry, 11/19/17.

.bitmoth. - Carrion Flaw (Live Take)

Another abandoned Painkiller The Pigeon tune I finished this Laborious Day weekend, the music for this one dates back to the summer of 2009 and was recorded in the basement at Aviette's house. Lyrics were written the following year but never seemed to fit. Turns out there were just too many of them, so I trimmed it all up and put it in a clean Nudie suit for your enjoyment. I like the cyclical key changes a lot, and the line "You gotta laugh at the jokes."

Painkiller The Pigeon - Low Life

A song I wrote in 2003 or 2004, intended for my good friend Stephanie Morris to sing, although I didn't finish it until many years after she died on June 1, 2009. By the time it was completed, the lyrics were as much about her and the time that had passed as they were about the cipher sister from Faulkner's The Sound And The Fury. The music was recorded in my large bedroom back in Chicago, where I would pull in a drumkit, a few amps and our microphones for a week at a time to write songs. The vocals, bass and light Moog were added in St Paul, MN some years later. I still miss Stephanie, this song is a nice way of remembering how much fun we had playing her sad songs. The little cartoon of her is by her friend Jay Ryan.

Painkiller The Pigeon - The Ballad Of Caddy Compson

Sounds by Devon Torrey Bryant (and others). Songs by Gaudy Night, Painkiller The Pigeon, The Luxury, Saint Sophia, .bitmoth., Blush/Blend, Soubriquettes, Powerful Digits, The Balloon Instinct and such. 

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