vocalist/demo playlist up purely for my different writing examples to different producers

Mint Season Began 2.28

Hello, we’re NASA. You may have seen our astronauts, rocket launches, or Mars rovers — but have you heard our sounds? From interviews with astronauts and engineers to stories that take you on a tour of the galaxy, NASA’s audio offerings let you experience the thrill of space exploration without ever leaving Earth.

                                                    Longshot Biography


One of the hardest working and most underrated emcees in the business, MC Longshot is a well seasoned and professional hip hop artist from Chicago, Illinois.  Aside from his undeniable talent and high quality music, Longshot propels his own life experience through his lyrics to inspire and motivate others.   

Born on Chicago's south side, the oldest of six, Longshot moved around the city and country with his family before they were split apart by DCFS when he was only eight years old.  After a couple of foster homes, Longshot was accepted into the Boys Hope Scholarship Program at 12 and lived there until he graduated high school at age 18.  After high school, Longshot got accepted into Drake University, where his love for freestyling was first show-cased.  After two years of attending Drake, Longshot realized that his true calling was music, and he moved the east coast to further develop his passion.  

While out east, Longshot honed his skills as an emcee on the open mic and battle circuit before returning to Chicago in the fall of 2001.  With the assistance of DJ Anomaly, Longshot released his first single "Happiness is Hard to Find" in February of 2002.  A year later, EV Records released Shot's first full length album, "Open Mouth's Fed."  That album introduced Longshot to the world as a thought provoking, soulful word smith, and also helped him get a spot on URB Magazine's 2003 "Next 100 List."  In 2004 Longshot partnered with longtime Chi-Town producers, the Molemen, to create "Sacrifice," Shot's second full length album.  For his third album, Shot decided to try and unite Chicago's seemingly divided hip hop community by utilizing some of the city's best rappers, producers, and Djs for a project he called "Civil War pt.2"   Thirty tracks, 28 co-produced and rapped on by Longshot, of raw Chicago hip hop, were documented and edited for an accompanying DVD by legendary Chicago filmmaker Konee Rok.  Longshot's fourth album, "Issues," was released in March 2007 and was produced entirely by then label mate, Copperpot.  In October of 2008, after three years of touring as Psalm One and Diverse's Hypeman, Longshot and EV records released his 5th album, "Addicted."  

A month later, Longshot recorded a song, "Hip hop is..," and entered it in the Jake One/ RSE song writing contest.  After over 1,000 entries and over 7,000 voters, Longshot was chosen by the fans as the winner, and will have his next single produced by Jake One and Distributed by Rhymesayers Entertainment.  A seasoned performer, Longshot can be backed by a live band or a DJ, and makes himself a hard act to follow.  His passion, energy, and love for music, along with his "you can be what you work for message," are felt in every song.

Ian Sorlie + iKaossilator, sometimes through a KP2 Kaoss Pad

https://phantogram.komi.io/

Fall In Love Again (Desmond Remix) Out Now
Move In Silence feat. Big Boi Out Now

Sparked by a color or song that recalls the most joyful and tragic moments in your life, a sense memory vaults you into the distant past. These subtle triggers remind us that memory isn’t confined to the mind; it lives in the body, too. Phantogram’s fifth album, Memory of a Day, captures that disorienting sense of time travel. “We put these songs together as a capsule, thinking about how a certain sound or melody can bring you back instantly to a memory of a day,” Phantogram says. 

While they were recording, the duo fixated on life calendars, a gridded sheet in which each unit represents a single week of a person’s life on the planet. As you fill in the grid, you witness the progression of your life in stark terms. The older you get, the darker the grid becomes, reminding you of how much time you have lived, and how little you may have left. “It’s this exploded view,” Phantogram says. “Like an image of Earth from a distance.” The life calendar is both morbid and nostalgic, a physical representation of our ephemeral time on Earth. 

“Days are only numbers,” Sarah Barthel sings on the chorus of “Come Alive.” That lyric became a north star for the duo as they set forth to make Memory of a Day. At once heavy and ebullient, “Come Alive” distills the lasting impact Phantogram has made on popular culture. Since their 2010 debut, Eyelid Movies, Phantogram has been comparable to no one, futurists who still manage to stay ahead of the curve more than a decade into their career. Their genre-bending approach to pop has led them to work with everyone, from Big Boi, with whom they founded Big Grams, to Subtronics, Future Islands, Deftones, the Flaming Lips, Tom Morello, and Miley Cyrus, to name just a few. A festival staple across the globe, Phantogram has also toured with Queens of the Stone Age, Arcade Fire, the XX, and many more. “We’ve always been proud of that: not being afraid of the experimental.”

Though their music has always been future-facing, to make Memory of a Day, Phantogram looked back. “Recording this album, it felt like how it did when we first started making music together,” Phantogram says. Alongside special collaborators like Mikky Ekko and Dan Wilson, Phantogram was joined in the studio by producer John Hill, who helmed Phantogram’s second album, Voices. The duo experimented in the studio and indulged in the music that brought them together in the beginning, artists such as J Dilla, Prince, Slowdive, and so much more. They reference new wave acts like the Talking Heads, ESG, and Liquid Liquid as influences on the percussive punk track “Feedback Invisible,” which is followed by the wistful burst of color “Attaway.” It’s a shoegaze song so sumptuous “you can almost see the grain in the guitar sounds.” 

Phantogram think in images when they write, drawing on scenes from films that linger with them years on. “Ever since Eyelid Movies, our work has been visually driven,” Phantogram says. In the video for the fuzzed-out waltz “All a Mystery,” snippets of human lives coalesce into a montage of experience. “Erase all the tapes in my mind/ Throw them all away,” Barthel sings, accompanied by a bittersweet swell of synths. “Turn back the tables of time/ Let all those memories die.” A swirl of memories, both triumphant and tragic, surface on Memory of a Day. “Come Alive” was written after Barthel experienced a transformative live show on her own, while the title track recounts the moment Josh Carter had to put his dog down. “It’s what you wanted, but couldn’t say,” he sings. “I’m not afraid of dying or what it feels like”

The album’s penultimate track, “Happy Again,” is a thrumming, bass-heavy rock song with a chorus that sounds like a wave crashing against the sand. “Another empty summer sunset/ Feeling homesick,” Barthel sings ahead of the bridge, her voice catching on the breezy, luminous production. “Can you believe this is your life?” It’s a moment of realization Phantogram compares to the dour scene in Forrest Gump, where Lieutenant Dan, “mega depressed and drunk,” throws a bummer New Year’s Eve party. Still, the song ends with an enlivening mantra. “I can be happy again,” Barthel repeats as guitars careen and crash. If days are only numbers, then how else can a person measure a life? On “Ashes,” the answer seems to be in moments of resilience. Based on the adage “you came into this world alone and you’ll leave it alone,” the throbbing production infused with elements of trip hop, shoegaze and indie accompanies Barthel as she reminds the listener: “Ashes rise, ashes rise.”

When they penned the lyrics, Phantogram thought of the mythical phoenix spreading its wings after catastrophe to take flight. The vulnerable, even despairing moments on Memory of a Day are stark, but they’re buoyed by a relentless optimism that has driven this project from the outset. In the Los Angeles studio where they recorded Memory of a Day, Phantogram often marveled at the distance they’ve come, both physically and spiritually, since they first started making music together in a barn in Upstate New York. “Tomorrow never knows,” Barthel nods to the Beatles on “Come Alive.” The accumulation of days together tell a story bigger than any finite lifetime, and Phantogram’s life calendar is only a fraction full.

balance ∆†∆ is following