*This song was recorded using binaural microphones. For the full effect please listen with headphones.* 

Song and concept by Bluebloods
Piano performed by Will Bonness 
Noise-makers: Bluebloods, Kristaps Balodis, and Meagen Smith 
Recorded by J.P. Peters at Private Ear Studios in 2017 
Mastered by Riley Hill

Program note: 

I haven't read Tom Wolfe's The Painted Word (1975), but I'm told in it the author complained that by the 1970s contemporary painting was so mired in conceptualism that it served only as an appendage or afterthought to the turgid “artist statement”. Like a joke confusing enough it requires an explanation from its teller but in the process of being dissected is bled of all life, modern art's billowing of dense clouds of theory illuminates nothing so much as its failure as art.  
 
In contrast to the image, probably popularized in part by Wolfe’s satirical book, of the modern artist as a trafficker in the ugly and profane, I believe in Beauty and tradition. And it was this faith – or pretension – that called me to study the catechism of classical composition, species counterpoint; studies that I began in 2016 under composer Dr. Glenn Buhr. As a final assignment, Dr. Buhr prescribed that I compose a fugue in baroque style. The piece I submitted, while obeying the rules of that form and style, is also a musical joke. I’ve entitled it “A Night at the Concert Hall (Fugue for Piano and Noisy Audience)”, and it is not beautiful.

I hope that the butt of my joke is obvious enough to the listener not to require explanation. I offer up this artist statement rather as an apology to Dr. Buhr if it seems like I’ve farted on the fancy fugal form that he’s spent so much time teaching and mastering (those are real fart sounds at 1:46) – and also as a little apologia on behalf of traditional music education. While baroque fugues and romantic symphonies may put most people to sleep, they are animated by a tradition of ‘tonal’ musical ideas whose universality was once taken for granted. The arrival of modernist music, which has so often defined itself in sharp distinction from this tradition, seemed however to cast it as just one more cultural-historical ‘paradigm’ whose time had come and finally gone. 

The explosive and more or less simultaneous arrival of pop music – with its roots in African American spirituals – is seen as further demonstrating this revolutionary turn away from the universalist tradition of European art music. And yet this interpretation can obscure what pop and common practice classical music crucially share: a stubborn, if complicated, allegiance to tonality. For the advocates of cultural relativism it should be embarrassing not reaffirming to learn that Black singers of American plantations, just like blues and rock ‘n’ roll musicians later, gravitated decidedly towards the I-IV-V and pentatonic forms of religious hymns; forms whose identity I believe transcend any one culture insofar as they express near universal musical intuitions. Scattered throughout the history of pop music are great artists, like The Beatles and Nina Simone, who have deliberately channelled the universalist tradition; nicking from Beethoven and Bach, when it suited them, in the most singular ways (while also being more explicitly indebted to African American R&B music). This first sort of cultural appropriation – this ransacking of Western classical music whose exodus to the public domain makes it one of the great resources of the commons – is actually worth encouraging. 

With that said, artistically speaking, I think it’s probably better to produce second-rate P.D.Q. Bach (another satirist) than third-rate J.S. Bach, so I’ve set out to do the former with this piece. A close listener to my other pieces – are there any such listeners yet? – may discover that, below their synthetic pop surfaces, there are chord progressions lifted from Wagner and Django Reinhardt. Ceci n'est pas une blague!

A Night at the Concert Hall (Fugue for Piano and Noisy Audience)

Featuring Roman Clarke (drums), Matthew Lindholm (vocals), Michael Perry (vocals), Heather Thomas (vocals ,

Ressentiment (excerpt)

Written and produced by Conrad Sweatman
Guitar by Conrad Sweatman
Vocals by  
Mixed by Conrad Sweatman and Riley Hill

Looking For God On Dancefloor In Steinbach

"Rep. Christian Cop
does whistle-stop
Does baby-kiss and talk
S'all jabberwock
This “family man” hawks crocks
Slinks down slum blocks
Raps May’s back door: knock, knock 
Begs for peg-cock!

One day, some way
Ms Lady May, make Christian pay

Masoch and de Sade
Bore a son
A bully who
craved a mom

Rep. Christian Cop
Chops union shops
Blocks gay pride walks, and yet
Begs for May’s crop!
In “Tie and Tease” May calls:
“Your submission
means free tuition for all
Or mommy won’t bust your balls!”

That day, that way
Ms Lady May made Christian pay"

Written and produced by Conrad Sweatman
Guitar and bass by Conrad Sweatman
Vocals by Courtney Devon 
Mixed by Conrad Sweatman and Riley Hill
Contains a sample of Candyman by Cornershop

Jabberwocky (feat. Courtney Devon)

A corny love song about the almighty $.

"Jade, lush lime
Pear trees
Nourish me
Health is green
And what gleams more green
Than
money?

Abe, Liz, Jack
seduce
Reds and blues,
Commies too.
For dead presidents
We all croon.

Drought,
Dust bowl,
Depression-hit
Strapped farmers sit and pray for it to please
Rain, make it rain please,
we’re on our knees,
and begging Frank D.,
to make it ——

My green love
skims free
Seoul to Greece
Past our sovereignty
Could someone so A-1 
lavish me? 

Past flames
peddled small games
as high romance, as old art.
So I smothered them.
I crave Great Games,
wild, high stake games,
Thrills by Darwin’s brute laws:
Struggle, power, and chance.
As found in finance; the romance and death-dance of titans.

"Rain God,
Deliver us."
Long before Reason
we’ve prayed for the seasons
to please
Rain, make it rain please,
we’re on our knees,
begging Frank D.
to make it rain.

God's autonomy
Is revealed
In economy
As Luther tells me:
'make money.' "

Make It Rain (feat. Courtney Devon)

"★★★★"—Winnipeg Free Press 

“...tilts towards a new territory of sound-making” —Give It A Spin  

“...beautiful and impeccably crafted...damn near witchcraft!”—Cups N Cakes Network 

“...we haven’t been able to stop listening...we would love to hear more from Bluebloods”—York Calling

"...one of the most, if not the most, ambitiously creative pieces of art to ambush the ears of our city" —Stylus Magazine

Bluebloods

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