ABOUT THIS ALBUM:

"I find myself making arrangements, with all of my quirks and estrangements." 
– angrymusicdad

When you listen to this his album you’ll find it’s a little rough around the edges. Not pristine and shiny like a new pair of boots. It has scuff marks and scrapes. It’s been to some interesting places. Danced drunkenly on the intersection of adventure and misadventure. And stepped into a fair bit of dog shit along the way.

But what a trip it has been: 2 years. 26 demos. 11 finished tracks. 31 minutes. Crafted with a blithe disregard for convention. Spontaneously. Impulsively. With purpose and panache.

– A killer collection of pop imperfection –

Whenever we drew blanks or maneuvered ourselves into a dead end, mentally or instrumentally – we’d carve a fresh loophole into our scholarly suppositions of what the proper way of doing things is – and let the whole damn band march right through.

From 2023 to 2024 eleven wildly different tracks broke on through to the other side of that loophole to form a confounding and charming album.

These songs have a level of maturity and immaturity that we're both really happy with. And it is with great joy that we release them onto an unsuspecting and largely oblivious world :)

"The Ups And Downs of Everything" is a whimsical and world-weary reflection of the relentless tug-of-war between despair and delight that wages on inside ourselves and everyone around us as we move forwards and backwards through our lives. 


ALBUM CREDITS:
angrymusicdad is Matthias Juhnke and Cameron James Laing

Tracks 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 10 all music written by:
Matthias Juhnke and Cameron James Laing
Tracks 5, 7, 9, 11 all music written by Matthias Juhnke
Lyrics on tracks 1-11 written by: Matthias Juhnke

All tracks recorded, engineered, produced, mixed and mastered from 2023 to 2024 by Cameron James Laing @ The Famous Gold Watch Studios in Weißensee Berlin.


All music performed by:
Matthias Juhnke: vocals, synthesizer, keyboards, drum programming
Cameron James Laing: backing vocals, piano, mellotron, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, bass guitar, xylophone, orchestral arrangements, orange phone, percussion, drums, renegade triangle, coarse language.

Additional performances by:

Phil Walker: electric guitar on “Angry Music Dad” and “Credits”
Kelly O’Donohue: Trumpet, flugelhorn, trombone on “Arrangements” “Second Half Blues” and “Credits”
Gidon Carmel: Drums on “Arrangements” “Shady Character” and “Second Half Blues”
Pier Ciaccio: Drums on “Faint Pulse” “Angry Music Dad” and “Credits”
© All rights reserved

Cover Image:
A "Penrose stairs" optical illusion by Sakurambo used under public domain licence.
© All rights reserved

I Awake

Bevvies

'Hexagonal' was written for saxophone quartet (soprano, alto, tenor, and baritone). The piece takes a playful approach to working with various patterns of six, inspired by some of the most common and beautiful patterns found in nature. The beehive, and the snowflake, for example, and of course many flowers and leaves are all based on the hexagon shape. Transposing some of these visual ideas into musical phrases, and exploring some of the colour and textural variations in musical language, this piece is very much about enjoying the simplest pleasures that the natural world has to offer.

'Hexagonal' received its premiere with the Cobalt Saxophone Quartet, at the DiMenna Center for Classical Music, New York, NY, USA, on November 16th, 2024.

Sheet music for this piece is available through the Canadian Music Centre:

https://cmccanada.org/shop/80689/

Knudson - Hexagonal

Guitars recorded with Neural Dsp Gojira X
Drums: Get Good Drums

Anemoia

Gulag, Winter 1936. 
A group of male prisoners lament and pace.

День за днём прибывает всё больше людей, план необходимо выполнять. 
(Day after day more people arrive, the quota must be maintained.)
 
Каждый день сотни людей приходят, а сотни просто исчезают. 
(Every day hundreds of people come, and hundreds simply disappear.)
 
Откуда они?
(Where are they they from?)

Они жили в городе? 
(Did they live in a city?)
 
Они жили в деревне?
(Did they live in a village?)

Почему они здесь? 
(Why are they here?)
 
День за днём прибывает всё больше людей, план необходимо выполнять. 
 
Каждый день, каждый день, план необходимо выполнять.

Men's Chorus exits. A group of 10 male prisoners* enter. Willie is there. They halt and wait.
 
Enter a group of 10 female prisoners. Katya is there. She is broken in body and spirit, dressed in rags. They halt and wait. The guards chat off to one side.

W recognizes K. She sees him and responds with a nod. W points down stage. K nods again. Both leave to meet.

W 
Katya, oh Katya, I can't believe you're here. How did you come to this horrible place?

K Why am I here? I do not know.

K Aria
This life has no logic,
No logic.
Were there diamonds or gold,
Hidden in my home?
If so, I'm guilty.
Were there books,
Any books, 
Foreign or banned?
Did I speak or write,
Unacceptable words?
If so, I'm guilty.
What is the reason?
This life has no logic, no logic, no logic.

W You are my angel!

K Soon, very soon, I will be an angel.
My health and smile are gone.
So I pray with hope, every hour I hope, but God decides.
Ah, how this happened, I do not know.
Why am I here, for how many weeks, months or years?
I do not care.
This life has no logic.
This life has no logic, no logic, no logic.

Each day I pray, I pray with hope;
Sometimes I cry.
This life has no logic.

W to K
Don't look back, don't look ahead, now is where we are.
Days that pass, are weeks we gain.
Each day, parts from the next, like pages in a book.
We'll meet during a break, no matter where, no matter how long,
If only with a nod, and smile from afar.

When I was young, my family vacationed, on the shore,
Of Great Lake Michigan.
Where wave after wave, at first out of sight, 
But with a steady pace, arrived at our feet.

Summer passed, the air turned crisp, 
Like rainbow leaves on an sunny day.
With a mild gust, they fluttered and stretched,
Then sprang in the air, to float away.

The first week of March, Robins appeared.
Warmth from the sun, roused new buds to sprout,
And leaves to unfold, at a steady pace.

Birds hover above, where people at sea, adrift on a raft,
Know each day, parts from the next, like pages in a book.

Our time will arrive, the gate will unlock,
And out we'll be, to never return.

W & K
Don't look back, don't look ahead, now is where we are.
Days that pass, are weeks we gain.

We'll meet during a break, no matter where, no matter how long,
If only with a nod, and smile from afar.

With sun or clouds, birds hover above,
where people at sea, adrift on a raft,
Know each day, parts from the next, like pages in a book:

(3x) Each day, each day.

(A guard notices K. She walks over, then ushers K to rejoin the group of female prisoners as they exit).

(W stares into the Concert Hall. He sees a vast forest of pines.)

W
What is here?
All I see are endless pines.
A forest like an ocean, of green and gray.
When I was young, at the home where we lived, was a fabulous oak.
Many times, as a kid in Detroit, I hid by the trunk,
For "hide and seek".

I'd wait, smile, raise my head, and search for the top.
It was a fabulous tree.

I have to grow the oak in my soul, the oak in my soul.
Day after day, month and year, I have to grow, the oak in my soul,
To honor that tree back home.

Back home, back home they're waiting, everyone's saying,
"Where's Willie?"
"Hey, Willie."

(W sinks to his knees. A guard notices W and walks over. He offers an arm to help W stand up and simply escorts him to the group. All exit).

Willie Doonan - Finale to Act 3

A "big band"  orchestral, waltz version of "The Boy With The Frozen Heart" . Lyrics and composition by myself, vocals dubbed from  "The Boy With The Frozen Heart" , Instruments produced with Suno AI and Soundtrap 

The Boy with the Frozen Heart  (Orchestral)

"Two Songs with Words" [November 2024 | New Haven, CT, US] is a set of art songs, originally composed for Olivier Zerouali (baritone) and Laura Miah (soprano) through Yale Song Lab collaboration between composers and opera singers at the Yale School of Music. It consists of two songs, which can be performed independently but, when staged together, should be presented in order and quasi attacca.

Texts:

I. for Olivier

Morning light creeps into those eyes, I know not whom they belong
A body floats on a cloud of plush, weightless, unknown.
Only yesterday I knew who it belonged, 
what the proclivities and strivings contained, 
What these hands have felt.
Today I know not if I was a man who stood on two feet 
This plaintive white ceiling,
Mind attempting to remove borders
To make the world blank.
Something beyond sleep Formless
Not to die
Not to live
Just to be Free of all.

lyrics by Olivier Zerouali (2024)

II. for Laura

Now the people whisper that I am your enemy
for they say that in the verse I give the world myself.
She who rises in my verses is not your voice: it is my voice 
because you are clothing, and the essence is me;
and the deepest abyss lies between the two.
You are cold doll of social lie,
and I, a virile flash of human truth.
I am the life, the force, the woman.
You curl your hair and paint yourself, I do not;
The wind curls me, the sun paints me.
You are a domestic lady, resigned, submissive;
Tied to the prejudices of men, I am not.
only my heart commands me,
But I am fire, the warming sun
Painted, with my curled hair
The woman, the force, the life.

based on "A Julia de Burgos" by Julia de Burgos (1943), 
translation and lyrics by Laura Miah (2024)

II. for Laura

I. for Olivier

RAJEESH WILL TICKLE YOUR BALLS [FREE TICKLES] [dm for beat] FEAT Emiway Bantai

A a short - slow - flamenco flavoured Ad lib - tuned down as a baritone - down to B.

Adamas Flamenco

Poetry and Music are two of my biggest passion, they are vehicles that drives my imagination, and medicine for my heart. And I have loved putting my poetry to songs. 
I love my traditional Vietnamese stringed instruments, and I love my Heavy Metal,  but I'm PolyJamorous XD

Debut album out December 6th, 2024 (woohoo)

Thanks for listening/sharing/caring. (yeeeha)

Merry X-Mas! (hohoho)

Hey, my name's Rajeesh! though in the world of beats, I go by Rajambwe. Since 2010, I’ve journeyed through the thunderous storms and calm seas of beat-making, flourishing like a phoenix reborn with every track. My sound has shattered barriers, transcended genres, and forged an unbreakable rhythm that pulses through the universe. Every beat is a heartbeat, every track a revolution. Witness my odyssey, for I am not just a beat maker,I am the relentless force that reshapes the entire music industry.

Frinla, a sound artist based in Singapore.

His artistic practice exudes a sense of depth, incorporating a plethora of dark industrial tones, rhythms and foley recordings. The soundscape of his  project is constructed using a blend of intricately sculptured harmonics produced by string instruments, low frequency rumbles, and machine noises.

Frinla's musical background was shaped through his previous bedroom project Navire Creux. This cathartic endeavour evolved his sound with deeper clarity, greater euphoria and higher states of consciousness for a transcendent audio experience.

Elizabeth Knudson is a nationally award-winning composer of orchestral, chamber, vocal & electroacoustic music, and an Associate Composer of the Canadian Music Centre.  

For a more detailed bio: http://www.elizabethknudson.ca/bio/
To request purchase/rental/loan of sheet music, please visit the Canadian Music Centre website: https://cmccanada.org/composer/elizabeth-knudson/

Composer and scholar of new acoustic and electronic music at the Yale School of Music

Thank you for visiting and listening. I appreciate your comments and messages. Please feel free to say hello! - Steve
General life - info / bio - - -
I began my musical education with listening as an infant and at the age of 7, in 1958, composed my first piece of music which was a brass quartet.

Early influences were guided by the musical taste of my Mother which was often Tchaikovsky and other romantic composers, with an occasional diversion to Big Band and pop music of the late 40's and early 50's.

The Boys Club Band, Grade School Choir and High School Band were a great education in basic orchestration and harmony and in the mid 60's, and self taught as a guitarist, I began live performance, which lasted until 1999.

Music and technology have always been my main interests and as those two elements continued to merge through the late 90's to the present, they have led me to the point where I now can successfully realize my earliest childhood dreams of musical expression in composing for full orchestra.

Special thanks to Mom for the great listening experience, brother Greg for the continued guidance in music from a formal perspective, and brother Lew for the technological expertise.

Nicholas Skedgell - b. 1952
is a concert music composer whose work has been performed by leading musicians, including members of the New York Philharmonic, Metropolitan Opera, Elmar Oliveira, Dale Clevenger, Leonard Raver, Orchestra New England and presented at Carnegie Hall, Yale University, Brooklyn College and St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York. He is a graduate of Manhattan School of Music, a student of Nicolas Flagello, violin with Louis Carlini and a member of ASCAP since 1974.

New tracks tagged #baritone