November 2016 – Small Glowing Pig

Music Not-Monthly: Summer 2016

*UPDATE on 5/29/2017: Added Jefim’s notes

A quote from the first round of “Music Monthly” posted one year ago, after which no subsequent rounds have been completed: “The plan is that one person will send a recommendation near the beginning of a month, and then all three of us will listen to it and send along our thoughts. We’ll see where this ends up, but it certainly was fun thinking critically about music and talking about it again!”

Well, life happens, I suppose. To Steve’s credit, he offered up the album up for discussion this time promptly after we posted the one for Hop Along. Then Jefim moved to Europe and we made a Duck House. Less time to talk music, I suppose. Still, we’d like to get back at it!

The album up for discussion is Picture You Staring by TOPS (listen here or purchase here). Emails are below:

Continue reading Music Not-Monthly: Summer 2016

Something Foul is Afoot

A few days ago we released Duck House Season 3, oddly enough before we released Seasons 1 and 2. Well, today we make right what was once wrong. Behold, Seasons 1 and 2!

Each album includes a handful of One, Two, Three and Unspecified Hour Challenges. There were some clear breaks in writing philosophy and time that aided in making the cutoffs for each Season. Nothing on here is new, except for the mix of Resistance, which reduces the reverb and brings the vocals out a bit to hopefully allow Steve’s melodies to shine a little more. Enjoy!

01 – Free Max-B [download]

02 – Bones are Radioactive [download]

03 – (Fun is) What We’re Made of [download]

04 – Tibet [download]

05 – Parcel Octopus [download]

01 – Blizzard [download]

02 – Universe 25 [download]

03 – Resistance [download]

04 – Silke Kruger [download]

Until next time…
-Mike

A House Filled with Ducks

In a move that would appeal to maniacs like George Lucas, Duck House makes their label debut by release their first album which is their third album. Also, they call them seasons.

A couple years (2012, holy cow!) ago Steve and I embarked on a journey of challenge songwriting. Each song would be written and recorded in one hour, we proclaimed. We failed on our very first attempt. Not ones to shy away from a challenge, but also not ones to succeed at them, we decided to move the goalposts. We released a few two hour challenge songs, most of which we also failed at. To three hours we went, failing all the while. At some point, we realized we shouldn’t call them challenges any more, and that a new name was in order. This would be our Desert Sessions. This would be our Duck House.

That leads us to today. For the past eight months or so we’ve been recording what would become the third “season” of Duck House. We’ve even documented some of the process. Now you can listen to the final tracks all at once on this very blog update! Enjoy!