Whalellabies by Troll Tunes

Whalellabies - i.e., Lullabies for or by whales. Floating and dreaming. Another batch of mostly daily songs. After about 8 I realized they are almost all about death or loss. And they're awesome! Thanks for your patience y'all.

All proceeds will go to benefit trans youth and women in Florida.

1. Two Spaceships

Ok this is basically a cover song of Kate Bush's Under the Ivy with worse singing, worse melody, worse words, and well, it's kind of the same chords anyway, I think.

This one came out when I saw the google transcription of my lyrics with the timestamps and I realized that was the right way to give this the urgency a spaceship needed.

I recorded the vocals 5 or 6 times on this, always with slightly different lyrics.

I love these computers. I love Big Brother.

2. Song for Maria

This one started with me trying to figure out REM's Nightswimming, and turned into the malevolent thing you hear here. Go figure.

The Maria here is NOT Maria McKee, whose photo graces my piano. In fact, I moved her photo after recording this track, that's no way to treat a genius like that.

3. Walking and Soaring

This was the first song to emerge from this second batch of daily songs. This one just wanted to emerge. I forget where the chords came from, but the words came from my Going in for the Snakes course, a section about history, a story about a Soviet cosmonaut who burned up into piece of charcoal upon reentry. I keep making duets with these computers, we share some confusion about big events and emotion, I think.

4. Lightning

Another daily track. Started with a waltz-time beat in the car. Anytime I start with a beat alone it's a bit of a mess. On this day too, there was the sound of this tree mutilation by chainsaw in my neighborhood. Instead of fighting it and trying to record in the quiet spaces I could find, I recorded the chainsaw from my window and relaxed and here we go.

5. Need More Love

This is maybe my favorite track. It takes so much noodling for me to get to 3 or 4 notes the work together :(

But the lyrics/voices really carry it here. The lyrics came from old dreams, but the gravity and humor in the computer voices could not have been predicted. Love it. We all need more love. The Mark Hollis section was a real dream.

The percussion is my daughter playing Minecraft. I asked if she'd keep destroying bricks or whatever while I recorded it. I didn't realize there would be sheep sounds and gentle music too. Totally great addition!

6 What Whales Dream of When They Sleep Upside Down

I called this a draft until I stopped calling it a draft. My favorite thing on this track is the percussive sound of the electric guitar. If I had more talent, I'd build this to 3 minutes, but this little thing is all you get. Thanks!

7. That's Driving

My first notes on this read as such:

Thank you friends!

This experiment started with asking two friends for a 3 minutes track played to a single 3 minute video I spliced together from the movie My Octopus Teacher. Can you guess which tracks? Yes! The well-played ones of course.

My friend Timothy Weber on ukulele bass and David Hirmes on doom guitar. My thanks to them as I mangled their contributions into the oddity you hear here.

This took seven days and went through 13 enormous permutations. I'm going back to being a solo artist now.

That's what I wrote.

AND THEN, an hour later I looked at a photo of my friend Katharine Daly, who is no longer with us, and I realized that I wanted to cover her song "That's Driving", and then I realized that that needed to be THIS TRACK. So after another half a week of trying and indecision, I came to this.

Katharine was a mad genius, brilliant and funny and I barely knew her. A hundred people came to her wake on Zoom. She recorded this song several times. I hope they all endure.

8. The Sad Parade

This one was inspired by Eli Nixon ( https://www.elinixon.com ) and their amazing show/work about horseshoe crabs, the earth, humanity, and a 450 million-year parade.

Also inspired by Beruit's Gulag Orchestra but who can tell.

Oh yeah, also done in a day. The percussion is A) windshield wipers and B) shaking mulch on the ground in front of a phone.

9. Ice Mountain

Ok this one started with the bagpipes, I recorded playing at a funeral down the street. Finished it in a day. Despite sprawling all over the place. This at one point had multiple backing vocal tracks and it just a real bear.

The fact that the piano sounds like chimes or church bells is a bit of an accident. I thought I was inventing a cool melody, ha!

I feel like this one didn't push enough of what I've done. "Do something new" was always the goal, but I don't know what I did new this time around. I should have re-recorded some of the rambly attempts at piano improvisation, and that's probably what I'll do. So at some point in a later iteration of this song, "revision" might be the new thing I try, but not yet!

Another song about death. Wrote the lyrics while walking to deliver AK Summers some food. Hi AK!

10. Surround Sound

Ok I did not expect this to be THAT depressing.

Especially since I just wanted to use the chords from CLOUDBUSTING and sorta did, and added a fun little synthesizer part or three, too.

But I follow the lead of the work.

This is one of the first times, or maybe first time I created the music utterly completely (aside from some jingles and bumps) before even thinking of the words. The synth bits are really lovely.

Then the lyrics came, as they often do, from poking through a notebook and/or drawing a few image cards.

The image cards all suggested being surrounded or enveloped, and from there, in a notebook, I saw remembrance of Noel Franklin, yet another troubled spirit who couldn't find peace in this world, and her boyfriend Mark Campos who also could not. Peaceful souls. And so many others I've known, who just exist submerged and unavailable.

To these friends and lovers, I offer this dreadfully depressing lullaby.

The jangly percussion here is a zipper rattled against a chair.

11. Gallery Show

This track took a couple days but I barely remember making it. Crammed some unrelated piano bits together (I almost shoe-horned Sia's Chandelier in there but it just wouldn't fit.)

Just gently playing, letting music and lyrics about death emerge, and generally having fun. I forget what the sort of door-closing percussion is, an actual drum I think.

I like this one.

Tracklist

1.	Two Spaceships	1:41

2.	Song For Maria	1:35

3.	Walking and Soaring	1:53

4.	Lightning	1:29

5.	Need More Love	1:31

6.	What Whales Dream About When They Sleep Upside Down	0:55

7.	That's Driving	2:54

8.	The Sad Parade	1:50

9.	Ice Mountain	2:17

10.	Surround Sound	2:43

11.	Gallery Show	3:48

Credits

released May 26, 2023

License

CC BY-NC 3.0. See the Creative Commons website for details.