RPM
Challenge.

Music written & performed by Maestro Bizarro. Music mastered and engineered by Johnny Kesh. Sabrina Meridian appears courtesy of KittyMeow records.

Original fiddle tunes

This is a track what went a little longer than anticipated. It was made in two home studios, collaborating almost entirely remotely with Ableton.

Improved music with the family. Set the mic, program the drum machine and hit record.

loops on a borrowed harp and found poetry

Got the old band back together to have some virtual fun

5 songs of nylon-string guitar and vocals, interspersed with field recordings. I made this record to get back to where I started songwriting and recording. It was started with my dad in mind, but came to be a more general record for my friends and family. ❤️

When I was a student, J.H. Prynne was a lecturer approaching retirement age. He fascinated me: eloquent, esoteric, always unconventional. His lectures were curious digressive affairs and he had a powerful aversion to utilitarian teaching rooms and chairs that stacked. His poems are famous for their density and obliquity. To my knowledge I have never understood one. But I’ve always wanted to and the collected ‘Prynne’ sits on my bookshelf teasing me with its strange possibilities. For this year's RPM, I culled words and phrases from Prynne poems to use as songwriting prompts. I'm not sure this has at all helped me to understand Prynne's work, but these ten tracks are the upshot even so.

I made a soundtrack to slo-mo footage of the Apollo 11 launch.

This is RPM album number 12 for nOT Mad. This is the first one done since relocating from NH to VA. I used the month to better know my new friends and neighbors that I enlisted to help record. Very satisfying.

I wrote a song in memory of a friend who passed away in 2021. I Made it in my home studio in Logic.

I made a 10 song "dawless" instrumental album, using guitar, a Deluge synthesizer/looper and a couple effects. Everything was recorded to the Deluge SD card. I made this mostly just to prove to myself that I could do it. It was pretty much done by the 2nd week of February. At that point I felt like I had run out of steam so I stepped back and never returned.

An excursion inspired by the crossroads of late 60s British psychedelic music and Americana instrumentation. Written, recorded and mixed in February 2022 using GarageBand for IOS.

guitar.. something? a bit ambient, a bit minimal. Some mathy time signatures, nowhere near math rock.

the call of the void

I was streaming on twitch making some noise, when a friend on chat told me about the RPM challenge.. And I thought Yes why not.. So started a new track.. Started with some synth vst (arturia analog lab fairlight cmi),.. then put in somome electric sitar fed through vst amps/pedals on Amplitube (fender champ/x drive/phasers/delays/reverbs/etc).. Then to round it all off played the vst of Upright Bass on Kontakt.. And that was it i think.. Done in about 1.5 hours (including this typing).. Cheers & #stayuntuned..

I hit record and let myself get taken over by the flowey waves. This album is fully improvised.

It's all coolHere is the albumBurn the album

It's collaborations from as many RPM participants from past years as we could get from our group of friends.

It is done and that is what matters

wanted to take things seriously this year, wound up using stuff i recorded on my phone that i thought wouldnt see the light of day. weeeeeee

I wrote and recorded a double album (18 songs). I only had time to mix and master 9 but I'll release the second half later. I'm glad the 9 worked out to 36 minutes. This is a very personal album about aliens, adhd, and my childhood... please listen!

This record was made using FL Studio 20. I also play sax on a track. I made it for You!

A nine-song singer/songwriter rock album reflecting upon a year in the life. With brilliant contributions from drummer Liam Byrne and an amazing lead guitar track from Andy Samford, this album is as truthful, joyful, painful, hopeful, and doubtful as the past year has been for me. It is intended to be listened to straight through (like the albums of my youth).

This was a back-to-basics Twin Goat record. We recorded basic tracks on an old Fostex D-90, and used a limited number of instruments. Most songs started with a double drum maching loop synced to a Pigtronix looper. No guest musicians this year, just the two of us. We tried and we made it.

I ultimately decided to make 5 songs in the genre of Synthwave. I am a child of the 80's and it just seemed natural. I used Reaper as my DAW and used all free synth plug-ins to make it. I made it for me.

I only managed to make one track but thats one more than Ive ever done for this challenge. I leaned into all my most nu-metal teenage years for this one.

Plan was a full album, but ended up with an ep. Trombone player is in FL, one bass player recorded here on 2/15, drummer recorded 2/18, second bassist recorded and e-mailed 2/25. Recorded for us, but may turn this into an actual band project (recording and perfoming). More songs would have been included, but the universe did not cooperate.

Getting back to the riff for this one. The lyrics are adapted from a poem written by Chidiock Tichborne on the eve of his execution, condemned to be eviscerated, hanged, drawn and quartered for his role in the Babington Plot in 1586, to kill Queen Elizabeth. Less about history, and more exploring feelings of isolation, and being trapped in a role you cannot escape.

As a second generation junkman and working musician for the last "fifty-some years," Ott Tarner has experienced his fair share of ups and downs. The songs he performs are directly inspired by what he has seen and lived "from both sides of paying the bills," as he puts it. Captured outside, under the front awning of his workshop in New Hoyle, Oklahoma, the listener is given the experience of being right there in the moment. Traffic noise, bird calls, the jingle of his dog's collar, and the sounds of Ott's Pabst Blue Ribbon beer cans being opened, drank, and tossed into the collection bin were all left intact. Though he played the country blues, rags, and hokum tunes he's entertained house parties and juke joints with for more than half a century, Mr. Tarner informed the Shive Records field team he wanted his songs to appeal to a younger audience. To honor this request, the raw field recordings were taken to LoFi Shit studio where digital beats and rhythm sections were overdubbed. The resulting product is an album of rough, raw, and raunchy acoustic recordings mixed with Hip-Hop and Mississippi Hill Country style studio production. Rather than have these recordings released under his legal name, he wanted to use Ott's Trashpile because "that's what people call this place—probably have for 80 years." (referring to the workshop he inherited from his father) Ott gave his full approval upon hearing the final mixes and has high hopes to "gain some fame on the computer."

Ascensio is a dark ambient record about making change in life. Going through all of the steps of realizing something needs to be different, breaking things apart, building something new, and moving forward and evolving. I recorded the record on a modular synth I built and. a Behringer Model D (MiniMoog clone). Best listened to with the lights down low

We made a 5 track rock ep that spans from really heavy to really melodic. Jimmy Corbett has been someone Felipe Collazo (me) has been around in the local music scene for quite a while. We first got to know each other when are bands Maybrick and Monkey Knife Fight would share gigs. Since then Jimmy has also recorded some Monket Knife Fight records because he is an incredible sound engineer. So with his guitar skills, progamming and sequencing skills and sound engineering skills i knew it was a no brainer to reach out to him for this years challenge. Within 3 days he sent me 3 fully fleshed out tracks for me to write lyrics and melodies too. The last two Sundays were spent recording vocals and mixing and that was that. We made this project for the good of mankind.

I was inspired by ancient robots. The Buddhist scholar Daoxuan (596-667 CE) wrote about "precious metal-people," humanoid automata that recited sacred texts and cried when the Buddha died. René Descartes believed that animals and humans were just biological machines, and had a mechanical doll version of his dead daughter, Francine. Leonardo Da Vinci designed, and may have built, an automaton of a knight in armor.

Slightly mellower and more disjointed than previous years, likely a reflection of the state of our lives and our focus.

It was completely phoned in. But it's done.

A song, or songs. Hard to say for sure.

We are veterans of RPM, Joe since 2007, Ed since 2008. We aimed for a stripped down collaboration and to come up with different material.

my 13th year doing RPM, my first Vata Rocket record.

Songs in minor keys, to learn more about keys.

It's a song of worms and birds.

We wrote and recorded these songs using ABLETON .The songs were recorded for those who come to mind and for those who don't !!!!!!!

I made it for myself.

A fuzzy buzzy country Sabbath thing?