Wintermute   -  Blog

Electronicus Arcana Majoris

Is what "Digital Kingdoms" was/is I have always been fascinated by the Tarot and the story of the cards is what a lot of what DK was supposed to be about, worlds within worlds and imagination. The album will consist of 22 (yes 22 average song time will be under 4 mins ) songs one for each of the 22 Major Arcana cards from the Tarot. "one eyed jacks", suicidal kings", the ace of spades, all of the cards we know from poker, etc all have roots and origins in the Tarot cards. Each card also has common depictions and renderings no matter who printed them--in short, there is a story in every card. Of all the cards, the ones with the most "character" to them are the 22 major arcana, they represent the most powerful of all the Tarot, from the uber powerful "The Tower" to the well known "Death" all of these cards have multiple meanings depending on their placement on the table. Likewise all the songs have multiple meanings and can be thought of as collages of sound and musik. The cover art, depicted above has this same spirit and features a collage of images all created by me, save the faded rider Tarot cards (these may be replaced by images (cards) of my own making, it depends.

Hopefully this will be the 3rd Wintermute album released by Blue Water Records.

WM

Well tagworld.com started out as what might be called a "marketing experiment" that has resulted in very interesting results. Tagworld is a rival site to myspace and when I started out there nearly two years ago there were barely 300 artist sites there. It seemed like a good place to try and gain some more exposure. The most interesting thing about Tagworld was there was little to no limitation on how many songs an artist could have there. Myspace by contrast has alway had a 4 song cap on their site, a limit I could never hope to compete with. I could not hope to "out market" a "major" if we both had 4 songs. Without that limitation, I could "out run" them in production. I could post 100 songs and more or less be a level playing field. This is the "word of mouth" effect that grass roots--like me--rely on. So TagWorld made for an interesting place, I could, and did, equal or beat most of the majors there because it was Tagworlds market was "in a bubble". So now two years later I have used my catalog as leverage to keep my position and find a wider audience. I am happy and surprised to see that I can maintain a 0-100 position there against all the other artists, 13,000+ at last count--I am happy to say Wintermute has never dropped out of the top 100 artists in the last two years. What I am posting about is not Tagworld, but the fact that one song in particular has now hit 60,000 plays with little to no promotion, just word of mouth--My hopefully soon to be released on "Club Futuris": "Throughout Time".

Well now if I could just get a "handle" on myspace.com :)

WM

For those of you who are interested on how "32" came to be and what was intended...

* This piece is to commemorate the victims of the Virgina Tech massarce, April 16 2007

* The piano melody is purposefully broken and disjointed to reflect the situation, survivors, families, etc

* The fade(with the piano) at the end "foreshadows" the never ending nature of how things like VT, Columbine, etc happen

* the snare represents Cho

* the over all "struggle" of the piece is a lot to do with my own understanding of how VT can happen especially in the "wake" of Iraq, Darfur, etc

* at one point the strings and the piano "dual" this is to reflect the student and teacher before and after and the relationship of the student and mentor (one of the "sacred trusts" of life, IMHO).

* most of the melodys, lines, etc were written within a few days of April 16

* It is hard for me to listen to the resolve at 4:00ish with getting misty--that passage/phase was inspired by the pictures in Time magazine

* During this passage the strings/piano purposefully "overrun" the snare(Cho) as to say, April 16 2007 will be remembered because of you, but not for you...

* This will be the final song on the upcoming "Digital Kingdoms" album

* I hope this song makes you feel--and maybe even cry...