Just For Fun #2

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

From all of us at Metal XOR Studio

Project Spotlight #10: What is Muffin Loaf?

What is Muffin Loaf? It was a snack in the vending machine where Jason works.

It is also the name of the band that played one show where Jason works.

The year was 2003. As a training exercise Jason's department was to design and set up a small performance area that included a sound system, video cameras, and a lighting rig to simulate a show site. They decided that if they were going through all the trouble of setting such an elaborate show they may as well make use of it. So a few of them got together and created a band.

The players were (from left to right in the picture above) Ken on guitar, Harry on drums, Brad on vocals, and Jason on bass guitar. They were looking for a name for themselves and someone noticed a "muffin loaf" in the vending machine. The name had been found!

They had one rehearsal in Harry's basement on Saturday, March 15, 2003. It was video taped and recorded on cassette and digital recorder. From the digital recording Harry made a bootleg practice CD called Tasty Jam in the Cellar. Jason pulled some of the songs from the camcorder and created another bootleg CD called Sounds from Underground. The play lists on both CD's were slightly different.

The night of the show was Tuesday, March 18, 2003. They had co-workers stick around after work to listen. It was recorded to 3/4" video tape and SVHS. The tapes had a bad audio mix, so the planned "live album" was never made from those tapes. Almost all of the songs they played were covers, but they did have a couple of originals thrown in.

In 2004 Jason produced a Muffin Loaf video using pictures from the rehearsal and show and set it to the band's rehearsal version of "Crazy Train."

Update - In 2009, Jason produced the second Muffin Loaf video using the band's rehearsal version of "Rock and Roll" set to a time-lapse recording of them building the set. Click here to watch the video at YouTube.

Muffin Loaf has not played together since. There are plans to have a reunion jam some day. Maybe another bootleg will come out of it...

Next week: Who are the Traveling Deengelburys?

Article: Services Used

What makes it possible to share Metal XOR Studio content with the rest of the world? What services are used to turn the blog from an idea into reality? Let us take a look at the services used.

Blogger
This is the website you are on now. It allows a user to create a blog, post new entries, archive old posts, etc. There are many blog sites available. The reason Blogger was chosen was because it is owned by Google and the Studio already had a Google account using various other services.

Verizon Online
Verizon is the Internet provider the Studio uses , so through them there was already web space available for a Metal XOR website. The Metal XOR Studio Information Source was created to be a place for the Musik Catalog, songs to listen to, documents to read, etc. Since the blog site offers no storage for files, the content needed to be stored somewhere else. So the Information Source site seemed to be the appropriate place.

Mediamax
The storage at the Metal XOR website was very small. In fact, last night the Studio hit 87% of its storage capacity. And there aren't that many songs and publications posted yet. There is a LOT more content planned to become available. So this morning an account was created with Mediamax to store all the music and publication files the Studio wants to provide to the public. The Information Source will still be the website the public will use to access the files, but the files themselves will now be stored away from Verizon.


And those are the three sites used in this blog. Plans for upcoming downloadable content include electronic versions of all Metal XOR Studio books and booklets that have been published, new e-books, entire album downloads, video, and more.

So keep checking this site for announcements regarding new available content.

Update: Since this article was written there are two other services used by this blog.

Scribd
Scribd is a site that hosts documents. So all of the interviews and lyric booklets are now stored there. They offer an option to embed documents on your website, so that's what the blog uses to allow the reader to view the documents in a small reader within the post.

Flickr
This is a site that hosts pictures. The Studio has two accounts. The first is for the album covers, and that is linked to the album cover slide show in the sidebar on the right of the blog. The second account is for the rest of the miscellaneous pictures that have been shown on the site. There are over a hundred pictures now on the site and that number increases every week.

This Day in Studio History

It was October 29, 1996, when the book "Olympus: Mountain or Molehill?" was released.

This was the definitive guide to Mune Mud's 1991 Olympus. It told how each song was recorded, the inspiration behind each song, what was recorded on each track of the 4-track master, hidden meanings, etc. No Mune Mud library should be without it.

Album of the Week #10: Electric Field Donut

Project name: Isthmus
Album name: Electric Field Donut
Release date: July 9, 1996
Release format: cassette
Studio name: Metal XOR Studio

Tracks:
1. Safety in Numbers
2. Free
3. Simple G
4. Rain Fusion
5. Farmer's Anguish
6. No Soul
7. Mama Got Caught
8. Jay's Mambo
9. The Long and Winding Road
10. I Saw Her Standing There
11. Nowhere Man
12. Yesterday
13. Help
14. Hey Jude
15. Let It Be
16. Rocky Mountain Way
17. Wicked Game
18. Flipcharts

This album came from a jam session that Harry and Jason had on February 5, 1995 in Jason's basement. The Metal XOR Studio was still under construction so the jam was done among the construction materials. They filled three 45-minute 4-track master cassettes and from those tapes this album was created.

It was a few months after the jam that Jason went back to the master tapes and started adding drums (most of the songs were recorded without drums since it was just the two of them), additional keyboards, and guitars. Once the songs were complete they were compiled for an album. Then it was time to name the album and the project. After a LOT of suggestions for a project name, they settled on Isthmus. And Harry came up with the album name. He saw a picture of lightning striking a baseball stadium and he said "Electric Field Donut!"

Most of the jam was them creating their own music and lyrics as they went, it was all ad-libbed. After their creative steam ran out they got out Jason's book of Beatles songs and started recording Beatles songs. Side A of the tape is their originals and side B is their Beatles covers.

This album also started an Isthmus tradition. The song "Wicked Game" has appeared on every Isthmus album in one form or another. And this was the first album to feature it.

For most of the album Jason played the guitar and Harry was on keyboard. They took turns singing. And this jam session was recorded with a video camera. There have been talks of releasing a video tape from the session but that has not yet materialized.

Below is the schematic for how the equipment was hooked up for this session.



Next week's Album of the Week: Lambskin Temple by Isthmus from 1996.

Collector's Corner #16

Below is an inside look into the record-keeping of the Studio. This page actually dates back to 1991 when the 4-track recorder was bought for the Studio. After recording a few songs it became evident that some sort of log was needed to keep track of what songs were on what tapes. So a Master Log book was created. This is the first page created for the Studio log.

Let's take a tour of the page, shall we?

• The title of the page came from the time frame these songs were recorded. The "Olympus era" (c1991, named for the album that came out of these songs) took 2 pages in the log book. Following the "Olympus era" was the "Underwater Problem Factory era" (c1991-1992) that titled pages 3 and 4 as "UPF 1" and "UPF 2."
• The title is "Olympus 2" even though this was the first page in the logbook. The pages were titled before the recording dates were added to the page. So when it came time to title the first few pages they were mixed up and page 1 became "Olympus 2" and page 2 became "Olympus 1" and the error was never corrected.
• The date of 8/6/95 in the upper right corner indicates when the page was titled.
• On the upper left side of the page is the word "counter." This was to be the column where the counter numbers of the recorder were written down for each song so a song could easily be found on the tape. But this was soon abandoned as it took too much time.
• The letters on the far left of the page indicate which project the song belongs too. At the time, Mune Mud was the only project so most of the these songs belong to MM, or Mune Mud.
• The yellow highlight next to some songs indicate that an MP3 exists of that song. The highlighting is out-of-date as most of those songs are now in the computer.
• In the center of the page are the song titles. Some songs don't have titles but a short descriptor of what the song was.
• As previously stated, the recording dates were added later. And those dates were not written down for most of the earlier recordings so the indicated time frames are the best guess as to when these songs were recorded.
• The next column has "T=" for each song. This became the tempo column. A T=60 means the tempo was 60 bpm (beats per minutes).
• The far right column shows the running time of each song.

To date there are 28 pages in the Master Log book.

And this first page is not in the Metal XOR Studio Museum. It is in the Master Log book that is still being used in the Studio today!

Listen Online!

The fourth installment of Listen Online presents three new tracks! These come from the 2001 album The Vintage Years Volume 1 by Harry and Jason. These tracks are from 1986 and are some of the very first songs Harry and Jason recorded together.

Click on the name of the song to listen to it.
"The Beautiful Corns"
"The Redenbacher Song"
"Hair"

Lyric Booklet #3: Devis Tortura

The third album to include lyrics was NueroMorgue's 1993 album Devis Tortura. The booklet was titled "Devastation and Minim Opi" and was eighteen pages long. This was the first lyric booklet to have its own title. It was typed on a word processor and printed out.

This "lyric booklet" did provide lyrics to all of the songs that were on the album but you had to work to find them for they were buried within the story or hidden in secret codes. All the lyrics of the songs were chopped up and rearranged, and this story was written around that.

The booklet started with the table of contents followed by a forward. Following that was the 5-part story titled "Devastation" which contained lyrics to ten of the songs on the album. The other seven songs had their lyrics hidden in seven short stories at the end of the booklet. After the minim opi was an epilogue. And the booklet ended with a full-page drawing called "Primordial Water and Lotus".

This booklet was meant to be released with the album but it actually came out on March 22, 1994, three months after the album was released. The cover credited the booklet to Gargoyle.

Project Spotlight #9: Who are Harry and Jason?

Harry and Jason are cousins. Their long music careers began with piano lessons when they were young. But when they were in their early teens they began a new kind of music. They would turn the radio on to an easy-listening station and record themselves making up their own lyrics on-the-fly as the songs played.

Well over a hundred songs on well over a dozen tapes were recorded over the next few years. There were two compilations of songs created, The Best of Harry and Jason and The Best of Harry and Jason II. This all took place long before the Studio came into existence.

More than ten years had passed before the project of transferring all of those songs into the computer began. Some of the tapes were over fifteen years old and they were deteriorating. It was during this process that it was decided to start releasing those old songs on CD. So on May 23, 2001, the first collection was released as The Vintage Years Volume 1 on May 23, 2001. It consisted of the first two tapes that Harry and Jason had made. Future volumes were planned but have not been completed yet.

But this is not the only musical project Harry and Jason have worked on together. They have also been in bands such as Pheonix, The Two-Tones, Young Herbage, The Traveling Deengelburys, The Spartans, The Duke Boys, Isthmus, Muffin Loaf, and others. It is safe to say that the two of them will continue making music for years to come.


Next week: What is Muffin Loaf?

Article: Mune Mud Singles

It is a little-know fact that with each Mune Mud album there were two singles released, usually one faster tempo song and one slower one. The first single from each album was released four weeks after the album was released and the second single was released eight weeks after the album release date.

The singles were released on cassette until 2001 when The Search for Metropolis CD came out, then they were released on CD. Each single release contained the single and two additional tracks, one which represented the b-side as old vinyl singles had and the other was the instrumental version of the single. The b-side track was usually an unreleased track from the album, a demo, or alternate take of a track on the album.

All of the singles and their b-sides were compiled in 2004 and had a very limited released on CD as The Singles Collection.

Here is the list of singles and their release dates.

From Olympus
Etesian Wind - released December 10, 1991

• Etesian Wind (album version)


• Etesian Wind (original speed)


• Etesian Wind (instrumental)

Waterfall - released January 7, 1992

• Waterfall (album version)


• Mystical Dream


• Waterfall (instrumental)

From Underwater Problem Factory
Gridlock - released fall of 1992

• Gridlock (album version)


• EnVenum Above (original version)


• Gridlock (instrumental)

Believe Me - released fall of 1992

• Believe Me (album version)


• Garden of Hesperides


• Believe Me (instrumental)

From Pryme Material
Reality Found Me - released October 5, 1993

• Reality Found Me (album version)


• Ominous (remake)


• Reality Found Me (instrumental)

Clouds Set Free - released November 2, 1993

• Clouds Set Free (album version)


• Up A Lonely Road (original demo)


• Clouds Set Free (instrumental)

From Equation of Time
Summer Song - released September 10, 1996

• Summer Song (album version)


• Winter Song


• Summer Song (instrumental)

One Night (v2.0) - released October 8, 1996

• One Night (v2.0) (album version)


• One Night (v1.0)


• One Night (v2.0) (instrumental)

From Sleep State F
Ginkgo Biloba - released October 21, 1997

• Ginkgo Biloba (album version)


• Little Germany


• Ginkgo Biloba (instrumental)

Reflection - released November 18, 1997

• Reflection (album version)


• One Second


• Reflection (instrumental)

From The Search for Metropolis
From Cousin B - released December 4, 2001

• From Cousin B (album version)


• Camilla


• From Cousin B (instrumental)

Ocean Body - released January 1, 2002

• Ocean Body (album version)


• Ocean Body (demo)


• Ocean Body (instrumental)

Album of the Week #9: The Vintage Years Vol 1

Project name: Harry and Jason
Album name: The Vintage Years Volume 1
Release date: May 23, 2001
Release format: CD
Studio name: Metal XOR Studio

Tracks:
1. The Redenbacher Medley
2. The Orvies
3. Danger to the Corns
4. Ode to Corns
5. The Beautiful Corns 1
6. The Beautiful Corns 2
7. The Beautiful Corns 3
8. How Beautiful Are Redenbachers
9. Feet Cream
10. The Song
11. The Redenbacher Song
12. The Belly Button Song
13. Hair
14. The Toilet Song
15. The Computer Song
16. The Radio Song
17. The Native Song
18. The Song of Rock and Roll
19. The Baby Song 1
20. The Baby Song 2
21. The Lottery Song

In the mid to late 1980's Harry and Jason recorded themselves singing many songs. They would turn on an easy-listening radio station that played instrumental music and make up lyrics as they were recording. They filled many tapes with this kind of recording.

With many of those tapes reaching 15 and 20 years old, it was time to transfer them to a computer so the songs would last forever. So the massive transfer project was started in 2001. The first two tapes that Harry and Jason recorded this way (circa 1985) were compiled onto one CD and released as The Vintage Years Volume 1 in 2001.

Tracks 1-14 were recorded one day at Jason's house and tracks 15-21 were recorded another day at Harry's house. Those 21 tracks were the very first songs Harry and Jason recorded in this manner. In fact the first few songs don't even have music, it was Harry and Jason being silly and singing a cappella. It was after those first few songs that they decided to turn on the radio to find some background music to sing to, thus creating music history.

The plan was to release further volumes of The Vintage Years as the tapes were transferred to computer but the second album has not been compiled yet. One day the collection will continue for there is enough material for at least six or seven volumes, possibly more. There has even been talk of a box set that contains ALL of their early songs recorded in this manner.

So only the future knows what is in store for the future of this project.


Next week's Album of the Week: Electric Field Donut by Isthmus from 1996.

Collector's Corner #15

Jason and Jimmy were hard at work on their new ORC album. They were out shopping on Saturday, January 11, 1997, and went to McDonald's to eat. While they ate the discussion turned to the name of their album. They had been thinking about this for quite some time. And then Jimmy mentioned "purging the great abyss." It had a nice ring to it! They had found their album title!

So they wouldn't forget it, Jason had Jimmy write it down on a napkin. They took the napkin home with them. Thus the album was named.

Today the napkin resides in the Northwest Wing of the Metal XOR Studio Museum.

This Day in Studio History

It was October 18, 1994, when NueroMud's debut album, ... Libra 971, was released.

This was the first of two NueroMud albums to be released. The music style was somewhere between Mune Mud music and NueroMorgue. It had a limited release so not many people even know it exists.

And today it turns thirteen years old!

Blog News: Slow It Down

I have been thinking long and hard about this. And I've been putting off the decision. But I have decided that this will not be a daily blog any longer.

The original intent of this blog (as stated in the Welcome Statement on August 23) was to post at least once a week. Right away I created two weekly features, so that was two days a week. Then I wanted a weekly update and to start sharing information from the Studio's past. So out of the gate I was posting every single day. And almost two months later I'm still posting every single day.

Am I getting sick of the blog? Am I running out of material to post? No and no. I'm more excited about the blog today than I was two months ago! And I don't think I'll ever run out of material! Is it taking too much of my time to maintain a daily schedule? Nope. The entire blog only takes a couple hours a week. Time isn't the issue.

Then why the change? After doing some research into blogging and looking at the traffic to my blog, I have come to the conclusion that I don't want to post too much too fast. As the blog stands right now, if someone doesn't visit the site for 3-4 weeks, they would have 28-30 posts to catch up on and no one is going to spend that much time reading about this Studio. So I am going to downshift. This will be extremely hard for me to do. I am now accustomed to making a daily post. In fact, the blog schedule I maintain has a post scheduled every day through mid-November already. So I will just have to stretch the schedule out.

So what will the new post schedule look like? I will keep the Sunday Album of the Week and Wednesday Project Spotlight. Other than those two regular features, I will try to limit the additional posts to 1-2 a week. That will give 3-4 posts a week. Of course if something comes up that NEEDS to be posted I will do that. There will probably be weeks that have 5-6 posts.

So as of today I will attempt to slow down. If after a few weeks I don't like the snail's pace I will crank it back up. So I will lean back, prop up my feet, and take tomorrow off!

See you on Friday!


UPDATE - Oops! I can't postpone tomorrow's scheduled post. So I'll take Friday off. See? This isn't going to be easy!

Project Spotlight #8: What is ORC?

ORC was born in 1994 when Jason was recording “Pedestal Song” and Jimmy stopped by the Studio for a visit. Jason reworked the lyrics, threw Jimmy a mic, and they both recorded the vocals. After that session Jimmy was given vocals to sing on other songs. Eventually Jimmy was contributing his own lyrics and recording his own instrument parts.

It was a couple years later when they actually named their project. The name came from a computer game they had both played called Warcraft. It had humans versus orcs. A project called Human sounded silly so they went with ORC. Originally the name was written O.R.C. but they could not decide on what it would stand for so they dropped the periods and left it ORC.

Their first album took over five years to record. They finally finished Purging the Great Abyss and released it on March 2, 1999. It was the first album released on CD from the Studio.

ORC music can best be described as experimental. It is rarely just drums, guitar, and vocals. They have used a violin, a wrench, backwards recordings, and various other instruments and sounds. And recording methods are just as experimental. They have used a 4-track cassette recorder, a computer, a separate sequencer, and various other hardware to compose their music.

Even though they have only released one album to date there is a lot of unused material in the ORC vault. Various releases have been considered but nothing finalized. There will definitely be more ORC material released in the future.

In fact, the next album released by the Studio could very well be a new ORC album. Metal XOR Studio is in negotiations with Attic Works Studio to do a joint recording effort involving Jason and Jimmy recording new material from the two different studios. This project is still in its early planning stages, so stay tuned to this blog for further developments in this project.

Update
On Saturday, September 20, 2008, Jimmy and Jason were goofing around on a Voice Over IP program and inadvertently recorded a few new songs. The songs were put on a CD and released as the EP Thru the Vent on September 23, 2008.


Next week: Who are Harry and Jason?

Lyric Booklet #2: Pryme Material

The second album to include lyrics was Mune Mud's 1993 album Pryme Material. The booklet was twenty-one pages long. It was typed on a word processor and printed out.

The booklet started with a table of contents, a two-page introduction, and an equipment list. The introduction gave a brief history of the album and what it took to record. And of course the equipment list was just a list of all equipment used to record the album.

Each song had the lyrics typed out. Also included was the date each song was recorded, the length of the song, and a brief note or trivia fact regarding the song.

There were only a few copies of the booklet handed out so this is a somewhat rare piece of Studio history.

Studio News: Blog Publication Deal

Metal XOR has just purchased the rights to release a new publication in early 2008.

Metal XOR Press will release a book containing a re-print of the daily posts from this blog site. It will be a print version of this site that could outlive this electronic counterpart. It will cover entries from the very first post on August 23 to the final post of the year on December 31.

If this project succeeds there may be a 2008 edition to reprint posts done throughout next year.

So watch for the new book in early 2008.

Blog News: New Logo

Something new has been added to the site. . . the first official Metal XOR Studio logo.


The logo has also been added to the Metal XOR Studio Information Source website. And it will appear on all official Metal XOR releases from this day forth.

Album of the Week #8: Purging the Great Abyss

Project name: ORC
Album name: Purging the Great Abyss
Release date: March 2, 1999
Release format: CD
Studio name: Metal XOR Studio

Tracks:
1. Magician's Companion
2. U-505
3. Element of Earth
4. Better Left Unsaid
5. Satellites
6. Flying Cloud Drive
7. Copekata
8. Element of Air 2
9. Vandetta (Constant Build)
10. In There
11. Mother Nature
12. Happy Little Squirrel
13. Placid
14. Ttub
15. Meaning of Number
16. Element of Water (Neptune's Mix)
17. Dawn's Tomorrow
18. Transducer Man
19. Herueux
20. Wooded Harbor
21. Animosity 3
22. Intercostal Communication
23. Sunny Ways
24. Element of Fire

Some things only happen once in lifetime. Some albums are timeless masterpieces that will never lose their unique identities. It is important to recognize such achievements for what they are. And Purging the Great Abyss is arguably the most important release in Metal XOR's history in terms of its cutting edge experiments and dabbling in the avant garde. Books could be written about this album. This short synopsis will not even scratch the surface on what this album is. But for a few of the more important details, read on.

It took over five years to create this album, from the first recording to the release of the CD. It started when Jimmy visited Jason in the Studio while Jason was recording the song "Pedestal Song" in 1994. Jason revised the lyrics a bit, handed Jimmy a mic, and they both recorded vocals for the song. For a while that is how ORC songs were recorded. After a while Jimmy started helping with the lyrics. Then he started recording various music parts. Soon it was a collaborative effort that resulted in some very experimental sounds and melodies.

The name of the album came out of Jimmy's mouth at McDonald's one day when Jason and Jimmy were out gallivanting around. Jimmy wrote the title on a napkin and that napkin now resides in the Metal XOR Studio Museum.

This was Metal XOR's first album released on CD. And it had the widest distribution. There were two variations of the album. The first ten that were printed were labeled "Autographed Gold Limited Edition" on the front cover. These came in a slightly gold-colored jewel case, the print on the CD label was in gold, and the CD label was autographed by Jason and Jimmy. The second run (twenty more copies) was the standard edition in the traditional black-spined jewel case, the print on the CD label was black, and there were no autographs.

This has been the only album from Metal XOR with the "Parental Advisory" label on it. There are not many objectionable words but there are enough to warrant the warning label. And this was also the only album in Metal XOR's history that was sold. They sold for $5 each and that was to cover the cost of CD labels and of having someone else burn the CD's. This was early in the CD-burning-at-home days and there were actually slight costs involved.

There was a nice lyric book also released with the album. It had one page dedicated to each song containing the lyrics to each song. In the back of the book was a section about the history of the album. That was followed by a complete list of ORC songs recorded. And the book ended with the 1999 Metal XOR Musik Catalogue.

A more detailed history and behind-the-scenes will be told some day either online or in a paper publication. The complete story needs to be recorded before it is forgotten in the mists of time.

This has been ORC's only studio release to date. There are a few bootleg sessions recorded but they have not been officially released. There have been several ideas for new ORC releases including an album of remixes from PGA, an album of outtakes and demos, or even an album of brand new music. But nothing has been decided for sure yet.

One thing is for certain... we have not heard the last from ORC!


Next week's Album of the Week: The Vintage Years Volume 1 by Harry and Jason from 2001.

Collector's Corner #14

What is the best thing to use to write Mune Mud lyrics? A Mune Mud pencil!

The picture is not very clear, but the pencils say "Jason Watson is Mune Mud."

These were a gift to the Studio soon after Olympus was released in 1991. It was a pack of twelve pencils. Although a few have been used throughout the years, seven remain wrapped in plastic and on display in the Unused Pencil Wing of the Metal XOR Studio Museum.

Article: Blog Categories

This article explains the different featured categories found on this blog site. A link to each category can be found at the bottom of the navigation bar on the right side of this page.

A Look Back
These look at one-time events that have happened in the Studio's history.

Album of the Week
This feature focuses on different albums that have been released by the Studio. This is a weekly feature that gets posted every Sunday.

Article
These are articles on various topics having to do with the Studio in some regards.

Blog News
This is where you will find news about this blog website.

Collector's Corner
These are items that are currently housed in the Metal XOR Studio Museum. They are collectible items that range from posters to objects that inspired songs to pieces of Studio history. You might find anything featured in this section!

Interviews
The first three installments were to make available past interviews conducted with the Studio. It will also be where you will find future interviews.

Just for Fun
These items are just for a quick laugh.

Listen Online
Occasionally a song will be posted that you can listen to online or download to your computer. This will announce when a new song has been posted.

Lyric Booklet
There have been a few albums released that had an accompanying lyric booklet. Each installment of this feature will focus on one of those lyric booklets.

Project Spotlight
This feature is posted each Wednesday. Each week a different Studio project is highlighted. The posts include origins of the project name, members of the project, albums that the project has released, and various facts regarding the project.

State of the Studio
These are posted on the first of every month and are an update on what has been happening in the Studio and future plans.

Studio News
If there is any news to report coming from the Studio, this is where you will find it.

This Day in Studio History
There are certain big dates in the Studio history, such as album releases or new versions of the Studio being built. This section will highlight those historic dates.

Update: Since the original post there have been a few new blog categories added.

Collectible Cards
This feature announces the release of the monthly sets of Metal XOR collectible cards. The series began in October 2009 and will run as long as the card sets keep coming out.

Equipment File
This is the feature that replaced the weekly Wendesday feature Musician Profile. There are a finite number of musicians who have worked with the Studio, so when the blog ran out of musicians to highlight it switched to the equipment that has been used. Each week described a different piece of equipment.

Musician Profile
This is the feature that replaced the weekly Wednesday feature Project Spotlight. There are a finite number of projects that have worked with the Studio, so when the blog ran out of projects to highlight it switched to individual musicians who have worked with the Studio.

ORC Update
This was a weekly feature on Mondays to track the progress of the new ORC album. It lasted for eight weeks, then was put on hold when the album was put on hold. It will resume when recording resumes.

Studio Chapter
This is the feature that replaced the weekly Monday feature ORC Update. Each week another 'era' of the Studio's history is explained. The feature began by documenting the Studio from the early 90's before it even had a name. It continued to the present-day incarnation of the Studio.

Video File
This is similar to the Listen Online feature but it highlights a video instead of audio. There are not many posts in this category yet, but as time goes on more video will be made available from the Studio.


These are the current categories that this blog site offers, but there will be more coming in the future. If enough new ones are created there will be another Blog Category Article written to update the readers.

Lyric Booklet #1: Underwater Problem Factory

This is a new feature that will discuss the often rare and overlooked lyric booklets that have accompanied various Metal XOR Studio albums throughout the years.

The first album to include lyrics was Mune Mud's 1992 album Underwater Problem Factory. The booklet was ten pages long. It was typed on a Brother word processor and printed out. There was no cover and the booklet started on page 1 with the first song, "One Last Time."

For each song the lyrics were typed out. Also included was a list of any samples or sound effects used in the song. A couple of songs included a 'background' section that gave some background or trivia on the song.

The booklet ended with a 'credits' section.

Project Spotlight #7: What is Binary Pipedream?

Although most of the music that has come out of Metal XOR Studio has been a solo effort, sometimes a guest musician will stop by to lend their talents to a project. In the early days of the Studio it happened more than it does now. So years ago it was decided to collect some songs that other people had helped record and put together an EP.

The project was called Binary Pipedream. The name can be broken down into two parts: binary refers to two people working on each song and pipedream refers to the idea that some day one of these musicians could be famous.

Only one album has been released so far and that was the self-titled Binary Pipedream album released in 1994.

There was no fancy logo created for the project. In fact, the album had a very limited release, so most people do not know of it. But one day there may be another Binary Pipedream album.


Next week: What is ORC?

Collector's Corner #13

What is better than a parabolic dish festival? A parabolic dish festival with an odor!

This publicity poster for Isthmus' newest album, Parabolic Dish Festival, was created on July 2, 1998. It was printed on an inkjet printer and spray painted with green spray paint. This is the only color print in existance, the copies were all black and white.

On the black and white prints the background looked like a negative of the night sky (which represents the inspiration for the title of the album). These were passed out a couple of weeks before the album was released.

Today this original poster and a few of the copies are displayed in the Promotional Poster Wing of the Metal XOR Studio Museum.

Blog News: 50th Post

This is post #50!!!

The original intent of this blog was to have a weekly post regarding noteworthy happenings at the Studio. But as the posting quickly began, it was evident that there was more info that could be shared here. So the Project Spotlight and Album of the Week features began. And there was a lot more info than just that, so it turned out to be a daily blog posting either news from the Studio or things from the past.

Coincidentally today also happens to be the anniversary of the birth of the founder and CEO of Metal XOR Studios. So all of us here at the blog would like to wish a big happy birthday to me.

See you in another 50 posts. . .

Article: Blog Behind-the-Scenes

This article will give a quick glimpse into what it takes to maintain this blog.

The first step when the blog was created was to also create an Excel file to keep a schedule for blog posts. This file extends out till the end of the year. After the two regular weekly features were established (Album of the Week and Project Spotlight), the schedule was filled out for those two days for the next couple of months. So right now I already know what the Project Spotlight will be for the last week of November!

That left five empty days a week. I try to have one or two Collector’s Corners a week. For that feature I scan in three or four items at a time and use those for the next week or two. Special articles can be written at any time.

With this blog site I can create a draft of a post and then publish it to the site whenever I want to. So right now there are four or five posts started (or finished) just waiting for their post date to arrive. Then I can go in and publish them to the site.

Staying organized and keeping a few days ahead of the posts is the key to this blog. It does not take a vast amount of time either, usually just a couple hours a week. I have already posted a lot of information to this site and I should have enough to easily make it to the end of the year. I am also always trying to think of new features to post. And I am in negotiations with another studio to start a new project in early 2008, so if that happens there will be a lot more information to report on.

I also maintain the Metal XOR Studio Information Source website which posts interviews and mp3’s that can be downloaded or listened to.

So stay tuned. The blog is here for a while…

Album of the Week #7: Binary Pipedream

Project name: Binary Pipedream
Album name: Binary Pipedream
Release date: September 6, 1994
Release format: cassette
Studio name: Circle IX Studio

Tracks:
1. JC's Suckin' Eggs (with Harry, as Young Herbage)
2. Two-Tone Rhythm Kill (with Jimmy, as NueroMorgue)
3. King Song (with Joe, as Mune Mud)
4. Pedestal Song (with Jimmy, as NueroMud)
5. Willy's Spring Theme (with Jimmy)
6. 5 Oz. of Milk (with Jimmy)
7. All Die (with Harry)
8. The One-Liner (with Joe, as Mune Mud)
9. Go Disco! (with Darrin, as Mune Mud)
10. Stream Dream (with Brad, as Mune Mud)

The Studio has always enjoyed having guest musicians come in to record various parts of songs, usually vocals. So this was an EP collection of the early songs that had guest musicians perform. These songs came from various projects including Mune Mud, NueroMud, Young Herbage, and more.

The musicians that are featured on the album are Harry, Jimmy, Joe, Darrin, and Brad.

The cover was done using a label machine for the project name on the spine and a computer for the digital date on the front. And there is a secret message hidden in those 0's and 1's.

This album had a very limited release so not many people knew it had come out. There are no plans of re-releasing this album on CD. It will probably remain hidden away forever.


Next week's Album of the Week: Purging the Great Abyss by ORC from 1999.

Listen Online!

The third song available for listening is from a project called Parvo. It was a project that was started to create music solely with a computer. There were two songs started but they never got past the demo stage.

The first song started was called "Distemper". There were three different demos of the song using various arrangements. The one posted here was the longest version. It was labeled "demo 1a".

Click here to listen to the song.

Studio News: Recording Session

On Tuesday, October 2, Paige returned to the recording studio for her first singing session since the release of her debut album, My First Album, back in August.

It was a new equipment setup including a new mic into a different recording computer. The session lasted about 8-9 minutes, which is the typical length. She recorded four new songs that did not appear on her first album.

When asked how the session went, Produce Jason had this to say, "She did great. The new songs are longer than most of her earlier recordings. She's learning more songs that have multiple verses. The problem with the session was the equipment. It was a new setup and the levels turned out very low. I can probably boost the levels and apply some noise reduction, but I will definitely look for a different recording solution before the next session."

Plans are to record her once a month so by this time next year her second album will be released.

Blog News: Featured Categories

A new feature has been added to this blog site. At the bottom of the right-hand tool bar is a new section called Categories. This organizes all posts into common-themed groups.

For example, if someone enjoys the Collector's Corner feature, they can now click on "Collector's Corner" in the Categories box and the page will refresh to show all Collector's Corner posts.

As this site and its companion site, Metal XOR Studio Information Source, continue to improve, there will be posts to explain the site improvements.

Project Spotlight #6: What is Isthmus?

On February 5, 1995, Harry took his synthesizer to Jason's house and they had a jam session in the new Metal XOR Studio that was still under construction in the basement. Jason played guitar and Harry played his synth for most of the jam. After hearing the tapes from that session, it was decided it could be released as an album. More than a year later, after doing some clean-up work and adding a few tracks (mostly drums), the album was released as Electric Field Donut on July 9, 1996. It took a while to settle on a band name, but the winner was Isthmus. The scan below shows some of the other names that were considered for the new band.

For months Electric Field Donut was listened to and reviewed. It was not bad for a "live" recording of two people goofing around. Could it happen again? They recorded another session on September 21, 1996. This time they had a drummer, Jimmy. Harry played guitar and Jason played bass. They recorded in Jason's driveway and the album became Lambskin Temple. It was released on November 19, 1996.

On December 10, 1996, Harry and Jason recorded a jam session of Christmas songs in Harry's chuch. This time they had Tim S. playing drums. The album was an utter failure, not much good came of this effort. It was called New Mexico Igloo.

On May 6, 1997, a very limited release of the Isthmus EP Ideas was released. This was a collection of tracks recorded during the Electric Field Donut session that did not appear on that album. And there is a good reason for that. These were really B-quality pieces of music.

But the band redeemed itself with the world-wide critically acclaimed 1998 release of Parabolic Dish Festival. It was recorded on May 22, 1998. Jimmy was back on drums, Harry played guitar, and Jason was on bass. After the traditional cleaning up and adding of musical and sound effect tracks, the first album of the two-album set was released on July 21, 1998. The second album was released on March 23, 1999. This was their most productive jam session to date and the one that all jam sessions have been compared to. There is a Parabolic Dish Festival Special Edition that has been in the works for years, but it has not been released yet. Maybe we will see it on its 10th anniversary next year. . .

Although the players keep changing, the official Isthmus line-up is Harry, Jason, and Jimmy. And although they have played various parts on their albums, the main instrumentation is Harry on guitar, Jason on bass, and Jimmy on drums. Harry and Jason provide most of the vocals.

They have not had a jam session since the 1998 PDF marathon session, but an Isthmus reunion is not out of the question.

Prior to the creation and naming of the group in 1995, Jason and Harry had played together for years in various bands and with various people. But there exist bootleg recordings of just the two of them playing songs. Those have been adopted as early Isthmus recordings (even before there was an Isthmus). None of those recordings have been officially released. Yet.

Updates:
On April 15, 2008, the first Isthmus video was released. It was for the song "Lost in Detroit (Free II)" from their 1998 album Parabolic Dish Festival Volume 1.

On May 8, 2008, their second video was released. It was for the song "Flathead Midget", also from their 1998 album Parabolic Dish Festival Volume 1.

For years the 10th Anniversary Edition of Parabolic Dish Festival has been discussed. Finally in 2008 the project was finished. It was released on May 22, exactly ten years to the day that the songs were recorded. Talks have already begun about an Ultimate Edition of the album for a future release.

On March 22, 2011, the Gemini Jay bootleg recording was officially released.  The recording took place on January 12, 1996, between the Electric Field Donut and Lambskin Temple recording sessions.  The music is rather raw, but it demonstrates an evolution in the band between their first and second albums.


Next week: What is Binary Pipedream?

Collector's Corner #12

This is an ultra-rare publicity poster for the Metal XOR project called Parvo.

It was the year 2000. The future had arrived. Technology, the field of medicine, and food preparation had come so far in humanity's lifetime. So why not advance music?

This was the first Metal XOR project to solely use a computer in making its music. Using a program called CakeWalk, two songs were started but never progressed beyond the demo stage. Maybe the world wasn't ready for Parvo. Or maybe Parvo wasn't ready for the world.

It was during this short time period that a publicity poster was designed to announce to the world the arrival of Parvo. The above poster was created on May 17, 2000. It hung in the Studio for quite some time, but when it was realized that the project had been canned, the poster was filed away. It was found recently and now resides in the Music-Projects-That-Never-Had-A-Chance-To-Succeed Poster Wing of the Metal XOR Museum.

State of the Studio #2: October '07

October. The best month of the year. And this is what’s happening at the Studio. . .

As stated in a previous post, there will be no October album recorded this year. Hopefully that will happen next year. There were a few demo songs recorded while getting the equipment ready for the album, but they were just short test songs that can possibly be turned into something grander in the future.

There are plans to record Paige singing again any day now. That will be the first session for her new album scheduled to be released a year from now. And her piano lessons are progressing nicely.

Plans are still in development of a more efficient recording method in the Studio. The creation of music is set up great at the moment. But when it comes time to actually record the music to tape or hard drive, it’s still quite a difficult task. That’s one reason the October album was postponed. Hopefully soon the equipment will be set up for easier recording.

This blog continues to churn out daily posts. Plans for this month include continued Collector’s Corner features, more Albums of the Week, more Project Spotlights, and additional articles including features on Studio singles that have been released and a behind-the-scenes look at the making of this blog.

In other words, although music output is low, things are still moving and shaking at Metal XOR Studio!!!