“Hey, wait. Is this the same EP that came out in March? Is this some sort of trick?”
With a complete disregard of linear storytelling, Andrew Steck attempts to answer the question: What’s up with this?
The full title of the EP is “The Mouth Remains Closed During Strenuous Activity” which is named after an art installation created by Cal Clements outside of Flicker Theater & Bar in Athens, Georgia. It is the very same – although there are a few very slight edits to the music and the cover has changed. To explain what happened here, let’s go back to the beginning of the year. I had finished producing my version of The Nutcracker Suite (which is also likely to get an update) wherein I got to experiment a little more with converting notated orchestrations to MIDI signals which then became different keyboards or whatnot. This was fun for me, so I wanted to “keep the party going” and find other ways to apply this approach after The Nutcracker was completed.
During the lockdown phase of the pandemic in 2020, my friend and fantastic artist, Will Eskridge, began encouraging people to make “20-second art” as a fun way to promote preventative hygienic practices. Rather than taking the prescribed 20 seconds to whip up a drawing or painting, I decided to use my lunch break at work to make a 20(ish)-second composition. I’ve made about 20 or 25 of these that are all fairly random. Jumping back to the future that is the dawn of 2022, I went to these to play around with using the technique I implemented on The Nutcracker.
What became “The Undulating Parade” began as a minimalist saxophone quintet. I slowed down the tempo, gave it a drum beat, and tinkered with moving the parts around – reassigning them to various keyboards and synths. Easy peasy. There’s even a sexy video for it.
The story behind “14 Reflections” is similar. I was taking a class on world mythology in 2020 while making those 20-second compositions. I was interested in the role of the griot in Africa as storytelling musician and watched videos of modern griots in action. This inspired the 14-piece percussion music that “14 Reflections” is based on. But then once I started re-arranging it, I was watching the show, Euphoria, and decided to make it extra dramatic like it could be the theme music for one of the characters. I slapped together a video for this one too. I used a program where you pick out a bunch of clips and then you press a button and the thing on the screen twirls around for a minute or two and then you have a video for your song.
It was after listening to these first two tracks that singer and writer, David Ferguson (Astral Summer), said:
“These songs make me think of bad things happening to a bunch of sentient toys who are way smarter than their manufacturers intended. Earnest space-faring robots flying under the lawnmower in a misguided bid for freedom.”
What does this all mean? I guess you just gotta check it out!
Oh, the source material for these tracks are included as bonus tracks when you buy the EP on Bandcamp. You can also download the 3-song EP from the Shop on this site.
https://andrewsteck.bandcamp.com/album/the-mouth-remains-closed-during-strenuous-activity
Oh right, getting to the weird timing of the release. I initially thought that these would be good to put up on the stock music website, Pond5. I was trying to upload as much content as I could to my account on there to try to actually make a dollar or two from my music. That didn’t work out as planned, so I decided I’d rather just get the music “out there.” That is when I decided to do put it up on all the streaming sites and make videos. Side note: If you need stock music for anything, I might have you covered at https://www.pond5.com/artist/ajs_ponker
I know you were all dying to learn all of these interesting facts that you can now use to wow your friends at dinner parties. I do hope you enjoy the music. If you don’t, don’t worry – I’ll make more.
-Andrew Steck
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