Bear Like Mouse | Update
Fugue
My second album, Fugue, has been available for free on Bandcamp for two months now. But, in the interest of capitalism, I’ve decided not to be such a hippie about distributing my music for free and will be making Fugue available on iTunes, Rhapsody, Amazon.com, and a bunch of other middleperson websites. That is, unless, I can find a label who wants to release this, which would really be ideal because it would bankroll the things I’m about to write about in a minute.
But first…
Why am I telling you?
Because, just in case you haven’t downloaded it yet, you’ve still got a three-ish week window to DOWNLOAD ‘Fugue’ FOR FREE.
So… wait, why do you care about the money?
Because, oh holy shit, you have no idea how awesome the third album will be. And awesome shit ain’t cheap.
The Maw
Work on the third album has commenced. It’s ambitious. Possibly too ambitious. Principle recording will happen between a cabin with no electricity and a century-old lighthouse in Lubec, ME. After that, it will be back to San Francisco to finish the album in a studio. By the way, Lubec is the Easternmost city in the US. And, if you don’t count Hawaii, you can get much more west than San Francisco.
San Francisco / Black Girl
San Francisco is now the cave Bear Like Mouse calls home. It is also the home of some artists that have exerted the most influence over me. Bands like Oxbow, Xiu Xiu, and Neurosis. I also find that the fog nourishes me.
The first thing I did after moving here was finish Fugue. The second thing I did was hook up with Oakland-based DJ, Zoo Kroo. Together, we put together a nine-minute trip-hop single called “Black Girl” that is all about deep, focused groove. And an oboe. Also a jazz flute.
I think it’s one of the coolest, and most trance inducing tracks I’ve done, and I include the Sleep, Pea single in that statement.
Radiohead | Nude (Bear Like Mouse Remix)
I’ve been on a big enough myself-kick lately, I figured I might as well slap the thigh and ride the wave in. When Radiohead put out In Rainbows, I was always really impressed with the model by which they distributed [download, pay what you want (I paid $0.95 because I was pretty broke at the time)]. They further impressed me when it came time to marketing their singles. Their video for my favorite track off of the album, All I Need, was a poignant-to-the-point-of-harrowing focus on child labor. As for Nude, they broke up the song into its core components and sold each track on iTunes for $0.99 a pop. Download them all and do with them what you please. They didn’t destroy the integrity of the song and, in fact, structured it in such a way that it was easy to remix. Now what do you have? Thousands and thousands of musicians paying $5.00 for individual tracks to one song who get to fully embrace Radiohead in an artistically intimate way, and then turn right back around and promote the everloving shit out of the single. Totes brill!
So back to me.
I took a pretty minimalist approach to this remix. The band, Holy Fuck, was the most doted-on remixer of this particular single and they did a lot of really cool stuff that structurally altered the song (as one might expect from them). I didn’t want to do that though. I really wanted to pare it back, crank up the reverb, and try to exploit the blues-y-ness of the track as well as create a gauzy track of those gorgeous ethereal vocals, which only makes brief appearance in the original track. It’s a much more luscious and saturated version of the song. I also ditched the drum track and did my own thing.
LISTEN | NUDE (BEAR LIKE MOUSE REMIX)
Hope & Anchor 