January 22
Japanese Maple
Expanded version of this song, but this time we're in control and not in control. Both my mother and my wife's mother planted our placentas under trees, in my wife's case a Japanese maple in West Seattle. I don't know if this was a 90s trend among certain parents, or if it's still a thing or not. [more inside]
January 20
man, damn
somehow managed to write this today and then record a million takes of it on my front porch. chords are far apart, words are close together — pretty difficult for me to sing but we're getting there
January 15
Milada In A Ditch
A few summers ago my mom's friend had a bit of an incident on the winding road to my parents' place and spun her car out, into the ditch. My brother happened upon her and helped her get her car out and told me about it later.
I totally wasn't there but I wrote a song about it anyway and invented things that didn't happen. [more inside]
Aircraft Recognition
Le Tic-Toc-Choc by Francois Couperin
January 13
C++ Shanty
The whole sea shanty thing going around is charming and someone made a joke about slack and that got me thinking about going to college for computer science and wanting to spend my life on computers, and here we are, a short shanty about being careful what you wish for. [more inside]
January 11
pictures of sunsets
A song about struggling with mental health, written and recorded in my bedroom this weekend. Some explicit lyrics.
January 9
phone in yer stomach
My friend's 7 year old kid made up a funky, surrealist 3-step parable of cause and effect, and I built the musical accompaniment around his 1 minute of wisdom. It turns out that if:
1. You put a phone in your stomach
2. You say boom!
3. The phone will inevitably, eventually ring [more inside]
lockdown feels ...
January 8
What You Want
January 7
All You Fascists Bound To Lose (2021 update)
The events in Washington DC on January 6 compelled me to write this one. I took Woody Guthrie's chorus and ran with it. You can see the video of this performance at YouTube. Cheers. [more inside]
January 5
A Ballad of 4 am
Third song in a 33 song, 3.5 hour project some friends and I have been working on over the past 14 months or so. A gnostic fable masquerading as a scene from a film noir. The rest are here: https://archive.org/details/33Songs
January 3
When You Least Expect it
Second song in a 33 song, 3.5 hour project some friends and I have been working on over the past 14 months or so. The rest are here: http://henriettatoughlove.com/ https://archive.org/details/33Songs https://henriettatoughlove.bandcamp.com/album/33-songs-for-33-people [more inside]
January 1
Ten
We're trying to release a song a month this year and are kicking things off with 'Ten'. [more inside]
December 31
Arpy New Year
December 30
The Long Cool
I was working on songs for my Microvague project and really just wanted to make something to use the phrase "Long Cool", so this is what came out of it...
December 29
A Ride to the Airport
This is the first song in a 33 song, 3.5 hour project some friends and I have been working on over the past 14 months or so. It was meant to take 4 months, but you know..
The whole thing is free to stream or download, donations are welcome, we're not really here to make ourselves rich and famous, because what could be more dull?
http://henriettatoughlove.com/
https://archive.org/details/33Songs
https://henriettatoughlove.bandcamp.com/album/33-songs-for-33-people
December 28
The second to last Christmas
Sorry this is a bit late and also my first contribution in a decade or so. A tune I despise, played in a manner that wavers between sarcasm and incompetence. Featuring lapsteel guitar, weissenborn and dobro...
December 27
4 Friends Suite
4 short tunes I wrote and recorded as Christmas gifts for some close friends, arranged in a "suite" of sorts. [more inside]
December 25
Let There Be Snow
December 24
Leave Her, Johnny
Lark on the Strand - Irish Trad
December 23
Ding Dong
Well, we did a holiday song. I have an alter ego as Fluffy the rabbit. (He's a bit prone to conspiracies and is kinda gruff but really has a heart o' gold). He joins Blue the Monster here on a hopefully-pretty-inclusive* holiday number we think will stick to your brainwaves quite nicely. There's a [youtube] video too, if you want the full dancing-potato and revolving-bagpipes immersive experience. Merry Happy everybody.
*it is a little anti-bagpipes.
December 21
Nico's Move
A jazzy little instrumental tune I wrote years ago for a school class assignment. I recorded this version for the audio track of a video in my ongoing Patchouli Project series (see MeFi Projects page for links to the videos.)
December 20
Eyes Closed
December 19
Forest of Illusion
A ghostly fox materializes ahead on the forest path and "hmm"s at you.
"Hmm? Wait, how are you talking?"
"A fox appears out of nowhere and your first question is how it talks? Humans..."
"Look, it's my first time outside the bounds of reality."
"You have a lot to learn. Follow me."
December 17
If I Can't Have You
Merry Little Christmas
December 16
Last Night in Christmastown
December 12
Irregular Apocalypse
December 11
Den Første August
December 8
Æ Rømeser
This is a Danish folk song called Æ Rømeser. All parts recorded by me, since I'm alone...so alone :P.
Fiddle, guitar, Irish flute.
December 7
New City
December 6
Barbie Knows Your Name 2.0
In 2017, I posted this piece (using the Barbie voice samples from this post. At the time, it capped out at around five minutes due to a limitation in the Sonic-Pi, the software I was using. I've now learned enough SuperCollider to be dangerous and as a result have worked around those limitations, producing a full hour-long piece containing all of the names. This is not that piece. It is a shorter version (a Radio Edit, as it were) that doesn't exceed this site's file size limits. [more inside]
December 5
The Huggy Molly
Excerpt from a streamed performance last night of music & stories loosely organized around some of my childhood anxieties. It's off-the-cuff storytelling with a live improvised electronic soundtrack in a mode inspired by itinerant handymen roaming the back roads with a harmonica and tales to share on the porch.
End Meeting For All
This stupid hellscape means that not_on_display and I are spending a lot of time zooming when we'd rather be smooching. How do you end a zoom when you'd rather kiss someone goodnight? So we came up with this song which we were singing to each other, and we put it to music. My vocals, his Casiotone CT-605. We will make a video that neither of us are in but that prominently features a hyrax.
December 2
Pensive
November 30
Legends Of The Magi (Overture)
Here is an unused overture for "Legends Of The Magi, A Christmas Rock Opera" - six songs done in collaboration with eight musicians (bass, cello, violin, keys, vocals). [more inside]