MUSIC
Technology you can dance to

---

Bow to the music of James Call and his little friends!
MUSIC FOR YOUNG ADULTS
POWER
HUBRIS TO GO
RECENT TRACKS
MAIDEN AMERICA
RAPT INSIDE
IT'S DA SPOOJ


The quintessential German Cars vs. American Homes album is the only one yet to be released to the public: One in a Million. It will be availiable for purchase very soon from one of those services like CD Baby, so just hold your horses. In the meantime, you can visit here to purchase the album. Here's two tracks so you can decide for yourself if this music is too far out for you, or just right:

Waste of Time
Tag Along

---

At last, Music for Young Adults , the latest release by the Missing Teens, is FINALLY finished and sounding golden, baby. Below find songs both recent and forlorn, including some that date back to James' original dropping-out-of-college period! With samples by DJ Pu Yi and vocals tracked lovingly by Alex Beck and Roko Djokovic, these songs are easily the most neurotic and funkiest to date in the repetoire.

Here's the "hit," kids! Featuring samples by DJ Pu Yi, bass by Smooth Dave Tirolo, and horns - yes, horns! - by the Porn Horns!!! Get in the hot tub made of cocaine and LET'S PARTY!!!

This song is co-written with Adam Reiter. Note the use of just ONE instance of Sculpture to achieve so much. Guitar by Spencer Chakedis and the original German Cars vs. American Homes guitarist, Jared "Fluffycombs" Rock. Also with the drums of Darren Jones and bass of Dave Tirolo, and once again, the Porn Horns! Thanks to Sanford Kent Livingston and Mike Weber for the mix notes on this tune.

This is my attempt at combining "Children's Song" with "Haitian Divorce". Heavily influenced by the samples of DJ Pu Yi. It took me about 2 years to finally record decent vocals to this tune. I could have slowed it down to 135 bpm from 150, but where would be the hardcoreness in that? Anyways... mucho gracias to Alex Beck for putting up with me as I recut the vocals time and time again, and to Roko Djokovic for providing the beautiful guitar tracks.

This is one of those tunes that I just couldn't recreate using Logic's many internal synths... I had to revert to the good old QSR and JV-880 for this one. Still use them to this day. Oh, it brings a tear to my bleary eye. Drums by Darren Jones, and all those basses by Dave Tirolo, except for the turnaround, played with masterful craftmanship by Neill Sanford Kent Livingston III. And horns by the Porn Horns. How right you are, Jeeves!

---

Power. is a cult hit amongst many weirdos. Some individuals even prefer it's hard-quantized sound to the live sound of GCVAH. Though outdated today compared to modern core-core, Power is still considered one of the finest core-core albums ever produced, and well worth a listen. The entire album is availible for purchase at http://www.crapcore.com/merchandise.htm. Here's a few tracks for free to pique your interest:

On and On

This is a smash hit that will have you puking with ecstasy. Move over, St. Thomas of Aquinas, it's time to kick out the jam!!!

Vacuum

This is it, the hit single. The original version. Perfect in its complete sterility.

Tick

There's a lot of problems with "Tick": the vocal performance isn't very "wet," the lyrics aren't totally appropriate, and most of all, it wasn't performed by a band with 2 drummers and a 5-piece horn section. This is one of angriest songs the real James ever wrote, and is a favorite amongst Americans who hate America. It's included here because it's one of the few tracks GCVAH didn't really do better from Power.

---

Hubris to Go was the 9-track follow up to Power, also produced by the fabulous Beebe brothers, in the confines of Alex Call's small houseboat in Sausalito. This album is definitely a step up songwriting-wise and contains several tracks that went on to be big numbers for GCVAH, including "Waste of Time" and "Dance of the Skeletons". It also includes one of my personal favorites of my whole songwriting career, "Serve Cold". The album can be purchased, along with remixes and outtakes, at http://www.crapcore.com/merchandise.htm. Here's a handful of tracks for your listening enjoyment.

This is the original version. The GCVAH version is totally rocking; the original is much more laid back, and almost a completetly different song. Al the sounds on here come from the JV-880 and the DR-660 drum machine, a drum machine which sadly is currently on it's deathbed. This track is hereby commemorated to the DR-660. It served me well for many years. I will miss it sorely, especially the Vrb+Dly kit.

GCVAH did a much better version, but it never got recorded. Too bad. This is a charming love ballad and it's depressing as shit. Irony fans will appreciate this one, though not "post-modern" irony fans, who are too busy listening to the White Stripes to download this track.

When the First Presidents Concieved of Spaceflight

Even more of a cult hit than "Vacuum". This is considered by many core-core conneisseurs to epitomize the genre.

---

There's been a long interlude between Hubris to Go and the modern era when I just haven't released any solo material. After all, the original GCVAH was together during this time, and sequenced-based recording had to take a back seat. Slowly but surely, I'm getting around to recording those tracks, especially the ones I'm not likely to do with the new band, and releasing them. Some of them, like "Fernando and Louise" and "Harem of Women," are the best songs I've ever written, but they're in no state to be released to the public yet.

In the meantime, here's a bunch of tracks I've recorded mostly up the SAC with co-writer/producer Alex Beck, and also at home with Greg Travis, Sanford Kent, and others. I may put some of their solo stuff up here too if I get permission. We crank out these songs all the time so check back in for new material every few weeks or so.

The clasic Carpenters song, recorded entirely using a Serge Modular Synthesizer with only 2 oscillators. This song took us about 10 hours to record and mix. The sultry vocals and blissful ring-modulated sine waves are sure to remind you of the good old days, when life was sweet.

Kids these days don't appreciate real music. Here's another tribute to the good old days, when we used to go down to the speakeasy and hear the scat man play that horn and sing that jive. They don't write songs like this anymore.

This is just a rough mix. Unfortunately, a real mix is not coming at any point soon. The files were lost in the great server crash of '04. This is a solo song about a girl with a partying problem who turns to Christianity and loses her mind in doing so. Alex and I just can't get enough of the ladies. In the Sonic Arts Center program with us, there are only 2 ladies. 1 of them, Elizabeth, dropped out of the program. The others are Denny and Ania; I'm pretty sure they're both married. Here we send a little lite-rock tribute out to them, with chimes and everything. <

What would you do if you were the Tsar of all musicians? This is the question that the beautiful Alexsandra Vrebalov asked me one day at a school concert. I thought about it for a while and wrote this song. Enjoy.

Alex and I were very excited to work with the talented Shonen on a remix of his track, "Chillin'". We added a few samples to smooth things out and came up with a phat beat to go underneath Shonen's slick and gentle vocals. What we have here will put R. Kelly to shame.

This is an EXTREMELY rough mix of a tune that Sanford Kent, Greg Travis 2, and I kicked out one night at a party at my apartment where most of the guests didn't want us to turn on the gear. Sometimes it's good to ignore all the guests at a party where you're the host. How else could you concieve of this rock gem that features slammin' drums, solid piano and bass and two Andean pan flute samples? A higher-quality mix is coming at some point, but probably not soon.

This track is a little loud, so be careful. A collaboration with Neill Sanford Kent Livingston.

The title says it all. An instrumental track co-written with Barbara King. At the time, we were living together, and one night we had a little blow but no parties to go to, and not a lot of money. So instead, we just hung out in our apartment, smiled way too manically, and wrote this song. But this track is for all you cokeheads out there.

A very rough mix of a very good song that will be done, oh yes it will, with the new GCVAH, even if it kills me, and the other band members. Very poorly mixed, with several instances of clipping, but still worth listening to over and over again. Features the guest voice of Skinny D Kalish.

---

About a year ago, I co-wrote the music (along with Greg Travis 1) for a full-length dance piece written and choreographed by Barbara P. King. This was the first time I ever did anything like this, basically, and I think it came off pretty damn well. Mixing this thing was a real bitch, as I was trying to do it on a PC with a Celeron processor, which I thought at the time was supposed to be great, but actually turns out to be really lousy for audio. I had to record individual tracks in real-time, in chunks no longer than 30 seconds, or the whole computer would crash, and then mix them down and export the audio. Cubase VST: NOT ideal for audio mixing. Lesson to be learned.

This whole album will be availible to purchase someday. You can contact me if you are a choreographer or filmmaker and want the whole thing. Or if you're just a fan, I'd be happy to sell it to you for only the price of shipping and handling. Unfortunately, it's not yet for sale via internet.

Here's the highlights:

This was my personal favorite from the soundtrack. A truly collaborative work, too. I wrote the chord progression, as well as piano, bass, and string lines. Greg provided the awesome "percussion" samples that come in in the second half. And Barbara mixed up the end, using Cubase's matrix editor. This is a song that I think can be listened to over and over again and is totally enjoyable even without the context of the dance piece.

This track is actually largely not mine at all. It's basically a collaboration between Greg's awesome samples, and Barbara's playing around with the "scale correction" function in Cubase. I mixed the thing and did a little arrangement. It's included here as a sample of the more rhythmic material found in Maiden America.

This track is perhaps excessively bright, and a little busy, but then again, I am a big Steely Dan and King Crimson fan. Once again, great use of the scale correction tool. I didn't even know there WAS a Hungarian 1 mode!

---

The follow up to Maiden America, that also appeared in the Fringe Festival. Probably a better sounding soundtrack than MA, but similar in terms of style and compositional choices. We really had to crank this one out in a couple of weeks, but I used Logic up at the SAC for this project, and didn't experience the massive Cubase VST problems I did with MA. Also, I had access to the Space Designer reverb, which I dream about at night.

This soundtrack was pretty much written entirely by me with a little help from Barbara and NO HELP from Greg. Bad, Greg! You are a BAD PERSON.

Once again, you can get the whole album if you contact me. Here's a few highlights:

Is this a hip hop song, or an experimental dance tune, or what? I wasn't able to get the clean, visible bass tones I really wanted out of these tunes, but still, overall, I think the track is pretty slammin.

Pre-So Peter Gabriel, eat my dick!!! Listen to what a hardcore sample & hold LFO can do to an otherwise uninteresting synth lead sound.

The name says it all. The mix on this is pretty loud and pretty clean. The arrangment could be re-done, but uh, I'm sure some lunatic will eventually re-mix it and make it more interesting as that seems to happen to me a lot for some reason.

---

's no artist I've been more pleased to work with than post-modern hip hop troupe Da Spooj. Sometimes Da Foot Docta and Tha Man Who Wud Be King get a little feisty and difficult to work with. They nearly shot up my whole studio fighting over a 40 of Snapple one day. Still, I knew, when I discovered these guys freestyling outside of Beasty Feast (on Bleeker St. in Manhattan), that they were on to something BIG and that if I could get on board it might be big for me, too.

I landed the job producing their debut CD, Bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb. The only song we can release to the public yet is a rough mix of Bucket of Sno. It's about a magical bucket of snow. The other tracks are going to include Beasty Feast and Balloon Masta.

Da Spooj is based out of Frisco so it's hard for us to get together to wrap everything up. They also refuse to perform anywhere, period, until the LP is done. But when it is, watch out world, because things are gonna change big time.