Stop Die Resuscitate

More unfinished Stop Die stuff, this was supposed to break out into four different parts which we used to perform live. I think this was recorded in 2004 or 2005. That was a long time ago now.

Untitled (Too Late), rehearsal/improv track.

With Lucas Costello, Lyle Crilly (guitar), Mario Laquintana (drums), James Strachan (bass).

Recorded on my first, now gone iphone.

Trouble (Alternate Version)

We wrote and recorded this in July of 2006, you probably only ever heard it if you caught us live around this time.  I figure it’s as fitting a time as ever to let it back into the world again.  It didn't make it to The Gloom, as our direction shifted alot. Basically, we should have just started putting out internet EPs as we were going along. LEARN FROM OUR MISTAKES.

We had a really awesome video concept for this where our friend Lucie Tic (dancer/dj extraordinaire) were going to dance/busk with a boom box in front of various cheque cashing places around Toronto until we got kicked out...I still kinda want to do it to be honest.

This is a remix we did for Simone (Battle) in 2008, I think she was still in high school.  She’s a contestant in the top 16+1 of the X-Factor now, good luck Simone!

Anyway, had to get this monkey off my back.  Enjoy.

Was also going to write a guide detailing all the mistakes we made, so other bands don't make them. Probably will do after this election.

DOWNLOAD IT HERE.

FYI The really weird intro is like a minute long, feel free to skim ahead

Given that everyone in Toronto feels like fish en papillote when stepping outside in Toronto, I decided to post one of a few different versions of my favourite song that we recorded “Midnight Romance Blood” for the Gloom. I wrote this when I lived in an apartment in Parkdale that overlooked one of highest trafficking areas in the neighbourhood; so much happened while I lived there.

The first week moving in a dude whipped out his dick for the world to see.  I woke up to gunshots within a month of living there (no one was hurt).  There were two heartbreaking murders, and a man well known in the neighbourhood was sadly, hit and killed by a fire truck, right outside my window. I saw a HUGE drug bust with undercovers and a snatch and grab van.  I witnessed a man try to convince his wife to come back to their family and to stop working the street.  I saw a young kid whip around a corner and knock a full grown man out for money owed while I was ordering fish and chips.

The exact years that I saw and heard about all of these things kind of melt together, but somewhere in the middle of it all, on a brutally hot night or two I wrote this at my window (CLICHÉ I know, I know!).

The places that familiarized me with who was who in a parallel world; the runners, the users, the subsistence dealers, the suburban suppliers in luxury vehicles; Jimmy’s Tavern (?), the other place that’s now Mother India (the name escapes me right now), Jerry’s Fish & Chips, they’re are all gone now.  I kind of miss them, I kind of don’t.

DOWNLOAD: Midnight Romance Blood

Hush Little - Stop Die Resuscitate

Every remix off the Bad Night EP was dope. This one got a little less notice though, but I thought (and still think) it was incredibly bold.  It was a pretty big honour for me as I was a fan of Da Grassroots when I was a kid, and of LAL after I moved to Toronto; and me and Murr are buds now, so yeah, it’s dope. 

 It has a slow build, but wait for it, as it’s very much worth it. 

 Stupidly, as I was coming out of a college radio/hip hop background I thought it would be a good idea to put an instrumental of the original version on the B-side. Our label (Summer Lovers Unlimited Music, do the knowledge) guy Doug wanted another track, in this Doug was way right. Sorry Doug.  No idea what we would’ve put on it though. 

Lesson learned: bands don’t put instrumental versions of songs on wax, unless you’re a band that puts out instrumental music. Duh.

This is the original version of a track we did with the scintillating Graph Gonzales (nee Nobel) it ended up in a strip club scene in a B-movie female revenge flick that I can’t remember the name of (19 year old b-boy dream come true? JK @_0?). 

When we recorded this and Graph did the breath tracks, I think both Lyle and I blushed.

Graph’s been in LA doing a bunch of awesome stuff. 

She just did a track with my band mate from back in 2001 Masia One (Hi Masia!), so I’m assuming that will slay.

My favourite story about this song; a rap idol of mine told me that his youngest was conceived while this song was playing (TMI?).

Sorry this never got a proper release Graph, because it should have, but you know how it goes.  The final version for the album ended up a lot more polyrhythmic and very different.  Both versions are equally excellent. You’ll have to wait til later for the album version though.

FYI if you play this at work, the “F word” is used a few times, so maybe use headphones?

I don't know why there are so many question marks in this post.

In light of the recent news of You Say Party's "break".  I thought it would be fitting to post the most insane/bizarre remix we ever did, for their song "Quiet World".  Just listened to it for the first time in a long while, and got heart palpitations.  

I advise against listening to it if you're hungover or haven't had coffee yet today.

It's basically a three minute audio version of Gaspar Noe's "Enter the Void" (the film hadn’t been made at the time, I think this remix is from 2008 or 2009).

The original version of the song is quite pretty, kind of like a beckoning to step into the light.  So we decided to do a version that revealed that behind the light was a behemoth with sharp teeth as large as mountains, that was made up of hideous creatures escaping from it's belly. 

This came out on The Remik's Cube Album you can still purchase digital versions here. My favourite remix off of it was the vitaminsforyou remix of 5 Year Plan.

Sorry folks, the Canadian election has me tied up a bit. ANYWAY, here's one of two remixes we did a few years back for Tegan & Sara's "Back In Your Head".  The other one we did kind of went everywhere, this one was lesser known.

I decided to dedicate the remix to Jaime Sin and Will Munro because they had this great disco/house night called 7th Heaven, which was always amazing, and inspired this version of the remix.  Sadly, Will passed away almost a year ago now, and the gigantic hole he left in this city has yet to be filled. 

I wasn't as close to Will as a lot of other folks, but was lucky enough to call him a friend.  He still is a huge source of inspiration both creatively and politically.

Do me a favour, if you have the finances, donate to the Will Munro Fund for Queer & Trans Youth Living With Cancer here.

Also from four years ago, also unreleased, also for a Warner artist (dudes, you should just hire me for your digital marketing team or something). I've been in such a "Forget the music biz" coma that I had forgotten that we did this.

Buck 65’s “Way Back When”, it’s pretty fun. This was all Lyle, my only contribution was that there was another version of this remix that sounded like a Ricky J track, and Lyle was mad when I told him so.

This was a remix we did for Sally Seltmann (nee New Buffalo)/A&C, about 3 or 4 years ago, she liked it alot, we exchanged a few messages about it, and she even put it on her myspace (!), but for reasons unknown to us that's the only place it went.  She's an excellent lyricist/songwriter.

We spent about a month working on this one, and were pretty psyched on it, I think it wasn't too long after the Feist’s “1,2,3,4” was everywhere winning awards/accolades/ipod commercials, and we thought, “Wow this could do big things for us.” But here you are hearing for the first time. 

I think what happened was we sort of lost our champion at A&C (you know who you are, and thank you), so it was buried under a pile of more important things.

Also, this was a time when everyone was still trying to monetize anything they could get their hands on.  A word to labels, bands, producers, managers, something some of you still need to understand, a remix is essentially a free advertorial that may or may not bring new listeners to your artist. I think everybody gets this now, but some may not.  If you don’t, catch up. 

Also, if you’re a label/manager working with music licensing you might as well slap it into the database, and if it circulates to the MAJORMUSICINDIEBLOGZ some music supervisor in LA might try to license it or something. 

Anyway, this remix had quite a bit of influence on the direction "The Gloom" started going.

A&C folks if you want me to take this down holler [email protected].

This was our second last show; we were starting to go JAMC/Jesus Lizard-y a bit and seeing and touching David Yow's sweaty bod earlier that year inspired my shirtless antics. 

http://melissaclementedesigns.tumblr.com/ made the amazing feather necklace which got destroyed that night. :(

This is a remix we did for Die Mannequin's - "Saved By Strangers" in 2008, when fist pumping was still OK (Was it ever really though?).  FYI Care Failure is probably one of the nicest, most down to earth rock stars in Canada.  

There was a bunch of back and forth on this, between us and Warner.  Lesson for aspiring remixers (hi mom!), after a month "leak it", deal with the consequences later.  This was pretty much all Lyle, I just told him to add the breath track.  We were going to try and do some recording with Care but our schedules never lined up.