All posts by anothercultland

REMODELING IS ALWAYS… MESSY

Foolishly – pretty damned foolishly – kirk started to poke around on this, our unfortunately-yet-forcefully long-neglected site…

… and he, ummm, well, installed a new theme.

And then he activated it.

(Well, it told him to activate it. So he did.)

Ooops.

So there might be some stuff missing.

And there might be some seriously WTF stuff that shows up.

But the good news is we’re… ummm, doing some… stuff.

Not going to say much more than that – since every time we say we’re going to do something, The Universe laughs at us.

And then stomps on us.

Hard.

So let’s just say:

Remodeling is always messy.

And just leave it at that.

In the meantime, here’s a cute picture of Pounce. (We’ll tell you about her later.)

k&w 😉

WE’RE STILL HERE.

Howdy. It’s been a while. 😉

We’ve just released our first, ummm, well, anything in two years – and it’s a new mix of always – a song that originally appeared on hey… that’s not a tootsie® roll… in 2009. You can listen to it or download it from Free Music Archive, or on Bandcamp. (And yes, we’ve finally enabled the “name your price” feature on Bandcamp many kind people asked us to put in place so they can support us directly. But remember: it’s still free. Hey – old habits die hard, y’know…)

This song carries a special meaning for us.

To be honest, always is pretty atypical of what we do: it’s quiet, spare, no weird instrumentation… and it’s the closest thing to a “love song” than we’ll ever record again.

It’s one of our oldest songs – our files show us working on it as early as November 2003…

… and it’s also the very last thing we were working on when Wendy suddenly lost control over her voice in late 2004, just before we moved to Mexico Beach.

Within a couple of months, she could barely swallow.

Six months later – after the first of two throat operations – we were told point-blank that she would never sing again.

And 4 years later, always was also the very first thing Wendy sang just to prove to herself that she WOULD sing again. (In fact, the vocal take used in this version is that take.)

In essence, this song changed everything about our musical direction – but to us, it was about something much bigger:

To us, it’s about Permanence. And Perseverance.

Whenever we hear it, it tells us to Never Give Up.

So… three weeks ago, out of the blue, in the midst of the intensifying maelstrom that’s been our life of late, we received a request for a high-quality (read AIF/WAV) version of always that could be used within a soundtrack.

The version on htnatr was a rushed mix – and we always thought we needed to go back & “do it right…”

… but we never did. (Life comes at you fast.)

We checked out that rushed 2009 mix – and even though we’re still manically fighting the total clusterfuck that has forced our current 3-year hiatus (more surgery while needing to move – we’ll post about this later), we immediately just dropped everything to go back & do this song justice: to finally “do it right.”

We realized we needed to do this – not just for a soundtrack, or to make it sound better, but to remember who we are and what we believe in.

We see so many people lately – so many of our friends – suffering through horrible personal battles while The Disaster Named 2017 continues to shit on us all.

And as wave after wave of horseshit falls on top of us all, it’s so damned tempting to just give up, just give in, just let these waves of hopelessness wash over us…

Don’t.

Don’t stop fighting the good fight.

Because those good things about being human – being humane – are still worth fighting for.

14 years after we first started on working on it, 12 years since Wendy was told she’d never sing again, 8 years since she proved everybody wrong & we released it – and after all of the many, many other battles we’ve dealt with just to survive & get to this moment…

We think we finally got it right.

We’re Still Here.

And we’re still making music, dammit.

Consider this song as our small token of resistance.

Never Give Up.

k&w 😉

all souls day, 2017

p.s. mzkitty sez hi

Well, Hell

Okay – so we haven’t updated the site (heck, we haven’t even looked at the site) for 16 months.

Hey, it’s been a bit… Busy.

Wait – you’ve been away for 16 months & that’s all you’re going to say about your absence?

Well, yeah.

Just let us get through Wen’s next surgery & we’ll fill you in soon.

Really.

We promise.

 

k&w 😉

 

p.s. if things go well, we do have plans…

p.p.s. knock on wood…

p.p.p.s. mzkittysezhi

It’s actually unborked

We fixed this website.

By ourselves.

Be afraid. Be very, very afraid.

Now, maybe now, we’ll finally post something substantive – maybe even very, very soon.

Y’know, maybe even something thought-provoking.

 

In the meantime, here’s Luna as a kitten.

 

 

Hey, we’re not above pandering to the public with cuteness.

 

more soon

k&w

P.S. please don’t tell mzkitty we posted that

Okay, it’s really borked

Per our previous post about our site being somewhat borked, it seems our site is… well, seriously borked.

Which means get get to make an all-new one! From Scratch! 

(Just imagine our enthusiasm thinking about that project.)

Anyway, in the meantime, you can read this post we made on Medium. It’s basically a pep-talk. (And so is it’s title.)

As for our personal going-ons, we’ll have something to report on that shortly. (That Medium post reveals a bit of what’s been happening.)

Meanwhile, we’re actually firming up plans for… stuff. Good stuff.

Then again, if you want to make the Universe laugh – tell it your plans.

So, for right now, our lips are zipped.

But hey, we’re still alive!

And hey, we actually made two posts in less than two months! 

We’ll call it Progress.

Now we just need a copy of WordPress For Dummies.

And time to read it.

And then time to do something about this !@#$! site.

argh

k&w 😉

Yes, We’re Still Breathing

And yes – we’ve borked our site.  (Images. Stuff like that.)

We don’t know how it happened – but it did. (Fits with everything else that’s been going on… and hey, we’ve told you we’re NOT web designers.)

What the hell. At least it’s back up.

As to our silence/absence – well, it’s been, umm, more than insane.

We’ll update everything soon.

And explain what the hell has been going on.

Really.

But first we need to find those damned images again.

argh

k&w <:-0

Once More From The Top. With Feeling.

(Note: our regular listener knows this stuff by heart. This is for anyone who may have read our new Aux.Out. article on music discovery & just can’t figure us out. )

“Who the hell are you guys?”

We get that question. A lot.

The short answer:

We’re kirk & wendy. Or wendy & kirk. (We’re kind of interchangeable.) We make music. And our manager is a cat.

That’s usually enough to scare people off.

If not,  we get asked:

“Oh! So what kind of music do you make?”

That’s a question we still can’t answer – even after 12 years of releasing music.

Our best attempt:

another cultural landslide is an on-going experiment: our music is all about Taking Risks. To us, music is a journey, not a destination – so we just go wherever It takes us. We never do the same thing twice: No Two Songs Alike. Ever. This makes us “post-genre,” because… well, genres don’t work well with our stuff. (We’re also shit-stirrers: we want to make people think.)

And once finished, we give our music away for free – because, to us, music is a gift to be shared.

Usually after saying all that, everyone either runs away – or tells us “that’s a lousy business model.

Screw business models.

We Make Music. Period.

You’re still reading? Hmmm.

In that case…

This Is Why We Do What We Do:

Both kirk and wendy were classically trained musicians. We both went to prestigious music schools.

And we both hated our musical education with an absolute passion.

What we experienced was a cookie-cutter approach to music: a way of thinking about music totally foreign to the organic creation & performance of music. You were required to work within one particular genre only. A particular instrument was designed to be used in only one type of music. Maintain the status quo. Don’t push the envelope.

Bullshit.

After several years of this crap inside academe & outside in the “real” world, we left the world of music behind us, thinking that making music wasn’t supposed to be a part of our lives…

… but upon re-meeting each other decades later, we fell back into making music almost instantly – this time with a renewed vigor. It wasn’t that we wanted to make music with each other – we had to make music with each other…

And this time we would do what we wanted to do – not what was socially acceptable, and not what was culturally expected. We wanted any music that came from us to be a living thing – even if it ended up looking like the baby from “It’s Alive.” (What the hell. That baby had really cute claws and an awesome growl.)

Most importantly: there would be No Limitations, and No Bullshit Allowed – and we would do it outside the standard music ecosystem.

We went as far as creating a basic philosophy: seven rules for how we’d make music… and supplemented those rules with seven built-in self-destruct mechanisms.
The another cultural landslide Rules For Making Music:

1) The Music Must Always Comes First. We serve the music – the music doesn’t serve us. When we walk into the studio, whatever comes out, comes out. We plan nothing – not themes, not lyrics, nothing. It comes together on its own, by itself – and that’s what it is.

2) Music is a journey, and never a destination. We don’t know what it will sound like until we get there. No boundaries. No genres. Just music. We will not be pigeon-holed.

3) We will never think about what we make. We will just do it.

4) No egos. That crap just gets in the way of making music and connecting with anyone who would like to hear our music. This translates into acl being a lower case band, with no last names – just kirk & wendy – and no band pictures. (Besides, MzKitty’s own oversized ego would never allow that.)

5) If we’ve done it before, we won’t do it again. That would be boring. And that’s why all of our songs sound so different from each other: because every song must be different. If a new song we’re creating starts sounding like something else we’ve done before, we throw it out. (We have a very large musical graveyard.)

6) Music is a gift to be shared (it literally saved our lives), so we will always give away our music For Free. The sole exception to this rule would be music commissioned & created for a specific purpose (what the hell, that way we could buy more shit to make more music) – but even then, a lot of the time we give that music away, too.

7) Most Importantly: We Refuse To Take Ourselves Seriously. We don’t make Art. We make Music. And music should be fun to make. When it stops being fun, we’ll stop. Period.

 

The another cultural landslide Self-Destruct Mechanisms:

We’re married – and crazy in love with each other – so we decided to made seven more rules to protect what we treasured most: each other, and our music.

1) If it starts to screw up our marriage, We Stop.

2) If it starts to feel like an obligation, We Stop.

3) It must always be fun; even if we’re creating some totally dark & gloomy work,  it must always be fun to create. If we no longer have fun creating, We Stop.

4) If by some astronomically fat chance we became successful at making music to the point it would require us to build an organization to maintain it, We Stop.

5) In fact, if we can’t do it by ourselves, We Stop. (The only exceptions to this rule are in areas we truly, truly suck at – like artwork & websites – because we suck at art, and we really suck at web design.)

6) Our music must always be Honest and From The Heart. If we hear a cash register sneaking its way into a piece of music, we throw the piece out. If all we hear are cash registers, We Stop.

7) Once we release our music, our goal is to connect with every listener as an Individual. We will encourage them to Create. Encourage them to Grow. Encourage them to Think. And most importantly, Give Them Hope. If we can’t do that, We Stop.

 

We’ve lived by these rules for over 12 years now. This is Who We Are.

So why is it important that we’re telling you these rules?

These aren’t just the rules we live by.

These are our promises to You.

You are not a Wallet. You are not a “Consumer.” You are not a “fan,” or a part of our “fanbase.” We refuse to buy into that leftover 20th Century horseshit thinking.

You Are An Individual – and you deserve to be treated as such.

You are Our Listener – and Our Friend. And we’ll be your friends – if you want us to hang around. 😉

This is how we do things. And we keep our promises.

We are truly honored and humbled that you’ve chosen to listen to us – or, for that matter, read our rantings.

And we thank you for reading this.

Because You matter to us.

kirk & wendy – aka acl, aka @anothercultand, aka another cultural landslide

P.S. as usual, mzkitty sez hi

It’s About Damned Time.

Okay, so we’ve been slacking here.

Well… not exactly slacking – we’ve just been busy doing other things. And we’ve actually got a bit of news to report:

• If you’ve been here before, you’ve probably noticed Things Look Different. (If you haven’t been here before – well… Howdy. We’re honored & humbled you’ve come for a visit.)

We’re redoing the entire site – and anybody who knows us knows we suck at website building. We’re still adding stuff, figuring things out (especially for mobile) – so improvements are on the way.  Stay tuned.

• We’ve spent the last three months or so writing a very long article for one of our favorite music sites: Aux.Out., the long-form arm of Consequence Of Sound. As usual, it’ll probably get us in lots of trouble. Bail money will be accepted. 😉

Update: Here’s the link to the article! The Elephant In The Music Room

(You should be reading Aux.Out. anyway: they post really great long-form music writing, and we wholeheartedly recommend them – and not just because they’re posting our stuff, either.)

• Our most recent music is still up at music.anothercultland.com (well, some of it); and some of our not-so-recent music is still up at our alonetone page…

And yes, there are things missing – lots of things, actually – like whole albums & EP’s and whatnot.

That’s because we’re finally embarking on our long-promised Remake/Remix/Remodel effort – so we’ve pulled some of our back catalogue while we work on it, and will be posting remastered versions ASAP… plus there’ll be an all new 5 or 6-song EP of stuff we wanted to do over/do right, entitled beat it with a stick.

We figured this would be a good way to ease back into recording after the death march that last days, last days became – so once we’re done with this project, it’ll be time to do New Stuff.  (Knock On Wood.)

• And for those who have asked, there are still a few limited-edition signed & numbered last days, last days  postersCD’s available – and they’re basically free – so grab ’em while you can… ’cause we won’t be doing that again.

So, there you have it: new look, new writing, new stuff on the way.

So maybe we haven’t been slacking after all.

Hmmm.

We obviously need to add some slacking to our schedule.

We’ll work on that, too.

 

Thank you for being there for us – and always remember: You Matter To Us.

 

k&w 😉

p.s. as usual, mzkitty sez hi… but you probably already knew that.

 

 

Social Isn’t Just Another Word

In our last monster blog post, we explained what we’re doing with our music – and our desire to forge connections with you & Keep It Personal.

Most importantly, we explained why we’re doing it.

A wonderful person read our last post & paid us the ultimate compliment: she called it “radically human.”

That’s Us in a nutshell.

And now we want to take that further.

We want to start a conversation with You.

You see, we don’t believe that “social” is just another way to sell your wares or toot your own horn.

For us, being “social” isn’t supposed to be about “marketing.”

We think “social” is supposed to be about People.

About being Human.

And about sharing conversations, information, joy, sorrow, outrage – and a desire to make things better. In the character-limited posts we all create, we seek to reach out to each other – to open a door, a window, a line of communication – and find a like-mind; someone who will read our posted thoughts, and perhaps respond in kind.

For that reason, we (acl) want to use “social” to take this idea further.

So, on Monday, in our social feeds, you won’t see us doing open posts about our album – instead, we want to start conversations. One-On-One.

This is going to take us a while to accomplish, but starting tomorrow, we’ll send you a series of three or four messages – they will be highly individual in nature (hey, we pay attention to what you post)… and they won’t be spam.

 

Here’s all we seek to accomplish in these messages:

1) To formally say Hello for the first time (this may seem silly, but hey – we were taught to be polite) and to tell you we appreciate you – because we wouldn’t be following you if we didn’t appreciate who you are, what you do and what you contribute to this world.

2) We’ll probably point you to our album as a way of introducing ourselves – because this particular album represents who we are, what we do & what we believe. Our music is free – and will always be so – and if you like it, it’s yours.

And hey, if you like it, feel free to share it with others. If not, that’s cool. We’re not for everybody, and we know it.

3) Most importantly: To start the Conversation. And perhaps you might start or open up new conversations with others as well.

That’s the meaning of “social” to us – To Start Conversations. To bridge gaps & get us talking to each other, openly and freely, without bullshit.

To be truly human.

And we’re not looking for anything – no favors, no sales or shit, nothing like that.

And perhaps this all sounds corny and stupid – but in this jaded world we currently live in, maybe this type of corny-ass activity is what’s required if we really wish to re-humanize our cold-ass inhumane society.

Again, this will take us time – but we’re dead serious.

 

We follow you because we like you. We like what’s in your head. And we seek to champion anybody with the courage to create – because let’s face it: whether you make music, write, create art, whatever – even if you view it as just a job, creating is an intensely personal act of courage; it’s baring the core of your being, putting it on display and then shouting out into The Void in hopes that someone, somewhere might be listening.

We’re listening.

And we want to help.

 

So…

Howdy.

We’re another cultural landslide. We make music.

And we’d like to make your acquaintance.

kirk & wendy

p.s. mzkitty sez hi

 

 

Where You Can Find “last days last days”

last days last days is out – and we are truly humbled by how it has been received.

And we are grateful to you. Gracias.

Now, rather than pepper news feeds with multiple posts featuring link after link, we decided to bundle them one place: right here. We’ll add to this as more links come online. (Streaming was supposed to come online last Wednesday. Well, It WasYeah. Riiiight. As of right now, Rdio is definitely live; no joy from Spotify & Medianet-distributed streams. Points go to Rdio.)

Remember – our music is ALWAYS Free.

Bandcamphttp://anothercultland.bandcamp.com/ or music.anothercultland.com This is the site to find the best audio quality, since we uploaded here at 24bit/88.2Khz – and as such, we’d recommend downloading it at the highest quality you can handle. IT’S FREE.

Soundcloudhttps://soundcloud.com/anothercultland/last-days-last-days-complete This one is special, as it’s the only place on the Net where you can hear the album as if it were a CD – completely gapless, as we designed the album to be. And it’s downloadable, too.

Alonetonehttp://alonetone.com/anotherculturallandslide/playlists/last-days-last-days-final-release-version alonetone has been our home away from home since it started; it’s also a great place for musicians to post their music with no hassles and be a part of a community. For free music with no boundaries, it’s the place to be.

YouTube: Yes, YouTube. Heck, we even have our own channel there. (Oooo! Fancy!) With the assistance of MzKitty’s personal photographer AJ Galli (yes, she has a personal photographer – sheesh), we’ve posted simple videos of all 16 of last days last days‘ songs – so if you’d like to post one song in particular within your social feeds, you’ll find a video for it there.

And this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYsrwYuqTyc&list=PLFjdIyKHXlrp6HhLqNG-aDdDNYegQ2eJT should take you to a complete ordered playlist of the entire album. We have found, however, that Playlists don’t seem to translate to mobile platforms. Go Fuckin’ Figure.

Also, it you’d like to make a video of one of our songs, knock yourself out! All our music is CC-BY-3.0, so if you make something and we like it, we’ll tell everyone where to find it.

last.fmhttp://www.last.fm/music/another+cultural+landslide/last+days+last+days We think we’ve beaten all the bells & whistles, and you should be able to listen to the entire tracks here instead of the 30 second previews. We think. At least we did enable it, for what it’s worth. We’ll see. You should at least be able to download from here or get it on their “radio” app.

iTunes: Yes, we’re on iTunes – we’ve been there since 2008 – but you won’t find our music for sale, since we don’t sell our music. Instead, search for us under Podcasts – that way we can get it to you for free. (We love subverting commerce.) 🙂 Hell, you can even subscribe & get our stuff whenever we make it.

(Note: looking at their latest listing, iTunes has does something weird with the Podcast section, so things are all bolloxed up as far as track order. When we get a chance, we’ll figure out a way to fix this.)

Streaming:

Streaming is showing up late – but we are definitely live on Rdio (sounds amazingly clear & defined), we are clearly listed on Gracenote & Songza – but Spotify and MediaNet distrbution still have yet to show up. Figures.

Where you won’t find last days last days:

Google PlayAmazon, eMusic. Our music is Free. Not a product. So, not there.

Same goes for Pandora. (No way. More on that in another post.)

iHeartRadio. Clear Channel Radio and acl Do Not Mix. At least not in this lifetime, if we can help it.

We’re still debating about doing Sirius.

Finally, it is quite possible that due to the way digital aggregation works, you will see the album appear on certain sites with Money attached to it; this is an unfortunate artifact of the way aggregation works. DO NOT PAY MONEY FOR OUR MUSIC. We went with aggregation strictly to enable streaming. And we won’t be looking for royalties, either.

So, there you have it. It’s our fondest hope that something in our music will make you smile.

And thank you for listening!

More later…

k&w 😉

P.S. mzkitty sez hi