Moose River the Soundtrack – Track 01
August 16th, 2008THE SHORT STORY:
I’m gonna start posting songs on the website that I think would sound great in a Moose River soundtrack. Scroll down to listen to it!
THE MEDIUM STORY:
I’m working on throwing together an official “unofficial” Moose River soundtrack. It’s unofficial in that, y’know, I can’t legally use most (if not all) of these songs in any official (read: money-making) capacity. But at least you could download these songs from SoulSeek or BitTorrent or whatever, throw them into a playlist in iTunes and listen away while (re)reading me comic! The beauty of this plan is that I can start posting tracks of the soundtrack online–as well as a short little blurb explaining why that particular song is of any importance–so you can listen to it immediately on the site. I got this really cool plugin just for this very purpose. Just scroll down to the bottom to check it out.
THE SONG:
Moose River is written in my interpretation of the whole indie style, which in turn might actually just make Moose River part of its own genre. So when throwing other people’s work into the mix, while those works are individually considered to be part of some other genre by the original artists, combining all the different works together creates a new genre in of itself. This is not unlike taking the same instruments used in Classical music and rearranging them to create Jazz music, or even Rock & Roll… it’s all based on how the sound is arranged. Now as time goes on and I reveal more songs off the Moose River soundtrack, you’ll begin to absorb what is the Sounds of Moose River.
The first song is a band from Glasgow, Scotland called Camera Obscura. Apparently they’re “Twee-Pop”, but I’ve listened to other “Twee-pop” artists like Belle & Sebastian and I’ve never really been able to get into them. What I do love about Camera Obscura is lead singer Tracyanne Campbell’s quiet and reserved voice. It’s almost as if she has a secret that she wants to share with only me, and only after we run away together in the middle of the night. It’s very easy for me to get lost in a lot of their songs, almost like being in a great hedgemaze, and plenty of times I don’t want to find my way out. Their song Eighties Fan makes the perfect addition to the soundtrack, and I would consider it to be the quintessential song for Anne.
[audio:http://www.mooseriver.us/audio/Camera Obscura.Eighties Fan.mp3]The long story about the Moose River soundtrack is under the cut. …
THE LONG STORY:
One of these days I would like to be a professional artist. I would love to be able to use art as a means to sustain my life and the lives of my (eventual) wife and children. But in order to get to that position in life, I need both a means to practice my craft and plenty of end material that proves to myself and others that I know how to do a particular something. Now ideally those “particular somethings” that would be the foundation that I can build my comfortable living off of would be through the writing, directing, producing and selling of my own comics and films, either straight to you guys or through a publisher.
If you don’t know it by now, Moose River is merely the answer to the question “ok, so where do I begin?” when it comes to how I should proceed in becoming a professional artist. Moose River exists to provide me with the opportunity to take care of some fundamental foundational work towards my artistic goals. I mean, I gotta start somewhere. Fortunately, like an onion, the possibilities that Moose River provides me are layered upon each other, all of which are waiting to be pealed and revealed. So far Moose River has taught me how to create my own mini-comic and my own hand-bounded books, how to write a narrative (in the past all I could do was write nonsensical short stories), how to run a booth at a convention as well as how to be a good salesperson, as well as a shitload of other important concepts that are all good to know as my artwork and I become more well known.
The next big opportunity that I expect Moose River to provide for me would be going from a comic to a short (or even a feature[!]) film–using the comic itself as the storyboard for that project. The purpose of a Moose River film is exactly the same as the purpose of the Moose River comic; I’ve produced several short films and film projects in the past, but I have yet to work on a narrative film, much in the same way I’ve never written a narrative comic prior to Moose River. But while the actual filming part of Moose River the movie is obviously a long ways off, working on various elements of the film is certainly not. The one thing I do know and don’t need the Moose River film to teach me is that each project needs a proper soundtrack to go with it. Space epics require a large, sweeping symphony… romantic-comedies from or about the 60’s in Europe will throw in a xylophone for good measure… and an indie, drama-comedy like Moose River needs to have contemporary–and equally indie–music. So while I wait to finish Moose River the comic in order to translate it into Moose River the movie, I can get cracking on ironing out the soundtrack that’ll work best with the movie, just so I don’t have to worry about it once the movie gears finally begin to grind.