The Hostel Life Trailer

I hacked together two existing tracks and layed down a bassline and high hat on a new track en homage to The Roots song 'The Roots is Coming' then added some Don LaFontaine style voice over to score this trailer of Mehdy deciding to up and leave the day job. Main track features Candi on violin.

We're flying into Panama on Feb 3rd to start shooting the pilot season of The Hostel Life. Get on the website and sign up for email updates to get ready to vote on the details of what we will be doing. If your mom's not already a fan on Facebook steal her password and become one for her. She'll thank you later, I promise.

Bruce Lipton - Biology of Beliefs Video

A while back I wrote about correlation vs. causation in regards to DNA and epigenetics after reading Bruce Lipton's book The Biology of Belief. Here is a guy who is not only talking about cutting edge science that challenges much of the general publics' understanding of how to achieve health and happiness, he is also a great teacher who can bring across complex subjects in simple terms.

Check out these great videos to hear a once non-spiritual, allopathic research doc expound upon how he logically came to understand:

Why energy is more important to healing (controlling biology) than molecules (ahem....big Pharma)

Why belief controls biology

How stress makes your body susceptible to disease, hinders digestion and makes you dumber

How male scientists confusing the brain and the gonads screws up our entire understanding of DNA and how life manifests

Why genetic mutations are NOT random

How parents beliefs select their children's genes

How your body is a community

How cells communicate

How belief can rewrite your genes

How we broadcast thoughts and a way that we are all connected non-locally

How scientific reductionism gets it wrong

Why we are not controlled by genes as much as we are controlled by our perception of the environment

and even why we are not actually just in our physical bodies

Eliot in Orbit

Back in 2007 Tony and Kiki were both working for Bait & Tackle, an all in one, ad agency / production house up in Gloucester, MA. They are a great one stop shop for advertising needs.

Chad who runs Bait and Tackle decided to enter the 48 hour film festival. This is a film making competition where the entrants have 48 hours to make a film within certain parameters that they are given right at the start of the 48 hour period including a line of dialogue. In our case, "If you come up with something good let me know". Tony invited me up to Gloucester to play.

Chad's vision was ridiculously ambitious. We ended up having footage of the band Guster live on stage saying lines, an underwater camera shot, shots from two planes in flight, one over the Panama canal. We shot in two states in the US as well as in Panama, had stop-motion animation, fireballs, a green screen shot, dolly shots, sunset camera boom work, too many locations to remember as well as original music written and recorded during the 48 hour period.

I ended up being credited as Sound Engineer, Music Supervisor and co-producer on two of the original songs. I provided a couple of sound effects as well.

Way too much fun. I need to do this again.....though maybe a little less ambitiously.

Stop Motion Animation

I'm always wishing I could score more video. Animation has always intrigued me, stop motion in particular (think Wallace and Gromit). I got my first hands on taste of creating stop motion working with Eric while volunteering at Camp Bright Feathers. For years I have been looking for artists to create the visuals for me, so I can focus on the sounds. Volunteers are still welcome, but I'm through just waiting.



I've had visitors staying with me 3 of the last 4 weekends. This long weekend I decided to hole up in the house and get creative.

I've got my new camera (Canon T1i) that I bought for a trip to India, but will now be using to photograph where ever in South America you all send us while traveling with The Hostel Life instead. I've got iStop Motion installed on my little mac mini (got this really cheap from the 2007 MacHeist)and I went to the store around the corner and got some clay. I also grabbed a little wire framed fisherman toy that my mother gave me a while back.

I'm studying Latin rhythms a bit to get ready to travel to South America with The Hostel Life. I taught myself how to play the Timbao rhythm on a djembe (don't have congas). I didn't record that though....not there yet. I grabbed some samples of a Samba rhythm and built off of that for the score. I, of course, threw a break beat over the samba to funk it up and then added some individual hits from a kit drum on top of that to give it some heft. Then I recorded some acoustic, electric, classical and bass guitar before layering pads and assorted bits with my new little Micron synth (It's a bit digital for my taste...I need to get my Virus fixed soon) and a few other soft synths.

What ended up on the video is a 30 second edit of the 2.5 minute track that emerged. The edit was taken at an early stage while the song was still fairly empty. The full track starts out fairly organic and beautiful then takes a sudden turn for the darker before it ends back on the samba groove.

The focus of this stop motion test was to learn about how to sync movement with sound. This is fairly easy to plan when the numbers are simple. If the music is 120 beats per minute and the video is shot at 10 frames per second then I know right away which frames will land on a down beat. The music here is at 115 bpm and the video was shot at 14 frames per second. This is not as simple or consistent. I'm figuring out tricks as I go. I did decide to upgrade to the 'Express' version of iStop Motion as this allows soundtracks to be imported and video to be imported for rotoscoping.

What we have here is a 33 second clip comprised of 468 frames made from 431 individual photographs taken while enjoying a glass of red wine (note the drip running down the side of the glass once it is empty).

I'm guessing it'll be 5 years or so before I'm making anything truly impressive to look at. Owen begs to differ pointing out how the mind links different arts such as music and sound. I'd agree, but things will go a lot faster once I get people like him on board to collaborate.

Here's the full track:


Devin Martin - Latin01
right click to download

I've Joined The Hostel Life

I've just joined the cast/crew of The Hostel Life. As I mentioned before, I was scoring some promotional videos to help pitch the show to some networks. I had mentioned to Mehdy, the host of the show, over a few months of working together by phone that in order to write music I need inspiration, so at some point he would have to take me on one of his trips.

I was sitting in my apartment catching up with Benjamin and buying a plane ticket to India. The plan was to fly to Bangalore on Christmas to attend The Art of Living's Yes+ Winter Break meditation and service courses and then backpack around for a few weeks by myself hopefully meeting up with some family who would also be traveling in India at the time. I would fly out of Delhi returning to NYC on January 22nd. Literally as I was pushing the purchase button my phone rang. It was Mehdy. He told me that he was planning his next trip, the first real attempt at the show with networks watching. And he was putting together a new cast/crew. It's going to be a three person team. Mehdy is the host. Luke is the Director of Photography. They needed one more person; a sound guy, second camera, co-writer, editor, photographer, jack-of-all type...and I was his first choice. The travel details will be up to you (the audience), but it is looking like it will be to South America for 5 weeks.

"When do you leave" I asked

"January 22nd" he replied

Interesting right? This was on Monday December 14. I decided that I couldn't leave for over two months without some more prep-time and out of respect for my day job. So, I postponed my trip to India and will be heading where ever people send us with The Hostel Life. We meet up in Tampa on Feb 1st for a couple of days of test shooting and then we will be leaving the country. We're going to be moving fast and covering a lot of ground. We will each have a lot of responsibilities potentially both on and off camera.

The success of this thing is going to lie heavily on audience participation. This is truly intended as an interactive guide to traveling on a budget. There will be polls on the website and what the audience votes we do within the budget while showing you how. The idea is to show how you can have an amazing adventure while on vacation for $300-400/week. We're not talking about sitting in a little hut on the beach. We're talking about getting off the beaten path a bit and seeing the exotic as well as festivals, fairs, natural wonders, music, doing service in the community and meeting as many unique and interesting people as possible. I think I'm going to document the food that we find in each region as well.

We will be off the grid a fair amount, but are committed to finding the internet every few days and uploading video and other content to the site.

So PLEASE find The Hostel Life on Facebook and become a fan. The page just went up, but we already have over 2,000 fans. A lot of them are from India, which excites me. Maybe they'll vote the show there next. You can also sign up for email updates on the web site. You'll probably hear me petitioning for certain outcomes for the polls, so I may need your help steering the ship to interesting places. I never promised to be impartial.

Check out the photos page on the site. I've just put up some photos of my trip to Brazil.

Practically Ideal

Logan recently reached out to ask me if he could use some of my music for his new podcast called Practically Ideal. Billed as a 'podcast for idealists who like to keep it practical' Logan Beaux and Bob Caswell speak from an intelligent and pragmatic Libertarian perspective. Quite often Libertarians espouse an idealistic, yet completely unrealistic view of how the world 'should be'. These guys keep the hope alive, but look deeply at both the limitations and confusions inherent in many ways this political ideology is often expressed. They offer us a nuanced exploration of how libertarian thinking and action does and does not fit into the lives of intelligent, compassionate, integrally informed and open minded individuals who like playing video games and watching TV as well as being political active; or at least informed.

I, for one, am interested in Libertarianism both for specific reasons related to smaller government, less war, increased liberties (LEGALIZE IT!!) and increased individual trust and responsibility. But, as much as you may or may not support one particular flavor of free market capitalism, who doesn't feel the need for a viable 3rd party in American politics?

Practically Ideal touches upon politics, technology and pop culture....and they play my music. And who doesn't want to hear The Emergence every chance they get?

You can find the podcast at their website: http://practicallyideal.com/ or on iTunes.

Check it out, it's definitely worth a listen.

Chunky Move - Mortal Engine

Just got back from a night out in Brooklyn. Went to the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) to see Chunky Move's Mortal Engine. I could describe, but you should just watch:



Thanks to Kiersten for both turning me on to the performance and for coming with me to see the show.

Baraka

People have been telling me to see this film for quite some time. I think Tony told me first and most often. Baraka is hard to describe. For some reason I was expecting something more music video than story and more psychedelic than linear. It's none of these things and all of them. I'm not going to pretend to be able to describe it in detail here. It needs to be watched and the less specific your expectations are the better I think. But I will try to give you an impression of what the experience was like for me.

If ever I had any doubt about just how weird and wonderful this world is in all of its diversity of manifestation, Baraka put that concern to rest. The cinematography is stunning. The music, the sounds amazing. The sequence of shots tells a story that words would have only muddled and confined.

At times I was reminded of Planet Earth simply because of a sense of awe that someone had managed to film what I was looking at and managed to do so in such an intensely beautiful and powerfully delicate way. Nothing seems contrived or rehearsed or even particularly concerned with the camera. The director Ron Fricke plays with time and scale exploring both the sacred and the mundane.

Through ritual, through design, through creating, moving, praying, working and intensely held stillness the scenes that are shown in this movie weave an image of intense differences at many levels, but left me with a sense of a far deeper and more universal common core. Through 152 locations in 24 countries nature is put on display in all of it's geographical, animal, human and technological forms. I was often left with a sense that there was something at work in all of these scenes, a common drive, a shared want or need, that seems to express itself in the most wonderfully weird and inexplicable ways depending on the environment.

I wasn't sure how much I would be in the mood for Baraka at home alone on this Sunday morning with a slight hang over and a lot on my mind. I anticipated a broken viewing with a lot of pausing and getting up to eat or sleep or play guitar. I was in state for most of it; transfixed by the unexpected and lulled by the sweetness of it all. Even in it's darkness the images are tender and full of life.


In case you can't tell. I highly recommend seeing this film. Find the biggest screen you can and don't be shy with the volume. And if you do see it or have seen it, please hit the comment button below and share a response. I'd love to hear your reactions.

Baraka was released in 1992. A sequel, Samsara, is scheduled for release in 2010. I can't wait to see this in the theater. And apparently in 2007 the original film from Baraka was rescanned in an extremely high end custom manner, the audio remastered, and the whole thing released on Blu-ray disc in what Roger Ebert described as "the finest video disc I have ever viewed or ever imagined." I think it may be time for me to update my DVD player.

The Hostel Life

Owen Beckmann recently put me in touch with an old friend of his named Mehdy Ghannad. Mehdy is a world traveler who has mastered seeing the sites on the cheap and now wants to inspire and educate others to do the same. To that end he is pitching a TV show called The Hostel Life to a number of networks. It's basically a reality show that will follow him on his travels. He will be operating on a limited budget ($300 a week I believe) and the fun part is that there will be a website where the audience can interact with him and even choose where he will be going.

Mehdy has asked me to provide music for the clips, and hopefully for the show if it gets picked up. So check out the two vids I've got here and then head over to The Hostel Life on Facebook and become a fan. The more people show an interest the better the chances of this thing getting picked up. And who knows, I just might get to do some traveling around myself.

Emotional Eating - Integrative Nutrition Graduation

I stumbled upon this image today. It seems fitting on this Monday after graduating from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition (IIN) yesterday. I think this is a feeling that we have all experienced, though it is not always so clearly understood. Sometimes we don't recognize it as the absence of another and eat whatever is closest. Sometimes we recognize the loneliness and eat through it regardless, desperate for anything to make us feel full. I think at one time or another we all eat our way through a lack of love in our life. The key is not to punish ourselves, to swear up and down that it will never happen again and then to beat ourselves up when it does. I tend to think that awareness is curative. When it is allowed in on a deep enough level awareness in and of itself manifests change. Simply bringing our awareness to the many ways in which the way that we feel affects the way that we eat and the reciprocal ways that the things that we eat affect the way that we feel is a bold step towards a healthier and happier existence.

Being a holistic health counselor trained at IIN guarantees that one is bringing their awareness to these and many other ways in which food is an integral part of the complex web of our lives. Our relationships, our careers, exercise, spirituality, our environment, society, all of these things must be taken into account if we are to truly understand our cravings and how they can be sated. Rather than being a complication of the already hard to comprehend nutritional theories that we are bombarded with, I think that most who embrace these ideas experience a simplification. There is an immense freedom to be gained by jettisoning the usual confines of yo-yo weight loss and gain that accompanies other, less comprehensive and more prescriptive approaches to health. Once we take into account the many factors that are both in and out of our control we begin to see that it is not massive feats of will and grueling dedication that allows our health to flourish. It is not about attempting to fit our body into a particular mold, or eating within the confines of a particular diet that works for someone else. It is about addressing the situation with an embrace that is open enough to allow for all of the many factors that impact our sense of hunger and emptiness as well as recognizing the many, many ways that we can be full-filled.

"Ain't no sunshine when she's gone, it's not warm when she's away"

A deep breath leaves me feeling centered and grounded. Social awkwardness can leave me cold and jittery. A hug brings warmth and gratefulness into my heart. A paycheck can be empowering, a bill in the mail deflating. I could achieve all of the emotions above and so many more through food or it's absensce. Sometimes, when I don't recognize the emotions that my body is generating for what they are, I can confuse them with hunger and either deny myself or indulge in food as a means to try and control the situation. Times when I can simply pause and recognize what my body/mind/spirit are saying are the times when I can honor these emotions and choose to nurture myself appropriately. Of course, sometimes I'm just really fucking hungry.

I feel blessed to have studied with all of the amazing people in this program and am truly excited to now be sharing these tools with clients. If you are reading this I would love to work with you. If you are ready to feel powerful in your choices and are excited about the possibility of listening to and trusting what your body is saying to you than my program is aimed at you. It does not matter where you are at now (not even geographically, I am in NYC, but so far most of my clients I work with over the phone). Please check out my website and reach out for a free health history consultation. If you recognize that there is room for growth in your life, if you want to send increasing amounts of light into the areas of your life that have been in shadow too long, than let me offer the possibility that working with a health counselor is exactly the type of support that will empower you to live the life that you are capable of, but may have been denying yourself.

The Emergence - Please Rise 2

In November I broke my pinky finger hanging temporary shades with wine. I put one foot up on the radiator and the other on the arm of a reclining chair. The chair tipped over of course, and I caught my fall on the top of the head rest of that chair creating a 'minimaly displaced fracture of the distal fifth phalanx'. When I looked down and saw the tip of my left pinky finger bent back a bit beyond a perfect 90 degrees I immediately grabbed it with my right hand and SNAPPED it back close to straight as I collapsed with a scream down to my knees. It didn't quite make it back into place. My pinky was still curved a little bit backwards at the tip. I sat there for half an hour bending my finger over the back of a spoon trying to get it to pop back into and stay straight; all the while thinking, "this is going to make recording the rest of my guitar parts really f*$k!@& difficult!" Eventually Amy convinced me to go to the E.R. to get it looked at. They looked at it, x-ray'd it, declared it broken, declined to snap it any straighter, put a $0.50 splint on it and told me to go the Drug Store down the street to get a better one. They also sent me to a hand specialist to get a custom splint made. Apparently hospitals don't specialize in splints. Everyone was amazingly nice to me, cut me deals, slowed down and were present with me (who has no health insurance) and honestly seemed concerned about my musical ambitions. I felt somehow blessed to live in this place.

My finger is still crooked............................ but I can play just fine :)

I made the page of 'Nine Fingered Tasks' above listing things that i could accomplish on the album while on the plane ride to London ten days later that only required nine of my fingers (no guitar). I did some pretty intense time correcting, granular editing, mixing, vocal comping and arrangement of parts. All in all, The album ended up taking about a year and a half, from deciding to start writing to CD in hand. Not too bad me thinks.


About a year and a half ago I showed up at David's house in Boston with a contract which we signed with each other stating that we would write and record a CD within a year and then give away 1,000 copies. This included us each writing a song a day for the first 30 days. I live in New York City, David lives in Boston. The plan was to make this a The Postal Service style project sending each other pieces of songs to work on, except instead of the mail we used ftp transfers, email attachments, shared google documents, flash cards, notebooks, skype video chatting and any other means available to communicate. We even got together in person at times to write and play.

Directly upon returning from that initial trip to Boston I found out that my entire building had been vacated. Basically, over 200 people, largely artists living and working in loft spaces we had built out, had been kicked out of our homes and work spaces by the department of buildings. So I found myself suddenly homeless, though my cat Agape was actually padlocked into my aparment. For the next 30 days, while staying with my sister, friends Amy and Logan and in hotels and while at my office I wrote, recorded and sent David a song a day......for well over 20 days. At some point it just became ridiculous (the laptop I was using for recording died). But the time was fruitful for both David and I. Many of the 19 tracks that made it onto the album came out of this time.

David and I met back in 2000. I was DJing at raves and clubs around New England and looking to get back into making my own music as opposed to just playing others. David was making noise in various bands and looking for a more spiritual project to engage. The first time we got together to play the very first thing we did was write a song. I said something to the extent of 'fuck playing covers, let's just write something' and then started strumming chords. David just started singing and within a short while we had written GA, which later appeared as a hidden track on the Hunger Dreams soundtrack. We wrote songs, scored theater, played shows, collaborated on the recording of another project and then went our separate ways for a while. I had moved to North Carolina, dug into my career a bit and recorded some bands on the side. David became a Jewish Studies teacher and later the director of a Jewish school, got married and had a daughter and played in a few musical projects of his own. This album represents us asking the question of whether or not music is still an integral part of our lives and our relationship. I think the answer is a resounding yes.

Over the last year and a half we worked with 25-30 songs exploring themes of love and spirit, of loss and despair, of transcendence and embrace, integration and dissolution; reaching a new level of collaboration between us. This manifested as an amazingly fluid writing process. We co-wrote both the music and the words on this album with an intense openness, vulnerability and clarity often times tearing each others work down only to get together and rebuild it. We recorded in Brooklyn and in Boston and finally had it mastered in Manhattan. We are now in the process of giving away 1,000 CD's. We invite you to find us on Facebook or on MySpace, become a fan or a friend and ask for your free album. You can find David in Boulder, CO this week and in the Boston area after that. I am in and around Brooklyn, NY. We would love to share this music with you. If you go to www.NoAffiliation.com and make a donation of $5 or more to cover shipping I we will send one to you.

This is project NA0018 from my label NoAffiliation. The CD is free, but we are accepting donations to help fund this and future projects.

Hunger Dreams

A number of years back Anthony Schwartzman approached me to write a song or two for a theater piece he was working on for his theatre company Oblivion Productions. When all was said and done I had worked with him and David Wesson to write, record and perform the score for Hunger Dreams. David, who I had been collaborating with on our DaVerse project, worked with me and the cast as a vocal specialist extraordinaire. The cast sang and flew (sometimes simultaneously). Ed Fians banged on junkyard parts as our live percussionist. We performed Hunger Dreams at the Boston Center for the Arts Cyclorama (fucking amazing room) and at the Brooklyn Lyceum. What you see above is a trailer built from live footage of those performances that Tony put together and I scored in anticipation of the second coming of a story which has yet to be fully told. Some of the music is from the original score, some I wrote for the trailer. Something tells me that the journey is not yet complete.