Otis Kyaad

WARNING: Obligatory pretentious bullshit...

Not Normal

Otis' music is not 'normal'. It hides in its bedroom, the blinds down, the door closed. It needs someone like you to tap on the door and coax it out. Take it slowly, or you'll startle it and it'll tell you to get lost. Spend time getting acquainted, and you may even be mates forever.

Not Music

This collection will have your dad fuming.

"Is that what they call music these days?"

Maybe. Maybe not. But then one dad's harmony is another dad's dissonance. One mum's Mumford and Son is another mum's Muse. There has to be grit in the oyster if you're to find the pearl.

Not Agadoo

If you liked Agadoo on first hearing (are you normal?) you most likely wanted to rip off your ears every time your mum spun it up. No, you're probably the kid who thought Jon Anderson had mashed your brain in 1973 with his shastric scriptures. Huh! These days you handle your original Tales from Topographic Oceans vinyl like a priest handles the Host. This is normal.

Brenda Twissse - NME 2007

Track Listing

Each track has a few words by Otis. If you want to add your own words, just click the player and you will be taken to the Soundcloud page where the music is hosted and you can leave your comments there. Please be kind or constructive. Trolls can fuck off.

Vegan Virgin

Please don't cancel me. Oh, go on then, I won't care too much.

Addiction

Don't try this at home, kids.

Funny in the Head

Just a bit of fun. You win a cigar and a balloon* if you guess the origin of the vocal clips.

I Want... Love

German, Icelandic, we're all very cosmopolitan here. You'll guess where some of the vocal clips originate if you can understand the last bit in German.

Deception

This elfin woman is superbly talented and crazy (in a good way). There's a video of her floating about on YouTube where she describes how a television works. So I changed the meaning somewhat.

Deathbed Hedonist

Some have commented on the weirdness of the chords. They sound perfectly normal to me...

Another cigar and balloon if you guess the origin of the vocal clips.*

Shake Your Body

I originally meant for this to be a soundtrack to a video clip seen on YouTube. I tried putting the track to the video and found it too much like hard work. This film scoring stuff is tough! One day, one day.

Two Musics Musing

A very talented guitarist friend visited and just noodled about on his own. I layered and edited some of his takes then added a few chords and bangs to fill it out.

Suspects

Listening to a couple of documentaries, one on GCHQ and another on an Indian crime writer forced me to do some vocal clip mashing.

Gesture of Protection

The vocals on this are from a documentary where a 12 year old girl recited her poem. That was in North Korea so the meaning is a bit lost on me. But the words just sounded magical.

Painted on Rust

This started from a doodle I did on iPad's GarageBand during a long train journey along Italy's Ligurian coast. I fancied playing with some orchestration. It was pretty ham-fisted, but it taught me how difficult it is to do proper orchestral work. So I rearranged it into this instead. It was easier.

Everything but the Pearl

I really don't know where this came from. Sitting at the keyboard one night after a bit too much wine, it just came out. Needless to say, the original performance was awful, so I did a bit of editing as best I could. Next job is to get my extremely talented niece to play it properly.

Sound quality

All tracks are demo quality only. They're more like rough sketches to be developed, mixed and mastered. They've been balanced for listening on decent quality studio headphones, so they may sound odd on different devices - particularly commercial bass-heavy headphones. This will get fixed gradually, track by track when Otis gets time.

Many of the tracks sound gritty. Back in the 70s and 80s he would strive for cleanliness when recording on analog. These days everything sounds clinical so there's a sprinkling of grit to please. But not too much...

Disclaimer

* Don't smoke cigars, they're bad for you. And balloons are bad for the planet. And helium is a scarce resource. You get the idea.

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