Elowyn, 2 months old!
Waking up next to this beautiful baby girl is always the highlight of my day. If she’s not peacefully sleeping like a little angel, she’s kicking and giggling and smiling at me with wide blue eyes and rosy cheeks.
It’s been a while since my last blog so I thought I’d fill you in on Once Upon A Time album production progress.
Firstly, my good friend and producer, Michael Thompson of Ivory Tower Productions, has sent me a number of amazing tracks to review for the Once Upon A Time (Part 1) album!!! Each of the songs on the album are inspired by classic literature and poetry (plus a few very select classic movies).
I sincerely can’t wait for you to hear how amazing it all sounds. We’ve got …
- Agatha, which you’ve probably heard on YouTube (there’s a live performance of it from a couple years back which I’ll embed below).
- Crocus Garden, which was inspired by Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window and author PG Wodehouse and has a Gothic, For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite, feel to it.
- Damsel in Distress was inspired by Casablanca and has a powerful angst reminiscent of Tori Amos’ Cornflake Girl days.
- Icarus was inspired by Greek mythology and features oboe by my friend Elisa Halaand.
- And don’t let the title fool you, because Silence Of The Lambs is actually inspired by The Book Of Revelation more so than the Thomas Harris horror novel (although it has some Hannibalesk ‘Easter eggs’ in it). It’s definitely one of the darkest songs on the album, and while it is technically about a serial killer (or killers), it’s probably not what you think (o;
- Madman came out really beautifully and is absolutely a tearjerker. It’s more of an autobiographical song. In fact … well … I have some ideas for crowd sourced projects, but I’ll save that for later!
- Out Of The Silent Planet is inspired by C.S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy and it has kind of a vintage sci-fi sound to it a-la David Bowie’s Major Tom.
- Finally, Whittled came out absolutely amazing! It’s one of those songs I originally thought would just be piano and vocal, but then Mike worked his magic and turned it into a stirringly beautiful orchestral piece.
Overall, we’re taking the music in a really unusual new direction that I think you guys will love. We kind of got back to my roots (if I can say that after only 3 CDs) making this a more acoustically driven album. But this time we’re accentuating the drama with classical guitar, oboe, wine glasses (yes, wine glasses), and effects to create an eclectic Celtic/Industrial feel. It’s very unique and VERY theatrical.
Anyway, we’re adding some instrumentation and working on mixing the album now. Then we have to master it, and then … YOU WILL HEAR IT!!!
Hope you have an awesome weekend (o:
Jennifer
