[[[ Yes Virginia, these are [[[ REAL ]]]] CDs ! ]]]
With downloadable music getting more and more prevalent, we are proud to state that all tim p scott CDs you get from CDBaby are real replicated CDs, in jewel cases with extensive artwork and liner notes: these are NOT homemade CD-Rs. So they will last for generations and you can pass them down to your descendents.
BUT! If you DO need downloads...they are also available from iTunes, last.fm, rhapsody, amiestreet, and several other places on the web, as well.
*** MUSIC FOR LISTENING TO ***
*** Vol. 1 ***
"Jack of Shadows" (playing time 49:18) is a suite of instrumental compositions inspired by a novel written by the late Roger Zelazny, and a favorite book of tim p scott's.
The brief samples available on this CDBaby page will give you a taste of the pieces, but some of them do take a while to develop and go through many musical twists and turns.
Downloads are convenient and we are appreciative to everyone who has bought full length CDs and songs from the various download services that CDBaby partners with, like iTunes and Rhapsody. But the pieces really do sound better in full CD quality plus as a bonus you get the original artwork, which is a huge foldout booklet complete with lots of additional information about the project.
(Incidentally, if you have purchased any of the music as downloads, you can get the poster rolled up and unfolded for shipping costs by contacting us at tims@crow-caw.com.)
Thanks to the iPod and the instant availability of millions of tracks at the click of a mouse, music is often just a disposable background noise. In the Old Days (i.e., my days), a record was something more or less precious to keep, remember and return to. Anyway, enough nostalgic bloviating...
Scrutiny of composer/producer tim p scott by Dobroe Utro
(Originally published in "The Journal of Practical Nihilism, Vol. LXII, No. 11, January 1997, and reprinted by persimmons.)
The story of composer and producer Tim P Scott is an odd one. This article is an attempt to ferret out the facts from the deliberate obfuscations. I have not yet been able to meet with the actual tim p scott (assuming the person even exists) so I have had to piece together this information from a number of other sources.)
There is a persistent rumor that, if there even ever was an individual named "tim p scott", he died, retired or stopped composing in about 1999 or 2000. There is plenty of evidence for this if we examine the CDs released under thie name before and after that time. The rumor continues that pranksters who had access to his computer and web site then took it over and continue to maintain it, answer emails, etc., impersonating Scott.
According to legend, tim p scott was unexpectedly born to a couple of Lapp nomads and circus sideshow performers named Hnf and Brlt Mhng. The Mhngs were so poor they could not afford vowels. They named their unexpected little bundle of joy "Besnik Hoxha", thinking by that ruse perhaps he would be mistaken for an Albanian in later life and thereby be upwardly mobile.
While his parents were touring with a circus through Finland little Besnik was mistakenly substituted for a baby peccary. Due to an uncanny resemblance, this was not detected for some time, and finally he was abandoned near a trainyard outside Helsinki. Hoboes and gypsies took care of him, passing him from one group to the next, until finally he ended up in St. Louis, Missouri, in the USA and deposited on the doorstep of the famous zoo there.
For the next 30 years he was brought up in the chimpanzee cage where he learned many of the skills and abilities that informed his later development. Specifically, screaming, beating on his chest, ensemble playing and deadly accuracy in feces throwing, as many an reviewer has discovered to his or her rue.
Finally rejected by chimpanzee society due to his unacceptable behavior and hygiene, Besnik was removed from the zoo and offered a tenured faculty position as senior lecturer in art, music and culture at the University of Missouri at Eel Grin Springs.
After 10 years in that position, and tiring of the cold Missouri winters that harked back to the frigid winters of his youth, he made the decision to move to the American Southwest, and become a musician. Not having any aptitude for playing an instrument or singing, he made the logical choice to produce electronic music. He picked a suitably nondescript name that would not attract attention in America and set to work to being the next Mike Oldfield.
How the "Jack of Shadows" suite came to be
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During his infancy in Finland, Besnik's father read to him from the only book they owned: a copy of "Jack of Shadows" by the late science fiction master Roger Zelazny. This made a big impression on him, even though neither Besnik nor his father could understand English and the readings were purely phonetic. They agreed that the book probably consisted of a variety of recipes for preparing turnips.
One day Scott found an old Sinclair ZX-80 computer in the a rubbish skip and, after teaching himself how to program it in assembly language, used it to create this cycle of compositions. Rather than employing the conventional method of using MIDI and music composition software, Scott dropped the Sinclair from various carefully measured heights and recorded the resulting impact to get the individual musical tones of the compositions. A very labour-intensive method to be sure.
The result is a complex, textured, many stranded combination of classical, rock and electronic idioms illustrating the characters, places and events from the book. Although this first full length (running time, 49' 18") release is somewhat simpler in form than those that followed, it is still favored by many curators and discriminating music aficionados and collectors around the world. And rumor has it that the St. Louis Zoo plays it at the chimpanzee enclosure when those primates become unmanageable.
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tim p scott release NEWS November 2008
A new set of compositions is now complete called "The Secrets of Metals." These tracks are going to be available as downloads only (at least at first.) Search last.fm, the amazon.com MP3 download store, or amiestreet.com for "tim p scott" to hear samples and get some downloads from this project.
Hopefully some booklet and cover graphics and other material will also be provided but that may come later...
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Why is the volume of the examples so low?
The earlier tim p scott CDs were mixed and mastered in a way that resulted in a lower average volume level. Obviously, you can make the songs as loud or as quiet as you want by a simple adjustment of the volume control. But mixing them in a playlist with a whole bunch of more contemporary songs, their volume will appear to be much lower when their turn comes around to play.
To get around this, Crow Caw Music Works is eventually going to make available downloadable versions of the earlier works that will be closer in level to common current practice. Check the Crow Caw Music Works website for news about this which should happen sometime in 2009.
Read more...