Dead Air For Radios (1998) / Chroma Key

• published: 03 Nov 2014
• views: 13240

The first LP by Kevin Moore's project, Chroma Key, released on December 16, 1998. If you like what you hear, you should buy the album: https://kevinmoore.bandcamp.com/album/dead-air-for-radios http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/chromakey3 http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0010VBP0C/ https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/dead-air-for-radios/id49521618 The comments are from Kevin Moore's website, circa 2000: 1. Colorblind 00:00:00 Pantone memory, x-ray eyes. This song originally started out with a sequenced piano pattern. One day the sequencer somehow played the piano part with the wrong patch - a slow attack, creepy tone that completely obscured the melody. Needless to say it sounded better, and the intro stayed that way ever since... 2. Even the Waves 00:04:52 Chill, trippy, begining of time song with short wave samples There are short wave frequencies you come across which broadcast only a series of numbers/letters/simple melodies. They're which are a source of myster for those interested in such things. Broadcast in several languages and from different countries, most think they are a way for governments to communicate with their spies in foreign countries. ETW begins and ends with a sample of one of the more famous of these stations. About a year after DAFR was released I was freaked out when I heard a sample of the same station coming from a Stereolab CD! 3. Undertow 00:11:24 Road music if you want to break up, quit your job and drive to mexico. 4. America the Video 00:16:13 I've got all of this on video / just gets better every episode. 5. S.O.S 00:20:43 Another song featuring samples of interviews I did with people I met in Santa Fe. In this interview a German friend of mine described his experience getting from L.A. to New Mexico with no money, after flying into the States for the first time. 6. Camera 2 00:26:07 This song stems from a recording I made of 2 people working in a video studio tuning the equipment. The 'choruses' are a sample of a woman preaching in Spanish. This preacher was recorded in the Mojave desert where thousands gather every month to take polaroid pictures of the sun in hopes of finding an image of the virgin mary in the resulting photograph. There is a video for this song (featuring the desert scene) which I hope to get on our site soon. 7. On the Page 00:29:55 Tricky piano playing, featuring anastajah's story of tripping at a science fiction convention in houston. When I was living/writing in Santa Fe I recorded a lot of interviews with people I met there. Some of them got pretty interesting, like the one you can hear in this song, and another in S.O.S. 8. Mouse (Now Watch What Happens) 00:34:21 The demo for this song (which is exactly the same as the album version, recorded on better equipment) was written and recorded in 2 hours, and I hope it shows. My roommate at the time and I set out to write/record a song in an hour. Todd went off to write lyrics while I came up with some music to go with a drum pattern I borrowed from a song that I had been working on for weeks (On the Page). The sample that goes on throughout the song is a real answering machine message from a previous housemate when I was living in Brooklyn. He had been going through this ongoing battle with this mouse that would wake him up every night with the sounds of scratching and chewing in his bedroom. One night he decided to find it, and the message was left right after he did (we had separate phones - I lived upstairs). What happened next - a devious plan involving spring traps, glue traps, cheese and a video camera - formed the basis of the video for the song, which we hope to get up on the web site soon. 9. Hell Mary 00:39:26 Computer voice interpretation of an actual transcript of a visionary seeing the end of the world. Plus free noise.