Cd's now available on Bandcamp

www.milosh.bandcamp.com/

In Indiana at VGR

Milosh playing in Village Green Records, Indiana from mike milosh on Vimeo.

Paragliding

Paragliding in Turkey from mike milosh on Vimeo.

Messing around with melodies

Indiana from mike milosh on Vimeo.

Doing a little singing at Kellar and Al's house

You Make Me Feel at Kellar's from mike milosh on Vimeo.

The last night we were in L.A. we had a bunch of people over to Kellar's house for some fair well drinks. Some singing occurred and we filmed a little chunk of it.

From the the show in L.A.

So the show at Echoplex in L.A. was a lot of fun. A photographer named Brenda Bravo took these shots from the event. Thought I would post them.

Practicing in the studio

This is a little video we shot in the studio of Paul, Tim and I practicing, playing an acoustic version of the song, The City. We shot this with three cameras, two 5d marks 2's and one 7d.

Practicing in the studio doing "The City" from mike milosh on Vimeo.

Playing in L.A.

First weekend back from Berlin

The first weekend back from Berlin I went up to my good friend Sean's cottage, and took some pics while up there. Canada is so different in so many ways then Germany, nothing can really replace home. This album thus far has taken me from Montreal, to Berlin and Paris, back to Toronto, to Indiana and soon L.A.. I feel very lucky that I have been able to see so many beautiful and perfect things during this time I have been making this record.

ghosts of the midwest

Bass Line

This Bass line came into my head during breakfast so Clare recorded me singing into her camera so I wouldn't forget it. I thought I would be fun to show here just in case it actually turns into a song and becomes something I will use for this record.

Remembering a bass line from mike milosh on Vimeo.

Before Those Ghosts

I went back To Paris to shoot another little film with Fanny to another one of my songs from this record. I am still going to make a much more involved video from the footage I shot with her but I decided to edit together a little something in the meantime.

Before Those Ghosts from mike milosh on Vimeo.

U.S. Military listening station

I am always inspired by the environment around me when working on songs. I let it in, let it shape the way I approach creating the track, to the lyrics and content within the song. But never have I had such and urge to really incorporate the buildings within a space into my music as much as I am feeling it here in Berlin. Yesterday I went with a little crew of friends and explored the abandoned U.S. military listening station in west Berlin. It was amazing, it really inspired me, it ignited a ton of ideas in me, I have to go back and record myself singing in there.

Fanny Dancing

I arrived in St Germain just outside of Paris a few days ago to film Fanny, a dancer whom I starting talking to a couple of months ago about doing a project together. She sent me some videos of her improvising to some of my songs, her movements were beautiful and completely matched the way I felt about music. I tried to keep her in mind and attempted to create a song that she could move to, something that suited her style. I nervously showed her the song for the first time and I have been documenting her experience with the piece, filming everything from her hearing it, to her working out ideas to the piece alone and with her Choreographer Marc. I am approaching this video the same way I approach making music, with no expectation. I am not trying to steer this piece in any particular direction. I am just filming her exploring what I have created while she explores ways to move to it with no real pre conceived notions of what this little film should be, other then, I want to make it beautiful.

Fanny Exploring Breath and dance from mike milosh on Vimeo.

Bass line with Felber

Milosh with Felber from mike milosh on Vimeo.

I decided the song, "Wish I Could Say" was in need of a bass line so I called up Mike Felber, bassist extraordinaire. We sat down for an hour, recorded direct through the "Great River", trying out different lines until we found what just felt right for the song. In the end I was really happy with what we came up with and I think he added something really nice, really subtle to the track.

Tools

I don't put money in clothes, or cars, or expensive things. I put it into tools. Tools that can help me realize artistic creations. I want to own these tools so that there are no barricades, nothing to hold me back from freeing an artistic idea that maybe looming in my mind. I want to create profound pieces of cinematic art with my most recent tool. A Canon 5d mark2. Visual compositions that move the viewer and stir within an intense reaction. Pieces like this piece posted below, that took hours to achieve and many days of rehearsal but well worth the effort.

Kelly getting slapped by Kiri from mike milosh on Vimeo.

Recording Guitars for "Want to Say More"

This last sunday Paul and I spent all night recording the guitars for the song, "Want to Say More". My good friend Jai Johnson was also there filming as we went. The way we generally work is we just start tossing ideas out there and record them, Soon into the process the idea that I'll eventually use starts to show itself. We then just start to bring it in, tailor it to the specific needs of the song. We spend hours working out these little ideas partly because we want to get that perfect part down, but mostly cause it's just a straight up fun way to spend a night, working out parts, in the studio, into the wee hours of the morning.

Milosh, in the studio working on guitars with Paul for "Want to Say More" from mike milosh on Vimeo.

what have I been up to?

Biking around, writing lyrics in the park and socializing... I haven't felt like rushing this ep, ideas are coming to me by just relaxing, taking in the city and allowing it and the people within it to inspire me. I went to this pretty fun party last night under a bridge held by Speaker Bruiser and friends, summer is in full swing. I think I am going to drive to Toronto tomorrow and record some more guitar parts for the song "Want to say more" with Paul and maybe even do some strings as well.

Practicing

So touring has always been a soft spot for me, it's been a little question as to what is an electronic musician to do in order to keep the performance compelling, authentic, challenging, musical and fun to perform. I decided to start touring here and there with Paul Pfisterer a couple of years ago and we have been experimenting with different methods of how to play these songs live ever since. This is a little video of us practicing "Awful Game" as more of a folk song.

Milosh practicing with Paul from mike milosh on Vimeo.

Inspired

This Girl Jaymie hit me up on myspace whom I had never talked to before with a link to a little video she did to a song of mine I did for the ghostly swim compilation, adult swim. I clicked the link and watched, and as I sat there taking in what she had created this feeling of happiness started to pour through me. It hit me, in this beautiful way, that I was able to make a song that motivated someone, somewhere out there, to put their energy into something creative, something fun. It felt perfect to know that I could inspire. I felt inspired, to try, to keep on.

Interview with Woofmedia

It's an interesting thing being interviewed about the work I have created. I can't help but feel I am being vain for the simple fact that I am talking about myself for an extended period of time. At the same time, I want to be concise, transparent, articulate without pretense, and give a good interview. All self consciousness aside, I love the way in which it forces me to think about the music that I have created, be objective, it solidifies my own songs in my own mind. I guess it's kind of like defending a thesis for school without the worry of a grade. Here is a link to an interview I did with woofmedia. We talked for about an hour and then they edited it down. It was a lot of fun to do and though I am too nervous to listen to the interview myself, I thought I would do a little post about it here.

New Release

When I got back from Thailand with 70% of my 3rd record done, I called on Paul Pfisterer, a good friend of mine, to lay down most of the guitars that are on, "iii". I got some gigs in Europe and it seemed only natural that Paul come with me for these shows and play guitar live as well. We were hanging in London with some down time between shows and we just started roughly working on some songs together, we liked what was coming out so we made the decision to make a record. We recorded the record at Pork Pie studios in Toronto over a period of a couple of months and just sort of took our time with it, let the songs unfold naturally. We have decided to self release the record under our own label name, "Deadly" and though it's not overly complicated, there are lots of little things that we have had to do concerning this release, hence why I have neglected this blog a little as of late. The record is going to be officially available in about a month from now but we put up a myspace page for those interested in taking a listen to a couple of the cuts off the record. www.myspace.com/miloshpfisterer. The record is called New Territory and it is a bit of a departure from my previous work in that all of the instruments are real. I played all the piano parts and drums live, and paul played the guitar, bass and organ. We got this really amazing cellist to play the cello parts, Coenraad Bloemendal, and there are some guest performances by Serena Ryder, and Rhonda Stakich.

Cervelo

A good friend of mine whom I have known since I was a wee teen, Joe, has put together this documentary for Cervelo. He asked me to use some of my tracks for the piece, I of course said yes not only because we are old friends but also because I really like what he is doing with this project. I thought I would put it up here on my blog just for fun.


Beyond The Peloton: one - BEGINNINGS from Cervelo TestTeam on Vimeo.

Witnessed

I woke up Saturday morning to the this melody pushing me, urging me to get out of my bed, so I wrote, I recorded, barely ate then recorded some more. Come 6 o clock that night I realized I had done nothing but work on this track the entire day, I didn't catch even the slightest glimpse of sun. Sunday I decided to actually leave my place, get out and meet Kelly, my roommate, Stefen and Thomaslav, in a cafe and work on lyrics while they worked away on their perspective things. I brought my camera with me and just shot random things that filled my day. It's nice to come out into the world to work on lyrics, hear my song in headphones pretending I was someone else, working away, just listening with no intent. I asked some friends to listen to the song on my Ipod or via email and give me four words that come to mind. I got an email from a girl named Annalisa, she gave me three, but those three words hit me really hard. Flying, Falling and stillness. I fell in love with this idea, this contradiction in words, this beautiful place in the middle, a gorgeous almost lack of being - a gentle purgatory. She has mono right now and she is lying in bed. I thanked her for the inspiration and asked how she was doing, she told me that she was trying to be still, trying to communicate with every little part of her that she was present and then she said, "Thanks for asking, its nice to be witnessed even if it is in weakness". It is nice to be witnessed. I went home and in a fury of inspiration, took the clips that I had been shooting all day and put them to this song as is, before I really get to it. There is something that I wanted to share in this, maybe just how I live, maybe how I feel, or maybe, just to be witnessed.


Milosh on the Metro from mike milosh on Vimeo.

Vocals for Wasted Time

Milosh recording vocals for wasted time from mike milosh on Vimeo.

Recording vocals at home has a completely different feel to it. It's subtle, there's no pressure and I can really go at my own pace, take as much time as I want with things. It's not just my voice that ends up in the recording, it's me, my home, the sounds I hear every day; the creaking of the floor boards, a bus going by, my room mate in the kitchen, my downstairs neighbour playing piano... I usually record a "ghost track", something somewhat lazily tossed out, something I'll most likely sing over top of focusing more on the subject matter, the idea behind the words.

Montreal

So I hit the road, that road that often calls my name, back to Montreal, back to the city in which I feel most productive. For some reason I am most happy recording vocals in my bedroom, (not in the studio) late at night as the city settles, with the lights low, in this old apartment that has housed many before me. I am going to be doing the vocals for most of this ep here in Montreal but first I am working on a part for a Daedelus track (something I have talked about doing with him for a while now) and possibly Tycho as well. I am excited about both of these things, I really feel that though we are in similar genres, it will be a welcome challenge and a real sort of refresh or change for me. But it's more then just my apartment, it's the food in Montreal, the people, the fun, the culture, the cold and even the tension that has me loving working here.

A Work In Progress

I needed to get away from the track "Wasted Time" for a bit, let it simmer for a while, while my mind digested something else, so I started working on another song, working title, "The Knife". I have a feeling that this song is going to become the central idea of the record, the song that most lyrically toys with "the knife" and thus sounds most like what I am taking from this analogy, this romantic love affair. I thought I would show a work in progress, where I am at with just a piano part and a vocal line before the song really starts to take shape. I thought it would be interesting to hear the skeleton, the initial spark that had me pushing to write more, the idea as it was when it was born. I am not sure yet if the song is going to take on a prettier tone or a more haunting or horrific one, I am not sure what is going to continue coming out of me and how fast, but I am liking the direction so far, I am liking where it is going, this current beneath the ice. Though the images of the frozen creek don't directly relate to this particular song, this is the creek where for years I derived much inspiration, the place where I would just sit for hours and settle, and think and write. I have a real fond attachment to this particular location for many reasons so I thought I would show it.

Ring Modulation

I was running through the playground, playing with my childhood friend Chris, when that primitive male need to break things arose from deep within me. I picked up a small rock and threw it at the now pink, once red, portable classroom window. It was plexiglass; it didn't break and the rock just bounced off and pathetically hit the ground. I picked up another rock and whipped it at the portable yet again with much more force, fueled by my father's words, "you have an arm for the majors!". But with more power comes less accuracy in the minor league world of minors and the rock completely missed the window. Instead it collided with the horizontal steal beam that was the foundation of the portable. That black beam that once hit, resonated so lovely with a sound so close to a sound I held so dear, a sound I had made many thousands of times with my mouth as I played in my basement amongst the imperial army of the dark side. It was the sound of the laser blast from Han Solo's Millennium Falcon. I used to throw rocks at these beams incessantly, I realized that if you hit the beams of portables that were adjacent to another portable the sound was amplified, it echoed and actually sounded much more like the TIE Fighters' vicious laser blast. I think that this was the start, where my search for cool sounds began, the doorway to the path that eventually brought me here, to this blog, to the use of Ring Modulation (also used in many sound effects within the Star Wars movies). I usually use my Moog Ring Mod. It's pretty wild sounding, has lots of cool knobs that are fun to tweak and is really controllable, but I needed one I could program for this particular vocal part within the mid section of the song, "Wasted Time". I turned to Logics software-based Ring Modulator, it sounds different from the Moog, but has a uniqueness of its own, it's pretty bad ass. The Ring Mod can be controlled with your mouse adjusting the virtual knobs but because I wanted the effect to change and move through the vocal part to create all those oscillating bell like overtones, I programmed the filter moves. The green line you see in this little film is telling the frequency wheel what moves to do, modulating through the different frequencies of my voice as it rotates, creating these beautifully haunting sounds that cut through the track, hopefully settling in the listener's chest in an almost odd and unsettling way.

Knife

This week is going to be a fairly simple blog, no video, nothing overly geeky or informative about production techniques. Instead I thought I would divulge a little about my writing process in terms of the lyrical content within my songs. I never plan things, I just go with what my mind is gravitating to at that very moment and I just write. Sometimes things come out as poems, other times simple phrases and sometimes just a little lone word manages to dribble onto the page of my little black book. Other times I just start singing over a melody that I have recorded, I mumble things that sort of sound like words that might fit the feeling of the song. I listen and listen and slowly real words start to take shape in my mind, they become something that I want to sing about. I am not usually after that huge idea, the profound. Instead I have this hunch that if I just let things come out of me they will in some way connect as an entire piece, or album, and in turn connect in it's own way to whomever is listening. The one thing that has been a constant in my records is that each record has had a theme. My last record, "iii", was laced with feelings of isolation, aloneness from culture, the world. A sort of objectivity about my segregation from like minded people blanketed or disguised in the themes of lost love. I am very fond of double meanings, juxtaposing concepts and analogies. I love tucking little secrets into the songs that though would have little direct meaning to many, ad depth and complexity to any one given song, slowly trickling out like little gifts for the listener willing to take the time to invest. If isolation was the jacket then water was the spine of ,"iii". It ran through my latest record and is in some way in every song, be it a direct lyrical reference or an actual audio recording of rain tickling the windows of my house in Thailand. I didn't intentionally mean for water to be so present, but as I started putting the album together it seeped in. It was all around me literally, kept showing up in things I was reading and was a huge influence on my attitude, psyche and day to day activities. It somehow, deep within me, reminded me of myself, my awayness, my absence. It was almost inevitable that it would be so dominant in the record. As I have been slowly putting the pieces together for what is going to be this little 5 song ep, an object has been carving it's way into my life, cropping up in books I'm reading, thrusting itself into my thoughts and situations. I have an almost romantic draw to it. It is, the knife.

guitars

My good friend Jai Johnson came by the studio the other day when we were working on some guitar parts for the song (working title), "Wasted Time" and made this little film. I started the song in Montreal but brought it to the Toronto studio, Imprint Music, to record the guitars, bass, and drums with Paul. I find it kind of ideal to work in different environments while working on a track. Keeps you objective and fresh, and it's nice to have other sets of ears in on the work in progress, keeps me from producing something toooo self indulgent. Even though the guitar part for this track will only actually make up about 10% of the total song, it's really important that it has the proper sound and feel to it. We'll spend a whole afternoon just working out the right sound for the guitar for that particular song, and on into the night running takes with different approaches till we’re satisfied. Takes a long time but I do admit I love the feeling of just sitting in a totally tech, geared-up studio, working out ideas and sounds. I’m rarely in a rush to just hammer through it and get it done.

Mist

The thick layer of snow that gently caressed the city started to melt and as it did, this beautiful mist rolled off the silent mounds of snow and filled the air. Driving to the studio I couldn't help but feel a calm excitement as a subtle whirlwind of ideas drifted round my head. It's times like these that I love to just let go, sit down at a piano or keyboard and just let melodies come out of me, not judging them, not silencing them. I just play and make recordings like this one and review it a couple of days later to see if the melody still moves me. It's part of the process of writing a song, a lovely process that takes some time. A lovely process that softly fills the day.

An aspect of a beat that might or might not actually be in a song

So the thing I love about living with Kelly is that we both produce music, it’s a great environment in which to work. We both give each other objective feedback on one another’s projects and we are also working on some stuff together. Often I’ll be home all day working on some little tiny aspect of something in a song and Kelly will walk up the stairs, still freezing, jacket and boots on and I’ll be like, “Dude, check this out, I've been working on this all day, it’s kinda weird I know but what you think?” A couple of days ago, I'd been working on this tiny little intricate aspect of a beat that I had recorded, making sound effects with my mouth and rubbing my hands across hard cover books. I then spent about 4 hours editing, cutting, splicing, reversing sections, dropping effects on and then hard panning the thing back and forth to give it that extra little bit of movement. Kelly walks in, discombobulated and just wanting to relax for a minute and I kinda bombard him with my day's work and make him listen to it. “It’s cool and all and I’m sure you had a lot of fun making it but it’s way too busy and it doesn’t totally go with your song, man. Why don’t you take your own advice on this one, simplify it, make the beat more of an anchor,” he says. In an instant I realized he was totally right. It was way too much, it collided with some of the melodies and kinda took away from the track rather then adding to it. I am still going to use it but as more of a 4-bar lead up to the mid section and I'm going to have it in a little bit near the end. I thought I would post this 'cause I thought it was kinda funny. Nothing lost though, I kinda feel when you work on something for a long time that is not necessarily in the track, it imprints itself in your song, like it’s supposed to be there, an eerie but beautiful being that lingers silently in some way, a ghost.

Snow

The snow fell this week as did the temperature and though it's presence leaves little desire to roam the streets it looks beautiful, sounds soft and quite and somehow reminds you of yourself as your focus is drawn to the sounds of your breath beneath your hood and of the snow crunching beneath your feet. I thought I would take some pictures to show what it looks like around my house.

Coming into winter

Coming off my little tour in Europe with my musical partner in crime Paul Pfisterer, I was totally beaming, excited and ready for more. We Played in Germany at Popkomm for my European label, !k7, France with the Norwegian band Minor Majority, England with the all around boy Genius Jon Hopkins, Ireland with Chequerboard and then Italy. I kind of expected the inertia from this wonderful fall to come across the ocean with me and back to Canada for the winter. Instead I was kinda forced into a kind of unwanted rest and relax recoup all the while my brain still spinning with a slight case of the what's next what's next. The thing is with this industry is that if you're not out there pushing really hard there is a lot of down time, lots of hurry up and wait. I hung out with my friends and family for a bit and just basically killed time when the need to write more music erupted so I packed up and headed off to Montreal where I enjoy living, loving and writing. I live with one of my best friends from childhood, Kelly, who dj's in Montreal and basically get up to no good in the down times between ideas. This is where this blog is starting, at the beginning of what most likely will be a 4 song ep. This blog is most likely going to be a sort of journal about my process and the things that are going on around me with me and my friends while in the middle of creating this.