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November 30, 2009 : Happy Holidays, everyone. I've never been much for tradition, but I do enjoy the positive vibes this time of year, so I hope you and yours are well and that the season brings all sorts of happiness.
Apologies in advance, but updates may come a little fewer and further between for a while. I'm knee deep in work on a feature-length documentary film I'm directing, editing, and scoring, so if news is intermittent over the next few months, you'll know why. If you want more bite-sized updates, follow me on Twitter. I post a few times a week or so, normally, so I won't crowd your home page or anything.
Despite the busyness, At some point in the first half of next year, I will be releasing a new album of soundscapes that I created for a pair of films for Brent Chesanek. The first of those films, Brethren Arise (yes, named for and featuring the song from The Dark Glow of the Mountains) is having its premiere in L.A. this week at the Zero Film Festival. Hopefully it should make its way to a fest near you at some point (and eventually online). I'll keep you updated.
I finally got around to updating the mobile version of this website to include Preludes, so you can now listen to all of my albums, in full, on your iPhone or Android device (or basically any smartphone that can browse the web over 3G or wi-fi and streams mp3s natively). Just point that nifty gadget of yours at m.chriszabriskie.com and enjoy.
October 29, 2009 : Mike Melchor of the Orlando Examiner wrote a really nice article about me earlier this week, and you can read it online. It's got a bit about my records, a bit about the music industry, and a bit about what I'm working on now. Worth reading? Only one way to find out...
My close friend and musical brother Marc with a C has started hosting his own very late night radio show on WPRK here in Orlando, and it's called "The Real Congregation." Three hours in the middle of the night to play/say anything he wants, and it's pretty great. It's on Tuesday mornings at 3 a.m. EST. That's 7 a.m. GMT, so that's perfect for all you UK'ers who are just waking up. I recommend tuning in online at wprkdj.org. I might just stop into the studio now and again, so be sure to listen and request lots of Yes.
A quick apology: I've been quite ill this past week and simultaneously swamped with CD orders, so I'm very sorry if your order is getting to you a day or two late. Remember, I'm a one man operation here, so your patience is greatly appreciated! I'm getting caught up now, and orders should be going out normally. If you ever have any questions or concerns about an order you've placed with me, please don't hesitate to contact me directly.
And, on a happier note, the wonderous private torrent tracker What.cd celebrated its second birthday this week. The site and its community are so amazingly supportive of independent music of all kinds from around the world; it's hard to imagine life without them. What.cd has been doing all sorts of things for its members in celebration, not the least of which was the recommending of I Am a Man Who Will Fight for Your Honor to everyone who visited the site and allowing them to download it free of any ratio hit. I'm super honored and I hope everyone who's hearing the record for the first time enjoys it and shares it with their friends.
That's basically it for now. Much more in store for the months ahead. Let me know if you need anything. Stay warm. Much love.
October 5, 2009 : Good morning. Preludes is now on iTunes for those who are interested in purchasing it there. That's it for now, more soon. Your homework: I want you to swim in a lake. And tell 10 people you love them.
September 23, 2009 : A sincere thank you to all of the super kind messages and comments I've received over the last 24 hours. I'm happy so many of you are enjoying Preludes.
A lot of you asked how you can either buy the record or send some financial love my way. Right now, the only way to actually purchase it is digitally at Amazon MP3. It'll be on iTunes before too long, and a physical release is in the works for later this year. But, don't forget, you can still download it free here at the site- that's not going to go away- and you can donate an amount of your choosing via PayPal, if you so desire.
But, ultimately, no matter how you choose to listen to it or whether you pay for it or not, I'm glad so many of you are enjoying it. Hugs and high fives.
September 22, 2009 : Surprise. It's the first day of Autumn here in the United States and today I'm releasing a new album, Preludes. It is a collection of 23 preludes, of all things, for solo piano. No, this is not the vocal album I've been working on all Summer. That will come around some time next year. Nor is this is the soundtrack work I've done for filmmaker Brent Chesanek. That will also probably see release in 2010. This is something new and different for me and I hope you enjoy it.
Here is the cover, photographed by Patrick Scott Bell:
You can download it for free from this site in high-quality V0 mp3 or lossless FLAC files. You can also stream it start to finish right here. A physical release is in the works. (Please note that if you are at all interested in a vinyl release of this or any of my other records, I would very much like to hear from you directly so I can more accurately gauge the interest in such an endeavor. The time and expense of a wax pressing demands justification beyond my own daydreams.)
Thank you for all of your support and love. Please come say hi on Facebook or Twitter. And if you enjoy the album, please share it with those you love.
August 7, 2009 : Good morning. I'm still working on recording and it's coming along famously. Much more on that soon. Remember, I'm updating Twitter with smaller updates as I go.
I'm also updating, much to my surprise, Facebook. I've been known to be pretty anti-Facebook in the past.
But an online class I'm taking ended up requiring me to use it, and people have been asking for me to bring back the page for fans so they can listen to music and chat easily, and I get that. So it's back, and I've promised to not be grumpy about it, accept my defeat, and use it as positively as I can. So, head on over there and "become a fan" (I'm picturing you magically transforming into someone who enjoys my music just by clicking the link), and feel free to say hello there anytime.
Speaking of both social networking and the new record, I posted a demo of a new song on Facebook yesterday.
It's called "Ride On" and it was recorded on my telephone. You can listen to it by visiting my Facebook page, or you can direct download it here. Let me know what you think; I'm genuinely interested in your feedback.
More recording this weekend for sure. Peace.
July 24, 2009 : Hello. How are you? I hope you're succeeding in everything you set your mind to.
I'm recording a new vocal album right now. It's going well. I'm updating Twitter occasionally with more frequent, bite-sized updates, if you're interested. I'll let you know more when it's closer to being done.
I've updated the site here with streaming mp3 players on each albums' page. I know it's not much of an innovation, but it wasn't here before, so it counts as new. Basically, you're running out of excuses.
And finally, cause why not, if you're at Comic-Con this weekend and can make it into the LOST panel, word on the street (okay, word from e-mails from the producers of the show) is that they're playing that silly "What?" video I made last year at some point. They were really nice in asking my permission, especially since they didn't need it at all. Regardless, if you're there and get to see it, let me know how it goes. (Also, don't tell Lindelof I'm not actually not a fan of the show and that the video was intended as criticism. It'd break his sweet little heart.)
More as it develops. Stay strong.
May 20, 2009 : The mobile version of ChrisZabriskie.com is here. It's specifically designed for the iPhone and iPod Touch, though it will work with other mobile browsers. However, some functionality that is native to the iPhone is not supported on other devices, so full album streaming, for example, may not work.
However, if you are visiting the site from an iPhone or iPod Touch, you can stream each of my albums, in full, from the Safari browser. The advantage of this over a native app, as I mentioned previously, is that you can start an album playing, then go about doing other stuff on your phone (go ahead, Twitter away... or play Wolfenstein 3D, that's what I do) and the music will continue like it's on your iPod. This works best over wi-fi, but 3G and even Edge are fast enough to stream the albums with little to no interruption.
There are also links directly to iTunes you can use to purchase songs straight to your iPhone or Touch. I'm working on getting links to Amazon MP3's app for Android phones, but that functionality doesn't seem to be available quite yet.
And, finally, you can watch my music videos on YouTube, get the latest news, and look at upcoming show listings (with maps included) when they're announced.
You can use it by visiting m.chriszabriskie.com on your device.
If you run into any problems or issues with it, please don't hesitate to let me know.
March 13, 2009 : I Am a Man Who Will Fight for Your Honor is now out on CD + DVD (early!). They're back from the press and they look sort of awesome.
Here's what they look like. (Please read down past this, though, as I've got a bit of an announcement to make.)
It comes with the CD and a DVD-audio version containing the record at full 96 kHz/24 bit quality (uncompressed, as good as it gets). You can purchase it right now for only $10. The iTunes and Amazon MP3 version still isn't up yet, I'm sorry. But, think, you can spend a penny more that what it will cost on iTunes and get the CD, the DVD, the physical packaging, and you can just rip your own mp3s at whatever quality you want. Logic triumphs.
Something else to announce... I've uploaded my entire discography to the website here as mp3s, which you can have. You'll now find each of my records as a zip file containing high quality, V0 mp3s, plus artwork.
Why? Well, here's the story.
In 2001, my friend Dave Joslyn and I formed a band called Struggleburger. We recorded 11 albums in 12 months and put everything up for free online. At one point, our ridiculous and very sarcastic spoken-word cover of Linkin Park's "Crawling" was more popular on Audiogalaxy than the real thing. Ah, Audiogalaxy. Still miss it.
In 2002, we formally created Celestial Bison Records, one of the first netlabels, where all the music was available as free mp3 downloads. Struggleburger's music was there along with my early solo work, Dave's, and lots of other bands over the next few years, including Bucket of Nails, Josh Brookoff, Marc with a C, Steve Garron, and more. We had a lot of success with it until we shut it down in 2005 (for a lot of reasons, none of them financial). And in 2006, I released the first record under my own name, The Black Hole, online for free.
So, in 2008, I put out O Great Queen Electric, What Do You Have Waiting for Me?. The music world had changed a lot in two years, so I decided to experiment. It was my first experience with iTunes and digital distribution. I'd always been against iTunes and paying for mp3s (obviously, given my history). I was, and still am, a big supporter of BitTorrent and file sharing. But I was getting more and more requests for my music to be available on iTunes. I didn't understand why at the time, but I figured it was worth a try. Who am I to tell people they can't have my music the way they want to have it (save vinyl, which is still hella expensive to press)?
The experiement was a success. The album did really well online ("Joss Whedon" being passed around all the Whedon fan sites probably didn't hurt, something I somewhat naïvely did not expect). But what really pushed its success was the song "We Start the Cure in Paris" ending up on Criznittle's February 2008 Indie/Rock Playlist torrent. If you don't know what that is (and I didn't until I started getting a bunch of e-mails about it and the song), it was a monthly torrent full of new indie music put together by some guy from somewhere (who, as I understand it, is actually now in jail for unrelated reasons, poor guy). It's really cool, just one person's mixtape, but a great way for people all around the world to see what's going on in music that month. So, very suddenly, tens of thousands of people from around Portland to Poland had that song on their computer (and their, uh, interesting YouTube videos... sorta NSFW, that one). How did Criznittle find it? I don't know, exactly. But he did, and he liked it, and he shared it, and I found a lot of fans because of it.
Sure, not everyone who downloaded it ended up buying it. That's ridiculous to wish for, and even more ridiculous for the RIAA to expect it. But I guarantee that no one bought that album, or any of my other albums, without hearing them first. Or without seeing me live. Or without "pirating" it first. And why would you expect otherwise in this day and age? I'll never forget downloading Kid A when I was in college, months before it came out. The idea that you could do that now (to speak nothing of the actual album) totally blew my mind. But I still bought the CD the day it was released. Mp3s weren't a replacement for owning something. That's where I think the RIAA went wrong.
iTunes is pushed as a legal way to download music. I don't think that's the point, though. That might be the way it is for the major label artists, who are still paying off their advances. To me, it's all about convenience and about supporting the artist. I actually purchased Alan Sparhawk's Solo Guitar last week from iTunes (something I rarely do, I'm a vinyl LP guy). I've heard the record many times before, but I was talking about it with a friend who'd never heard it and wanted to give him a taste. I could have easily gone to What.CD or Waffles.fm and found it, I'm sure. But instead, I just went to iTunes on my iPhone (I know, I know), purchased it, downloaded it directly, and we were listening to it moments later. Both super convenient for me and I know the bulk of that money is going straight to Alan. It's a win-win. (The artist making the bulk of iTunes cash depends on the label they are or aren't on, to be sure, but in this situation, I knew who was getting the cash.)
Was I paying for the right to listen to that record? The temporary license, as it were? The industry says yes, I say no. I can find that record anytime I want to online and listen and no one is going to come after me (not even Alan, I'll bet). But I was paying for the convenience, and I was supporting the artist. And that's the best way to look at something like iTunes. Some people just really like the convenience. Who needs a bunch of plastic discs cluttering up the house, when they're just going to my iPod? And even though BitTorrent is second nature to me now, the majority of the world doesn't use it, doesn't understand it, and doesn't want to bother with it, especially since iTunes downloads fast, immediately, and directly to your iTunes library and iPod. Simple.
The world is changing faster than we can keep up with, and I can tell you assuredly that no one making music today has any idea what they are doing anymore. When you see Of Montreal releasing an album with decals, paper lanterns, and whatever the hell else along with it, you know something is sort of wrong with the process. Napster, BitTorrent, iTunes, and file sharing of all kinds have not just leveled the playing field, they have slashed and burned it.There is nothing left but the charred remains of what used to be the only way to find and listen to music. It's a stupid analogy, maybe, but when a forest burns down, eventually new growth appears stronger than ever. That's what's starting to happen, little green buds coming out of the ground. It's going to take a long time for those to be trees again.
There is simply is no right way to release music any longer. You can put it in any sort of shiny packaging you want, offer as many bonus tracks as you want, and put free copies in as many newspapers as you want. Nothing will change the fact that the people that want to hear the music will do it how they want to, not how they're told to. Some people will buy the CD. Some people will buy only vinyl. Some people find iTunes best for them. And some people download everything they can get their hands on and eventually buy what they like. Who's right? Everybody. The Internet has put the power in the hands of the consumer and the artist, and taken it away from the corporations. This is awesome. This is the way it's supposed to be. What does that mean for the future? What's the best way to release a record these days? No one knows. And, for those that make music, that problem may never be solved again.
So, it's widely known that I leak all of my records in advance to torrent sites. I can tell you from numerous conversations and firsthand experience that there are few artists left, even in the big leagues, that do not. You wonder where the early leaks come from? Don't be so surprised. "People are going to do it anyway, it might as well be me." So it's out there, for anyone to have. The vast majority of my physical sales come from people who've "pirated" it first. And why not? Why wouldn't you want to hear in advance what it is you're purchasing? No one should ever be upset that people are downloading their record for free. They're listening to it. And chances are they will buy it someday if they like it. Someone who doesn't buy it still wouldn't have bought it if they didn't download it, so what's the worry?
But, in all that, and in all my support of BitTorrent, I'm still leaving out an important part of my fanbase: everyone else. Why reward those people who think they're stealing something, when there are plenty of people in the world who don't use BitTorrent and would probably enjoy it being in their iPod just as much as the IndieTorrents member?
In the end, there's no use in hoarding my music and forcing people to pay for it, since it's just going to end up on The Pirate Bay anyhow. And there's no use in giving it only to people who use The Pirate Bay. The music world will continue to change perpetually in the future, and it will never stop. But it can't change past "everything is free, buy it if you like it," so I'm permanently making that step and staying ahead of the game.
I want you to listen to my records. That is why I made them, and that is why I released them. Sure, I'd like to make some money for it. If anyone says they don't want to be paid for their music, they're either lying to you or themselves. But it's not the sole reason I make music. I make music because I want to. I need to. I am compelled to. It comes out of me whether I want it to or not, for better or for worse. So why not share it? And if someone wants to reward me monetarily for that, why not let them?
So the records are now, and will forever be, on this web site, chriszabriskie.com for free. My friend, lo-fi pop legend, imaginary label-mate, and co-conspirator in crime, Marc with a C, is taking this same step early next week. This is not a replacement for purchasing a CD or buying it off iTunes, it is a recognition of both what I believed in when I started making music and the way the world has changed. I think it's all for the better. There's so much amazing music out there, and you don't have to go to Best Buy or even your local independent record store to hear it anymore.
Bottom line: if you like something you listen to, support the artist however you can. If that means buying something, great. If that means going to a live show, great. If that means sharing it with a friend, great. If that means blogging about it, great. If that menas requesting it on your local college radio station, great. If that means just scrobbling it to Last.fm so people can see that you're enjoying it, great.
That's the future of music. It's completely in your hands, not mine, not anyone else's who makes music. Yours. Don't let anyone judge you for how you choose to find and experience music. The soundtrack to your life is up to you. All music is free, everywhere. Don't take that for granted. Share it, disappear into it. It's yours.
-Chris
March 10, 2009 : My new album, I Am a Man Who Will Fight for Your Honor was supposed to be out on iTunes and Amazon MP3 today, but there appears to be a bit of a snag getting them online (it's out of my hands, but I'm working with both parties to get it fixed). So, as of right now, the only way to actually give me money for the record is to buy the CD/DVD, which will be shipping next week at the earliest. So much for instant gratification.
Best to rip your own mp3s from a physical copy anyway, right?
Still, you can at least listen to the album in full at iLike or Last.fm, whichever suits your fancy. A poor substitute for it actually living on your iPod, I know, but I'm working on it.
If you're as disappointed as I am, you can come tell me so in person this Thursday night at Will's Pub in Orlando. I'm playing drums for Marc with a C, opening up for Casper and the Cookies. It will be quite a dance party, I hope you can join us.
And thank you for all the birthday wishes. Hope you enjoy the music. Much love.
March 4, 2009 : March 10 is my birthday pretty much every year. To celebrate it this year, I'm releasing a new album. It's called I Am a Man Who Will Fight for Your Honor.
Here is the track listing:
1. Androids Always Escape (1:33)
2. The Sun is Scheduled to Come Out Tomorrow (7:04)
3. I Am Running with Temporary Success from a Monstrous Vacuum in Pursuit (7:17)
4. I Am Running a Marathon with Thousands of Other Highly Qualified People Who Are All Trying to Defeat Me (3:59)
5. I Am Running Down the Long Hallway of Viewmont Elementary (6:24)
6. Laserdisc (3:44)
7. I Am a Man Who Will Fight for Your Honor (11:25)
You can order the CD/DVD right now. DVD, you ask? Every CD copy comes with a DVD-audio version of the album in full 96 kHz/24 bit quality (basically the uncompressed master recordings), as high quality as it can get. Play it on any DVD player or computer DVD drive. The whole thing comes in a really nice gatefold minature-LP packaging (not a crummy jewel case).
The album will be out on digitally on iTunes and Amazon MP3 next Tuesday, March 10, and the CD/DVD will ship in a couple of weeks. For now, you can download the title track to get a taste, or stream the album in full online at Last.fm.
February 11, 2009 : The wonderful UK-based non-profit We Heart Arts (advocating creative arts education programs for children) will soon be putting out a digital single of my song "Psycho II" from last year's O Great Queen Electric, What Do You Have Waiting for Me?. Included are covers of the song by Existential Hero and 3 lbs. 4 oz., as well as remixes by Miss Teapot and fire island, AK. It's pretty surreal. You can listen to them now over at Last.fm, and be sure to purchase it when it goes on sale or donate now, as every last bit of the proceeds go towards supporting We Heart Arts.
January 29, 2009 : It's madness, really, but I've recorded a cover of Guns N' Roses' "Better" from Chinese Democracy. I guess I've always heard something special in the song. Slightly more insane is the song's YouTube video, made for me by a certain party that I have agreed not to name. It's sort of wonderful. I hope you enjoy the tune and I also hope you give Chinese Democracy a fair shot. Imagine Axl Rose as Dewey Cox during his Brian Wilson period, holding microphones to goats and such, and you're on the right track. Anyway, download the mp3 if you want, or listen at MySpace.