Birds and Buildings' Myspace page
Birds and Buildings is based in Washington, DC. We play a mixture of intense jazz-rock (often bordering on zeuhl), more experimental symphonic music, and occasional avant-garde heaviness.
The lineup is:
Dan Britton: keyboards and guitars
Brett d'Anon: bass and guitars
Brian Falkowski: sax, flute, and clarinet
Malcolm McDuffie: drums and percussion
The first Birds and Buildings album was "Bantam to Behemoth," released in April 2008.
(artwork by Hieronymus Bosch)
Bantam to Behemoth (2008)
1. Birds Flying Into Buildings (9:13)
2. Terra Fire (3:36)
3. Tunguska (6:33)
4. Caution Congregates and Forms a Storm (10:53)
5. Chronicle of the Invisible River of Stone (9:19)
6. Yucatan 65: The Agitation of the Mass (10:35)
7. Chakra Khan (5:59)
8. Battalion (9:55)
9. Sunken City, Sunny Day (3:19)
(artwork by Kezia Terracciano)
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The second Birds and Buildings will be called "Multipurpose Trap"
and will be released in early 2011.
Here's a blog about it, from July 17, 2010:
We are working very hard on our second album "Multipurpose Trap"....our first album is a bit hard to follow, and I had been worrying there was nothing we could do to equal or top it, but I am starting to feel more confident in the new material.
Yes, there will be singing, probably on every track, but hopefully not by me, and only for a minute or less on most of the tracks. This will confuse people who want to label each song "instrumental" or "vocal"! Ha ha!
The working titles and my best recollection for running times are:
1. The Dumb Fish (3:30)
This one is jazzy and catchy. There's some very "tight" playing here.
2. Horse-Shaped Cloud (formerly Underscore) (4:30)
This one goes from (a) a perky theme that reminded me of the great band Deerhoof to (b) maybe the most intense and Anglagardian idea we've ever done back to the perky theme (a), but this time more in a country music sort of way. Surprisingly it doesn't feel too disjointed. The song is about flying in a hot-air balloon, then getting blown around by a horse-shaped cloud, then landing safely. Though there are only two lines to the lyrics, the music will help tell the story.
3. Miracle Pigeon (2:30)
A soundtrack to a nonexistent comic book about a superhero pigeon. I actually wanted get someone to do an animated cartoon to this, but there probably won't be enough time.
4. East is Fort Orthodox (6:00)
This is a murky prequel to the next song.
5. Secret Crevice (maybe to be renamed Stealth Cantiri) (5:00)
This one doesn't let up at all from beginning to end. Very intense, very dark, very fast, very tricky, and very fun. I added some mellotron parts that really hit the spot too. This would make a great show-opener, maybe with the preceding track.
6. Tragic Penguin (7:00)
The entire track is built around an improvisation I did on electric piano on November 17, 2007. It was a lot of fun to build stuff around it, and sometimes I think this is actually a genuinely progressive way to make music.
7. Catapult (10:00)
Requisite offspring of "Birds Flying Into Buildings" or "Battalion." 10 minutes of 20-second ideas, one after the other. But there is some design- it's not completely randomly arranged, anyway.
8. Aviator Prosco (10:00)
Yes, that's "progressive disco" and to make matters worse for closed-minded prog fans, this one starts out with a very breezy jazz feel very unlike everything we've done before, but the kind of thing that Brian and Malcolm are great at playing. The evolution from jazz to disco is fun, and the chord sequence for this song is very Tony Banksian, even though Brian wrote almost half the song and has never really cared much for the one Genesis album (A Trick of the Tail) I lent him.
9. Abonimable Pelican (14:00) (former working title was "Acoustic Techno")
This is built around a very simple theme that Malcolm improvised against, and then I built some completely different stuff around what Malcolm recorded. It's still in the early stages, but it's probably going to be a good way to end the album, even though the diversions into hardcore funk aren't exactly what we're known for.
Birds and Buildings is based in Washington, DC. We play a mixture of intense jazz-rock (often bordering on zeuhl), more experimental symphonic music, and occasional avant-garde heaviness.
The lineup is:
Dan Britton: keyboards and guitars
Brett d'Anon: bass and guitars
Brian Falkowski: sax, flute, and clarinet
Malcolm McDuffie: drums and percussion
The first Birds and Buildings album was "Bantam to Behemoth," released in April 2008.
(artwork by Hieronymus Bosch)
Bantam to Behemoth (2008)
1. Birds Flying Into Buildings (9:13)
2. Terra Fire (3:36)
3. Tunguska (6:33)
4. Caution Congregates and Forms a Storm (10:53)
5. Chronicle of the Invisible River of Stone (9:19)
6. Yucatan 65: The Agitation of the Mass (10:35)
7. Chakra Khan (5:59)
8. Battalion (9:55)
9. Sunken City, Sunny Day (3:19)
(artwork by Kezia Terracciano)
____________________________________________________________________________________
The second Birds and Buildings will be called "Multipurpose Trap"
and will be released in early 2011.
Here's a blog about it, from July 17, 2010:
We are working very hard on our second album "Multipurpose Trap"....our first album is a bit hard to follow, and I had been worrying there was nothing we could do to equal or top it, but I am starting to feel more confident in the new material.
Yes, there will be singing, probably on every track, but hopefully not by me, and only for a minute or less on most of the tracks. This will confuse people who want to label each song "instrumental" or "vocal"! Ha ha!
The working titles and my best recollection for running times are:
1. The Dumb Fish (3:30)
This one is jazzy and catchy. There's some very "tight" playing here.
2. Horse-Shaped Cloud (formerly Underscore) (4:30)
This one goes from (a) a perky theme that reminded me of the great band Deerhoof to (b) maybe the most intense and Anglagardian idea we've ever done back to the perky theme (a), but this time more in a country music sort of way. Surprisingly it doesn't feel too disjointed. The song is about flying in a hot-air balloon, then getting blown around by a horse-shaped cloud, then landing safely. Though there are only two lines to the lyrics, the music will help tell the story.
3. Miracle Pigeon (2:30)
A soundtrack to a nonexistent comic book about a superhero pigeon. I actually wanted get someone to do an animated cartoon to this, but there probably won't be enough time.
4. East is Fort Orthodox (6:00)
This is a murky prequel to the next song.
5. Secret Crevice (maybe to be renamed Stealth Cantiri) (5:00)
This one doesn't let up at all from beginning to end. Very intense, very dark, very fast, very tricky, and very fun. I added some mellotron parts that really hit the spot too. This would make a great show-opener, maybe with the preceding track.
6. Tragic Penguin (7:00)
The entire track is built around an improvisation I did on electric piano on November 17, 2007. It was a lot of fun to build stuff around it, and sometimes I think this is actually a genuinely progressive way to make music.
7. Catapult (10:00)
Requisite offspring of "Birds Flying Into Buildings" or "Battalion." 10 minutes of 20-second ideas, one after the other. But there is some design- it's not completely randomly arranged, anyway.
8. Aviator Prosco (10:00)
Yes, that's "progressive disco" and to make matters worse for closed-minded prog fans, this one starts out with a very breezy jazz feel very unlike everything we've done before, but the kind of thing that Brian and Malcolm are great at playing. The evolution from jazz to disco is fun, and the chord sequence for this song is very Tony Banksian, even though Brian wrote almost half the song and has never really cared much for the one Genesis album (A Trick of the Tail) I lent him.
9. Abonimable Pelican (14:00) (former working title was "Acoustic Techno")
This is built around a very simple theme that Malcolm improvised against, and then I built some completely different stuff around what Malcolm recorded. It's still in the early stages, but it's probably going to be a good way to end the album, even though the diversions into hardcore funk aren't exactly what we're known for.