Free Collaboration EP

Artwork by Phillip Ginn - www.legendhouse.com

HUGE BLACK MAN / HUGH JACKMAN EP
01. Side A
02. Side B

Recorded in Sacramento in September of 2006, Huge Black Man’s “Hugh Jackman EP”  was in many ways a musical experiment. The rules: 4 musicians from very different bands would meet in a practice space for one day, without any prior rehearsal, and record an entire album.

Those musicians were:
Anton Patzner of Judgement Day - Violin
Nick Reinhart of Tera Melos – Guitar, Knobs
Sam Phelps of 4 Guys from Reno – Bass
Noah Clark of Brilliant Red Lights – Drums and Producer

The result is a highly unique blend of musical styles and an intriguing study of spontaneity and creativity under the pressure of time constraint.

It’s also pretty fun to listen to. Check it out:

DOWNLOAD HUGE BLACK MAN / HUGH JACKMAN EP

Film Scores

When I’m not writing music with Judgement Day I write music for films. I’ve always loved film scores. My favorite growing up was The Empire Strikes Back by John Williams. It’s super epic and has tons of great themes that interact with each other in cool, interesting ways. It’s dope. Check it out.

The first score I wrote myself was for “Black Scar III”, a movie I made with my friends in 4th grade. My uncle Joe said that it sounded like music from a porno. Since then the scores have gotten a little bit better and a lot more ambitious. In high school I worked with director Hoku Uchiyama on a film called “The Killer Chihuahua”. Although it was all synthesizers and kind of sounded like an 80’s horror movie that was kind of like my first real score and my first of many collaborations with Hoku. In college I started using real instruments in my scores, adding more and more each time until they started sounding like real film scores. That’s how I got started and I’m still doing it to this day.

I released two of my scores on cd: “Undercut” in 2005 and “Rose” in 2006. “Undercut” is now out of print and “Rose” has stopped selling so they are both free downloads now. I hope you enjoy them.

-Anton

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Undercut
This was a no-budget martial arts film directed by Stephen Reedy that ended up getting nominated for an MTV Movie Award (best student film). The music is somewhere in between Shaft and Mortal Kombat. Then there are some parts that sound like smooth jazz. Ya. It’s a pretty weird movie. In a good way.

DOWNLOAD THE UNDERCUT SOUNDTRACK

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Rose
This  film is a 30-minute ghost story directed by Hoku Uchiyama. It’s scary, sad, sweet and pretty awesome. It it did really well on the festival circuit and it will hopefully be out on the internet soon. The music is mostly orchestral but has some folk instruments as well. The melody for one of the main themes was written by the singer-songwriter Amanda Mehl. She also does all of the ghostly vocals. Lewis has a nice cello solo on one of the other main themes. A bunch of other great musicians are on it as well.

DOWNLOAD THE ROSE SOUNDTRACK HERE

www.rosethemovie.com

Free Rarity Download – Noae Kaedae, Electric

This is the happiest song that Judgement Day ever wrote. If you have heard Opus 3: Acoustic then you know the acoustic version of Noae Kaedae but we also have an electric version. We originally recorded it during the Dark Opus sessions but we decided it was just a little bit too sunny (and sloppy…) to fit on that disc. It ended up on the 2005 Norcal Compilation which was put out by Agent Records and featured other bands like Tera Melos, Desa, Audrye Sessions and Overview. We still have a few copies of it lying around. We might be able to sell you one if you want but you could also just

download Noae Kaedae, Electric for free HERE

Original Acoustic EP Free Download – Happy Holidays!

The ORIGINAL Acoustic EP (2003)

OPUS 1: Acoustic EP

Before we had drums or FX pedals, before we tried to get every note perfect, before we had enough songs to make a full length record, we released our first EP- The Acoustic EP. The songs on it are basically the songs we used to play for spare change on Telegraph Ave in Berkeley along with a couple of quieter avant garde intros. I just listened to it again for the first time in a couple of years. It’s interesting. It’s definitely raw. We recorded it really quickly in our parent’s and uncle’s garage without computers so there’s no editing or cheating. Some of the violin parts are improvised and sometimes doubled by another violin that is improvising. The intro and interlude were completely improvised. We didn’t do very many takes so some of the songs have blatant mistakes. Overall, though I think that the rawness gives it a pretty cool energy. If nothing else its cool to hear how it all got started.

BONUS TRACK
The bonus track, “Carol of the Bells (orchestral)” is the same as the original ep version except with 4 or 5 extra violins and a couple of extra cellos doubling what is already there. We decided to use the version with just one violin and one cello because it sounds more real but I always liked the “Orchestral” version too so we’re putting it on here as an extra holiday bonus.

FREE DOWNLOAD
The original release of the Acoustic EP was a CDR in a plastic sleeve with a black and white booklet. It’s been out of print for a few years now so we are excited to be able to share it with you all again now as a free download. Take a listen and let us know what you think.

Download the Acoustic EP HERE

Pictures, Videos and Recording From Our 2-Month Journey

Practicing with Margot Before tour:

Late night jam with Margot – San Francisco 10/6/08

Rocking out in Norman, Oklahoma – 10/17/08

photos by Kriea

Live on South Street in Philadelphia – 11/9/08
Our set got cut short this night so we decided to play the last song out on the street after the show. Thanks to Joe for the video.

Live from Minneapolis – 11/17/08
FREE AUDIO DOWNLOAD: Klagenstuck Live in Minneapolis
Hear the rest of the set at The Live Music Archive .
Thanks to John Coughlin for taping.

Live in Omaha – 11/20/08

If you have any other cool videos, pictures or anything else worth checking out let us know.

On tour with our new Van

Photo by Riki Feldmann

We bought a van! Well, a minivan. It’s prefect though. We can fit all of our stuff in there and still have some room to move around. That’s the beauty of being a 3-piece without amps. We need to think of a good name for it. If you think of one you should leave it as a comment on this entry.

So we are in Oregon now. We played in Eugene on Wednesday and and Corvallis last night. Both of the shows were great. We’ve been having a fun time. There was a webcast of the show last night at The Fireworks venue and it actually sounded pretty good so we’ve got a song from it for download here:

Finis Omne Live at Fireworks Bootleg MP3

Tonight we’re playing in Salem, which is a very short drive, so we pretty much have the day off. We’re staying at our aunt and uncle’s amazing house and they’re letting us ride their bikes so I think we’re going to ride downtown, check out some music stores and try to put some cd’s at Happy Trails Records. It should be a pretty fun day.

“4-Door Tour” Blog 1: Northern California

We are officially on tour! We’ve decided to name this tour “The 4-Door Tour” because both Judgement Day and Silian Rail are traveling in little 4-door cars packed to the max with gear. It has been amazing!

Our kick-off show in Sacramento featured Lewis rocking out so hard that he fell over and snapped his bow in half at the end of “Revelations”. Luckily our friends from fellow string band The Definite Articles were in the audience and let us borrow a cello bow to finish our set. What are the odds of that? That’s the first time we’ve ever broken a bow. I guess that’s what happens when you get possessed by the metal spirits. Good thing it was only a backup bow.

CHICO!!! We love Chico. This was our fourth time playing there and definitely our best yet. We played at this little art space called “The Crux”. The local bands The Secret Stolen and La Fin Du Monde both totally killed it and Silian Rail had an especially good set. I jammed with them on a couple of songs which was fun.

Lewis was going to jam too but when he took out his cello he found out that the end pin had fallen backwards into the body and was rolling around making loud, bad-sounding noises. It was scary. We spent more than an hour trying to get it out through one of the F-Holes but it was too big to fit. We ended up having to play the set with Lewis holding up his cello on a drum stool. He had to be careful not to move in the wrong direction and put a hole in his cello but he still managed to rock out and play a great set. We played a bunch of old songs and brought up Eric from Silian Rail to play some extra drums on a crazy 9 minute jam at the end. Good times.

Later on after the show we had an epic late-night jam sesh with 3 guitars, bass and pizzicato violin until 5 in the morning. Eric is just as crazy on guitar as he is on drums. He was totally blowing my mind.

The next day we went over to The Music Connection (a music store/repairs shop) to take care of Lewis’ cello problem. The dude totally handled it and we were back in business. We had lunch at Broadway Heights and hung out for a while and then headed to Redding.

The Redding show was smaller but pretty chill. Lewis and I both jammed on Silian Rail’s set and Eric played Glockenspiel on one of our songs. The guys that put on the show are the same people that used to run this awesome Redding venue called The Dip but since it shut down a while back they have to bring their whole sound system now whenever they want to have shows, so it was pretty cool that they wanted to have us. After the show we headed back to their place and had another epic jam sesh, this time with a 12 string guitar and a little bit of piano in addition to the usual acoustic guitars.

In a little bit we’re going to head up to Oregon. We’re playing in Medford tonight. Hopefully it will be fun.

-Anton and Judgement Day
MP3: Excerpt from the Chico Jam with Eric

Two Versions of Barrage

Barrage has a more of a set structure than many of our new songs but it still manages to be a whole new song every time we play it. Here are two versions:

The first is a full band version from Cafe Pergolesi in Santa Cruz. It’s pretty straight forward and similar to what will probably end up on the full-length album. Thanks to Luke Soin for the MP3.

Barrage Live at Pergolesi MP3

The second version is from the Hemlock Tavern in San Francisco. It was going to be a straight acoustic show for us but at the last minute we told our sound lady Julia to do an epic dub mix with whatever effects she wanted. She got all trippy with delay and made it totally different and awesome. Thanks to Kevin Dick for the video. He shot it on a Flip.