It should probably go without saying that this year *didn’t* quite go as planned. I was hoping to have this as my breakthrough year creatively, and I was hoping to have more done than I do. Alas, it was not to be. That doesn’t mean this year was a bust however; if anything, it laid a groundwork for things to come.
Let’s start off with the big news: my long-in-development album “Beyond the Infinite: A Musical Odyssey” was finally release after it began life in 2000 as just an ambitious idea. There’s still one piece intended for the album that has yet to be recorded (the full-length version of “Dawn of Man”), but the album is quite substantial without it. I even did an interview with Randall Parson Smith over at www.dryinkmag.com to help promote it; to call it an enlightening read is putting it lightly (I mean come on, who WOULDN’T rather kiss John Williams than hit Ennio Morricone? :D). The album is available for purchase at CDBaby, Amazon and iTunes if you haven’t already checked it out, and (as a Sonic Cinema exclusive) you can download the album here as a special “audio commentary” featuring the music in context to the film that inspired it (Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey”) as well as my own thoughts on the movie and creating the album.
The next most exciting project to see fruition (at least partially) was my in-production short film series “Baron Wasteland: Littered With Failure- The Career of Baron Brian von Skutle”. Based on ideas by myself, Jeffrey Butzer and Mathew Timms, this story of a failed filmmaker and the projects that inspired his passion is surreal at times, but also very funny. We’ve only had a handful of filming dates to date (all discussed in my blogs on the project), but already it’s provided many challenges for me to overcome (like my crippling lack of “acting chops” :D). Still, I did manage to get one chapter of the series completed (“Chapter 2: Lemur See, Lemur Due”), and it had a successful private screening on my 33rd birthday along with the first part of the still-incompleted “Unwinnable Hand: A Thriller in Two Movements” (I WILL finish this in 2011- this I swear to you). Hopefully I’ll be able to put it out into the world (and maybe even get some festival interest for that or “Hand”) in the new year, ’cause I’m genuinely excited by what we’ve come up with for it. One piece of music I wrote for “Chapter 2” is available for download at Sonic Cinema here.
Other than those two projects it’s been a rather quiet year for me artistically. I do have a couple of story seeds I’ve come up with for future screenplays. And musically, I finally recorded my 2006 composition “Sonic Contemplation”. Inspired by the emotional struggles I dealt with in 2000 when my grandfather John Mitchell was diagnosed with (and passed away from) Cancer, this piece was first begun in 2001 as catharsis, only to be unfinished before I came back to it five years later. I still hope to record a live trombone performance for it, but an all-MIDI version can currently be heard right here on Sonic Cinema. I’ve also begun work on writing another long-in-development piece, “Calling of a Warrior” (inspired by Joss Whedon’s comic series “Fray”), which– when recorded –will be the final piece for my fifth album (“Storytelling Through Sound”), which will hopefully find itself available by mid-year 2011. Coupled with my scoring work for “Baron Wasteland: Chapter 2”, it’s been an exciting and inspiring year for me musically, even if it hasn’t been quite as productive as years past.
Hopefully, 2011 will see more forward momentum on not only several of the projects listed above, but also several other projects I’ve either just had ideas for (like an electronica album) or are ready to be completed as recordings. And I hope you’ll continue to follow me every step of the way.
Thanks for listening.
Brian Skutle
www.sonic-cinema.com
www.reverbnation.com/brianskutle
www.myspace.com/brianskutle
www.myspace.com/cinemanouveau
www.youtube.com/bskutle
Sonic Cinema Shop
“Creative Beginnings” at CDBaby
“Dark Experiments” at CDBaby
“Sonic Visions of a New Old West” at CDBaby
“Beyond the Infinite: A Musical Odyssey” at CDBaby
