Will I ever make it off the island again? Who knows? Anyway, here is a picture I took in Kunming, China. In October 2018. It was 25°C.



It's a collage...

It is done! I recorded and mixed it myself. It has very bad lyrics (basically the first idea that came to mind and rhymed was good enough). The most basic of chord progressions is used (including only I, IV, V and iv) and a melody constructed around the base note of the chords, which is why the melody sounds like something you heard before. The bridge is fun though as are the key changes and I really like the background harmonies, even if it goes strangely "Sound of Music" in parts.

I recorded it with audacity, a program I never used before (it is really easy to use!) in my bedroom. Guitar and voice were recorded together, because I'm lazy and didn't want to deal with 5 tracks (I had three instead, main vocals and rhythm guitar, background vocals and finger picking and second background vocals). Because of this I couldn't use fancy effects on the guitar or voice, so I just cleaned up some background noise and added a reverb from the bridge onward. During the bridge you hear me tapping to count how long to wait for the background vocals to come in. This is the only attempt at keeping the tempo I made, so the whole thing is a bit wonky.

I'm not quitting my day job.

I was in my friends place near Blönduós and we were having fancy drinks. It was quite dark inside and I had no tripod and only my built in flash without diffuser, so I held the palm of my hand in front of the flash instead and used tungsten setting for white balance and viola:



So after I went home I tried several settings with my glasses on the nightstand. First without flash:


Then with flash (and set white balance to flash, too):


Then I used my hand and still flash light balance, as you see the white balance is totally off:


So I set white balance to tungsten:


Then I took a picture of my hand (with flash and flash white balance) and used that to do custom light balance:



Lastly I remembered I have a phone (which is silver), so I just used this as a diffuser (with flash white balance):

This is a bit of a different playlist. It includes Green, Monster and New Adventures in HiFi. There is no way I can only choose 4 or 5 songs from Out of Time of Automatic for the People. Just get both albums and listen to them both
(except Radio Song ).

Even without Out of Time and Automatic for the People this playlist is quite a journey, from very poppy songs, over screaming guitars to mandolins and accordions, it's sweet, angry, bitter, sad and ironic. So much for REM always sounds the same.
I also did not put all the singles this time, some are here, some are not, I chose the songs I thought were the best / most representative of each album.

Green

1. Pop song '89 (a single, it's delightfully weird in lyrics and music "Hi, hi, hi")
2. Get Up (a pop song about wanting to sleep your life away, also proof that REM can be cute)
3. You are the Everything (the way the lyrics flow remind me of the Cure. Best song of Green)
4. Orange crush (the best example of the rock sound of REM in the Green era. Also cool call and response in the chorus)

Monster

5. What's the Frequency Kenneth? (Here they succeeded with their plan to write proper rock songs for touring)
6. Crush with Eyeliner (The Remix version, because I actually really like it, even if I do not agree with most of the other remix decisions, very glam)
7. Star 69 (THE REVERB!!!)
8. Let Me In (no words)

New Adventures in HiFi

9. Undertow (after I listened to the album again, this song became one of my favourites, like the impressionistic guitar, the religion inspired lyrics and the chilling background vocals)
10. E-Bow The Letter (was my favourite song from this album since I first saw it on MTV)
11. Leave (I actually like the siren effect on this song)
12. So Fast, So Numb (it is a good representation of the many great rock songs on this album and the bitter tone in many of the lyrics)
13. Electrolite (the violin solo is amazing as is the piano part and I really wanted this playlist to end with "I'm outta here")

This time I just played with the opacity of the upper layer (the writing). This is the last one, I swear.