Norfolk & Western - A Gilded Age

April 2006 Norfolk & Western - A Gilded Age Hush Records HUSH061 (cd, download) Jealous Butcher Records JB-055 (lp)

01. Porch Destruction
02. A Gilded Age
03. Watch The Days Slowly Fade
04. There Are No Places Left For Us
05. Minor Daughter
06. Border, Oklahoma*
07. Clyde & New Orleans
08. We Were All Saints
09. Seven Seas*
10. Marie*
11. A Voice Through The Wall

*on vinyl only, recorded February 2006

Adam Selzer - vocals, guitars, tympani, pump organ, bells, bass, juno, acoustic guitar, percussion
Rachel Blumberg - vocals, drums, piano, glockenspiel, mellotron, vibraphone, tape orchestra, percussion, tympani, gong, wurlitzer
Tony Moreno - banjo, accordion, keys
Dave Depper - bass, piano, organ, vocals
Amanda Lawrence - viola
Peter Broderick - violin, banjo, accordion, musical saw, mandolin
Chris Funk - banjo, pedal steel
Nicholas Marshall - bass
Cory Gray - trumpet, trombone, piano
Shelley Short - vocals
Kelly Bauman - vocals, electric guitar

The Apt Ensemble - Actaeon At Home

2005 The Apt Ensemble - Actaeon At Home Vladmaster5 (cd & viewmaster reels)

A musical picture story in 4 disks & 1 mini-cd.

The Apt Ensemble:
Peter Broderick
Nathan Crockett
Branic Howard
with Tim Nicodemus - narration on track 1.

1. Introduction
2. Soundtrack

The first commercially-available recording to feature Peter Broderick was a soundtrack by The Apt Ensemble.

The Apt Ensemble were Peter Broderick, Nathan Crockett and Branic Howard. Formed to provide musical accompaniment to Vladimir's handmade View-Master™ reel Actaeon At Home, the band "play[ed] strange and delightful music on an assortment of instruments including toy piano, tuba, musical saw, melodica, pump organ, and train whistle."1 The recorded soundtrack (available on a 3" cd with the four discs of View-Master™ reels which make up Actaeon at Home) runs for 5 minutes and 41 seconds.

During the Vladmaster California tour of 2005, The Apt Ensemble "also perform[ed] a wonderful set of music unaccompanied by tiny photographs and clicking noises."1 Sadly, no record of this music exists, although photographs of the performances can be seen here.

Vladimir described the coming-together of the Apt Ensemble thus: "There was this guy I didn’t know very well who was a student at the Northwest Film Center, who did the scores to his own films, and I really liked those. So I asked him to score "Actaeon," and he got the other two to help."2

1 (http://www.atasite.org/calendar/?x=1506)
2 (http://homepage.mac.com/merussell/iblog/B835531044/C1592678312/E20050826021234/index.html). It is more likely than not that the guy was Peter - some of the films he made at this time are on his youtube channel.

Music for Three (People)

2004/2005 Peter Broderick - Music for Three (People) (mp3)

From Peter's flickr photostream:

"Today I've been sorting through a bunch of old boxes of my things, out at my father's place. I found all these compositions I wrote while I was studying music theory in 2004-2005.

This was a piece I wrote for piano, violins, and tuba. I remember the teacher wanted us write everything out on the computer, so that it was easier to read, and to hand in the printed composition with a MIDI recording of the piece. I never learned how to use the computer program, so I ended up writing out everything by hand, and making recordings of the music.

This one cracks me up. This was only 4-5 years ago, yet it's hard for me to believe that I'm the one who wrote this piece of music. It seems my music just keeps getting slower and simpler as time goes on.

And I managed to find the recording I made. For some reason at the time I decided to add drums and harmonium, which aren't even in the score. Guaranteed to give you a headache and make you smile if you listen to the whole song :-)"

listen here

Balalaika Song/Work and Play

2004 Small Failures From Several Years Ago (mp3)

On 8 March 2010, Peter posted this on his flickr photostream:

"Year 2004.

I'm 17 years old. I recently moved out of my parents' home and to the city (Portland). I take a trip to Guitar Center and buy some recording equipment to use with my computer. And then I just start recording. There's a folder on the desktop of my computer, quickly filling up with all my hard work.

A few months later, I have 10 or 11 songs, enough to call it an album. One day I'm browsing the internet, and I download an mp3 from somewhere. The file goes onto my desktop. I put it into iTunes and have a listen. Then I grab the file on the desktop, throw it into the trash, and empty the trash.

But why is it saying it's going to take two minutes to empty the trash? That's weird. It only takes a long time to empty the trash when it's really full, and I only put one mp3 in there, and it was empty before . . . Wait . . . That wasn't the mp3 I threw away. It was the folder with my album in it.

No back up. Gone. I take the computer to a store and pay a couple hundred dollars for a data recovery service. They aren't able to retrieve anything. Really gone. All I have are the rough mixes. My mind is baffled by the modern world and how one tiny mistake like that can destroy an infinite number of valuable 1's and 0's.

I don't even want to look at my computer. I definitely don't feel like recording music on it. So I borrow my sister's four track cassette recorder and record these two ridiculous songs:

official.durtonstudio.com/1_balalaika_song.mp3

official.durtonstudio.com/2_work_and_play.mp3

Then I make my first and (so far) oil painting (above). One day a friend comes over and asks me what I'll do with it. I say, I don't know, throw it away. She asks if she can have it. I say, only if you hang it backwards, with the painting towards the wall.

Last time I talked to this friend, she still had the painting hanging backwards on her wall."