Jordan Daniel

Whether Jordan is writing acoustically under moniker Borderline Angelic, scratching out club beats with experimental project Electric Dreams Fantasy Boy, exploring 8-bit sounds and field recording with the electronic Pareidolia, or even playing homage to David Byrne and early ska in Captain Sizzle At The CBGB - the founder of Sudden Epidemic and the "voice" of Jane Lane plays music wherever he goes.

When not dancing the tango with lady Music herself, Jordan enjoys croquet, Regina Spektor, cooking, The Dark Knight, Magic: The Gathering, composition notebooks, horror movies, Terry Gilliam, concerts, quidditch, Blue Indigo, Mel Brooks, Richard Linklater, Photoshop, the internet, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, milk, Stanley Kubrick, new wave, Moog, the color pink, and the number 136.

This Is Not My Beautiful House, This Is Not My Beautiful Wife

It's strange how dreams can really shake your reality for awhile. You can find yourself waking up - mouth open in silent scream - shaking, sweating, and cursing your memory for not being able to remember who was chasing you. You can find yourself springing out of bed and running around like a maniac because you dreamt you heard your alarm going off.  You can even sometimes feel yourself "fall" back onto the matress after you were just flying around in these rapid eye induced hallucinations.

"There are several functions to dreaming. One is to give balance to the events that happen during the day. Studies have shown that if we interrupt dreaming for humans, they go crazy and psychotic and start seeing hallucinations and all kinds of strange things - even if they get the rest of their sleep. In other words, it's really a vital process. It has actually been scientifically proven in sleep lab research that dreaming increases learning or retention of new knowledge. Obviously, the more we sleep and dream, the more we integrate things that we have learned during the day. That's another valuable function," dream expert Craig Webb says. 

I found myself a little shaken this morning after a particulary vivid dream, or nightmare, or both.  Strange incarnations of friends, relatives, situations, and the past relived.  I'm still here trying to recatch my breath; my heart is still beating to the pulse of an invisible world while my conscious mind is completely aware of the ultimate, undeniable truth:

You.  Are.  Awake.  You.  Are.  Okay.

"The Nightmare", Henry Fuseli

It's strange what influences our dreams - exotic food from earlier in the evening, a song played in restlessness, or a few lines from a television programme or film.  An old photograph.  A prominent memory.  The balance of these surrealities lies hidden in shadow; no control can be placed over these incredibly powerful visions.

"Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens." (Carl Jung)

In non-dream related trickery, myself, Walker, and The Lee have sneaked our first episode (9/26/08) of the podcast online for the lost wanderer's listening pleasure.  We seem to have received a prominently positive response, so we'll definitely be back for seconds this Friday at 7 PM MST.

In other audio related news, Thursday (an old favorite of mine) has just released a split EP with Japanese...um...wow, well they're definitely some kind of band...Envy.  The split was announced by Temporary Residence Ltd. a few months ago, and is only available in a CD/LP combo.  I guess you just have to listen to it to understand for yourselves:



Thursday, Envy: Split 2008
DL (change xx to tt):
hxxp://www.sendspace.com/file/u7t4je

Enjoy!  More soon, including: the secret adventures of Phantom Stranger, journeys to All C's, and how we all learned to stop worrying and love Obama.

Rain Down The Magic

Well, I have revised the blog again - a little more to my liking. I really like being able to have all the information anyone would need available on one page; I don't know. A little chaotic, but also a little neat freak - a little scattered, but surprisingly well organized. Am I describing the blog now or myself?

Sigh. So much to do.

Yesterday, Marble and I swung back by 8 Houses Down to finish up the final master of Jane Lane's upcoming EP, Stories. After experiencing a little trouble with MySpace revamping their music player, we got four new songs up for your listening pleasure. The new songs include "A Real Live Girl", "She Was The East River", "This Is The Story", and "Vacant" (an acoustic version). I think MySpace is still experiencing a few problems with it's new "featured playlist" option, so if you can't see the songs immediately when the page loads, click the dropdown menu in the music player and select "Stories EP" from the list.

LISTEN TO THE NEW SONGS HERE!

We should have it available digitally from iTunes in the next week. I'll keep you all updated.



The Creature, circa 1954


In other audio related news, Benecio, Walker, and The Lee will present BENECIO & WALKER'S MOST EXCELLENT PODCAST OF DEATH, DOOM, AND DESTRUCTION tomorrow at 7 PM MST. This is the first episode in a weekly podcast - a collection of reflections, ideas, and plans for the zombie apocalypse (to say the least). In future episodes: Creature (TM) hunting tips, Hampshire 3.0, Jake Fairly, and guest appearances from The Baron (from The Thrill Of The Hunt). Exclusive music, scattered thought, and utter chaos for all! Every Friday a new episode will be available for download at HERE.

Elise got terribly sick this last week, and I ended up getting it too - I'm downing liquids and Airborne like there is no tomorrow so I can hopefully beat the germs and get better by the time my sister gets here. I haven't been able to go to work for a week now, so I still have to figure out what I am going to do about that situation. Really. I have just been so busy trying to work out the next few weeks - getting things going with the CD, getting promotion done, making enough money to survive on, etc. - that I haven't been able to get my head straight long enough to form a short-term plan. I need to figure this all out fast.

So many things happening/happened at once. This week was a drag. Hopefully this weekend will be better.

...A Beautiful Moment, Trapped, Glowed Under The Water.

Some exciting things being brought to us by lady Music this month.  Not only are we (Jane Lane) preparing to release our debut EP, Stories, at the end of this month, but we ourselves are expecting a bucketload of amazing releases.  I thought that I'd mention some in this blog; I've considered before turning MMLI into a music blog, so let's both just consider this the first real step in that direction.

Eluvium - "Genius And The Thieves" (from An Accidental Memory InThe Case Of Death)

Just learned that Eluvium, aka Matthew Robert Cooper, will be releasing a 7-LP vinyl box set with hardbound, cloth cover book.  The release itself contains every single Eluvium release.  The might be the most beautiful designed and well planned vinyl release I've seen this year - maybe even since Sigur Ros' "In A Frozen Sea".

I consider Eluvium's "Talk Amongst The Trees" my 'desert island' album.  I could listen to that ambient masterpiece a million times and never get bored of it.  Every single time I hear it, I discover new, hidden (or simply, waiting?) pieces in the music.  New things.  Exciting things.  Eluvium is something special to me.

It was this music that really pushed me towards exploring the ambient realm - new artists such as Hammock and Helios, as well as "legendaries" (if you can call artists of the 80s and early 90s onwards "legendaries") such as Brian Eno, Tim Hecker, and Christian Fennesz.  It really opened new doors.

Eluvium Live: "Under The Water It Glowed"

The Eluvium box set will be available for preorder from Temporary Residence Ltd. on October 1st.  They estimated the price at $100 plus shipping.

Matthew Cooper has been very busy as of late - he also just released a self-titled album available exclusively on vinyl entitled "Miniatures".  I offer a track for you all to enjoy from that release.


That's all for now.  Next time: Thursday, Envy, And How They Learned To Play Nice.

Open The Pod Bay Doors, Hal!

Ugh. The inevitable pain in the ass that is reformatting my computer. After my computer pulled some ridiculous shenanigans - including an ever-freezing start menu, a lack of free space, and not recognizing a Win XP native DVD - I decided to blow a hole in this PC's chest and take my revenge. Armed with "the perfect XP" (a slimmed-down, performance-oriented SP3 build) and everything backed up to the externals (oh, and complications with my hard drive playing "now you see me, now you don't"), I'm currently 52% into deleting all its precious files that made my life so hard up until this point.

So many problems! First, it won't let me reformat my Leopard partition because the Mac filesystem differs so from the Windows'. Then (with a little help from PartitionMagic - thank you god!) after deleting Leopard entirely and extending my Windows partition to the full capacity of my hard drive - Windows Setup does not "believe" that there are any hard drives installed on the computer. Oh, fuck you too.

Open the god damn pod bay doors, Hal!

Now I'm sitting here on Elise's MacBook once again typing this blog entry as my computer whimpers. It should be happy - I'm probably ridding it of hundreds of unseen malware files and trojan horses (Avast Anti-Virus? Yeah. Right.). I'm prepared to turn it into an open-source fueled fighting machine. I couldn't bring myself to dual boot Linux again - past experiences with RedHat have left me a little weary. Maybe Ubuntu could do the trick.

Otherwise, I'm trying to get a lot of work hours in extra at home because my sister, Robyn, will be visiting me from Oregon at the end of September. Between having to pay rent, pay for the "Shards Of Alara" prerelease tournament, and getting food, I certainly hope I have a bit of money left over to have fun with my sister...

Well, just a little rant about the 1s and 0s - I'll be off now. Tune in next week for stories of mad beats from the world of Magic: The Gathering, and a little thing called love. Ciao.

Oh, By The Way, Which One's Pink?

Had a very interesting conversation with the two Marbles last night; after discussing everything from the subtleties of lyrical voicings to the wonder years of Stevie Nicks, we settled on the nebulousness of "rock and roll lifestyles" - drugs, booze, and abundant women and how each one can change people.  Not usually for the better.

After quickly eliminating women from the list of "bad" things...

We came to a pretty interesting conclusion about the whole thing. In the world of independent music today - a world where most artists take out personal loans to buy equipment, and work odd jobs with even odder hours to squeeze in practice - I think the granduer and the drawing 'mystique' behind the life of "rock stars" has been given up for the hardworking, loud, and musically responsible lifestyle.  I mean, seven years in the band, one full-length album, two demos, one EP, an amp (and it's three replacements), and a summer tour later - would I really want to jeopardize all of my hard work for a little fun?

I think that indie artists (and most musicians in general, minus the $25 million dollar deal pop stars and bands that originated in the 60s, 70s, 80s...) have steered their energies away from the throwing their lives away.   There's a few bad apples here and there (Ms. Winehouse...?), but as a whole, I think it's getting a lot better.  The air a lot cleaner.  Maybe I'm just a little too hopeful about the next few coming months, and am seeing things with a slight overlay of obliviousness.

Marb and I also discussed with John how we believe marijuana and it's position in the world - among government's laws and foreign religions and modern cultures and new ideas - is not that 'bad' of a thing.  I guess if you're parent with a son in a rock band, you might see this "drug" as something completely different.  A slip forward into the rock and roll lifestyle?  No, just a decision made; a idea formed.  I feel I don't need to ramble all of personal opinions on cannabis drug culture here on this blog...

Otherwise, three new songs were put up on the Jane Lane MySpace last night.  None of them are currently available for download, but I will be posting a track for download in the coming weeks.   Better quality versions will be posted to the MySpace soon, so look out for a huge announcement about them then.  In the meantime, this is really mostly for anyone who stumbles across my blog before the big day:


Another day, work at home.  Need to go in as many days as humanly possible in these next two weeks.  Big plans require big money.  Things on the shopping list:

Gorilla Glue Duct Tape.  It's all I'll need.

If We Can Hold On Until The Mood Swings Are Gone

...We might just have a chance.

Alright, so it's almost been another full year since I've graced my blog with any kind of thought. Bored at work, and barely alive, I set out to make my blog look a little more attractive to me. With the help some sweet CSS from JackBook and a pinch of creative engineering, I welcome you to Murder Murderer Love Inc. version...well, I lost track somewhere around 13.

So a lot of things have changed since December 31st. I don't really know where to begin, so I guess that I'll start with saying that I am sitting in my living room typing this on Elise's brand new MacBook. I live with Elise and Jean now, back in Denver, trying to move along one day at a time.

By "back in Denver" I mean that I was gone for six months - living in Oregon with my family. I needed some time to really evaluate who I was, what I wanted, and what I needed to do to get it. Some rocky moments along the way - working out the future with the band, missing my friends terribly, feeling completely alone in a brand new town - but more good than anything. From my extended "mental-health" stay, I created two albums (Borderline Angelic's third and final studio album, "From The Park To Your Apartment", and a new ambient-electronica release under pseudonym Pareidolia entitled "Untitled I"), made quite a bit of money (slaving day after day in the freezing cold and trivial rhythm of Baskin Robbins), and bought far too many vinyls.

But on May 6th, 2008 - my planes filled the sky. After spending three days on the road with Elise - traveling across Oregon, Idaho, Utah, and the endless 'state of mind' that is Wyoming - I arrived back in Denver to a new apartment, a new job, a new start.

Quite a start it has been.

After finally letting go of the opressive title of "Sudden Epidemic", we most recently changed the band name to Jane Lane (www.jane-lane.com). A few shows later (with local legends Vices I Admire and Synthetic Elements), a week spent holed away in Denver's own 8 Houses Down recording studios, and a feature in the "Who's Making Noise" collumn of the Colorado Music Buzz - things have begun to burst at the seams. Everything seems like it is happening at once, and all falling into specifically placed spaces along the timeline.

As Elise so wonderfully put it, "I can smell something amazing is going to happen".

So, when I'm not playing music, playing music, or playing music - I spend my days organizing web orders and maintaining the site for The Wizard's Chest (www.wizardschest.com) and discussing the properties of the universe with Mr. Alex Marble over a few games of Magic. I feel overwhelmed with a sense of peace - even though I know I still have plenty to stress about - and happiness. Happy to have this wonderful musical opportunity, and happy to share it with my closest friends. Happy to have returned the people I missed so much, and happy to see where both my path and their's have taken me. Happy to sleep soundly next to Elise, and happy to hear the way her voice sings in a whisper in my ear. Happy.

I think I'm okay with that.
 

Dustin

Jesus and Christ

Jane Lane 2008

Borderline Angels

In The Studio

Built For MySpace

Kyle

Marsha Marsha Marsha