Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Filling In The Blanks

It is now the end of March, 2010, and tomorrow I leave for the Southwest portion of this project.  I'll arrive in Phoenix tomorrow night, and will stay for 3 nights with my friends Alma and Alexis until my first desert excursion this Sunday.
 
There have been some great summit attempts and scenic excursions since my last blog entry in September of 09, so because I never got 'round to posting those conclusions, I'm going to start with video footage from that month and slowly work my way back to the present.  The next few blog entries, 
including this one, will be spent filling in the last 7 months, one video piece at a time.

It is all good, relative, relevant info.  And besides, it's only fair that I keep you entertained in chronological order so you know what the heck is going on.  I will try to post each day.  As soon as I head out into the Arizona wilderness, in 4 days, I want to have the past cleared up so I can start posting new entries. 

The Summit Music 
Project involves making live electronic ambient music at somewhat removed, natural locations.  To me, aside from the beauty of it's settings and nostalgic 
parallels, this project has become somewhat of a monster.  It started out as a simple and fun experiment and is now turning into a potential publicity stunt/expedition/quest for music-video and documentary footage.  Then again, very few projects I've ever started, be it music or other, have ended up being anything but snarling monsters. (Always in a good way--when it's finished.) 
 Don't get me wrong, it's definitely fun-and-games compared to some jobs and projects, but there are some cold-case sacrifices that must be made in order to pull off this type of thing successfully. 

I am in the process of renovating my record label, and will be carrying some new artists whom I believe in, artistically.  If there is even a chance that this project will muster up some future publicity for both them and I, then that alone is worth it.  (Alongside inherent reasons.)

At the very least, I am determined to have a (somewhat) fun and effective record of this whole thing.


Last September, Lisa Claire and I stayed at a summer home on the Oregon coast near Port Orford.  It was a temporary visit before we continued onward towards Mt. Shasta where we were going to climb to the top and I was going to record music up there.  

A few days before we left the OR coast, I decided to have my first ambient-music recording session in a natural setting by going down to the pristine, Oregon beach and climbing one of the buttes that line the shores. 

The following footage, and music, is from that day.  It was definitely fun.

Tomorrow I will post the conclusion to what happened at Mt. Shasta the following three days, and at Mt. St. Helens the following month.

Dean De Benedictis

VIDEO FOOTAGE