Ok, I’m in Colorado now, and I didn’t have enough room in my luggage to bring my MIDI controller. At first this pissed me off, because my constant obsession that is referenced in the tagline of this blog. I just really need to be making an album so I have something to do that isn’t celebrity pictures or movie rumors. Otherwise I’d go crazy.

On the other hand, sometimes I take time to do music that could be better spent of celebrity pictures and movie rumors, so it’s sort of like an addiction in the sense that wanting to make music suggests I make bad decisions about my personal scheduling.

Like right now. I’m supposed to be looking up pictures of celebrities. I have another window open that has several tabs of leaked Carmen Electra Playboy photos.

Anyway, I’ve used this time without a MIDI controller to listen to tracks off of (what I was calling) zeroone on multiple devices. This album is going to clock in somewhere between 40 and 50 minutes and is getting really close to release. As both Valhalla and Out Of Insight Out Of Mind proved, none of you are that interested in high-quality AIFF files, so that saves me a lot of rendering time.

THE TITLE HAS BEEN CHANGED. I was reading about old myths of masturbation and realized that they would socially refer to choking your chicken as “the solitary vice.” Of course, I had to snatch that up for my own use. Not only is it a colloquial phrase from the past that refers to masturbation, but my inability to not work on Citizen Nowhere in 2008 was certainly a vice and one I did alone.

zeroone was called such because it was supposed to be an album of instrumentals that only had binary names. The two tracks I’ve posted from it fit this formula (0101 and 010101) and I had seven of them lined up - the seventh being 01010101010101. I was going to do this so no one read into any of the tracks, they were just music, they didn’t “document” anything sonically.

Then, one of the songs got lyrics. And I added a cover song. Things snowballed and zeroone is off. I’ll probably get around to it sometime (I’ve been listening to a bunch of film soundtracks), and I’d really like to do zeroone in the future. I like the idea of 40 minutes of insturmental tracks to plug into my iPod so I can walk aroun the city without silencing my thoughts.

Thus, CN7 is now The Solitary Vice.

IT WILL BE RELEASED TWICE. I know this sounds counter-intuitive, but I will be releasing The Solitary Vice in 2 different ways. The first way will be VERY early in 2009. Possibly even on New Year’s Day if I wake up from the hangover.

Sometime in early 2009, there will be a ZIP file of The Complete Citizen Nowhere Collection, “celebrating” five years of Personal Diary Music. That’s 8 albums, 7 of original material and 1 compilation of my favorites from the first four:

Alone In Americaland, Pretentious, III: Sin Seer, IV, Mirrors & Masks, Valhalla, Out Of Insight Out Of Mind, The Solitary Vice

It will be a honkingly huge file, but it represents five years worth of work from 2003-2008.

In the spirit of excess graphic design, the version of The Solitary Vice that appears in the massive collection will have an alt cover that looks like this:

The Solitary Vice: Complete Collection Alt Cover

After that sits in the digestive system of the brave and the few, I’ll have a few days/weeks to contemplate adding tracks to The Solitary Vice, just in case. Sometime in the first quarter of 2009, The Solitary Vice will be released with its real cover:

Citizen Nowhere VII: The Solitary Vice

Got it? Got it?

So, in anticipation of The Solitary Vice, and in the new tradition of Citizen Nowhere, I’m giving you the “promo” single with the official release announcement (that’s this post).

download link “Hey You” by Citizen Nowhere off The Solitary Vice

I’m designing the cover for zeroone, the seventh (sigh) Citizen Nowhere Album.

I’m going to plunk some designs down here just so I can stop thinking about them.

zeroone cover one: book cover wrap

zeroone cover two: sewn version

It’s rainy outside and some Brillhart/Gonzales commercial bullshit is stressing me the eff out.

So, I’m behind 2 days on posting and WAYYYYYY behind on the Serious Bob Retrospective.

What I’m not behind on is tracks floating around that eventually need to get up here.

So here is one of those pesky instrumentals named in a series of zeros and ones and it’s corresponding, individual artwork.

download link “0101″ by Citizen Nowhere.

It’s been a week since I released Out Of Insight, Out Of Mind on Read It Or Don’t and already tracks begin to pile up for my next effort.

I described it to Jess Frantz when she was visiting as: “A 40 minute instrumental album with tracks named in binary.” And I bet you thought I was joking.

The rational behind it being: I don’t know who listens to this stuff, I don’t have enough money to get CN6 out on iTunes just yet, and I need to monetize my music habit or it becomes a hobby that I don’t have time for.

The problem is that these songs have been building in me for a few months, specifically this one, the third track (of six existing). Vocals would be easy, the album would be a different sonic direction for Citizen Nowhere, and I’m really tempted to just make CN7 out of these tracks (and you know that with my habit of putting random 7s in my name, the seventh album is important).

I’m also getting to the point where my graphic design has started spilling over, so it’s very possible that every track on the instrumental album will have its own artwork.

And when I start following ideas like that, the side busy work starts piling up. Like right now where I should be doing laundry, paperwork and finding pictures of celebrities.

But I’m going to post this anyway, because I like the track.

If I wasn’t naming the tracks based on their number and the numbers 01, this track would probably be called something like “Rachel Paton From The Future.” Because I love the idea of Future Rachel.

Download link “010101″ by Citizen Nowhere