ariel powell - the lightningrod salesman
Instrumentation
Ariel Powell- percussion, computers, guitar, bass, keyboards, vocals, photography, writing.
when i was 12, my brother toby, our friend johnny and i decided to start a band. at this time our favorite band was the beatles, and our favorite radio station was the oldies. not one of us actually played an instrument, but we assigned instruments to each other and started writing cheezy love songs. i elected to play the drums, and was the first of us to actually obtain chosen instrument.
for the next 5 years i slowly and steadily learned the ways of rythm, taking some time to play around on the guitar and piano every now and then. at 17 years old, i found myself in a dormitory in philly full of young musicians interested in playing and recording music. i began to play regularly with a canadian named tyrell umbach, who loved playing metalica and hotel california. as we both continued quickly on the learning curve, we decided to do our first recording project for a history assignment. using a four track tape recorder, we recorded nine songs of drums, guitar, bass, piano, and vocals, all based around the concept of war, particularly WWII. our history teacher granted us an A on the project.
within the next year, i had decided i wanted to pursue the recording of music as a career, and had bought a 16-track digital recorder. using this, i recorded a solo album that featured a song with tyrell (who had by this time bought a marshall 100v twin), a song written with another friend glen boyesen, and one with mark adams. i named the album SMILE, and sold it around school at the end of senior year, only to offend many of my listeners with a particularly disdainful track about an ex-girlfriend.
learning from my mistakes both musically and lyrically, i started writing another solo album almost immediately. i got an acoustic guitar, began composing more complex chord progressions, and learned the art of ambiguity and representation in lyric writing. still using the 16 track, i furthered my still primitive mixing and mastering skills, and at the end of a year of college and another half year of work, i had finished THE LEAVES, SHIMMERING GOLD. despite this being a fairly upbeat album with some really catchy riffs and harmonies, i did not give this cd a packaging or try to sell it to anyone. it still sits in the cd collections of many of my close friends to whom i have given it.
around this time i started listening to alot of post-rock and shoegaze, as well as electronica and dance. so naturally my next recording project veered drasticly in this direction when i bought an ms-2000 synthesizer online. i learned to turn knobs and change waveforms to get all sorts of wild electronic sounds. i also began to experiment with the delay pedal. another year, another full length solo album. this time dark and brooding, and waaaay spacy. if you were to hold your breath underwater for an hour, you would lose consciousness, and in your quiet, spirit inhabited repose you may hear SO BE IT.
at this point, the hard drive on the 16 track was full, and attempts at bouncing the songs to another drive failed. so instead i bought a mac computer with pro logic, and a whole new world of producing sound opened up to me. after 3 albums on the old 16 track, it was hard to believe i had been so constrained. so now it was all about midi instruments and drums, formatted songs, cut and paste, and oh, all the effects and mixing capabilities!!! with a new music studio constructed in my parents garage loft, i dove in headfirst working on an ambient electronica album using a mix of echoey electric guitars, rhythmic synth bass and drums, world style vocals, and lots of pads, bells, and dance leads. with the new equipment, i was going places i had merely dreamed of before in music. i decided early on in the process of HIDDENKIND that this would be an album to print and sell. so with the help of oasis cd manufacturing and cd baby, i printed a professionally presented disk with flashy pictures and got it up and running on amazon, itunes, cd baby, and many other internet sellers. to this time, HIDDENKIND is still the only album readily available over the web.
but that does not mean i have not been productive. another rock album, this time resembling something between the deftones and sigur ros, i sitting semi-complete in my projects folder. i have also been working on more electronic music, very much in the dance realm, and hopefully leading toward something tangible.
throughout the last few years i have also been working on projects with a number of other people who are interested in having me produce their own music, or in working collaboratively on music. I have had tons of fun playing with 'dudes for deep', which mainly consists of a whole lot of drunken idiots on drums, guitars, bass, keyboards, and, oh yes, microphones. i have also greatly enjoyed playing with 'noisebleed', which is a shoegaze/postrock effort by myself and my good friends nippy and anna. on the electronic side, i have been working on and off with dj lorn making some psychedelic and ambient tracks and intros to lorn mixes. this collaboration we call the 'legions of lana', after lana lang of smallville, who just happens to be smokin'. in the area of producing music for others, i work with my brother toby powell on folk/rock songs that he has composed, and with connor scott (the everyday) on his own tracks.
i love getting the opportunity to help people reach a goal in music. i enjoy playing parties and bars with bands when the opportunity presents itself. music for me is a way of life that i cannot imagine giving up, though sometimes i wish it were otherwise. the future holds whatever the future holds, be it hitting it big and going on tour, or simply writing and recording in my spare time after work. either way, i will continue the ongoing pursuit of happiness and perfection in both life and music. that's all for now.
-ariel powell