NewYearsDayProject | a song a day blog

  It’s time to play mixologist again and set my plan for the new month. This month, I decided to balance bleakness and hope. With its shortening days and gloomy weather, I’ve always found November to be one of the most depressing months. This year, the extra anxiety of the U.S. presidential election also influenced my picks. I always hold the power to shift songs around and change up the formula, and the next few weeks may do that for me. I tried to balance the nostalgic, the dark, and the shiny without giving a feeling too much weight. There’s a contrast I tried to build--the cold outside and warmth. Today’s song “ Flights ” by Falling Up , starts the month in a misty morning haze that is as mysterious as the day after Halloween, All Saints Day. Tomorrow, we’ll hear Jeremy Zucker ’s anxiety lament “a dying world,” which turns into a warm hymn of hope. The playlist will shift to Stone Temple Pilots’ “Interstate Lovesong,” a nostalgic post-grunge ‘90s hit. The playlist will take several

  Talk about Falling Up was sparse until this year. At one point they were one of the biggest Christian Rock groups and then they became a quirky progressive rock band singing about science fiction and making space operas. With Tooth & Nail Labeled Podcast and HM Magazine’s Black Sheep Podcast , many big-name Christian Rock stars from the past 20 years have gone on the record about their experiences recording, touring, and eventually breaking up. Falling Up’s lead singer Jessy Ribordy remained mostly elusive. A break-up interview with JesusFreaksHideout.com’s podcast and the Christian Rock 20 podcast was my only insight into Ribordy’s experiences with Falling Up until earlier this year when Jessy did three podcast appearances and announced that he was starting a new band, and releasing a final album under the Falling Up moniker, The Chilling Alpine Adventure. SO EXIT THE FALL, AND NOW IT’S OVER. Jessy Ribordy’s interviews coincide with the twentieth anniversary of Falling Up

There had been hints and tendencies listeners could pick up on from earlier  Falling Up  records. There was the occasional strange word choice on  Crashings .  There was esoteric storytelling on  Dawn Escapes .  There were the made-up words on  Exit Lights ,  the remix record. And for the band’s third studio record on  BEC Recordings ,     Captiva ,  Falling Up delved into Greek mythology and science fiction.  But for the band’s fourth record,  Fangs!   Falling Up presented a full concept record without Bible verses in the album notes.  This time fully indulging in world-building. SOME OF US HAVE SEEN GOLDEN ARROWS POISED.  Working with frontman  Casey Crescenzo  of cult-status progressive indie band  The Dear Hunter , the sound on  Fangs!  steers the band away from the electronic and Nu Metal influence Falling Up had previously embraced. Before releasing the record, lead singer  Jessy Ribordy  shared the  story behind  the concept record. Ribordy explained that the story is a prologue

Twenty-one years ago,  Linkin Park  released their sophomore record,  Meteora .    Throughout the band's career, their sound would shift to various styles of rock music, but  Meteora  is not much of a departure from the band's debut  Hybrid Theory .  The album did, however, embrace Asian musical instruments on several tracks. At the time of its release,  Meteora  not only debuted at number 1 on  Billboard's 200 Album charts  but also set the record for the most units sold in a week beating  Celine Dion 's  One Heart .  In 2003, Nu Metal was the ruling dynasty and Linkin Park was the king of the music. I CAN'T FEEL THE WAY I DID BEFORE.  Speaking of deluxe editions, you can stream Linkin Park's 20th anniversary edition of  Meteora-- 95 tracks of live performances, B-sides, and demos; some of which have been released like their  Live in Texas   record and some remastered tracks which had never left the vault. Personally, I don't have fond memories of this reco

The idea of a remix album has been around since the 1970s. In 1987  Madonna  released her remix album  You Can Dance , the second most-selling remix album ever after    Michael Jackson 's 1997  Blood on the Dance Floor: HIStory in the Mix.   Jennifer Lopez 's remix album  J to tha L--O! The Remixes ,  in  2002, was the first remix album to top  Billboard 's Hot 200  album sales charts.  There have been some notable rock remix records. Nine Inch Nails released  Further Down the Spiral   in 1995, remixing their classic album  The Downward Spiral .  In 2001 Limp Bizkit released  New Old Songs , which sold 500,000 copies. However, I argue that it was another platinum remix album followed by a slew of Christian Rock artists to copy their style. The band is Linkin Park and the album was  Reanimation , a reworking of their 12x platinum debut  Hybrid Theory.  HE'S IN THIS PLACE TO QUESTION WHO YOU ARE .  Reanimation  featured collaboration between rockers and underground rapp

  In 2017, Aaron Sprinkle released Real Life , his last release on Tooth & Nail Records . The legendary producer had released solo work sporadically since the ‘90s; however, being the go-to producer for some of the most successful bands in Alternative and Hard Christian Rock was time-consuming, and Sprinkle felt that producing great records was more successful than trying to promote a solo career. Sprinkle’s production always felt cutting-edge when he recorded, whether for Anberlin , Acceptance , Demon Hunter , Falling Up , or a host of other bands. Real Life, however, feels very 2017. Today, let's explore the album, track by track. 1. Invincible kicks off the album with that 2017 electronic sound. Featuring Poema ’s Elle Puckett contributing a spoken-word/ rap part, the song sounds nothing like what you’d expect from either artist. The lyrics seem to be the speaker coming to realize that he is not invincible. Puckett tries to convince the first speaker that he never needed

  My Christian school took an annual mission trip in the spring to Chattanooga, Tennessee. The school had partnered with a church in the inner city that had a Habitat-for-Humanity sort of outreach. It was one of those "I feel more ministered to" type mission trips. We ended up doing a lot of grunt work for ongoing projects, but we were made to believe that we were of some use. Of course, this was before I learned that most of the churches built on mission trips overseas have to be torn down the minute the  missionaries  step on the plane because of course unskilled builders don't know how to build--but I digress. DO YOU HAVE THE TIME TO WASTE AWAY THE DAY?  One of the rules of the mission trip was that we were only allowed to listen to Christian music. It could be any genre, but it became a time for some of us to show off our CDs of the hard rock, metal, punk, and Emo-Christian records that made their way to the Family Christian bookstores. Sometimes we'd listen to Gr

On October 25, 2005, Falling Up released their sophomore record, Dawn Escapes . The album, produced by Michael “Elvis” Baskette , varies from the band’s Hybrid-Theory - inspired debut Crashings . Rather than maintaining the momentum of the synth-driven rock on Crashings, the band’s sophomore effort focuses on a dreamy ambiance enhanced with hard rock guitars. The first single from the album, “ Exit Calypsan ” (Only in My Dreams)--released earlier in 2005 on the Christian Rock compilation X2005 -- is slower than the singles from Crashings. The chorus brings heavy guitars in to keep Falling Up a rock band. Dawn Escape ’s second single, “ Moonlit ”; however, broke the band’s electronic formula and gave them a riff-heavy rocker. With the two singles preceding the album, listeners were treated to a dreamy experience that perfectly wrapped the dichotomous songs. THIS PLACE I PASS. The album cover of Crashings showed a fresh-faced six-peace band. According to their cover artwork, Falling Up