Night's Bright Colors - Indie Music

Night's Bright Colors is the moniker of the supremely talented Asheville-based musician, Jason Smith. A little Elliot Smith here, a little low-fi Pixies there, NBC has written movie music for Harrow Beauty in the past (most notably, our first feature film, Sinkhole), but it's primarily a recording entity that Smith uses in connection with a rotating cast of musicians following his lead. He just released yet another full-length set of songs (he's very prolific, too) on the web. Here's what The Mountain Xpress' Ali Marshall had to say about Smith's latest release:

"Just in time for this tough economy—and (less bleakly) for the first day of spring—Asheville’s Night’s Bright Colors releases its newest effort, Late Night by Lamplight. The online-only album (available at http://www.nightsbrightcolors.com) can be downloaded for free.

The no-cost digital album is in keeping with the times. In late 2007, mega stars Radiohead issued their “pay what you want” online-only album, In Rainbows. Five years earlier, R.E.M. released r.e.m.IX, a remix of the previous year’s Reveal for fans to download free via the band’s Website. In this age of DIY home studios and indie labels, the straight-to-Web tactic seems a logical next step.

“With this new technology, downloading it for free makes more sense,” explains Night’s Bright Colors mastermind, Jason Smith. Printing CDs was a major cost for the musician who felt the pressure to sell the finished product “became more of a focus than it should have.”

A companion disc to last autumn’s First Set Fire to the Stars, Late continues with the nighttime motif, a velvety hush palpable throughout the collection. But Smith’s shimmery, ambient aesthetic is bolstered by pop sensibility with nods to Sparklehorse as well as The Cure. Lush violin (from Lauren Brown) balances sanguine guitar strumming on the all-too-brief opener, “blush.”

The title track pairs Medieval string tones with a Nick Drake-like vocal for something sweetly romantic. The adroitly-named “parry the wind” is a moody meditation on weather as metaphor for relationships. That Smith, a stay-at-home dad, can craft such quixotic material in between sippy cups and naptimes only adds to the starry-eyed spell this album casts.

Smith plans to release the fourth and possibly final album in the Night’s Bright Colors catalog - a concept collection he describes as “evolving or devolving” around a Romeo and Juliet theme—this fall."

Check it out -- it's a free download and it rocks the house -- but quietly.

http://www.nightsbrightcolors.com

Music for Indie Films

There's a lot of cool music in Asheville. This is a musical town. I know a ton of talented, serious, professional musicians -- good ones. That's one of the secret blessings of living in such a creative place.

So when we talk about what type of music we're gonna hear when we watch Alison, I was a little hesitant to pin it down. On one level, the movie is a quiet, minimalist sort of piece that doesn't require much accompaniment -- you never want to signal the viewer what type of emotion to have, unless you're making The Goonies or something.

But on the other hand, music can add so much. Since Alison is a story about a woman -- a chick flick, as it were -- for a time I played with getting some 'chicks' who play rock music to score the piece with some sort of indie-rock mood music. That was a good idea, but it seemed a little like I was hoping to co-opt some type of movement that I don't actually belong to.

And then came the ukulele.

It's solid koa. It's from Hawaii. It's a concert-sized uke, which means it's a little larger, almost like a small classical guitar. It sounds amazing. I can't stop playing it. 1920's jazz is my favorite, particularly something like the beautiful and very apropos Carolina Moon.

This is the way, I've found, creativity works. You look for something, and you may not find it, but chances are you'll find something else just as good.

So, like all other aspects of this movie, happy accidents will provide. I think in addition to the cool indie chick-rock and hair metal and the requisite ambient tones, there might just be a little ukulele happening somewhere in there.

Alison Hatchfest

So, Tuesday, March 24, 2009, the Media Arts Project and Hatchfest, two North Carolina-based, supercool arts entities, will host 'Alison' and a few other projects for a Hatchfest fundraiser.

We'll present six or so minutes of 'Alison,' just to give people a taste of what it's like. We've been living with it for awhile, of course, and are excited to get it out there so other people can appreciate it, too.

The Media Arts Project helped us out with a few finishing funds, so it's a way to give something back to them and help them raise money for the next batch of hungry artists to come along.

Come out and say hello!

First!

Actually, this really is my first. It feels good to be here. Thanks for checking us out.

For more info about this page and it's subject (Harrow Beauty Pictures), go to www.harrowbeauty.com, or to see our latest project, check out alisonmovie.com. We'll be updating things here fairly regularly from now on, so keep comin' back ...

Thanks, ya'll!