INTERNATIONAL

This means the world to me, all of you. Let's cover the whole map with green!

(((xxxo)))

THE MIDDLE MAN

So here's the story behind this new track.

While my guitar is broken, I decided to dabble in production a bit and I just recorded this one. It's kind of the song that fuels my "I'm the one to watch" statement- it's just that song that I feel like proves myself over other teen singer-songwriters.

One of my goals with this track is to show that I don't just write these songs that are all doom and gloom- I am a versatile lyricist and songwriter. I can write a song that is this weird indo-hybrid-soul-rant and make it work just as well as one of my more stripped down pieces. I hope everyone likes. Here's the lyrics.

I will never know the story told
The day I was left there
Shining like gold

The day I was born
They resented my name
The place I was born
Looks at me with shame

Boy's Town, downtown, dirty freak
Dollar store man and
Lyrical cheek

You know I'm no good
Angst ridden teen
The place where I am
Is not where I've been

Dollar store
Drug whore
Take me away
Cos friendship hurts
But nothing is worse

The rise and fall is a funny thing
It was all fun and games
Until I started to sing

Oh, truth hurts but it's better than
A prison shank
From the middle man

DIRTY DOWNTOWN TRASHY DETROIT BOY'S TOWN CIGARETTE-TINGED CINEMATIC PULSE RACING NOIR GENTLEMAN GAS STATION PUNCH DRUNK SONGSTER KING OF DIAMONDS

In case you missed the new track:

SURPRISE NEW SONG

THE MIDDLE MAN
FROM MY NEW MIXTAPE THAT'S COMING SOON CALLED PARIS!!!! (((XXXO))) ENJOY MY LOVELIES

New Pages

Just put some new pages up on the blog!

LITHOGRAPHY: For all the lyrics from the album (and maybe some subtle hints at new ones...)
MUSIC PLAYER: Free streaming of all the songs from the Midnight Fission EP and the album.
MERCH: External link to my website. Shirts and Custom Converse.

(((xxxo)))

TEMPORAL AGNOSTICISM

And I suffer every day.

I have a very small conflict with my family as of right now. I'm not asking for anyone's opinion with this one- tonight is gonna be a ranting night. 

My family is, primarily Jewish. It's complicated, because both of my parents are mixed between Christians and Jews, and then they had me. The holiday season is nice, but with mildly awkward undertones. Anyway, as much as the average person does, I do a fair amount of thinking about death, religion, afterlife- that kind of thing. And I decided that I was Agnostic- I feel like until we experience death, we can't make judgements about deities and the afterlife. I also feel that religion causes a lot of fuss and fighting about essentially nothing. Isn't it better to stop questioning and start living in hope of witnessing what may or may not await?

Here's the conflict. The Christians in my family are very Christian and the Jews in my family are very Jewish. When they heard of my thinking and recent decision I made for myself as a person, I sort of got attacked.

"Well his mother is Jewish, so he is also."

This would be a valid argument if I wasn't a religious mutt. But even if I was 100% Jewish on my mom's side, would that really even matter? I'm not "Jewish by blood"- no one is! Religion is not the same as nationality. You choose to be Jewish, or Christian, or Agnostic, or Atheist, or Buddhist, or whatever- you don't choose to be American, or Russian, or Mexican. Most kids just grow up in a household of that religious variety and choose to adopt it for themselves. I'm not most kids. I made the decision to be who I am, and if you have a problem with that, it's none of your business anyway.

Let me be me. And if I change my mind, you'll all be the first to know. 

(((xxxo)))

OFFICIAL FINAL TRACK LISTING AND ALBUM COVERS FOR THE DEBUT ALBUM FROM A CENSORED SUNLIGHT, BLOODLINES.

Standard Version:

1. Temperance

2. Sick

3. Bloodlines

4. Not Your Friend

5. Light

6. Reality in the Trenches

7. Come Find Me

8. Sell, Sell, Sell

9. When In Rome...

10. Hollywood

11. Midnight Fission

12. Opaque Winter

Deluxe Version:

13. Here I Am (Mainstream Love)

14. The Head + The Heart

15. A Brief History of Pain

Bloodlines (Lady SnowBlood Remixes)

1. Bloodlines (Remix)

2. The Head + The Heart (Remix)

3. Not Your Friend (Remix)

4. When In Rome... (Remix)

Lady SnowBlood Remixes will be released in 2013, soon after the standard and deluxe releases. All remixes will be produced by Kurt Splitt.

KILL YOUR BABIES

There is an old songwriter's moniker that bluntly states "kill your babies." It means that every lyricist on the face of the Earth thinks that each of their creations is equally as beautiful and perfect as the next. The phrase is simply a wake up call to those lyricists, especially ones like me. Commercially, not every song is going to be a smash like it can measure up to be in your head. 

I have never really had this issue, especially now that I'm writing a follow-up to a record that I consider to be stellar- it's very easy to draw comparison and realize that not every song is the best song I've ever written. But I refuse to write an album with a filler track. Or multiple filler tracks. If I don't love what I write, then other people definitely won't. 

I'm incredibly excited to have the time to write again, and I've found inspiration through some really everyday stuff- for example I just finished up a song for the second album called "Innocent Eye." I got the name in English class, where we were talking about points of view in literature, and one of them was called Innocent Eye- it described any work in which a child was telling the story. 

I was probably the only artsy weirdo who did, but I took serious offense to that. I'm a child, and I've listened to my debut a million times, and I think I tell a damn good story- why do "children" need a separate category? We're just as capable as anyone else to convey a story. The song is an angry one, as you might have expected. But not in the textbook terrible way you might think. It's teen angst, it's irony. It's not one of my babies I'm about to kill.

I get scared though, because I don't want to write a whole album on the "kill your babies" theorem until I've 1-uped my way through a twelve song set. I need to be equally happy with everything. I just want to feel the same about everything.

(((xxxo)))

Nick 

A Brief Summary of My Upcoming Record

I guess that I really haven't said very much about my record, Bloodlines. It comes on on December 21st... so I figured I would give some background information on the album.

Bloodlines is... this is a hard thing for me to describe because after I wrote the record, I didn't even know what it meant. Whenever I write, a lot of times I don't know how I feel until I see it all there on paper, and even then I have to interpret that into what must be going on in my head. Anyway, after a lot of that process, I played myself the rough demos of each track and I realized that it wasn't fitting into any category of mainstream music right now. So, I decided to sort of set up my little LP camp in the empty grey area that's only inhabited by like... Adele, Florence and the Machine, and Bjork. The lyrics are really deep and confrontational, but its something that the mainstream crowd can enjoy too. It's a very mellow record, but its like laid-back to the point of apocalyptic 'Well, I guess I'll just have to sit around and wait to die' kind of thing. It's very cool and diverse. There's my typical style in there, but I mess around with some different genres in writing styles too. If I had to describe me as a musician, it would be like if Florence Welch and Jack Johnson had a musical love child. And I think that vibe really reflects on the record.

The record actually started when I wrote the first single, "Temperance." My parents had just gotten divorced and everyone kept telling me "Oh, it isn't your fault! This had nothing to do with you! It was a completely separate adult decision," and all this junk, but inside me I still needed a reason for why this could be happening to me, and I wanted to blame myself just to fill a void inside me so I could be sort of sad all the time, but still be able to function. That's why it was called Temperance- holding back from something frowned upon.

Songwriting actually started as a venting method for me, so when I was sad, I could write a really mean, emotional, and angry song about it and just have the feelings out of me. After "Temperance," my work started forming a concept album- I wrote a treatment, kind of. It's not a story, but more of a theory.

When you're first born, you have your entire family come to see you and be there for your first days. Of course, grandparents and uncles and aunts and cousins all have to leave you eventually. And as you get older, aren't you really just being further and further separated from the caring and safety of the people who will always love you? You leave your parents behind eventually, whether it's through moving out or blocking out- you leave your siblings, and eventually you're all on your own. From that point on it's a struggle to find someone else to save you from the solitude and to repeat the cycle. 

My theory was that my separation time lapse was much shorter than everyone else's- I wasn't seeing one of parents at any given moment. They were gone- the separation was halfway active every day of my life. And I was barely even in high school when I wrote that first song. 

The liner notes on the album are going to be really focused on the A Censored Sunlight Theory of Separation. I want a picture of a very happy looking family on the first page, and have one family member disappear with each page until you have just me sitting there. 

Don't get me wrong, I am so not as sad and deep as I appear on the surface. This was a very sad record to write, and it was a very sad time for me. I'm done with it now, but the emotions will always be there in music that I couldn't be any more proud of. 

(((xxxo)))
Nick

FIX ME

So, I have learned another lesson about myself. I'm a really stubborn person and I always think I'm right. It might just be the teenage mentality, but I think I take it to new extremes. I refuse to believe that anyone could ever have a logical reason to be rude to me or take offense to anything I say or do.

I'm not saying that I think I'm perfect. I strive to be perfect. But I'm not. It's a painful lifestyle. If you recall one of my many venting posts in which I was "hurt via confrontation"- it turned out to be a misunderstanding from both sides that I worked up inside my head to be a deep mental battle. I've made amends with my friends and I'm in a good place with the majority of them. I decided to just swallow my pride and say I was sorry so I could move on instead of dwelling on some stupid fight. I can't afford to be in a rough place with my friends, especially when I'm heading into my freshman year of high school. That'd be terrible. 

I learned a valuable lesson this summer and it's just to not worry so much. There are very few things in life that truly matter to the point of where your mentality should totally change. I can't afford to be depressed and anxious that everyone is scrutinizing me wherever I go- I need to keep the superstar mentality. 

(((xxxo)))
Nick

My Writing Process

Just wanted to take some time out to describe this to you, because I don't think we've been over this.

As you all know, (or should know), I am in the midst of writing my second record, and recording and finalizing my debut. I have a very set writing process- it's pretty simple, but I use it in every song you will hear off the first record.

The way I used to write was, I would write lyrics and a melody first, and then hope to be lucky and find a musical arrangement to fit it. This turned out to be not so great, since I used it before I even was A Censored Sunlight- I wound up with a huge pile of great lyrics and melodies with absolutely no musical direction to them. That sucked.

So what I turned to was writing musical parts first and then writing lyrics over it. In this way, I feel like I have more honest lyrics because once I have a great piece to write with, the thoughts start flowing from me and I don't overthink about how I must be feeling about a situation. It's almost my downfall as a songwriter in that sense- I don't really even know how I feel until I see it on paper. From there, I find my own meaning in it. 

TANGENT: This is the goal of my lyrics. I don't like to tell what my songs are about because when my fans hear the backstory, they start to connect it to that scenario every time they hear it, and then they might not be able to relate. But, if I leave the mystery in my words, everyone needs to find their own meaning, and in that way, my lyrics have a different significance to each listener. It's a system I've learned to love. 

Anyway, I my method is why Bloodlines sounds like it does (BRIEF TANGENT: It drops on December 21st, 2012!) because when I would write these arrangements, I had certain go-to chords- especially on piano, which is primarily self-taught. These chords were minor chords, which makes my debut sound pretty sad and sadistic. 

So with this new record, I'm trying to break away from writing in that style and find new ways to develop a song. I don't want to make another sad record- I'm done being sad! I am putting the finishing touches on maybe four new songs right now- one of them is a song called "The Wild Side" (tentatively) that I'll probably be posting a snippet of on my Soundcloud in a few days. Here's some of the lyrics.

I miss the heart wrenching stories//and mardis gras strings//the smiles on our face//and all of our dreams//but everything I miss about you//I miss about New Orleans

(((xxxo)))

Nick

LINK TO MY SOUNDCLOUD: www.soundcloud.com/acensoredsunlight

LINK TO MY MUSIC ON ITUNES: http://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/a-censored-sunlight/id458006911

love to everyone, please be sure to listen to all my music and continue spreading the word <3