'Qenz' (pronounced 'KEHNZ'), a new EP (six songs), should be up and running any day now for downloads and streaming at
www.cdbaby.com/shrimpcityslim12.
These tracks, dating from June 1983), are raw song demos for a musical theatre project (never staged) concerning love and loss during the Spanish conquest of Peru.
1. Crystal House - glass house and rocks
2. Mortaleza - sunburnt town with a cheek of satin rose
3. Someone Who Really Loves You - try my God...you'll like Him
4. The Sound of Late Night - nude beneath the blue ruana, clinking chains & cameos
5. O Silent Partner - why do you stay with me now?
6. The Time We Should Have Spent Together - too much this, an awful lot of that
There are three songs never-before-released and two vocal (lyric) versions of tunes which have appeared on "Rio Angie" (all-piano album, 2012). There is also a version of "The Time We Should Have Spent Together" which made its first recorded appearance on 1998's "I Work Nights".
What we have here are starving-artist loft demos, just voice and bargain-basement electronic keyboard (actually the Yamaha CP-20 I was using with Ancestor Worship at the time); pretty late-night, pretty loose. Includes all the warts, pimples, and hiccups. Some false starts and a few whoops and hollers (hope you don't mind).
But it's urgent stuff, as could be expected when you are writing for a conquest.
About the cover art (shown on CD Baby - we might burn a few hard copies for gig sales), that's a fishing scene (actually: hunting sea lions) from the Mochica culture (pre-Inca) of coastal Peru.
'Qenz' is definitely a collector's item, stuff salvaged from the vault. I guess you could say that sometimes the archaeologists get there before the tomb robbers.
Thanks for climbing aboard.