Nico (the Dark Divide)

Very cool. It has a very haunting quality to it, at least to my ears. Loved the fiddle parts. Actually, I liked all of it. Vocals sounded great. The whole thing was just very organic. It was refreshing to listen to something as unique as this. I enjoyed it a lot. Great job.

Nice song, very melancholic and well recorded. It was nice to hear a minimal track that holds together well, a lot get carried away with this type of thing and think they need to use a gazillion channels.

Absolutely lovely ... dreamy and great idea .. best of luck with it.  

Thank you for the very kind words and thoughtful comments, everyone!
 
Leadfoot-- glad you liked the fiddle parts. We had a good time working up the solo beforehand--not the entire solo, but the basic feel and (I believe) the first few measures. Rachel (the fiddle player and co-vocalist) changed the fingerings on a few segments of the solo to eliminate the string crossings, to give it a more exotic sound (as she'd have to slide up to the destination notes). Made it sound a bit like an erhu (the two-stringed Chinese "fiddle". We busked at Pike Place Market all the time and there were two erhu players down at the market every morning, so we got some exposure :)  )

BioDiode--glad it holds together for you! It's interesting to listen back to this now given where I'm at in the current project, wondering what I might have done differently now. I'm pretty happy with the subtlety of some of the mix features that might have been overbearing without some careful balance (for instance, the cello on the outro is actually doubled, along with the two really far house mics we had on each take. something that I would normally avoid, but which gives it a really nice texture here, in my opinion anyway).

Bill--I'm with you--banjos on ballads! It's a good base to work from. No long sustaining notes to eat up all of your space right from the get-go. Was really happy here with the banjo/pizz fiddle combination.
 
Thanks again! Looking forward to hanging out on this forum more and hearing all of your songs.

Wow...   unexpected, and soooo nice.   Love the overall dreamy quality, which is kinda weird with a percussive banjo part being the backbone.   But hey, it works!   And yeah, those slides gave the fiddle a nicely eastern touch which I thought fit so well. 

bloody gorgeous

Thanks for the kind, thoughtful comments. I can't tell you how much it's appreciated.
 
Jesse--
 
"an example that talent does not equate to viral natures
 
I hope you appreciate yourself"
 
About seven years ago, only a few months before meeting Rachel, my Summer Januaries partner and love of my life, I had a brief experience with quick, viral "fame" (scare quotes because having something you wrote or drew be internet famous for, like, a week is clearly not real fame). And then, when Rachel and I started busking together, playing on street corners and the like, we had another very odd, very complicated type of "fame" in the sense that, for however many hours we played, we could attract a dozen or even 200 or so people at a time, people that would stop to give us money, chat with us, want to give us a meal, cry, request songs, many many other things that were amazing and (mostly) positive.

And both those types of experiences can trick you into thinking, hey, if I'm doing something worthwhile, somebody will recognize it. But of course, the truth is a lot more complicated than that.

Now, it's been years since we've performed live, and I've largely come to terms with continuing to make whatever we want to make almost entirely for ourselves, as, at least for now, there's not really an audience. At least consciously. But these comments are very encouraging of the idea of continuing to put songs out there, even if in a limited way. 

Which is all to say, thank you all for listening, and for your comments! I'll be posting a work in progress later this week, and I look forward to hearing more of your songs as well.