From April 1st to today, June 15th, Escalation has been growing, expanding and working it's way into the world. Now, with the help of many friends (including Katlin Rivers, Andy Hutner, Jeff Ball, Richard Dodd, Jessica Codispoti, Kim Gray and more) and the backing of BBMC, we've brought the single to IndieTorrent.org at www.indietorrent.org/perlictman IndieTorrent will be the exclusive retailer for "Escalation" until July 15th so head on over, grab yourself a copy and drop me a line! All the best, Per

Okay, this makes it really clear that I need to update my blog more often: since the last blog I've had a birthday (as has my mom and one of my brothers) and Hila won the Grammy for Best Classical Vocal Performance. If you go to her pages, you'll see me gushing plenty so I'll keep it short here: she performs with a voice that is not only trained, talented and beautiful but also extremely individual. She deserved the Grammy, no question about it. :) I hope that the Grammy helps her get the attention for her original compositions that they deserve, because they are really great works. Got to get back to mixing work: my business, marketing and PR work for Bela D Media, Blumenstein Ultra-Fi, Wusik.com and WSM and of course the many writing and editing duties for WuiskSoundMagazine.com... which may help explain last night's conspicuous absence of sleep. ;) All the best, Per

The new year has started off with a bang. First I spent the weekend covering NAMM 2009 for WSM (at www.wusikmagazine.com) and now I come home to find over 20,000 plays so far on the counter. I am really looking forward to working on both "Liquid" and Joanna's project "Stream" this year, so keep your ears open: more music will be coming soon!

I'm delighted to hear that my collaborator Hila Plitmann was just nominated for a Grammy! Eric already said it best in his own blog so I've quoted him below, but I just wanted to say congratulations to Hila: you so totally deserve the Grammy and they couldn't have picked a better nominee! I'm looking forward to hearing all about when you get the chance: Eric seems so thrilled and I bet Aesh will be really proud too. :) For anyone that's been living in a cave, Hila's amazing voice can be heard from concert halls, to headphones to movie theaters and manages to inspire every time. I can tell you from our recording sessions that, in my opinion, the closest she gets to a "bad take" is one where a truck drives by the studio: she has an amazing voice, and they did the right thing when they nominated her. Alright enough of my gushin, here's the original post from Eric's MySpace blog: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- So my totally awesome wife, Hila Plitmann, was just nominated for a Grammy in the Best Vocal Performance category. How frickin' cool is that?!? The piece (recorded on Naxos) is called Mr. Tambourine Man, and was composed by my teacher at Juilliard, John Corigliano. Seven new musical settings of classic Bob Dylan lyrics scored for soprano and orchestra, each more beautiful then the next; I've heard them several times now, and love them more and more with each hearing. Hila gives such a nuanced, delicate, ferocious, fearless performance, the kind of performance that every composer dreams they'll hear when they write something down and give it to a musician. And Hila was nominated for it! God, I'm just exploding! WOO HOO! --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Last month I completed my production work on Hila Plitmann's electronica demo for "Reckoning" and resumed production on "Liquid". Three of the tracks, "Not Here - feat. Nimrod Nol", "Oil" and "Demon Rain" are mastered and finished. "Magma" has been mixed and is being mastered as we speak. "The Well" is almost complete and several others (including the title track "Liquid") are close to entering the mixing stage. Production on the album is coming along beautifully and I think you'll be pleased to hear the surprise inclusion of a new mix of one of my 2003 tracks on there as well. The timeline for the album's release has been pushed back to, among other things, allow a couple new soloists to feature on it. The project was already an international collaboration and now we may be seeing contributions from England as well. I look forward to letting you all hear more soon! In the meantime, I'd like to mention something exciting about my new friends Hila Plitmann and Eric Whitacre, who've been so great to me that I'm glad to try to return the favor in any small way. :) To any of you that don't already know, last year Eric Whitacre created a new staging of his opera-electronica "Paradise Lost: Shadows and Wings" that was performed here in a Pasadena and (among other great soloists) featured his amazing wife Hila Plitmann as Extasis. All the demos from that production are now online at... http://www.facebook.com/pages/Eric-Whitacre/6290062228 If you like Eric Whitacre, Hila Plitmann, electronica, new interpretations of the operatic vocal idiom, or even musicals, you owe it to yourself to check this out. There is a great deal of variation between the tracks from the meditative, to the visceral and even poignant. I'd also like to say a little more regarding the "Reckoning" demo we completed berfore I went off to Washington for a bit last month. Hila's voice comes through beautifully in her words and music and I was glad to expand and support it with an understated, yet evocative, collection of sonic textures and the new vocal recordings we made together. I'll let all of you know when/if the demo becomes public, so that you can all have the exciting experience of hearing Hila's voice emerge as a composer. :) All the best, Per