Hi, My name is Paul, and Mocha Lab is the moniker I began using in the late 90s for the electronic groove albums i was beginning to make. (I've put both because sometimes people i've known in past lives track me down through my name, which can be quite interesting getting a message from someone you haven't thought about in years)
I am in my 30s and have traveled extensively around the US, living in NY, San Fran, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Portland, OR, and even Prague and Belgrade amongst other places. I've written albums, theater projects, scored, done cabarets, piano bars... i mostly produce a quirky kind of electronic music in my studio, although i do also love to play piano. One is a medium where i carefully construct a universe of sound, mood, and emotion into a well crafted experience that can hopefully be repeated many times, and the other is a second by second howl, sob, or sigh, existing only in that one exuberant moment, never to repeated quite the same way again.
The first 3 tracks presented here are from the upcoming album Subduction, which i'm putting the finishing touches on, as well as assembling the press kit and all those other fun promotional tidbits, so i can find myself some marketing and distribution.
As you can hear, the style is nu-jazz with latin overtones and sultry female vocals, courtesy of a Serbia singer named Milena Jelic. Normally i have to go to great length to describe it, but since 3 of the 13 tracks are sitting right here for a listen, you can see for yourself.
Having just replaced the tracks again, i guess i need to rewrite the descriptions. The first is My Dream Of You, and by far the most popular on the album.
The 2nd is Eres Mi Vida, another one of the most popular tracks from the upcoming album . Its a samba groove that i'm particularly fond of. Instead of song structure, it's all written around the groove. I would never have made this track had i not fallen madly in love with Bitches Brew era Miles Davis a few years ago while down and out in Eastern Europe.
The 3rd is one of the the only 2 songs on the album that don't feature Milena, and which i sang myself. I It was also the last track made for the album and i wanted heartbreak. I've just put it up here on MySpace for listening.
The very last track is one i wrote for my bestest friend Jana, and is up here so that she can log on and listen to it whenever she wants. She's a severe, hopeless animal lover who spent 2 years working at a dog shelter, where she would be given anywhere from a few months to a few weeks to train problem dogs to be adoptable. So she would work and work to train them, bonding with them and falling in love with them, only to come to work one day and be told they were to be killed. So she would go in and hold their paw and look into their eyes as they were injected and put down. Love after love, death after death. It started to eat at her and she started to feel that more and more of her was in the dark lands then here. So i wrote her this song.
A quick word on the SNOCAP tracks for sale (other than that little .99 purchase you might make means the world to me...): There are actually 2 albums up on there and a third to be added. The interface doesn't allow me to specify albums (which i'm working on), but they are rather different. The first is Subduction, runs 13 tracks, and the last track is 'The Other Side'. It is all that groovy Latiny Jazzy thing you hear mostly on my sample tracks here on MySpace.
The last 2 songs are seperate. 'The Dark Lands, which you can hear on the myspace player, is actually the very last song on the newest new album, 'Songs Of Lost Faith, not due for release until 2008, but streaming for free in the meantime on my website www.mochalab.com (there's another entire album streaming, 'Mala Sirena' one of the greatest albums i've made, and which will stream until the end of October when it becomes available on iTunes)
The last track is Post Mayan India, from a 6 song, as yet unreleased (because i'm still 2 tracks short of finishing it...) modern Indian inspired Beatwork EP. It's been getting radio airplay, and i've had requests to make it available, so here it is.
I'm still working out the best way to do this, so feedback is appreciated. Warm fuzzy salutations to all of you.