"One Day I Shall Come Back... Yes, I shall come back..." (November 2013 blog post)
(On November 22, 2013 I announced in a blog post that the Criminally Shy project would be going on indefinite hiatus while I explored other musical avenues. Besides announcing the hiatus I mostly used that blog post to write an updated and more in depth recap of the history of the project . This is the recap portion.)

Starting with just a copy of Propellerhead Reason 4 and a MacBook with MIDI controller I started learning how to use synthesizers and how program drums properly. Originally, I really wanted to be "IDM" ("Intelligent Dance Music") and really wanted to rip off Aphex Twin and Autechre. As I started to get better at the program and getting more into electronic music as a whole I eventually approached enough songs to release an album.

My first strictly electronic release was the demo e.p. "Dream Incubation" which was released under the moniker Schizophonic on the short lived Is This Music? imprint of Nana's Records. I quickly realized there were quite a few acts already using that name and I needed a new name A.S.A.P. I had previously used the name Criminally Shy between 2004 and 2006 as a name to originally try and "release" my first solo recordings (made on a Tascam Portastudio). I put together some of my favorite recordings from that time, along with a few newly recorded tracks featuring my younger brother Chris, as the "first" Criminally Shy album "Criminal Shyness". I proceeded to start my first netlabel, the earliest incarnation of AN IDEAL FOR LIVING, through the Internet Archive to release it. Eventually, most of the tracks on the release that were me solo were released as a proper first album for me "solo". At that point I had already began work with Chris on the "second" album.

The story goes that Chris was originally going to play a homemade "drum kit" made out of variously sized empty coffee cans which I put make shift "skins" on along with using some nails through tin can lids to make "cymbals". You see, at this time Chris had started taking drum lessons (for whatever reason). Unfortunately for me Chris didn't last very long and shortly after we recorded the first song for the release with this setup ("Let's All Go To Canada") Chris had his fingers bit by the dog and had nerve damage and had to get surgery. So, therefore, him playing drums wasn't an option anymore. I don't remember how the idea was started or why I went with it but most of the album is actually made up of me on vocals, guitar, bass, keys, whatever and Chris playing one of the early Resident Evil games on the original Play Station and me running the audio output of the Play Station first into my guitar effect pedals and then into the Korg 4-track I had (with the built in speakers and effects) which finally went into a microphone in jack on an ancient Gateway laptop running a hacked version of Pro Tools FREE (which unlocked all the track capabilities) on Windows 98. You read that right. That was pretty much the whole second album right there. Technically Chris has a vocal part on the album on the track "Dream East" where he was reading a sentence from some argument against nuclear weapons that I found in an old book from 1980s that I bought at my high school. It's edited slightly, I pitched shifted his voice down and I did some minor editing in Pro Tools.

That album was "DEUX!" (a tribute to Krautrock pioneers NEU!) and it came out in 2006. I still have the only physical copy of the album that I know exists. where it reads "R.I.P. Criminally Shy: 2004-2006" or something like that. Chris had already had enough at the time of the album's eventual release on AN IDEAL FOR LIVING. I had tried persuading him to work with me on some new tracks but he never wanted to.

The first release under the name was the album "The Shadow of Insanity" which was released on Nana's Records. It was recorded over the previous 2 years and featured the track "Symptoms in Schizophrenia" which wasn't originally intended for Criminally Shy. I had put together with a silent video from the Internet Archive of the same name and put that up on YouTube. I was told it was my best track so I threw it on at the end in an edited form. And there it was.

The second new release was "When Does A Dream Become A Nightmare?" which actually takes it's name from the creepy slowed down video of "Gimme Pizza" by the Olsen Twins on YouTube posted by WolfgoreShow (artist Danial Ryan) and not an Alice Cooper lyric. It showed some progress but it was kind of rushed and kind of went nowhere musically.

The next few releases were extended plays. "Auburn" (and the subsequent single "I Am A Wonderful Person") and then "Broken Utopias" which was shortly followed by the "Generically Enriched" release. "Generically Enriched" were four remixes I did of earlier released tracks to make them more accessible ("generic" so to speak). This was finally followed by the first release of all new material, "User Guide Ch. 1". There was also a "Mind Wash" single. Lastly there was the "Pripyat" single.

The last full album was called "Dual Form Madness" and featured remixed versions of 3 of the 4 tracks on "User Guide" and remixes of the two tracks on the "Pripyat" single. The other 3 tracks on the album were completely new.

The final "official" release was the "Songs About Cuddling" e.p. (a.k.a. the "Cuddly Healing" single).

Since that point there were 2 other extended plays that were released under Criminally Shy ("Unachieve The Achievable" and "Become What You Hate") but I deleted them shortly after release because I didn't like them.

It's been a trip.

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