1. Attack, Retreat, then Attack Again of the AcoustiChromatic Pixies (mp3) (9:26) [From the solo album 'The Great Divide']
2. Restless Angel (mp3) (11:46) [From Resistor's self-titled debut album]
3. Lotus Victorius (8:13) [From the solo album 'Song to the Sky']
4. Life Without Pain (mp3) (6:16) [From the film 'Air']
5. Two Little Awakenings (17:55) [From the solo album 'Two Little Awakenings']

steve_unruh_sampler2009_cover.pdf

A few notes about the music choices for this year's sampler:

• "Attack, Retreat, then Attack Again of the AcoustiChromatic Pixies" is one of the most difficult acoustic instrumentals I've composed. It goes through a bunch of fast riffs (well, they're hard to play on acoustic guitar, anyway), time signature and scale changes, as it depicts a tug-of-war between traditional harmony and the chromatic craziness that crept into the 20th century. Inspired by the concept behind Charles Ives' "The Unanswered Question," but with a different "thesis statement": In Ives' composition, the old and new play simultaneously, yet never truly intertwine (I'ves did this on purpose to make a statement), whereas in my composition I decided to have them lob alternating vollies of musical passages at each other as if warring. And, there does seem to be a clear winner, at least for this round. For what it's worth, on the album, this tune flows almost immediately into the opening of the title suite "The Great Divide" which has a combination of old and new harmonies throughout - and even some chords built on 4th and 5th intervals, sort of splitting the difference.)
• "Restless Angel" turns the spotlight to electric guitars. This is one of the epic tunes from my band's self-titled debut, Resistor. This tune definitely has my compositional signature on it, but our rock quartet takes it to a whole different territory. One of my favorite pieces I've written recently, both musically and lyrically, and I love what Rob, Barry, and Fran did with it.
  
• "Lotus Victorius" is another acoustic instrumental. I've always liked the way this one flows. The artistic success of this tune (in my view, anyway), inspired the instrumental pieces on my subsequent solo album, "The Great Divide."
• "Life Without Pain" is a tune I wrote during the 'Air' sessions, and it got sucked into the mighty wonderful vortex that film is. I never intended to write all the incidental music for the feature musical, but since I was writing other music at the same time - much of it influenced by what I was doing for the film - some of that other music got called in for duty, including this tune. I'm happy about that, and hopefully someday soon the soundtrack will see the light of day. (It keeps almost happening...)
• "Two Little Awakenings" is an acoustic progressive rock epic about a moment in the mind of a protagonist starting to doubt the verity of his love relationship. Well, really, what more needs to be said than that, eh?!
  

Click here for cover art printing instructions.

Simple Instructions: Download all tracks. (Windows users - right-click, save target as...) Burn them in numbered order to a music CDR, using the "disc-at-once" option (to avoid those annoying gaps between songs). Download the artwork pdf files. Follow the printer instructions here. (Other versions of Acrobat have the same basic printing options, but look a little different.) Cut out, assemble, and voila... free CD.