Respondent EP

Resplendent/Downey : Respondent EP

I'm happy to announce that the Respondent EP by Resplendent/Downey is officially available as of today. This is a free MP3 release. You don't have to do anything except execute a few keystrokes and listen. Both Michael Lenzi and I want you to own this music; there is no financial obligation. Because: This EP was not asked for, planned on or even audibly discussed. There were some MP3s and some emails on our part. It was all very quick and painless. Here it is:

The Respondent EP by Resplendent/Downey is now available for free download on the heartphone page.
From the desk of Michael Lenzi:

In the beginning of 2005 I played my one and only show under the name of Resplendent. I had a band of 4 people consisting of Derek See (guitar), Pat O'Connell (guitar) and Joe Adamik (drums).

I was a bit discouraged after that and decided I needed to take a break. Perhaps that would revive me. It did temporarily and I set about recording an EP called Spring. I thought that I would release it under the name of Michael Lenzi, thus retiring the Resplendent moniker.

I came up with 3 songs which I recorded in a few weeks in my home studio Plastic Skull. I promptly shared them with a few people and forgot about them. My desire to make music vanished.

I did however share them on my website. That is how Mike Downey heard them. He contacted me and we talked about a collaboration but it fizzled on my end. I just couldn't get the music going again.

He plugged away on his own and sent me a remixed track by email. It was awesome. He went ahead and did the other two tracks from the EP. I loved them so we decided to release the collaboration. This is it.

All my tracks were recorded using my two samplers: the AKAI MPC 2000 XL and the Roland DJ-70. I recorded them on a 1/2" analog 8-track machine. Mike did his remixing, editing and additional recording in early 2007 at his home studio Funkis & Svettis in Stockholm using an iBook and Ableton Live.

If you would like to contact me about Resplendent, Fire Show or Number One Cup music, you can visit my website: www.michaellenzi.com or send me an email: michaellenzi@sbcglobal.net.

---Michael Lenzi, June 2007, Chicago


I hope you enjoy this EP. I can say that it was an honor for me to work with music that Michael had recorded. He's been someone I've kept tabs on and looked up to for over 10 years now. I felt that these 3 songs were really strong and captured the essense of what Michael's songwriting and style are all about: honest and emotional; broken pop heart; jaded and happy. I originally heard these songs about 2 years ago and eventually took it as my duty to bring them to another sort of public realm. It felt like the simple songs he recorded and randomly uploaded onto his webpage were made to be given this treatment. Thanks Michael for letting me play along and thanks to anyone who downloads these and gets anything from them.