This is an amateur home effort, I’m not suggesting it deserves any how-I-did-its. All this is primarily a repository for my own interest, essentially a personal journal of the project.

Audio and/or guitar nerd minutia-

Both David and I track at home with small digital setups.

David- Roland TD50KV2 V-Drum Electronic Drums, Roland TD-20X, Tama hardware, Studio one, PreSonus Studio 24c, Superior drummer 3, Addictive Drummer 2.

Tyler- Logic Pro X, Arturia Audiofuse interface, tons-o-plugins.

Guitars- Lull custom Strat, Dean Soltero, Fender 1998 Voodoo Strat, Harley Benton DC Jr FAT, RTH custom build, Yamaha SA2200, Ibanez 5 string bass.

Amps- Fryette GPDI (primary), Blu Guitar Amp1, PRS HDRX 20, mostly direct but occasionally a Sure SM57 mic’d single 12” Fane F70 cab. Otherwise Celestion, Fane, and misc cab IRs.

Little boxes- my mystery impedance matcher, Dwarfcraft Devices Eau Claire Thunder Fuzz, Crazy Tube Circuts Super Conductor, Wampler Ego compressor, Dunlop FFM6 Band of Gypsys Fuzz Face Mini, Analog Man/Geoffrey Teese wah, J. Rockett “The Jeff” Archer Boost, MJM London Fuzz, EHX Small Stone, Subdecay Prometheus DLX Resonant Filter, Iron Ether QF2, J. Rockett Blue Note, EHX POG2, TC Electronic Mimiq, Boss FZ-1w, Vox Mystic Edge, JHS Haunting Mids, Deep Trip BOG, NPD Power Tube Reactor, Prescription Electronics Outbox, Echoplex EP1, Blackstar Dept. 10 Dual Distortion.

Keys and synth basses are software, native LPX or 3rd party, often stacked, as well as piano, pipe organ, and mellotron samples.

A few guitar parts are iphone recorded quick ideas later imported as they had an appeal I couldn’t recreate doing it “right”.

From the start I wanted more uses of guitar, and guitar sounds, modern through old psychedelic, in less expected contexts, and combining genres in unique ways. Infuences over the decades start from a baby experiencing my mother’s classical piano practicing, thunderous Rachmaninoff to the sublime Moonlight Sonata. Then rock, Beatles, early PNW rock, “sunshine pop”, psychedelic, obviously Jimi, hard rock, progressive, fusion, power pop, some new wave, grunge, alt, post rock, jazz rock, current electronic jazz, ambient, metal, you name it. These and more influence this music, often subtley. Instead of camouflaging them and the artists, I embraced them and when they popped up, abandoning originality concerns. I relaxed my writing, using repetition and more space when called for. Any idea born of some interesting use of music language had to pass the feel test. No piece was brought about to fulfill some preconceived need for the album, every piece began from some seed I really liked, even if it might not fit, hence, not the most coherent body of work, but honest.

Pursuing a broader palette of sounds, a variety of guitars came out, many pedals, an ebow for the first time, more wah than I’ve used in decades, and even my old Echoplex EP1 was reconditioned to use. A long time strat lover, I’ve never liked the overused “in between” PUP sounds, but even dropped that bias for the intro to “Passage”. Preferring saturated guitar sounds, I don’t think there’s a clean guitar anywhere. I put an OCD effort into each these sounds no matter how small, selecting amps, pedals, FX, cab IRs, for each part, and stacked fewer takes this time hoping the nuances would be less blurred, though I often stack re-amps of the same direct. To avoid disappointing myself with the same decades long playing habits and cliches, guitar parts were often written on a keyboard then learned on guitar. 

Unlike “Words” and “Erratics” which were essentially compilations after much work was already done, this time I wanted to make an album intentionally from the start, and had managed to better my home tracking and engineering, David as well. Some additional track by track notes-

Migration- Not much to add to the previous page. Following some initial themes appearance, I had some structural ideas for the whole piece. From there it was a challenge developing those themes into the following sections, but in ways that let the sections stand on their own yet complete the whole. After periods of frustrated stalls suddenly it was done. Mellotron is one of those habitual go-tos for me, incredibly evocative, and I wallowed in it for this.

Departure- Also had some birthing pains, ideas that I had doubts about, but just moved forward anyway. Once I envisioned a funk solo with some heavy jazz-rock lines, I knew it had to be done, one of those genre mixes I find entertaining. A structural habit surfaced here- a spacey breakdown, going into an emphatic wrap up of previous themes.

Waiting- Came pretty fast after the feel and space came to mind. I settled on a pretty simple structure and some repetition. The tracks were done quickly, including David’s, we made a particular effort to not over think it. I knew what lead sound I wanted, my LPJRDC clone with P90 nailed it, but it also needed tremolo. I had a custom guitar in the works, with P90s and a good term bar. The song sat, all done but the lead, for months while the guitar project moved forward. My vintage Echoplex contributed it’s unique sound to this piece. There’s definite subconscious Grails influence here.

Don’t Go- Again nothing significant to add to the previous page info, lots of lead strat in this one. Evan’s mix helped it move past the nervous sense of urgency I had, into a more relaxed appealing groove.

Suspension- Some of the peripheral sounds were cell phone recorded ideas brought in, looped, effected, etc.. I knew what elements I wanted, percolating drum and bass influenced rhythm section, atmospheric sounds floating in and out, drifting unmoored tonalities in chords, sounds etc. literally written measure to measure without concern for the key, or a tonal center. More genre mixes, there’s a filigree guitar all the way through with a 70s psychedelic sound inspired by Ernie Isley, and a cleanish main sound inspired by Chris Whitely, but in neither of their styles, and neither would have been caught dead in this piece.

Cover- I ran across a classic jazz rock piece on youtube, performed live. Occasionally the keyboardist threw in this dissonant ascending chord progression that captured my imagination, I thought it would be a foreboding but unusual metal-ish piece. Unable to accurately pull the chords I made my own progression, similar, with the same feel. I tried it through a new mellotron plugin with a huge sounding preset, into an over driven guitar amp plugin. Combined with a crunchy guitar, that was it. Initially I thought I was in Lark’s Tongue era Crimson territory with the raw guitar, mellotron, dark musicality combo. Now I hear more Gates of Delirium in it (not sonically). None of that really matters of course, it’s just interesting to me how these deeply embedded influences surface. I can’t explain how, but I hear my pressing concerns about Ukraine in it.

Obie’s Shuffle- I realize it’s barely listenable, but it makes perfect sense to me and feels quite jolly. As I said on the previous page it may have some connection to Chris Whitley’s “Gasket”, which is so confounding a piece of bash rock it, regularly comes to mind but not for this. I’d occasionally land on Keith Olbermann’s channel cruising YouTube politics. His theme piece starts with the opening of the 2nd movement of Beethoven’s 9th, quickly turning to hard rock shuffle I liked, so something started to form in my head, Coincidentally I heard “Atlas” by Battles for the first time since the 90s, same feel, same carefree absurdity I imagined. We were watching a series called “No Offence”, the theme song, same feel. Considering all these signs from various gods I had to go forward with this absurd idea. Trying things for this with my LPJR clone drop D tuned, I recorded them on my iphone for later, again it had some quality I could not get back to “properly”. So I brought that into the daw, chopped it up etc., it became foundational to this thing. The rest came to pass letting any normally discarded belligerent swagger prevail. Indulgent fun, if you jump on the bed in your underwear alone in the house to it, it’ll grow on you.

Landings Unimagined- Given the melody and chords, It could have gone a cliche “pretty” direction, lush keys, gorgeous reverbs, produced chorusing guitars, all stuff I didn’t want. Intro instruments are under a velvet blanket of soft round saturation, the rhythm guitar an odd tuning forcing me into slightly unique voicings (Chris Whitley again), and some clunky spring reverbs to place it all in a slightly unexpected environment. There’s some ebow you can’t really distinguish, some unusual keys, a pipe organ here and there, and a backwards guitar. The loping funkiness of the Mitchel/Redding rhythm section on Jimi’s early ballads(?) is very appealing, where one might have expected some tasty mellowness, influenced this. There’s really just three choruses and some interludes, fancy musicality to distract from the theme unnecessary.

Jargon- I liked the lazy hip hop inspired beats on the latest Dhani Harrison album, hardly new or unique, but an unexpected context and I wanted some of that persistent funk on this. The era I was learning funk rhythm playing was also when I indulged in a lot of noise on the guitar, string scrapes, whammy bar, fuzz, wah, solos, snakeskin boots, as braggadocious and unhinged as possible. So I giddily regressed several decades for Jargon, it all goes back in the box now, I’m adulting. All strat, nods to Jimi and the grooves. The unheralded classic Prescription Electronics Outbox made an appearance here.

Strut Looking Up- Not much to add to the previous page. Another that I only knew where it was going when I got there. Lots of relentless eight notes, cycles of five became a device throughout. Pretty much a three piece until some piano in the end, pipe organ, maybe some strings… ok it’s not a three piece.

Passage- i wanted something like this for the album, I don’t know what “this” is but I know it when I hear it, what it needed to feel like. As soon as the 7/4 bass and drums groove fell into place, the rest followed quickly, and it became the album closer. A little pipe organ again, some polyrhythms here and there.

 

 

yup it’s a mess