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Erratics is a compilation of guitar based instrumental pieces created between 2014 and 2022 while learning digital home recording, and re-immursing in guitar, writing, imagining, etc.. Progress was glacial, each came to fruition and was deposited in place, with no relation to the others. Rarely preconceived, several were constructed around improvised playing recorded for various reasons, later initiating ideas for pieces. Reviewing those years of personal efforts, seeing if some of the newbie engineering could be cleaned up, these survived. I left in any silly ideas, silly is the new charming.

Psychedelic, symphonic, soundscape-ish, experimental, and progressive descriptors come to mind, but these words transformed into genres for branding, hashtags, etc.. 

My thanks to Even Schiller for recognizing and revealing the music, and getting it all across the finish line far ahead of my expectations.

Too much bla-bla about the tracks-

01 – Blues Moment, 2021 – Videos on Instagram were limited to 1 minute for a while, musicians would regularly post quick impromptu bits. This was preconceived, a short and sweet blues based progression executed with more colorful chords, and some bluesy relaxed guitar on top, now a short undemanding introduction to the album.

02 – Anthropocene Variations, 2016 – Learning a Chris Whitley song to play with friends, I had an appropriate sound dialed with a neck P-90 and a CW tuning. I recorded some off the cuff CW style octave phrases over an ambient loop. Two variations with totally different executions and contexts followed. None of it is remotely Whitley-ish.

03 – Wednesday, 2019 – In October 2019 we learned the orange shit-gibbon threw our longtime complicated allies, the heroic Kurds, under the bus. Needing immersion in something other than the prevailing U.S. downhill slide and this betrayal in particular, I played a bit, a repetitive drone-ish thing with the looper, and some practice modal noodling. I even turned on the camera and DAW thinking maybe it’d pass for a quick instagram thing marking a shameful day. It was a Wednesday. Later, enamored with the reversed last measure of the loop, the end section appeared.

04 – Groundward, 2017 – A very fuzzy slow motion Trower-ish riff from a song written in the 90s recontextualized, some fun with orchestral feedback, too much reverb, and some old school psychedelia. Then of course, some bombast no one requested at the end.

05 – Meander, 2022 – I created some lead tracks for an outside project that didn’t materialize. Eventually unwilling to let the tracks go, this new piece was made as a new home for them.

06 – Night Drive, 2014 – admittedly abstract and different. How this originated (in garageband!), developed, and eventually completed is too long a story. But it was an adventure. Considerable cacophony with a nice symphonic psychedelic finale for the kids. All sounds are guitar, effected or otherwise, except some ancient edited Bruford drum loops, and the very end where some background keyboard chords underline the structure.

07 – West Winter Meridiem, 2017 – another that began with some noodling bits, rearranged over some loops, and on from there. A literal title, in a mood after the initial playing, I wandered into the snowy backyard for some quiet air and sky gazing, it was dead calm, noon, in the west.

08 – February Afternoon, 2016 – another born in Garage Band. Testing ways to capture my amp sound, I played/recorded over the bass/drums loop for a while on an afternoon, in February. Attracted to the arch of some of the phrases and a certain feel. I built the instruments/arrangements underneath, then filled out the composition. I should never have sold that Matchless. One friend remarked that the guitar outro reminded him of Howe’s on Awaken, another thought it was Whitleyish, I guess I can’t hide my influences but it was Castles made of sand inspired. It’s usually Jimi

09 – Other, 2020 –  Written as background for A Selection From Four Decades of Photography, initially way too intrusive and distracting, several versions ensued. Along the way I wound up using it as work, or relaxing background, eventually mixing it as this stand-alone. Uneventful and spacial, it doesn’t demand any attention, allowing one to wander off at will at the end of this compilation.

When I’m 90 I can come back here, if I keep up the hosting fees, and see what the hell I was thinking.