Huge Days EP

This was a collection of songs written before The Clops entered the studio to record their first record, which can be downloaded for FREE here. All of them were recorded on my awesomely funky 8-track or hurriedly applied to Mike’s Pro Tools rig while the neighbors downstairs pounded on the ceiling.

When I first started writing words for Clops, I wanted to create a world, a network of beings, monsters, and childhood memories. Huge Days represents an essential peak to that writing process. Granted, we wrote a lot of music after this EP, but I’m not so sure this music will see the light of day. For now, take whatever Clops the Clops will give ye.

ENJOY.

Chrome-Third From the Sun

The first time I heard of Chrome was when a friend told me that Pavement had ripped them off. I had recently been introduced to Pavement by my friend Jarek. Amongst other things, their first release “Slanted and Enchanted” is nothing if not a cross-genre love letter to the 80’s, through the lens of their hyper-literate leader Stephen Malkmus.

The shaky, warbly vocals of Meat Puppets and Dinosaur Jr, the lyrical puzzles of R.E.M., the sonics of The Television Personalities with occasional Mark E. Smith caterwauls. All this held together with what I now view as an apparent homage to Chrome’s industrial metal shards and song structures.

Now, Chrome at the time of “3rd” was comprised of Damon Edge and Helios Creed on vocals, guitars, and keyboards while the Stench Brothers held down the bass and drums. Not many 80’s guitarists can hold a candle to Creed’s electric manglings. He has an epically melodious sense, even when his guitar sounds like it will actually destroy the very tape the band is trying to record on.

The mix is dense, the drums and bass mixed loudly in with the vocals. Only the lead guitar manages to over-power them. Tape loops, rhythm guitars and keyboards fill in the mid-range. Newer recording clarity aside, this ain’t Steely Dan. Don’t expect to hear the kick drum pedal squeak.

The songs. Forgoing the Faustian cut-and-paste collage style that dominated their earlier records, 3rd is rooted in a strange marriage. Somewhere, on a planet far away, the heavy metal of Black Sabbath, the industrial sludge of Throbbing Gristle, motorik swerve of Neu! and the unbounded energy of the Swell Maps collided to form the sound of this album.

Songs like “Firebomb” and “Heartbeat” mercilessly plow ahead, mixing in quasi-funk bass/drums with brain-damaging guitar runs. Damon Edge’s keyboards slink along, quietly adding sinister counter-melodies to the bass guitar’s foundations.

The lyrics are dark and incredibly hard to decipher. Yes, certain nouns and verbs can be occasionally gleaned from the chaos, but they are fragmentary in nature, all doom and gloom with tongue planted firmly in cheek.

If you have 20 bucks, buy the Chrome Box. Four complete albums, as well as the Inworlds 12″ among other odds and ends. Essentially amazing.

Ye Olde Reckordings

This topic is wonderfully relevant to my current struggles. I have always had a looming problem in my recording history: too much too soon. I begin the process of writing songs for a full-length or EP, and before finishing the first project I begin writing for the next one. It’s especially confusing when one project or persona bleeds into the next.

That Zappa book’s pretty good, but preachy as all heck. Yeah, Zappa, you were right, the Christian right-wingers got their way and ran the country to almost two decades. Yeah. Now, explain why “Broadway the Hard Way” was such a piece of bland garbage with stock-Zappa arrangements? Politics do belong in music, but not when it’s so overt. But you knew that, didn’t you Zappa? You smug bastard.

That’s a separate conversation for a separate post.

I can easily be accused of listening to my own recordings, as I’m working on compiling The Attics Demos. Some of these songs are 3 years old. Some are barely months or weeks old. I’ve incorporated several Attics songs into other bands: Edgy Citizens, even Multiple Cyclops was supposed to be an Attics album until I convinced myself I needed a band proper to record and play with.

Multiple Cyclops was probably the first proper band I’ve ever been in. Mike and Mischa were incredible musical partners, willing to play any song I offered up and arranging parts of their instruments (guitar and keyboards, respectively) on the spot. You couldn’t ask for better band-mates. Those were incredibly focused songs, and the first batch of 14 proved to be enough to fill a whole album. As I played gigs and rehearsed, more songs came at an even quicker pace. As it stands, there are still almost 35 unreleased songs in the Cyclops vault. As of right now, those songs will never see the light of day.

I still talk to Mike and Mischa, but I’m separated by half a country. Every once in a while I’ll pop in the album to give it a spin, which is rough considering that it’s still basically unmixed. Nevertheless, you do transport back to not only the recording sessions, but the afternoons of invention that led to the songs. What I may have been eating (giant sandwiches) or drinking (giant coffees) at the time, or which episode of Law & Order was on in the background come to mind.

With the Attics, the writing has spanned over the course of all the bands and records I’ve worked with/on. Now that I’m finally getting the hang of Pro Tools (PS-I still hate you Digidesign, for putting out a product that was not ready for consumers. Apple, I slightly dislike you for the incompatibility issue, but I enjoy your interface so all is forgiven between us!), I’m ready to find the cream of the crop and try to create a definitive recording of these songs.

This of course means trudging through nearly 35 songs, actually 40. I finally recovered five “lost” songs from a scratched up data CD, with aborted Pro Tools sessions as well! Fantastic! Luckily, Evan is helping me slog through them all. There is a wonderful range of quality:

1. Embarrassing minimum- guitar part, maybe 1:00 long, with disjointed sections, sounds like it was played by an 90-year-old woman

2. Bare Minimum – guitar, voice, guitar part is almost complete but lacks any hooks, the vocals range from terrible to hilariously awful

3. Minimum – guitar, vocal, possible synth, guitar and vocals are remarkably coherent, keyboards probably involve minor dabbling before feeding back and cutting out awkwardly

4. Neutral – guitar, vox, keys, elec. drums, arrangement is fleshed out in miniature, lyrics are almost completed, drums are electronic but give a good template

5. Surprisingly decent – most of the arrangement finished, vocals are multi-tracked, bass gtr appears, and actual Pro Tools tracking can commence

Poor Evan. He has to slog through almost 40 songs of that! Psychologically, it lifts me up. After so many years of writing, one tends to lose perspective. What sounded like a great song to me two years ago now sounds like garbage. Hopefully Evan will be able to convince me not to throw everything out.

In the meantime, check out this rough transfer of Gilgamesh’s latest track, Destroy All Honda Elements. It has to be severely edited down, but check out the 19 minute track length. Everyone has a place in their heart for a little prog, no?

Yes. Yes you do.

Morning Idea: Old Recordings

A while back I read Frank Zappa’s autobiography. Not my favorite read (I was especially disappointed that the final chapters were dedicated to social/political rants rather than a look into how he felt about his ’90s work), but I remember being struck by a particular sentiment. He purportedly never listened to his own recordings. Once he was done with a record, he was done with it. Considering how prolific he was throughout his career, this may have been a protective mechanism against doubt and regret. When you’re pumping out material at the pace he worked, I’m sure there were plenty of compromises and dialed-in fixes for recording or compositional issues that came with each recording.

I could never work that way. It’s too late for me! I’ve always worked slowly. The Dionysiac Revelry record took us a good part of three years to finish. Some of the demos for that record were written a year or more before that 3 year period even began. And since we have the totally rad technological advances in music these days, I was able to listen to “Being Here…” for the entirety of the recording journey. It would be safe to assume then, that I’d be done with the record once it was completed. Three+ years of hearing the music develop into its “final” form. Not so! I occasionally go back and listen. I do it for a couple reasons:

I’ll clear the air and profess this right off the bat: listening back is incredibly ego-building. I BUILT THIS THING. HOORAY! Sure you recognize the mistakes and the horrible sections, but when you nailed a song it’s always interesting to test it. Did we nail that section? Was it as tight as I remember it? My taste has evolved. how primitive was the writing? It can be incredibly refreshing to listen back to the old material and recreate the compositional process and compare it to how you now work. I tend to notice that I completely glossed over certain compositional or engineering choices in my older material. With so many software instruments, so any musical styles, so many damn options these days, seeing how I inadvertently limited myself due to a lack of knowledge is incredibly refreshing.

There’s so much more to listening back than just considering the craft. It has personal implications as well. Music locks a  PLACE. When you listen back to that Mariah Carey record that helped you through a painful breakup, nostalgia kicks in. The emotions come back, and the memory of where you were when you experienced that record is reconstructed. The car you aimlessly drove around in and cried while listening to Mariah Carey becomes real again for the moment of listening back. I think its the way that emotional landscapes are mapped onto a recording that let you recreate that space.

So when I listen back to my old Wounded Soldier recording I remember the room! The room! That summer! Those moments of watching movies, but stopping them halfway because I got the itch! Putting together a recording seems to map even more emotions than simply listening to a final product (ala my Mariah Carey example)

Of course, the recording world of Frank Zappa didn’t allow for extreme overdubbing. They would go into the studio, smash out a recording, then move on. Good musicianship and a different mentality towards recording might have contributed to this. So maybe even if Zappa listened back to his old recordings he may not have found such a personalized nostalgia. He wrote so much music, maybe he never got that close to any of it. A crying shame!

What thinks you Ariskany Recordists? Emotional mapping? Waves of nostalgia? Specifically relating to the space in which the recording took place? I’m curious.

Y’all Should Hear

Gilgamesh’s “Destroy All PT Cruisers” has officially entered my Running/PhysicalExercise Playlist. This is no mere feat of Insider PR-ing. I feel that fellow Ariskany Records mate Gilgamesh has crafted a song worthy of the emotional state needed for X-treme activity.

Running is a horrible activity. I have grown to love it, now having outgrown my self-starving adolescent period I finally eat enough calories each day to get me through some good ol’ fashioned exercise. But back in the day I needed some serious tunes to get me though a punishing workout. I put together countless mixes only to realize that a small handful of songs from my collection could handle the task. In high school they were few:

Grateful Dead – Hard to Handle (From The Phil Zone, back when PigPen was singing)
Rolling Stones – Rocks Off (From Exile on Main St.)
? – There were a couple others, but these two stand out.

These songs could get my blood pumping – that combined with my endorphins made for a serious runner’s high. I would then usually run way too fast and tire myself out early, but damn if it didn’t feel good.

What songs didn’t work? “White Light/White Heat” comes to mind. Man, what a pumping and breathing and chugging track by the Velvet Underground, and yet when that song came on my energy dropped and I felt my body all over. The tempo drops just enough and maybe Mo’s drumming just wasn’t tight enough. I wouldn’t have that brilliant track any other way, but it lacked the tenacity to be a part of a running mix.

So why does “PT Cruisers” work? Maybe it’s the triple drum machine attack. Maybe the incessant guitar line. (As a side note, I got to hear this maybe two years before Gilgamesh finally unleashed it and had the drum and guitar track stuck in my brain… FOR TWO YEARS). I love how a couple minutes in, that third drum machine finally jumps into focus in the left speaker and begins the back and forth motion every two bars. When that left drum machine plays you feel every 8th note. But it drops out after two bars! In the vacuum the two other drum machines click away, but now we’re only feeling the first beat of every bar. This back and forth occurs for the rest of the song. It’s fast enough, “PT Cruisers.” Also Gilgamesh delivers lyrics with a wonderful biting, yet absurd tone. Perfect for shouting along with the run.

I must be off to class. But here’s my short list for running:

This Heat – Health and Efficiency
Lightning Bolt – Two Towers
Gilgamesh – Destroy All PT Cruisers

(they’re long songs, and I never run that long anywayssssszzzzz)

Beach Canon – Iso Booth Video

My little booth! Check out those Quadratic Residue Diffusers! Whoa!

-Evan

Beach Canon – Post Mortem

Beach Canon

Evan: Some thoughts!

So yes. I wrote this piece for a contest. How perfect. I’ve been pushing, in my mind, a return to compositional freedom. That is, to write something that I think sounds good, without a care for what my doubting brain has to say. Since entering the shapeless world of post college graduation, I entered that scary space of existential-dilemma-ishness in regards to recording. Why was I writing? Who was it for? Was I truly in need of new sounds? I wasn’t necessarily in a good place in general, so it makes sense that it would affect my ability to record.

But now. I am finishing up audio engineering school, and I’ve found that excitement again. We’re in the process of creating a space on the internet where we all can share our music. Where we can take as much care as we feel in presenting our work. This is all exciting to me, and I know helped me in writing this piece. Sure, if I made a good recording, maybe I’d win a sweet piece of gear; but at least I’d have finished a piece. Alright, enough emotional baggage!

I had three weeks to complete the whole thing, and knowing that I would need at least four days for mixing and editing, I had a little over two weeks to write and record SOMETHING. (The stipulation of the contest was that I had to use the Apogee Duet (see video below) in some creative and interesting way and submit whatever I came up with). I had written a canon back in my college days and decided to use that as my starting point. The early process of creating and then sifting through musical ideas can be hard when working with a deadline, so I was happy to have the canon to start out with.

Composing was a similar process to Napping Study. Recording singing ideas in the morning, then editing them later that night. I really enjoyed this process, as I was working every morning, and I only had an hour to setup, record, then put everything away before class started.

Scenes from the iso booth

This way I was always working fast in the morning, and when I was editing at night I could sort everything in such a way that I would have a general idea of where to begin the next morning. A big problem with sitting down and recording at home is that there’s no crunch time. I really feel that the time constraints helped me write this piece.

The equipment was nice, too. Used a Neumann TLM103. Mmm. Nice microphone. It’s going to be sad to leave the school here and return to my SM57. Ah well.

When it came to mixing, what I was the most concerned with was levels. Since I exclusively used punch recording and each section had its own SPECIAL AND INTERESTING arrangement, my biggest challenging was making the listening experience smooth. Later on I’ll post some of my recordings from 2007-08 where I did not do such a smooth job. Thankfully the school had some really nice monitors, and I was able to mix Beach Canon in several different rooms. I ended up with a mix that although still has some irregularities and EQ issues, I was happy with. And apparently Apogee was too!

I’ve never had my music give me something in return, so this has been an incredibly encouraging experience.

This is in no way a complete post, but I’ll leave it at this for now. If you have questions about the piece, please comment! If you have ideas for what I could have done better compositionally, engineering-wise, or mixing-wise please let me know! Discussion is always cool. Again, here’s the link!

Beach Canon

LATER.

Guess What Came in the Mail!!

Our first video! A Test.

I’ll do better next time!

Beach Canon

Evan: I finished a new song! This came about all because of a contest to win an Apogee Duet at the school I’m attending. We simply had to use it in some way and post our production on the school’s website. Thusly I took the opportunity to write a new song!

Beach Canon

I worked pretty steadily for the past three weeks on this thing, so I don’t really have much to say about it at this point. I need some time away from it. Critiques?