I’ve always worked on multiple projects/bands at once and this album was born out of that style of multitasking. I find working on very disparate sounding things at the same time keeps everything fresh, or when your tired of one sound you can hop over to something else for a while and come back when you’re inspired to do so. For much of the writing of this record I was also writing lots of latin music, fingerpicked alternate-tuning acoustic guitar compositions, things that could be put under the metal umbrella, etc. I love music from all over the world so everything I listen to informs everything I write. I’m also a very visual person in love with geometry, sci-fi/fantasy, independent comics. All that stuff gets to be in there in a different context with instrumental music. It’s not as obvious but it’s richer to me.
The Approach – Quite literally imagining the view of descent from a small window, the anticipation, taxiing on a runway, the whole process of landing at your destination, be it an unfamiliar transportation hub very far from home. The snare drum tone and reverb are really what was the spark of this song in general. Honestly, everything else just kind of fell into place once that sound hit me. It’s a very specific snare, the Yamaha Akira Jimbo 13×7 signature model with wood hoops. No other drum sounds quite like it, and in this instance paired with that reverb, a song was born. All the stringed instruments on this track were done on a Squire Baritone that I’m still kicking myself for selling, but I needed a bass to complete this very project, so that’s how things went at the time. Much of the bass and guitar parts on this record are in fact that Baritone processed accordingly.
BIFAR – This felt like a high stakes game of cat an mouse on an obstacle course, so I kept that in mind the entire time recording this. I have a deep love of Bob Marley & the Wailers, Sonic Youth, Tangerine Dream, King Crimson, and I feel (hope?) all those things are on full display here in one way or another. Keeping with the idea of the obstacle course, the meter shifts and changes throughout while keeping the spirit of the classic steppers and nyabinghi reggae rhythms. My friend Rexy is my upstairs neighbor so I asked her to rip some saxophone lines. Her contributions to this record levelled up the whole project, I can’t say enough about her.
REXY: This was the first of the tunes Jason had me tackle. I remember him saying to me, “Get weird with it!” I drew on the energy of Moon Hooch, which is a super cool rave-dub-saxophone band that I follow. I thought less about these lines melodically, and more about kind of letting my tone hang down, belligerent maybe. I’m really happy with the effects that got added to the final mix, because it most definitely sounds how I pictured it would!
Two Triangles – I wanted this to feel like a heist that while it didn’t go wrong necessarily, it didn’t go as planned or without collateral damage of some sort. I’m in love with the way Carlton Barrett plays the high hat. The first half of this song is all a tribute to that, as a drum part. The vibraphone line that fades in over the second half of this song was fun to create and record. I like parts that feel almost like another character making a call back to a previous scene, superimposed on the current situation. That line felt like that to me.
One Door Opens – The sobering reality of collateral damage sets in and gives way to the anxiety of future consequences. The imagery here was like slowly rowing through dark treacherous rising waters. I have a Squire Jaguar that I love the sound of, especially with Pyramid flat wound strings. It’s still noisy, and chimey, all the wonderful things we love about Jaguars. The strings help mellow out some of the high end and I just love the feel of them. It’s the only regular guitar on this record.
The Mountain – And then the journey gets more landscape. I remember trying to channel Lee Ranaldo specifically on this one. I saw Sonic Youth a whole bunch of times and if I could get down front, I was always going to be on Lee’s side of the stage. The way he phrases a melody and bends notes is totally unique. SY’s use and abuse of pedals should be taught in music schools. The drum beat for me is a cross between Steve Shelley and Tony Allen. The two basslines intentionally obscure each other to mimic the multitasking you kind of have to do when embarking on a tough but rewarding climb. The whole song goes on a bit because that’s what a mountain does. This was truly sculpted in the mix with Todd Hutchisen.
Quite the Curious State – I always imagined this to be like a sort of Miami Vice meets Kubrick’s 2001 meets Dre’s 2001 with a whole bunch of Tortoise at the end. Typically I don’t really care or even think about time signatures when I write. I try to just let the idea take it’s own shape and I try to mold things in a way that feel good to me. I always liked how groups like King Crimson, Rollins Band or The Melvins could make the “odd” aspect of a time signature irrelevant to the conversation by just writing riffs that felt like they have their own kind of story and resolution. It’s only after I write something that I’ll bother to learn what the time signature is. My love of latin music inspired the rhumba clave style clapping on this. The tone of the flat wound strings really stick out on this track to me.
Sixteen Sunsets – Dub is a process and Todd and I paid tribute to that process while creating this. The riff itself is three bars of three, one bar of four. Keeping a samba style bass drum figure under the whole thing keeps the cohesion. I lived in Colorado for a while growing up and I fell in love with nature while I was there. This song is a tribute to those incomparable Rocky Mountain sunsets you get every day. Rexy’s saxophone once again just makes this track.
REXY: This tune has such a good heartbeat! The imagery of many sunsets combined with the Latin feel immediately reminded me of one of my favorite tunes “Na Baixa do Sapateiro” (better known as “Baía” or “Bahia”) and I just tried my best to keep things smooth and cool- we tracked a couple different parts and had them kind of weave in and out of each other. I tried to keep the parts warm and cozy, and thought of depicting clouds and colors emerging and fading.
Circular Spaces – More covert robot espionage back channel stuff. There’s a lot of Kraftwerk influence in the sound design of this one, apart from the guitars which I thought ended up sounding more Sticky Fingers than Uprising. The segue section at the end made me envision like bunch of floating space manatees circling a small moon.
Detectives – Night-time beach, cigars, pineapples and a crime scene. Clues lead to mocking, sinister laughter. Classic “who done it” kind of story. I believe every track was recorded with the Baritone guitar. The song itself was born out of me being defensive over people saying reggae is “all on the up beats” so I put everything I could save for the melody and drums on the upbeat just to see if I could make something musical out of my pettiness. Rexy once again adding all the right spices to all the right dishes.
REXY: I distinctly remember listening to this on a loop on my headphones for a few days thinking about what I wanted to put down on it. Jason really wanted a double on the vibe solo, and I kept hearing these other little vibe parts during the head that were really sweet but definitely further back in the mix, so I thought why not go in on those parts as well? Thinking about the song title, I really wanted to add in those horn echoes as well- like they were little clues these detectives were picking up, and the echoes get more and more numerous as the plot thickens.
Morpheme – With this project I didn’t want to shy away from the diffuse and murky. It’s ok for things to be confusing sometimes. The atypical meters -particularly in the B section and all that sits on top of it- are intentionally dizzying to recall the disorienting aspects of psychedelic recreationals. Originally I wrote the bass line on a mandolin while I was working in a cigar shop. It was a small enough instrument and it never really got busy, or more importantly no customers complained to the owner. So I wrote a lot of stuff when I wasn’t figuring out Alan Parsons and Joe Jackson songs on the mandolin. Good times. I hear The Cure meets later Paul Simon on the bulk of this.
Rayquaza – I like too many things happening at once. I enjoy frenzy. I imagined a big band like John Brown’s Body with people sitting in to close the night. Couple more guitars than you need, a couple more clavinets, bunch of Rexy saxophones, insistent rock solid grooves. This song was originally supposed to be part of a lyric driven project but I decided to just keep it the way it is here because the vibe felt right. Named after my favorite Pokemon
REXY: This tune reminded me a lot of another project Jason plays with called, “El Malo,” self identified as ‘Salsacore’. A lot of my inspiration on this track was that sound, I just kind of thought to myself, what would (saxophonist) Diamond Dan do? I ran with that for a few sections of the tune, but the chaos at the end was a combination of my own thoughts on layering parts, and the work of Todd’s expert mixing.
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