The good stuff. What does this shit really mean?
01 - Namaste - This is Hindi/Urdu for "Greetings" or "Salutations." I just put a tanpura (Indian drone instrument) on a short loop.
02 - Dronology - The idea of studying drone. I like ambient music, and I think there's so many cool things about it. Music has many, many intricate layers, and with typical rock/pop music, it's hard to pick out that simple tremolo guitar that puts feeling into the chorus, or the way that extra little percussion hit will really drive home a good rhythm. With drone and ambient music, because it moves so slowly, it's possible to really appreciate and deconstruct every layer one at a time. That's what makes it so cool. I took a few sine wave generators through a bunch of filters and phasers and a pulse comb to make this guy, and did live manipulation of the pitches. Notice that the speed of the notes reverberating back changes over time. There is also one base tone sitting underneath of it all, running the whole time [hence the drone, much like Indian classical music].
03 - Pots & Pans (featuring Eric Belcastro) - Ah, one of my noise pieces. It sounds like trains going down a track during the start, and then a gusty wind tunnel with birds flitting about. And finally, a really fucked up beehive. Lots of reverb and delay, with a crappy computer microphone. That's it. It was made almost entirely by Eric and I beating on cookie tins and pans, and whatever other things I had laying around (egg shakers, hitting pens on my desk, whistling, singing, etc). I used to tell people, "You'll probably find something to like about every track except 3, 11, and 18." I also used to say that this was "what Merzbow would do if he was drunk as hell in his kitchen."
04 - Falling Sand - I was REALLY into Fractal music composition at this time. This piece was arranged for I think no fewer than 10 kotos [that's why it's very playable, but each person would have a very small part]. Koto is a Japanese zither instrument that I've wanted for years, but I obviously do not have the $1000-2000 necessary to get one. Sure, you can get a cheap one for like $200 or so, but that's like buying a knockoff Fender Strat from Wal-Mart when you want a PRS guitar. Just not the same, dude.
05 - Meditations in Solitude - I was going through my own shit at this time. Figuring out my life. Trying not to get distracted by unimportant things. Focusing. Creating. The main drone is coming from a didgeridoo that I made out of PVC pipe. Completely improvised dialogue. No effect on the didg, it sounds HUGE, but it's just looped. My voice is using a stereo delay pan. This gives you an idea of what it was like being inside of my brain circa '05.
06 - Ulysses Built This Upon the Rocks That Fell From the Skies... - Remember what I said about buying a knockoff Strat from Wal-Mart? Uhhh, yeah. I bought a lap harp [a dulcimer-esque instrument!]. I could not resist, for $20. I LOVED the tuning this was in as soon as I got it. I played it almost all the way home, one hand on the harp and one hand on the steering wheel. I recommend not doing that, EVER. An improvised piece; it reminded me a lot of Indonesian/Balinese music, which I think I was going for.
07 - Paleontology [Interlude] - Interludes. Incomplete ideas that I wanted to develop but didn't have time to flesh out. I liked this one a lot. I used a really strange tuning on my classical, I think it was BEDGBE. 9/8 time signature.
08 - Oxygen - This is as poppy as I got during this time. My buddy Jason Mars used to be REALLY into Reason, which is a cool piece of software. He bought it over with his Oxygen mini-keyboard. So we sat together and fleshed out ideas. I was really into IDM [intelligent dance music, think Aphex Twin, Squarepusher, Dntel, Mum, etc.], so the beat came out of that. I thought the synth line was really cheesy, but he was like "No man, keep going!" So I decided I wanted to hear some string patches, and thus came that hilariously cheesy melody. Still fun as hell and one of my buddies remixed this song a long time ago and it sounded like Clifford Gilberto meets My Bloody Valentine. He just never expanded on it, and I can't remember where the file is...
09 - Spelunking (featuring Michael Dodin) - I had my classical in a really fucked up tuning. You can tell because certain strings sound noticeably out of tune. This could've been a really great piece if I remembered the tuning and expanded upon it. Mikey really liked the recording I made, so we both sang on it. He takes the lead though, with a little reverb [which was also on the guitar].
10 - Watching the Plains - Another fractal piece. God, I love fractal imagery, and I'm still a sucker for fractal music. Much like "Dronology," don't pay attention to the main melody, hear the subtleties as it moves along. The cool thing about fractal music is that it works in a bell curve. Usually starts kind of simple and plain, then becomes extremely interesting midway through, and hopefully you end the piece before it gets too boring! This invoked imagery for me where I would be sitting on a plateau in the desert, with the moon out, and a soft wind blowing sand around the land beneath me.
11 - Sonic Truth - Reverting to my nihilistic tendencies. You have to sometimes destroy something in order to make room for something new. This was a play on words of Sonic Youth (who are one of my favorite bands, and manipulate lots of feedback noise and such). This was made entirely with my Line 6 DL-4 [I didn't even need to use an input signal! It just fed back on itself].
12 - Our Premonitions Shall Never Be Changed - Probably my second favorite song on my album. Yeah I know, picking favorites is fucking lame, but I don't care. I so desperately wanted to find enough musicians to be able to perform this live. I even had two of my friends who were string players look at the score. I condensed it for one instrument and they said it was impossible. Again, subtleties. Listen to the rhythmic movement of the pizzicato (plucked) strings.
13 - Transcendentalism (featuring Eric Belcastro) - Really into drone at this time. Unfortunately, it was a little more distorted than I wanted it, but it made me think of being out in a cavern, listening to the echoes of monks that were approaching. Still, probably a harsher listen than most people are ready for. Tried some throat-singing elements, but I think it failed.
14 - Raga in Dha Komal (featuring Rob Wallace) - Rob liked this piece so much that he put it on his solo album too. I loaded up a tanpura drone in Dha Komal. It was so great; I sequenced a tabla beat, and told Rob to go to town. There's more grace notes than I wanted in there, but I think he did an amazing job. Again, first try. He used his Boss DD-6 delay on his cello.
15 - From the Stoop [Interlude] - Another incomplete idea. I need to finish these things more often. I have a folder full of 100+ song ideas that just never went anywhere. This one starts in 5/4, then switches to 7/4.
16 - Derelict (featuring Rob Wallace) - Ah, more droney voices. Probably one of the few times I liked how my voice sounded in a recording. Lots of reverb. Rob has such a nice deep voice that helped get across what I couldn't do in "Transcendentalism" (and in major key!). You can hear me breathing heavily around ~3:15. Again, most of these things are improvised. That was kind of emotional moment for me because it hit me in just the right way, at the right time. Then I laid my falsetto overtop. Rob's whistling after that reminded me of the Old West. Haha.
17 - Sidewalk Chalk - One of the poppiest songs I had written to date. I originally was writing this song for a girl I was really into, and spent 4 hours alone tweaking and modifying the percussion [where I even forgot to eat dinner that night]. It's kind of repetitive in a way, and was written to be played in my old band. Just never happened. My drummer at the time took one listen to this and said, "Fuck you man, how am I supposed to play that?" It's lead bass, believe it or not! Drums and bass carry this song; the guitar is just doin' it's thang with simple chords. I'd still love to have live musicians to play this song out with one day. It's probably not mathy enough for Kalon. And it's pretty damn poppy as I said.
18 - Voodoo - Another fractal piece. Remember how the one track was supposed to be Merzbow drunk in the kitchen? This was like Matmos or Aphex Twin tripping hard and sitting in front of a Commodore 64. 10 minutes was definitely too long for this to go on, though.
19 - Outro (featuring Lucy Steigerwald & Rob Wallace)* - I have a bunch of flutes/ocarinas/etc. in my house. I put it on a loop, and wanted to say thanks and encourage people to donate to the charities that we were punting [Red Cross and LiNK]. I said thank you too many fucking times though, really. As stated in the previous page, there's 42 seconds between my monologue and the hilarity that followed afterward. I was rolling on the floor laughing after it was recorded. Rob, Lucy, and myself were making gibberish noises and originally I was going to call it Animal 1984 [a play on of Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm, because it sounded like we were at a zoo and you were being watched]. I decided to just add it as a funny bonus. We made sounds one at a time on loop. Rob was the only one who could remember what sounds he made the first time. As far as "Dictionary!", one of my friends had a keyboard that had a "hiphop" sound set. And you'd hear record scratches or drum beats or whatever with each key, sampled. One of them, for some fucking reason, said "Dictionary!" in a really enthusiastic voice. Could. Not. Resist.