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Loiterer – Adrift

Posted on by Jon

 

Okay, so this piece is going to take some time to explain because it combines some uncommon experimental composition ideas. So to make things short for those who don’t want to read something long and dry, I will begin by putting this in quick-and-dirty terms:

  1. This is music co-written by my computer. I coded a piece of music that writes itself.
  2. This piece utilizes notes and harmonies unavailable in “normal” music.

Point 1 is particularly oversimplified. So if you’d like a more detailed, accurate representation of what this is, read on.

A few months ago, I released Key West, an algorithmic/microtonal* piece that was composed using the awesome software known as Pure Data. While I really enjoyed how that piece turned out, I wanted to go further with Pure Data and create something that had stronger rhythmic content. Within a few days of completing it, I began putting together a new composition.

I put quite a few hours into it over the next few weeks. The code ended up a lot more complicated than I expected. I liked how it all came together, but upon finishing it… I felt that I couldn’t put it out yet. This was because I actually didn’t understand some of the theory behind what I had done, and didn’t know how I was possibly going to explain it. I was told that to someone who wasn’t already deep into lunatic-fringe musician territory, the explanation I wrote up for Key West was mostly incomprehensible gobbledygook, so I wanted to be sure that I could thoroughly explain this new one before I put it out to the public. I had to do some research to figure out what exactly I had come up with.

 

* Don’t know what these terms mean? Don’t worry, explanations are coming below.

 

MICROTONALITY

 

Like Key West, this piece also experiments with microtonality. Most music that we hear is written in 12edo (equal division of the octave), which splits the octave into 12 notes that the human ear interprets as even jumps in pitch. Key West utilizes a temperament known as 5edo, where the octave is split into 5 notes that the human ear interprets as even jumps in pitch, allowing the utilization of notes that are not found in most music.

12vs5




This song, however, abandons that approach and uses a different kind of system. The composition came to be as a result of my curiosity regarding different ways of splitting up the octave. After trying a bunch of different things, I happened to take the octave and split it up into 16 even divisions… but instead of splitting them up in equal cent intervals (tones that the human ear interprets as even jumps), like with an EDO, I split the octave evenly in hertz (i.e. vibrations per second). This is one of the things that I did that, at the time, I didn’t fully understand, and later got really confused by, so hopefully I can explain.

The human ear interprets frequencies logarithmically. Doubling any frequency will result in an octave harmony. We understand 200hz to be the same note as 100hz except one octave higher. This doubling continues with each iteration of the octave; 400hz, 800hz, 1600hz, et cetera are all perceived as the same note. This means that in a tuning system where every step of the scale is interpreted by the ear as being exactly even, the amount of Hz between each note increases.

12edohzcorrelation

So, as I said before, I derived the scale that I used for this piece in the opposite way. Instead of dividing evenly in cents, I divided the octave evenly into Hz. This means that as the scale increases, the ear interprets the intervals as getting closer together. I later learned that this is known as an otonal scale due to its relation to the overtone series (shout-outs to Dave Ryan and Tom Winspear for helping me figure out what the heck this approach is called).

otoneshz

This particular scale is known as otones16-32. From my research, otonal scales seem to be pretty uncommon. I don’t know why that is. They’re a very logical way to construct mathematically harmonious scales. To my ear, they can be utilized in a way which sounds very consonant, but they also allow for some exotic xenharmonic flavor.


From the 16 available notes in this scale, I chose a set of 7 of them that I thought sounded agreeable together. The ratios† of these notes are:

  • 16/16 aka 1/1 aka unison
  • 18/16 aka 9/8 aka major whole tone
  • 19/16 (doesn’t reduce) aka overtone minor third
  • 22/16 aka 11/8 aka undecimal tritone (11th harmonic)
  • 24/16 aka 3/2 aka perfect fifth
  • 25/16 (doesn’t reduce) aka augmented fifth
  • 28/16 aka 7/4 aka septimal minor seventh
  • 32/16 aka 2/1 aka octave




I found the sound of this scale inspiring (especially when I heard how strange it sounded to build chords with it), so I set out to put together a new algorithmic piece. Like I said earlier, I wanted to be more ambitious and give the thing more structure than my last effort.

 

† “Ratios? What does that mean in this context?” The ratio is what you multiply your base note by to create a particular harmony. For example, say your base note is 100hz. To create a perfect fifth (3/2), you multiply 100*(3/2), yielding 150hz. When 100hz and 150hz are played together, every time that the base note vibrates twice, the harmony vibrates exactly three times in perfect alignment.

 

 

ALGORITHMICALITY

 

An algorithmic composition, in its simplest form, is music that is made by creating and then following a set of rules. The term, however, is more commonly used for music where the artist designs some kind of framework (most often a computer program) that allows the piece to perform itself without intervention from the artist. In this case, I did just that: coded a framework of rules dictating which sounds are generated when by a combination of soundwave generators.

This composition also falls under a closely related musical form known as generative music. A composition is generative if it is unique each time that it is listened to. It needs to be continually reinventing itself in some way. This algorithmic composition is also a generative composition because the computer makes many determinations about the musical output each time that it is played. Every time the program runs and the song is heard, the chord progressions are different, as are the rhythms and notes that the instruments play. Many aspects of the composition are the same each time, but many others are determined by the computer and are unique to every listen.

 

Here are the rules I chose that are the same on every playthrough:

  • The scale utilized
    • 7 notes of otones16-32
    • 1/1, 9/8, 19/16, 5/4, 11/8, 3/2, 25/16, 7/4, 2/1 (as explained above)
    • A base frequency of 200 (roughly halfway between G and Ab in A-440)
  • The overall rhythm and tempo
    • 4/4
    • Backbeat on beat 3
    • 137bpm
  • The intervals that the chord instrument plays
    • Root note, 3 notes up the scale, 5 notes up the scale
  • The instruments and their beginning timbres
    • Drums
      • Kick
      • Snare
      • Hi-hats on both the left and right sides
    • The polyphonic synth which plays the 3-note chords
    • Bass
    • A monophonic, airy sounding “ah” synth
    • A lead “sequencer” that plays in the center, with a 5th harmony that fades in and out
    • A short-tailed secondary lead layer
    • The warbly background synths on the left and right
  • The 17 available chord progressions
  • The overall structure of the piece
    • Fade-in
    • 5 parts
    • A “trigger” occurring at 3 specific points which activates one of the instrument mute sequences
    • A slowdown and fade-out for an ending

 

And here’s what the computer determines on each playthrough:

  • Which chord progressions (of the 17 available) will be used for each of the 5 parts. There are no restrictions on which progressions can be used for each part, so:
    • The computer sometimes makes the piece have unique chord progressions for each part, creating a song structure of ABCDE
    • It is theoretically possible that the computer could choose the same chord progression for all 5 parts, creating AAAAA, though highly unlikely (odds of 1 in 1,419,817)
    • I am not well versed in the theory behind statistics, so I don’t know the reason for this, but the majority of the time, it tends to pick the same chord progression for at least two of the parts
      • Most often, it seems the structure will end up being something like ABCAD, or ABACB
  • Unique melodies and rhythms for each instrument during each of the five parts of the song. That is:
    • A unique drum pattern for each individual drum sound during each part
    • A unique bass line during each part
    • A unique sequencer line for each part
    • A unique short-tailed synth line for each part
    • A unique set of warbly background notes on the left and the right for each part
  • The morphing of the timbre of the instruments
    • What morphs:
      • The overtones that create the timbres
      • The amount and level of frequency and amplitude modulation
    • When this morphing occurs
  • Where and when the instruments pan around in the stereo field
  • When the sequencer harmony fades in and out
  • Which instrument mute sequence (of the 3 available) occurs at each defined trigger point

 

FINAL NOTES / OTHER

 

There is one aspect of the composition that I listed under the “rules I chose” heading that I would actually consider some kind of middle ground: the available chord progressions. While I was working on coding the program, I made a chord progression generator. It automatically created bar-long chord progressions. Each time it would generate a loop, I would listen to it a few times and decide if I liked it or not. If I liked it, I would add it to the list of progressions that the computer could choose from. The ones that were musical nonsense were deleted. About 1/3 of the progressions generated by the algorithm I designed were usable. So in the end, I did choose the chord progressions that were included. But the computer created them in the first place.

On a different note, this method of presentation of the piece raises some art philosophy questions. Is the YouTube video of the piece being played actually the same piece? It’s not truly representative of the generative nature of the song; the YouTube video will be exactly the same every time it is played. It’s a facsimile that only demonstrates one particular runthrough. Eventually I’d like to make the jump over to Max/MSP, an extremely similar visual coding language that allows you to compile your code into a standalone program that anyone can run.

Lastly, all of the sounds you hear in the piece are generated via what is known as waveform synthesis. They are created by adding various combinations of sine waves and white noise‡ to one another. This creates complex waveforms which our ears interpret as different timbres. I could write a post entirely about how the sound generators in this piece work together to create the sounds that you hear, but this post is already long enough. Maybe for my next Pure Data based composition, I will focus my explanation entirely on that aspect of the piece.

 

‡ Sine waves are the most basic, pure waveform (a sinusoidal shape), and white noise is an audio signal that plays all frequencies at equal power (which ends up sounding like a sharp hiss). The audio demonstrations included in this article are all made up of basic sine waves.

 

 

 

Yikes! That’s a lot longer than I expected. Hopefully someone finds this interesting. At the very least, writing this cemented a bunch of this stuff in my brain.

The Clavins – File Corruption EP

Posted on by Jon

clavins

The Clavins – File Corruption EP: Unfinished Instrumentals

theclavins.bandcamp.com

Here’s a post unlike any other on my blog! I didn’t produce this music at all. Steve (one of my favorite people for 15ish years and co-writer of ADD/Nihilism) made these rad songs and used my piece Steve from the Repeating Features series as the cover art. Check it out!

Antiverb – General Purpose

Posted on by Jon

antiverbblog

Antiverb – General Purpose

antiverb.bandcamp.com

Earlier today, The Hard Times (specifically, author Kyle Erf) put up an absolutely savage satire piece about noise artists. I’m a huge fan of THT’s work, so I decided to spend a little time today blurring the lines between joke and reality by making a Bandcamp for the band that they invented in the article.

The supposed band consists of members Hans Lederman (drums) and Ashleigh Milton (production) of New York City. Collectively they are known as Antiverb. Their release, General Purpose, is a 7″ disc of 180-grit sandpaper intended to be played on a turntable.

I was greatly amused by both the article and the EP’s concept, and upon completing my reading wondered if anyone had gone to the trouble of fleshing out the non-existent release. I entered “antiverb.bandcamp.com” in my address bar and found that no such page existed. “Antiverb band” on Google yielded no results either. I was honestly shocked that no one was using that name. At that moment I knew: I had to be the one to do it. I had to make this Bandcamp for the sake of the few other weirdos in the world who would read that article and think, “I wonder if anyone has made this into a Bandcamp.”

Anyway, to begin the process, I recorded the sound of a piece of sandpaper on a turntable. As someone who does a lot of work on my house, I happened to have it lying around, so I didn’t even need to hit Home Depot. Score.

A post shared by Jon Lervold (@bigname.music) on

As you can see in the video, the needle doesn’t move laterally while the sandpaper spins; it just sits in one position. This means that the sandpaper “record” would play continually until stopped by the listener. A computer program could be coded to replicate this endlessness, but Bandcamp only operates with standard audio files. An audio file can’t be infinite, so the digital recording of this EP needed a chosen length. The article states that the release is a 7″, so I decided to make the digital version 6 minutes long, as this is approaching how long a single side of a traditional 7″ record can be.

After recording and mastering the audio, I registered the Bandcamp page and uploaded the track. At this point I had to decide what to add for other content. I wanted to fill in as many of the fields as possible with information derived from the article. For the “about” section I took the brilliant Harold Zhou “New York Times” review that mentions using the EP to prep a shelf for staining. The artist bio was similarly taken from Lederman’s quote about the intent of the project.

For the credits, the band members’ names and roles were simple enough to fill in. The digital version really was recorded at Big Name, so I put that in there too. At this point I had exhausted the supply of pre-existing ideas. It was time to come up with some original content to fill out the rest of the page.

printstation
The Big Name printing, cutting, and scanning station. This is where I have put together thousands of copies of various tapes and CDs. In this case, it’s where I scanned the sandpaper cover art.

I used my scanner to scan more of the sandpaper that I had lying around. I was really worried about scratching my scanning bed, but as far as I can tell I got away with it. This scan was used for the album cover as well as the Bandcamp’s header and background. Next, for the artist photo, I used a picture of myself and Laura. I modified the image so our faces don’t show (so it’s not clearly just us) and then I added an overlay using the sandpaper I had just scanned because I thought that was funny.

The article mentioned a label releasing the EP, but did not give that label a name. So I had to come up with one. I chose Acquired Distaste Records; it just strikes me as a perfect noise-label name.

bnr4-1-2 bnr4-3-2

All that was left at this point was a few pictures of the physical release. I took a 7″ record sleeve and cut the piece of sandpaper down to the size of a booklet. Then, I used another piece to create a proper disc. The pictures were taken using the setup that I use to photograph everything for Big Name Records.

The Big Name Records photo setup, consisting of styrofoam, can lights, mic stands, and curtains.
The Big Name Records low-budget photo setup, consisting of styrofoam, can lights, mic stands, and curtains.

I created a fake Facebook for the band’s drummer, posted the link on the article’s page on their website, and watched a scant few plays roll in.

hanspost
If you want to help get this post into the “top posts” of THT’s FB link so that a few more people find it, you can like it here.

I actually think that if this were a real release, it would be genuinely interesting from a conceptual standpoint. The audio would be fully generative (i.e. each playthrough would be a completely unique waveform), but then, to take that concept to the next level and turn it on its head, the differences between listenings would be indiscernible to the listener. While most generative music is done via computer programming, this release would be different, as it would be the result of purely physical processes. The infinite playback of the disc is also noteworthy; there are plenty of releases with run-out grooves where something repeats over and over again at the end of the disc, but I personally have never seen any kind of disc where the entirety of the audio is infinite. Also, as noted in the article, the disc would likely permanently damage the needle of the listener’s record player. The listener would have to make the conscious choice to put their equipment in harm’s way in order to experience the artist’s piece.

The EP, if real, would be construed by many as extremely pretentious, which would make those people angry. Of course, this is the crux of the satire piece. The pretentiousness, however, (in my humble opinion) could be cool provided that the artist had a solid sense of how ridiculous their piece really was and also provided that they had a good sense of humor about it. The release itself would be comedy gold in its own right, and would be a solid of a jab at noise music’s more absurd artists (while also joining the ranks of noise music’s more absurd artists!). As a final note here, I love that it really does sound kind of cool when you listen to it. I absolutely did not expect to feel that way when I first put the sandpaper on the turntable. The playback sounds exactly like how the surface of sandpaper feels.

 

ADDENDUM:

It has been brought to my attention that it could be helpful if I lay out a short list of all the reasons why I took the time to do this.

  • I thought that the idea presented in the article was genuinely artistically awesome.
  • I thought that the idea presented in the article was also genuinely hilarious.
  • I really wanted to know what a sandpaper disc would sound like played on a turntable.
  • I read the article and checked if anyone else had done this already. No one had.
    • I thought there might be a few other weirdos who would try the same search that I tried after I finished reading the article, and that they would be amused when they found the Bandcamp.
  • I had the means to do all of this quickly and for almost no cost due to having a recording studio, record label, and physical media production facility.
  • I thought it would be fun and a good exercise in creativity.
  • I thought that collaborating with someone (the author) in a way that they never would have expected and didn’t even know about was a curious concept.
  • I thought going to all this effort for something so odd and pointless was intriguing and ridiculous.
  • I found the non-existent release’s meaning very ambiguous and wanted to explore its concepts more concretely. I see elements of various forms of art in it and I am not sure if it’s more “music” or “conceptual.” It blurs the lines between different mediums of art. It also straddles the world of comedy and serious, thought-provoking concepts. I see no reason why comedy and art cannot coexist, and I like a lot of art that is humorous.
  • Taking it to the next step in the process, I wanted to explore just what the heck it would mean if I were to actually do what I did (flesh out the Bandcamp). It felt like doing art, but I wouldn’t even know what form of art to call it. It’s music, conceptual, somewhat performative, and it could be considered an internet installation art piece. Again, I think it’s all funny, but it’s also meaningful in some way. My end of the process felt just as ambiguous as the original concept.
  • Everything about my own hand in this process (the development of the Bandcamp and also this explanation piece) will certainly be considered very pretentious by some who encounter it. For whatever reason, that just made me want to do it more.
  • Most importantly, I just wanted to pay homage to The Hard Times, because their work is superb.

Honestly I didn’t consciously think through all of these things before I began, but they were all reasons that I took the time to do this. The simplest explanation is just that it was a fully natural thing for me to do.

Internet Roundup – February/March/April 2017

Posted on by Jon

Here’s some amusing, interesting, insightful, or useful internet stuff I discovered in February, March, and April of 2017.

yeltsin

Yeltsin Drunk. In His Underwear. Hailing a Cab.
politico.com/blogs/on-congress/2009/09/yeltsin-drunk-in-his-underwear-hailing-a-cab-021553

To begin, here’s a short but interesting article. The information within comes from secret interviews conducted with Bill Clinton at the end of his administration. The article contains two amusing anecdotes regarding former Russian president Boris Yeltsin, who was found in the middle of the night on the street in Washington DC, in his underwear, drunkenly hailing a cab. He just wanted a late-night pizza.

King of the Hill animation help

King of the Hill Animation Rules

As an avid King of the Hill fan, I find these slides fascinating. They are a small selection of the rules and guidelines with which animators worked to keep the show consistent. These are little details the average person will never notice, but they add up to a consistent final product that is very cohesive and, in this case, realistic.

These types of decisions add up. A focus on realism suits the point of the show as a whole. Mike Judge wanted everything like textures, perspective, and windows to be sensible. To make the feel match a live action show shot on-location, the “camera” perspectives are set as though it’s a real camera in a room, not like most cartoons or even like a set on a soundstage. They took this level of detail down to getting things like the time correct on a character’s wristwatch in every scene.

It’s a good way to work through art in general, to make rules to work by (and occasionally break them for effect). It begets a lot of creativity and a consistent end product.

fretlets

Fretlets
fretlet.com

These are self adhering extra frets that you can add onto your guitar in order to play music that utilizes microtones. They’re dirt cheap and are not permanent, so they allow a lot of flexibility in experimentation. They can be used to add a very eastern flavor to a person’s guitar playing, as these intervals are traditionally found in forms of Indian, Turkish, and Persian music, among others.

24edo

24edo on a 12edo Guitar
sevenstring.org/forum/showthread.php?t=161530

And to further solidify that I am interested in the possibilities of microtonal composition (if 6 entries on my blog so far regarding microtonality didn’t give it away), we have a forum post where someone came up with a method of playing 24edo on a standard guitar without requiring any modifications.

I’ve been very interested in 24edo since I first heard Jute Gyte’s Perdurance. Jute Gyte utilizes guitars with double the normal amount of frets, with an extra fret added exactly halfway between each existing fret. As far as I know, there’s only one luthier out there who makes these necks with any regularity: Ron Sword of Metatonal Music. The problem is that the price is too high for someone who is merely looking to briefly dabble with the idea. This is a good solution for those people.

The system proposed in the forum post is simple and elegant. Instead of tuning the guitar’s strings fourths apart like in standard tuning, the strings are instead tuned half-fifths apart. This interval is also known as a “neutral third.” This is the note 50 cents between the minor and major thirds that most musicians are familiar with. This interval is not available in a conventional tuning. It allows for some interesting tonal possibilities.

Things full of beans that shouldn’t be full of beans

Things Full of Beans that Shouldn’t Be Full of Beans

An art project that answers a question everyone has asked at one point or another: “What if life was packed to the brim with beans?‘

Ryan Lockwood – Streets Agent 1:12

[Video contains strong language. If you are at work or around children, you probably won’t want to play this video.]

This is a classic YouTube video that I just rediscovered. For those unfamiliar with speedrunning, the idea is to beat a game or certain level of a game as quickly as possible. There are huge online communities where people obsess over every minute detail of specific (often decades-old) games, trying to figure out strategies (“strats”) to improve current world-record times. It can take many years of dedicated study and practice to improve a world record time by one single second. From the YouTube description:

Ryan Lockwood’s narrated replay of his record-tying 1:12 Streets Agent run with subtitles. He’s narrating his run over stream to a 50+ audience, shortly after achieving it. It was the first time he or anyone else watched the run.

Hundreds know Ryan Lookwood from his Twitch stream; dozens others have met him at our annual meetup. There are a lot of, um… idiosyncratic dudes that take to speedrunning, and Ryan Lockwood is no exception. He’s an intense dude, in short.

Ryan is the second person to achieve the time of 1:12 on this level. Normally record ties aren’t big news, but Ryan hit this time before getting 1:13. This is absurdly unlikely. 1:12 is one of the most frame-for-frame maxed times in GoldenEye, first accomplished by Marc Rützou in 2012, a player whose [sic] made a name for grinding hard to break/set records that are daunting to match. With 20+ people sharing the old record of 1:13 in early 2012, the prospect of 1:12 was a popular debate in the forums. A $100 bounty was posted for anyone who could get this time–legitimately–and after weeks of attempts, Marc won the “race”. Only a few have shown serious intentions (or even interest) in matching the feat since. Technically, Ryan isn’t among them, as 1:13 was his goal. But you’ll see in the video that he had a good sense of what was on the line toward the end of his run.

The nuances of “modern” Goldeneye speedrunning may be hard to detect, but the novelty of this run’s unlikeliness should not be. A 1:14 run Streets is probably a 1 in 20 event, with respect to Lockwood’s ability. A 1:13 absolutely requires something random (see: RNG) — the presence of a grenade launcher guard. Let’s call 1:13 a 1 in 500 event. A 1:12 run leans on “RNG factors” even more, also requiring at least 3 “boosts” from gunfire (getting shot in the pack [sic], pushing you ahead slightly). Let’s suppose 1 in 10,000 odds for 1:12, in which case you can probably expect dozens of 1:13 runs before achieving 1:12. Think of this like a statistical outlier in a distribution plot — perhaps a few hundred data points between 74.0 and 75.0 seconds, thousands between 74.0 an [sic] 76.0, and one 72.9.

[Written by Derek Clark]

More information about this feat and just why this guy was so pumped can be found in this video.

 

UN – Live @ Big Name

Posted on by Jon

Seattle’s Un came back to Big Name a few days ago to record drums for an upcoming release. It’s one 18 minute long track that will eventually be part of a split with a band from the UK. When we finished earlier than we expected, Monte (guitar/vocals and primary writer of Un’s music) suggested we use our remaining time to do a live video session. I thought that was a great idea. It’s always a pleasure to work with these guys.

(Select 720pHD to stream the full quality audio/video.)

 

An-Dron Yekrae – Atalean Spxldror

Posted on by Jon

bandcamp

An-Dron Yekrae – Atalean Spxldror

andronyekrae.bandcamp.com

I am proud to present another new solo album. I think that its origins are worth discussing, as they’re pretty… odd.

One of the main principles that I follow while creating art is that the work must be allowed to flow freely, and that I should follow the art wherever it wants to go. Most of the time when I’m working on my own material, I try to actually get out of the way of the art, let whatever it is show itself, and then mold those raw impulses into a finished product. It feels like channeling something. This album was done that way, and it led me on a few twists and turns throughout its creation process.

Last year, melodies, chord progressions, and bass lines in the style of old jazz standards unexpectedly began popping into my head. Whenever this sort of thing happens, I make sure to capture and transcribe the ideas. After a few weeks of this process, I ended up with 14 complete pieces.

Originally I thought that they should be played in the style of a jazz combo, as would be expected for jazz standards. But I didn’t know how I was going to accomplish that. At this point, I can confidently say that I play drums and bass well, and piano decently… but playing jazz drums, bass, and piano is a different story. And I don’t play any traditional jazz lead instruments at all. My skills in that genre would need a lot of work before I could pull something like that off. So I puzzled over that impasse for a while, and the songs just sat while I worked on other things (like Retail Monkey – ADD/Nihilism and [syzygy] – [visitor] {which was “channeled” in a similar way to this album}).

When I have a project sitting, I can feel its weight in my mind. It takes up space and it makes me anxious. If I wait too long, the inspiration of the project can sometimes leave and never return. It wasn’t long before the incomplete project really began to bother me. I prefer to get things done and move along, but I knew something was not right about the way I was approaching it. So I couldn’t. After some time I realized that my original instrumental vision was definitely not how they were supposed to end up.

I realize how weird this all might sound, but at that point, the answer came to me. The project wanted to be a concept album: songs written by a character, an alien (An-Dron Yekrae) from another world (Atalea), who visited Earth and fell in love with two sounds: classic jazz and synthesizers. He got together some friends and recorded this album, melding those two interests. I don’t know where this idea came from, but it felt like the right answer, so I just shrugged and followed it. Immediately I rediscovered the flow state, and the entirety of the project was tracked within the week. After being stuck for quite a while, it turned back into a naturally flowing process. It was a blast to record all this stuff.

Yeah, like I said, it’s weird. But that’s what this project wanted to be. It was fun working with you, little alien jazz buddy.

Released on Big Name Records. BNR1701
Available on cassette via the Big Name Records Webstore or Bandcamp.
Cassettes were printed in the Big Name print shop.

bnr4-13 bnr4-14 bnr4-15 bnr4-16