55YT MQRT – Self Titled

55ytmqrt.bandcamp.com

55YT MQRT was formed in Redwood City, CA way back in 2006. At that point in time, my friend Neal Jensen and I were high schoolers deep diving into the world of psychedelic and progressive rock, our favorites being The Mars Volta, Pink Floyd, and King Crimson. We had just left our post-hardcore outfit Ending Reason and we very much wanted to explore some more experimental sonic territory ourselves.

We originally formed under the name Hellships. For reasons unknown to me now, we ended up dropping that name and instead chose to go by 55YT MQRT. Something about progressive rock that has always made us laugh is how often people complain that bands within the genre are “pretentious,” so we chose a name that we found maximally pretentious as a way to poke fun at the people who make such complaints. (Neal later ended up properly forming Hellships in Olympia, WA with Robin Flowers and Alex Freilich. I produced their two studio albums, Leaden Hum and Doom Organs in 2012 and 2015 respectively. I consider Hellships and 55YT MQRT to be sibling projects… Hellships is a bit more of an unhinged and “off the grid” fellow, whereas 55YT MQRT is an equally strange individual who somehow manages to hold down an office job.)

We developed the band’s compositional approach in the early days. We would do long improv sessions that were then edited down in Pro Tools into seamless songs. From there we would add elements, cut parts, and rearrange things until the songs felt complete. We released our early tracks on MySpace.

Within a year of forming the band, Neal moved to Olympia, leaving our project with an uncertain future. In 2010 I ended up deciding to move there as well. We became roommates and revived 55YT. We assembled an untitled album consisting mostly of ambient noise tracks. When we moved from our apartment into a house where we could make loud music, we started properly practicing again. Over the next roughly 4 years we would occasionally work on 55YT material, but during that time we did not properly record anything due to focusing on other projects (Hellships, A God or an Other, Bird Surgeon, The Lunch).

Neal eventually decided to move to Montana to pursue a master’s degree, and again this left the band with an unknown future. In January 2016, before he left, we decided to properly document what we had been working on, again following the edited improv approach of our early works. We quickly had solid recorded versions of our songs that represented what we had been doing live during that time: Neal playing a single guitar accompanied by myself on the drums. The lone overdub was bass for fullness. Neal then left for Montana. This version sounded complete to me, but not to Neal. He wanted to overdub some additional parts he had been imagining.

He came to visit Olympia and we recorded his extra ideas. Now that there were additional elements on certain scattered parts, the parts with no overdubs sounded empty to me! And thus, a nearly 8 year process began. Parts were added and edits were made in short bursts, usually when Neal would come to visit for a few days here and there. Sometimes the session sat for literally years without being opened. Finally, in November 2023… we knew it was complete.

It shocks me when I think of how different my personal world and even the world in general was when we began working on this album. I was pursuing music full time living in Washington state. Donald Trump was just beginning his first run and the idea of him becoming president was ludicrous. Since then, I moved halfway across the country, had a son and a daughter, worked as a cable technician for 4 years, and made my jump into software development as a career. And the whole pandemic thing happened.

This is my longest-running recording project to date. I don’t know how many people will connect with this album but this is one of my personal favorite releases I’ve ever put out. We had been envisioning creating something like this since high school. The vision is finally fulfilled.

Over the last couple of years Neal has regularly been coming from Iowa, where he currently resides, to visit our family in Colorado. During those visits we have been recording new tracks which will be the basis for the next 55YT MQRT album. If the pattern holds, we’ll release the next album somewhere around 2031. We’ll see!

Album art by Garrett Botkins.

Gapless w/ Lyrics on YouTube:

Stream or Download/Purchase (name-your-price) on Bandcamp:

THEREWOLF – Self Titled

therewolfrwc.bandcamp.com

Therewolf was a band that some of my best friends and I formed way back in 2009. We got together in our drummer’s garage and wrote these songs. For our one and only performance, we were lucky enough to be asked to play the final show at the legendary Oddstad Gallery in Redwood City before it was sold to a commercial real estate developer. That space was central to our community — it had hosted hundreds of shows and major bands from all around the world. The energy of that final event was incredible.

For reasons none of us are really clear on 13+ years later, Therewolf disbanded shortly after that show. A few months later, I chose to move to Washington state and everyone else moved on with their respective lives as well.

I was disappointed that we had never recorded what we had created and tried multiple times to get a remote recording project together. I recorded some demos and tabbed out all the songs to preserve the ideas. The first attempt at a proper recording took place in 2011, but the effort fizzled and the session was scrapped before much progress was made.

I spent 2012-2018 running Big Name Recording Studio full time. In early 2018, my wife and I decided that it was time to switch things up and start our family, and we decided that the best path forward was to pack up and move to Colorado to be close to her family. I had greatly enjoyed having such a flexible recording space for so long and was uncertain what the future might hold for me with regard to being able to produce loud music without irritating any neighbors. I had a few loud recording projects that had yet to get off the ground that I felt could be great — I thought, “It might be now or never!” _{(Thankfully, I did end up finding a great recording space in Colorado.)}

So I set up the necessary gear and got to work on those projects before we moved. This is one of those sessions.

Our drummer Mike told me at some point prior to 2018 that if I wanted to make the Therewolf recording happen, I should just play the drums on it, since it would be much easier logistically than having him do it, and because it would probably never come to fruition otherwise. So I did, trying to stay as faithful as possible to what he had written based on our full-band demos from 2009. (I am thankful that he was still able to participate in this release as the artist behind the album cover!) I then recorded my guitar parts and sent the session off to Steve (guitar) and Kol (bass), who recorded in California and Illinois, respectively.

The session sat dormant until 2021 when Albert announced that he had booked a recording session (also in California) and would be tracking his vocals. This was quite a surprise after the long pause and I was really excited when I heard the result.

Of course, soon after that I began my journey into the world of software development. I took about a year where I did not work on music at all, so again the session sat dormant. But finally, in 2023, more than 13 years after writing the songs and more than 5 years after beginning the session, the music is ready to be shared.

There are plans in the works to resurrect the band and perform live again. I’m not sure exactly what my capacity will be in the new iteration of the project due to living in a different state, but I am excited to see what the future holds for THEREWOLF.

Gapless w/ Lyrics on YouTube:

Stream or Download/Purchase (name-your-price) on Bandcamp: