Op. -1: Update #1

Posted in Music by Gv on February 18, 2012

This is for my use, not yours. I’ve learned that when I give regular public updates on the progress of a record (as with At Peace At Last and Travelogue: Paris), the record gets made. When I try to live a “balanced” life, going out when I should be staying in, the record is never definitively committed to tape. You need the accountability. You have to come home to it every night, proud. You have to be able to look it in the eye and show it your overself. It has to be a wife, not a lay.

Though the nature of XXXXXXXXXXX is blazingly clear to me, I don’t want to describe it. I don’t want to hype it or myself, if only because it’s way too soon; even working full-time, these processes take longer than expected. I want this diary to be craftsmanlike, focused, head down.

You’ll laugh when you finally hear it, but I declare this a pop record, to be made by pop logic. What that means is that if a number demands a trumpet, I will overdub a trumpet, without having to weave trumpet into the album as a whole. At their senseless extreme, these drop-ins are just “shitty whooshes.” Visible seams. (I don’t mean to leave loose ends; I hope to trust the subconscious to tie them up.) My other releases have had conservative arrangements: For At Peace At Last: violin, cello, and acoustic guitar/piano as the basis of every track. Its thou-shall-nots: No drums, no electric guitars. Overwhelm, Abstracted Catholic, and Two Pieces: electric guitars working within narrow parameters effects-wise, bass, and drums. Thou-shall-nots: No acoustic guitars, no keyboards, no strings. It’s been said that op.1 “cried out for keys,” but I felt it important that any uncanny, vivid weirdness it achieved be a surprising uncanny, vivid weirdness, set in the language of four-piece rock.

This time, lushness is a goal. There is in fact a lushness consultant on call — a producer friend, Deep Field South. I will require of myself two special effects per song — moments where something transforms or when the production itself communicates. I will move quickly and paint in bold strokes — if that means that one instrument takes a part that could have been more cleverly assigned to another, that’s ok. This being a pop record, I want each song’s arrangement to add up to a varied, shifting scene; not the flavor of piano plus something, but a unified, unfamiliar blend. More Up than Automatic for the People. So far, we have the drums recorded. Mr. Kim laid them down at the Hideout Studio before moving to Japan. Everything else is a scratch track.

Since it’s late and I can’t make noise, I’ll sketch an arrangement to start on tomorrow:

Okay, I’ll say a little more — This record charts a character’s positive disintegration. It takes place in the future. I dedicate it to every teenager fending off his or her world’s wetiko soul-predations. You are a warrior. You’ll need more than Bruno Mars and ukulele.