Release date: 9/11/2014
Third of three albums to date, A Quirky Time for Something
New features material from the last few years.
Darker and more atmospheric than our previous releases, it still
maintains the eclectic mix of electronic and acoustic sounds you’ve come to
expect, and as usual the music is all over the metaphorical and literal map,
evoking sounds from Africa (Papa Pi), feelings from Syria (Damasculated), and
ideas from Hungary (Vörösszem), among others.
As with all of our music, we start with improvisation and
continue through an iterative process of composition and construction using
samples from the original improvisation, sometimes adding sounds and additional
artists along the way. We share thanks
and writing credit with our guest artists P-Rose, Dean DeCrease, Joe Breskin,
Sumit Basu, Court Crawford, Steve Markowitz, Matt Pickard, and DJ Essey’s dad
Ed Essey, Sr, not to mention Snake’s lovely wife ParisAnne for forcing us to
clean that shed.
The creative process is split pretty
equally. DJSE does the bulk of the hands-on
construction in Ableton Live, but we regularly hand projects back and forth or
work in parallel on two laptops. DJSE
builds out most of the percussion loops, often using samples we’ve captured
using found objects. Snake often takes
the lead on harmonization. DJSE takes
Snake’s melody lines, chops them and recombines them so they are a product of
our interaction. The process we simplify
down to the three terms “Synth, Sequencing, and Effects” is a creative task
that encompasses everything from building drum loops to complex composition to
audio envelope manipulation and filtering.
Mixing and mastering was done by DJSE in the Jaguar XKR
Mobile Editing Suite (aka The Mes).
Without further ado, the tracks:
Neuroverdrive (Ch'min'ter) (feat. P-Rose)
DJSE: Synth, Sequencing, Effects (SSE)
Snake: Vox, Lindsey fretless tenor
guitar
P-Rose: slide whistle
Neuroverdrive is the first of two tracks recorded one October weekend on a trip to Port Townsend, Washington. We tracked this the first night in our room
at the Palace Hotel. The lyrics and name
came about in a fun word game over a sushi dinner before our creative
session. Snake made effective use of a
heavy-duty room fan by singing into it for built-in FX.
Ba
Ba
Ba
Neuroverdrive
Ch’min’ter
Neuroverdrive
Ba
Ch’min’ter
Ba Ba
Neuroverdrive (3x)
Ba
Ch’min’ter
Neuroverdrive
 |
| P-Rose lays down a slide whistle take |
 |
| Marking the Lindsey’s fingerboard to facilitate playing the solo harmonic line in the latter part of the track. |
One N Anette
DJSE: SSE
Snake: Ukulele, Lindsey fretless tenor
guitar
A lovely
floaty thing featuring Snake on ukulele and Lindsey guitar. Several different motifs on the uke are
combined in different ways over DJSE’s spare percussion.
At the Top of the Stairs
DJSE: SSE
Snake: Lindsey fretless tenor guitar,
throat-singing, handrail, violin, door handle, wine glass
Dean DeCrease: Vox, bones
Somewhere in
Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood, a nondescript door leads to a large
open and irregular space, a sort of oversized anteroom leading to bathrooms,
utility rooms, and a concrete stairway to the parking garage. The large empty space produces a natural
reverb that we wanted to put to our nefarious purposes. We set up shop here one evening after
work. Snake brought the Lindsey guitar, a
violin, and a couple of glasses to go with a nice bottle of Tempranillo he had
been saving. DJSE set up shop on top of
a case of toilet paper borrowed from the utility closet.
Snake took
advantage of the space by bowing the Lindsey guitar, and we balanced that
decision by sampling the violin pizzicato.
Throat singing, an improvised glass harmonica, and a nicely resonant
handrail down the stairs rounded out the samples.
 |
| Recording At The Top Of The Stairs on a makeshift editing table |
 |
| Preparing to bow the Lindsey guitar |
Sporking Battalion (feat. Joe Breskin)
DJSE: Piano guts, guiro, SSE
Snake: Piano guts
Joe Breskin: Guitarron, Guitar
 |
| Joe Breskin and P-Rose, spork war |
The same
trip that started with Neuroverdrive found us on the second day at Joe Breskin’s
Port Townsend wonderland. Since our last
trip to Joe’s, he had acquired the strung plate from a discarded piano, and had
it standing upright on his front porch. We
set up mics and explored this with sticks and mallets, sampling individual
notes as well as glissandi. Ed laid out
a Latin beat, including both a sampled guiro and one he played live. Joe played guitarron and guitar.
At some
point in the afternoon, Payton challenged Joe with a plastic folding
spork. Joe countered with a titanium
spork, and the battle was engaged, giving us a handy title for the track. Working titles rarely stick with us, but “sporking
battalion” has survived unchanged from day 1.
(As has Neuroverdrive – that was a magical trip).
In post
processing, we chopped Joe’s guitarron track into note samples and Ed built
this into the back half of the tune.
The
resonance of the plate and the sympathetic vibrations of the strings in the
middle portion of the track make for a really magical ambience.
 |
| Ed, sampling the piano guts on Joe’s porch |
 |
| Breskin tickles the Guitarron. |
Quirky Hour for Something New
DJSE: SSE
Snake: Guitar
It was about
2 AM, long after the appointed time to leave the studio. We were done – done, dammit, and in the wake
of a newly finished track, DJ Essey started whipping together a new
arrangement.
Snake was
incredulous – it was a weekday and there was work in the morning. It was his house and he was ready to go to
bed, but DJSE was onto something, creating something really catchy. It was so cohesive and complete that it took
us several sessions and many months to find a way for Snake to weave in his
musical voice, playing on his Yamaha classical guitar. We really like the result, and hope you will
too.
We like to
think the release date for the album – 9/11 – is a quirky time for something
new and creative. Snake’s daughter P-Rose
was due to be born on September 17th 2001, and the attack on the twin
towers had he and ParisAnne wondering if it was a good time for a child to come
into the world. Quirky Time indeed.
Heavy Mike
DJSE: SSE
Snake: electric and acoustic guitars,
piano, electric bass
This simple track has been the source of many an argument
between Snake and DJSE. DJSE would love
to make music as simple and melodic as this.
Snake thinks it’s been done – “too commercial” he says. “Not breaking new ground”. In the end, we’re both attached to it. It’s pretty and has just enough of our
personalities to keep it interesting. It’s
a little bit grunge and a whole lot of pretty.
The original track consisted of the A/B pair of progressions
that makes up the head of the tune. The
minor section that follows is something Snake made up when we started putting
this collection together.
We would love for you to imagine a deep backstory to the
title of this track, but the reality is pretty silly. Ed had recently made two purchases – a nice
new microphone, and a pretty flimsy mic stand to go with it. The mic was all set up to record the rhythm
guitar on this track, we turned our back, and boom.
Heavy Mic.
Vörösszem (feat. Sumit Basu and Court Crawford)
DJSE: SSE
Snake: 2xtar
Sumit Basu: Piano
Court Crawford: Upright bass
Smashing together the Hungarian words for “red eye,” Vörösszem
is another piece fit for the darker side of time. Shortly after Snake returned
from a trip to Hungary, and on the birthday of Nick's friend and co-worker
Attila Voros, Sumit joined CCR in the cradle for the third time (following his
previous contributions on Jack in the Bucket and Toasting More often). Flush
from a few shots of Palinka, we loaded a deep ascending A Hungarian Gypsy scale
on synthetic bass, and began weaving wicked stuff around it. Later we invited the immensely talented Court
Crawford to add his upright bass to the mix, and this drove yet another
reinvention of this track. Bowed,
plucked, and struck 2xtar drives the undercarriage to make bodies move.
Damasculated
DJSE: SSE
Snake: 2xtar, banjo, slide guitar
On September 1, 2013, US President Barack Obama announced
that he was seeking approval to take military action against Syria in the wake
of alleged chemical attacks against Syrian nationals. On September 3, we met for a music
session. Snake brought the 2xtar, and we
were inspired by feelings of fear and uncertainty about what would happen in
Damascus.
This track, with the banjo and the fife, and the deep
warlike drone of the 2xtar, feels like an American battle cry – marching to war
in yet another nation as the peacekeepers of the world. There are mixed feelings of nationalism and
sarcasm in the result – and over it all a feeling of being helpless to further
or to stop the violence.
Jaanaap Conspiracy (feat. Steve Markowitz)
DJSE: SSE
Snake: Vox, Electric guitar, Wine
glass, electric dih, electric bass
Steve Markowitz: Piano, Sarcasm
This ethereal, after-dark jazz piece features irreverent
jazz pianist Steve Markowitz. Did Steve’s
dog actually go to Juilliard, or was he just throwing us a metaphorical
bone? I’m not sure we’ll ever know for
sure.
“Jaanaap” is an invented word that refers to a mixed time
signature in which multiple instruments are aligned on the beat, but playing
different numerical cycles. In this
track, the drums are playing in 3/4, the piano and bass in 4/4, and the
electric dih in 5/4. Nick Dallett refers
to this as “eighth note pulse” in his book The Musical Experience, and uses
it as a structuring mechanism for improvisation. Jaanaap is distinct from Hemiola, in which the
time signatures align on the length of a bar.
The Trinity Paradigm (feat. Matt Pickard)
DJSE: SSE
Snake: guitars
Matt Pickard: guitars
Matt was
visiting us from Vancouver, WA, and took some time to duet on guitars with
Snake. Matt then overdubbed additional
guitar parts. The thing that really
makes this track is the interplay between the guitars and DJSE’s hypnotic
tapestry of synthesized piano parts.
This is an exceptionally tasty track.
 |
| Matt strategizing between takes |
Up To Go Down (Feat. Ed Essey Sr.)
DJSE: SSE
Snake: 2xtar, guitar
Ed Essey, Sr.: guitar
Before we started assembling this collection of tracks,
Snake started work on a track on his own.
It was in his favorite time signature – 5/4 – and it was intended to
feature the 2xtar. When we were nearly
done with the album, it was clear that the 2xtar would be a major part of the
album. Snake suggested bringing the new
track along to round out the 2xtar-focused project.
 |
| Snake lays down the original track |
About this time, Ed’s dad visited and we brought him into a
session to show him what we did. We let
him play some guitar riffs along with the new track. We liked what he played, so we added them
into the final track.
 |
| Esseys Junior and Senior |
Papa Pi
DJSE: SSE
Snake: Guitars (Gibson L6, Yamaha
classical, Lindsey fretless, Ron Ho steel string, Dobro)
Papa Pi was originally recorded on Snake’s deck back on July
15, 2011.
DJ Essey had been researching sub-Saharan African rhythms, and
Snake had always wanted to try to build a multi-guitar afropop track. After several years resting, and remixing with
some new electronic sounds, the final result is an afropop-flavored
construction with our own unique electronic twist.
 |
| Left to right: Gibson L6, Dobro, Ron Ho steel string acoustic, Lindsey fretless tenor guitar, Yamaha classical |
Honeydew Waltz
DJSE: Candy cane tube, spray can, paint
tray, volleyball, SSE
Snake: 2xtar, lawnmower, glass
lightshade, saw blade, drill, circular saw, jigsaw, flex hose, wonderbar,
mayonnaise jar
ParisAnne: motivation
Who wouldn’t love a power-tool waltz line? In this latest in the series of real house
music (following the tradition of Salumba Parte and Boiling the Ocean), we took
to Snake’s shed for a new boil. Christmas
decorations, power tools, and all manner of home improvement miscellanea found
their way into the paws of the creative duo, who managed to create a hip,
modern dance number while checking a big task off of Snake’s todo list.
Introducing the
2xtar. (pronounced two-by-tar). While boiling the shed, there were enough
power tools in place that we could build an instrument with found objects. This
instrument strings heavy wire across a length of 2x4. Since this was home-improvement wire, not
instrument-grade strings, we had a lot of slack to take up, and we wedged two
camping-sized propane tanks to form a dual bridge. To capture and resonate the
low frequencies, we screwed on two large cement mixing buckets. The 2xtar was born! This instrument, with its
squealing high-end, distinct percussion shrieks, and resonating bass that adds
the signature sound for most of this album.
Check out themusic video to see the 2xtar get built!
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| Snake plays the 2xtar to DJSE’s beat at the release party for Jack in the Bucket, March 2014 at Row House. |
Zzik'kundz (feat. Court Crawford)
DJSE: Quarter and nutcan, Jar of
change, SSE
Snake: Egg shaker, Ukulele, Electric bass,
Berimbau, Piano
Court Crawford: Upright bass
One of the
swingingest tracks on the album, Zzik’kundz’s core is an interplay between
Snake on ukulele and Snake on bass. The
spinning quarter on an empty nut can is a throwback to First Frost in the
Garden. Court Crawford’s upright bass
and a wicked battle between Snake’s electric uke and DJSE’s synthesized trumpet
round out the piece.
We hope you enjoy these 14 tracks! Please reach out and let us know what you think - here or on our facebook page.
