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Dreamscapes
With my new album “Dreamscapes” coming out on Tuesday, April 5th through Concatenation Records (and various other online retailers), I felt that this would be an opportune time to talk about the creation of the album, the album itself, and where I see myself going musically after this release.
Musical Origins
I didn’t officially start on “Dreamscapes” until September 2010, but the seeds were planted for the album in the spring of 2009. I was shopping at a local Goodwill with my friend Eric and I had told him about the decent toy keyboard I had found at the same store for $3 a couple weeks before.
We decided to stroll the same aisle where I found the keyboard and he spotted another one that I could add to my arsenal. It was a little more brutal on the wallet ($5), but it was a decided step up from the earlier model. The sound was a lot fuller and there were eight demo tracks that I heard potential in.
Right around this time, I also purchased a stereo reverb pedal which has a lot of different reverb settings, but the one setting I was most interested in was the reverse reverb setting. That interest came from picking up a copy of My Bloody Valentine’s “Loveless” album in the fall of 2008.
I’d been acquainted with My Bloody Valentine’s “Loveless” album for quite some time (an old co-worker used to play it a lot during shifts), but hadn’t picked up a copy for some reason. Once I finally bought one, I couldn’t stop listening to it.
I absorbed every nuance of the album that I could, and when that wasn’t good enough, I picked up the My Bloody Valentine's Loveless (33 1/3) book about the album and even found a thesis that was written about the album in order to find out as much information as I could as to how Kevin Shields (the mastermind behind the group) created his magnum opus. I found that reverse reverb was a key element to the album, so I wanted to use it in my own works as well and that’s why I picked up the stereo reverb pedal.
That stereo reverb pedal was a key element to my Philistine on the Sidewalk project and has played a fairly large part in my solo works from July 2010 onwards – “Dreamscapes” is no exception. However, the eight reverse reverb tracks that “Dreamscapes” is based off of were actually recorded in June of 2009 for my Wavetorrent project.
I decided it would be an interesting idea to record every single sound from both of the toy keyboards I had picked up at Goodwill and run them through my stereo reverb pedal on the reverse setting. I think I recorded about 50 sounds during the first weekend of June 2009 and the plan was to use them all in the first Wavetorrent album, which was entitled “Dreamscapes”. That project obviously fell to the wayside, but I still wanted to do something with those samples.
It took about 15 months before anything did happen, but some of those samples became a core element of “Dreamscapes”. The original idea for the version of “Dreamscapes” under my name was to still use all of those samples.
What actually happened is that I based each of the eight songs off of the eight demo tracks from the $5 keyboard that were recorded through the reverse reverb pedal – one per song. The original demo tracks became rather undiscernible once run through reverse reverb, so they had been given a new sound and were all great looping sounds to build off of.
I also started going through my CD collection at that time and I stumbled upon an old Herbie Hancock CD in early 2010 that had a track on it which blew me away. To preface, I’m a huge fan of his work from the Mwandishi and Head Hunters eras, but I hadn’t paid a lot of attention to his work after “Secrets”.
The CD in question was “Feets Don’t Fail Me Now”, which came out during the heyday of disco in the late 1970s. A lot of the album was disco-influenced, but the one track in particular was infused with some serious funk. That song was “Ready or Not” and I couldn’t get enough of it for months. I even requested it to be played at Eric and Breanna’s Wedding and my friends and I all danced it off to the song for its duration.
Now, “Dreamscapes” was certainly influenced by more than just “Loveless” and “Ready or Not”, but a lot of the other influences (save for my Philistine on the Sidewalk project) didn’t show up until taking a hiatus from the album in December of 2010.
Artistic Origins
The origins of the art come from an even earlier time. The artwork consists of pictures taken of little clouds in the sky above my home in the summer of 2007, and those pictures were going to be used for an Amaranthine Skies ambient EP entitled Cumuloscapes. The pictures were taken at dusk and have a dreamy quality about them (not to mention an amaranthine hue), so it seemed fitting to use them for the album.
I also used the same font for the album text that I used for A New Beginning a little over nine years ago. It seemed fitting since both albums are under my own name and the font is not a ridiculously common one like the one I used for Amaranthine Skies (Papyrus). In fact, I only found one group in my CD collection using the font, and that group would be Red House Painters. I definitely enjoy Mark Kozelek’s work and am inspired by what he’s doing with his label and some of the acts on it, so I see it as a good thing.
Now, on to the creation of the album!
Creating Dreamscapes – September 2010 to December 2010
The initial creation of “Dreamscapes” started in September 2010 (as stated above) and it was a layered process. The layering started with the reverse reverb samples from the toy keyboard, and those samples were loaded into MODPlug and pitched to C as best as possible before any further work was done.
Once the pitch was corrected, I created ambient tracks with changing pitches for each of the songs, then I switched over to Reason and started sequencing drum tracks that matched up well with the reverse reverb ambient loops. After the drums were done, I went through all the songs and started sequencing bass lines for each one of them.
I was making good progress until I started writing the melody lines, which is when I noticed things were going all wrong and I needed to take a breather from the album and regroup.
Between Sessions – December 2010 to January 2011
The album was taking a noticeable electronic bent, similar to the one I had taken with my earlier album Mindtrap, so I went to the one resource I knew of that had a wealth of electronic music samples from many different electronic genres – Ishkur’s Guide to Electronic Music.
I went through the entirety of the archive and found myself gravitating towards two genres in particular – Atmospheric Jungle and Electro Funk. The works of LTJ Bukem and Zapp & Roger were particularly influential, but just about anything found from genres I enjoyed (there were more than a few) were in some way influential.
Also at this time, Teena Marie passed away (RIP) and only being familiar with her song “ 14k ” from the Original Motion Picture Soundtrack for The Goonies (an all-time favorite movie of mine), I decided to dig around and listen to some of her other work. Similar to how “Ready or Not” blew my mind when I heard it, “Square Biz” took that sensation and trumped it. I had never heard a song with such a funky bass line throughout.
Listening to all of these different songs and styles really changed how I approached creating “Dreamscapes” for the better.
Finishing Dreamscapes – January 2011 to March 2011
When I returned to “Dreamscapes”, I had a lot of cleaning to do. I started off by listening to each of the tracks and going through them by taking notes on what worked and what didn’t. I also used that time to loosely assign sub-genres to each song and rearrange the track order on the album.
Once that was done, I streamlined the drums by taking off a lot of the delay attached and focused them more on the basic dance beat – kick on one and three, snare on two and four. I found a bass sample in Reason that was even thicker than the one I had been using and re-tracked all of the bass lines that I had written.
I also had to do some rearranging to make the songs on the album flow a lot better than they did before. Once I had fixed up the reverse reverb ambient tracks, the drum tracks, and the bass lines, I started work on the melodies. Rather than attempting the melodies I had tried creating before (short, staccato notes), I went for more drawn out and ambient melodies. It seemed to work a lot better and the process flew by.
After that, I started doing the live recording. I created most of “Dreamscapes” while commuting on the bus between work and home (or while on my lunch break), but it’s kind of difficult to rock out on the bus with an instrument. I recorded the live bass lines first (which add texture to the Reason ones), then recorded all of the reverse reverb guitar parts. The recording was the easy part – the mixing is what gave me some trouble.
While mixing “Dreamscapes” wasn’t a nightmare by any means, it still took a bit of work to get the balance correct between 14-16 tracks per song. Even with the songs being about half the track size of some of my old Amaranthine Skies work, I had to dig through everything with a fine-toothed comb, as those reverse reverb guitar tracks have a mind of their own and like to peak and ebb at random times. Though they’re a pain to mix, I think that’s what I like the most about them – it’s like trying to control the uncontrollable.
Once everything was mixed down, it was more or less smooth sailing. I say more or less because I think I only slept about six hours between finishing the mixing (Sunday, March 20th) and sending the album to the printers (Tuesday, March 22nd). A couple days of delirium at the office is worth having a finished product almost two years after finishing my last album.
The Sound of Dreamscapes
The reverse reverb keyboard loops & reverse reverb guitar parts certainly add some ambiance, the huge bass lines and synths give it an electronic feel, and the kick-snare-kick-snare drum pattern give the proceedings a rockin’ groove. So, ambient electro rock? Sounds good. I’m pretty sure that’s how I described the last few monthly songs I put up on the music page.
One thing I really focused on trying to make “Dreamscapes” is versatile. It would be good music to have on in the background while working on a computer, while going to sleep, while driving – just don’t do the last two together. You can dance to it, I’ve worked out to it, and I’m sure it’d be good to listen to while working on tasks at the office (provided you have a hands-free portable listening device).
If that’s not helpful enough, I’ll list (as best I can) the artists that had at least a fair influence on this album – Boards of Canada, Eluvium, Herbie Hancock, LTJ Bukem, My Bloody Valentine, Neurosis, Teena Marie, and Zapp & Roger.
Aftermath
Since finishing “Dreamscapes”, I really haven’t done much work on new music. I did record another song for “Explorations in Sound: 001” the weekend after finishing the album, but otherwise I’ve been busy remastering old video game covers.
I have been thinking about where I want to go with upcoming material, and it seems to be taking me back towards my roots. I’ve been listening to a lot of Neurosis after seeing them live twice just before and just after the new year, and their sound is influencing where I want to go quite a bit. Also, I’ve been listening to Alice in Chains’ “Rain When I Die” track a lot after Mike Starr’s passing (RIP) and that track has a lot of elements that I could see incorporating into upcoming work.
Of course, the newer material will still have some pieces of “Dreamscapes” in its sound, but the distorted heaviness will be back with a vengeance. I’ve been practicing my death metal roaring (it’s more powerful than ever) and practicing my screaming with a focus of not shredding my throat like I used to. Those throat-ripping screams I did back in the days of yore had the tendency to turn my throat into the Sahara after a few takes. I’m happy to report that I have figured out the way to scream correctly and it didn’t take too long to do so.
That said, I know that nothing gets done until I actually commit to doing it, and I have no real plans for a heavy album in the near future. “Explorations in Sound: 001” is the next album on my radar, I have a video game cover album listed to do not too long after that comes out, and I’ve tossed around the idea of doing a deeply ambient album sometime this year, so who knows when the heaviness will come back out. I should start writing lyrics before starting on a heavy album in earnest, because having lyrics will help to send me in a more focused direction.
Putting all future plans aside, I must say I’m quite happy with how “Dreamscapes” has come out, because it’s an album I can listen to without any difficulty. I only make note of that because not listening to my own work after the fact has always been an issue for me with previous albums.
As far as enjoyment and distribution is concerned, I don’t expect this album to set the world on fire like Rebecca Black’s “Friday”, but there should be a fair-sized audience for this collection of songs that should find it enjoyable – that’s all I hope for.
All in all, it was a great experience to work on and finish this album and I’m glad that I was finally able to finish an album under my own name after having tons and tons of projects since completing “A New Beginning” over nine years ago. I’m definitely happy with how the album came out and I can’t wait to work on and release all of the upcoming music to be written and recorded!
Posted on April 3rd, 2011.
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