This album was recorded as part of a competition held by the small independent record label Lights & Lines Basically, write and record an album within the Month of May.
Recording another album for 2022 was not something I had planned. When I initially saw the concept of the competition, I was not keen on the idea. I’ve rattled out many an album in a month as a younger man, and none fill me with a great deal of joy these days. I discussed the premise with my partner, and after much deliberation in my own mind I decided to give it a go. If what I produced was not a suitable quality, I had not actually lost anything. I had two ideas for the project. 1, a song in each key. I’ve never really written songs with key signatures, so I thought this would be an interesting concept to push myself into creating something new. 2, A kind of concept album, essentially I would improvise four songs each around 10 minutes long, and then cut these four songs into shorter phases that would enable the album to hopefully not be boring. Idea 2 won as I felt this would be much more achievable within the competition timescale. Bearing in mind I had nothing written at all, I started out quite simply. I chose four tempos and then searched out four beats. I also chose four sound samples, and these would become the themes of each song.
I began improvising. Guitar, bass, keyboard, my notation software that I had been learning to compose on, whatever was to hand. Slowly but surely I added more and more to each song until they were a mass of noise. This was probably done in the first two weeks of the project. It was then a case of stripping everything back, finding the bits that sounded good, deciding when to make the cuts, so that I had more than four songs. It was an epic task, and one that felt fairly unachievable at times. Eventually I broke everything down into 12 phases, and these needed tidying up a lot. I also had to try and write lyrics. The remaining time before the competition submission date was a mixture of listening to rough mixes, writing lyrics, recording vocals and re-recording other instruments that I felt I could do better.
I did not manage to complete everything as I had hoped, so very slight alterations were made during the month of June. Some drum revisions, percussion and vocal re-recordings. The essence of the album remains the same, but I wanted to publish a more polished product. I have credited all songs to my partner and I. With the way the album was composed and recorded in is impossible to untangle what I did alone, and what I received in collaboration. Overall I’m happy with the results. The lyrical content, although sparse, has a great deal of meaning. It details mankind's interactions with nature and the consequences of our actions. Although I did not win the competition, to my surprise, I did make the final shortlist of albums. From that list the eventual winners were taken, and as a result the album gained a "One To Watch" award for which I'm very grateful.
You can find a copy of the album HERE
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