BUTTONS:
1. ‘Adamantine’ – Bill Forth
I did this one as a favor for my old buddy Bill Forth. After meeting Bill in 1993 thru a recycler ad to exchange gear, Bill casually mentioned the Sylvian/Fripp audition that changed my life. i starting with some samples of crystal bowls triggered by Ableton that got a vibe going and off we went . . hey, i’m starting to see a pattern here: maybe i should have called this compilation ‘freebees and favors’ .
2. ‘Fandangogo’ live – Tu
A combo mix with a live version from our musical blind date with Azam Ali, mashed up to an earlier studio version. In the Tu + 2 tradition, i invited my drumming buddy Butch (from the eels) to join us for a Tu show and he brought Azam. we met for tea but had never rehearsed or even heard each other play until we hit the stage. we did however ask the sound man for lots of verb on the voice. This track also features Matt Chamerlain’s Shruti box.
3. ‘Annunciation of an Angel ‘ Tunisia
Tunisa is me and my partner Pamelia Kurtsin the worlds greatest living roller skating bird-punching Thereminist. - i met Pamelia backstage at BB Kings in NYC when Tyler Trotter invited her to sit in with California Guitar Trio+2. When she came along with us the next night to Boston, to open the show and i joined her as the opening act . . after that, every time she passed thru Austin on tour she would contact me so we could spend some time in the studio. i would collect her after her gig, bring her out to my place and we would drink, and jam, press 'record' and follow the muse all night until I took her back to her band bus after sunrise . . later my girlfriend (now wife) Deborah suggested adding the story line-based on Maria Rilke’s poem -like most of the songs i present here, this is an edited version. for the full story find the (pink) Tunisia cd.
4. ‘Nano’ Ktu Quiver
After our SXSW gig the Ktu guys stayed over at my place, swam in my freezing cold pool (not so cold to the Finns), played a lot of ping pong and continued song writing , we cut this ditty at my neighbor Mike Morgan’s ‘Zone’ studio, additional engineering on this one by Pat Nasty.
Later when Kimmo got home to Helsinki and he emailed me that he immediately bought a ping pong table for his family . It’s addictive.
5. ‘Abandoner remix 2’ - Steven Wilson NSURGENTS
Another of my remixes for Steven. this is same song with same time line for vocal, but now the track is in 7 at 134.75 bpm – with the exception of the bass, most parts are Stevens that i cut up. the SW bass was first cut up but never sat right. so then i tried to play it myself (seemed like a good idea at the time) but after realizing i couldn’t, i sent the idea to Markus and he got a lot of it. but i still had this bug up my butt to find the elusive idea i started with. . then, into my life came Adrian Benavides, a young man i met at the Guitar Center - the kid plays about everything and was a huge SW fan so i invited him over to my place where he has helped me with gobs of things including some sections of this bass riff . .
6. ‘Pomegranate‘ Stick Men
We were in a bit of a hurry to finish the Absolom CD in time for upcoming South American tour and needed another tune. After midnight i started with familiar bells patch but Markus helped me find new tunings. i got most of the basic drums done that night and the next day the guys jammed over it and found that killer riff in 15.
7. ‘Flinch’- Tuner Totem
Markus and i met on a train in Germany and corresponded for several years passing tunes. eventually we took it to the next level and made the 'Totem' record. we did it almost all over the internet using Ableton Live software. this is one of he first things we did. as you can tell i was into chop chop chop mode.
8. ‘Parallax Distortion Cranial Wood Mash’ BPM&M BOMO
mash-up mix, this is me and Bozzio (Bo-Mo) jamming on blocks in Terry’s garage. i overlaid on a bpmm track we made by cutting up T Lev bass chunks and replaying from trigger pads against my pseudo-photek feel.
9. ‘The Irresistible Blow Torch’ - BPM&M.
i had just gotten my Latronics Notron, a sequencer with all the hands-on interaction and flashing lights and it was a blast cutting up Fripp’s guitar and retriggering it, then adding various overdubs like a few words from Adrian Belew, David Singleton one finger Mellotron performance. my buddy Bill Munyon helped a lot too, but the big score was my Turkish pal Cenk Eroglu. After a week of cutting tracks for his project in Anatolia, i put my Adat tape in his machine and asked him to jam a quick synth bass while I packed, since my 6 am flight was leaving in 4 hrs- as you can hear Cenk tore it up. . later cut and pasted.
10 /11. ‘Dervish & Angst’ (Boddy/Reuter)
A favor for Markus and Ian Boddy. they let me dabble on a few of their tunes. i remember assembling and make shift drumkit in my bedroom, besides drum samples i played the rim of a PTS head, an old Rodgers floor tom with Hydraulic Evans head put into a bath of reverb and a plastic bag of microwave Pork Rinds, eq’ed to sound electric.
12. 'Kill the road’ Samuel Hallkvist
I met Samuel at an IB expo in 2009, then in 2011 he rang asking me to help with his new CD, and asked that I only use electric drums since he would add an acoustic drum kit player later. His 'yousendit' arrived just as i was just leaving for Canada so i took his data and did this arrangement in the kitchen of a small cabin in British Columbia looking out at foggy mountains and pear trees while Deb made toasted olive bread from Ferraros market, yum ya.
13. ‘Brutal Ecstasy (with this fuzzbox)‘ - BPM&M Extracts
The story of 'The Psychedelic Trousers' as told by Boppin Bobby himself. once again i cut and pasted Robert’s speaking and soloing and T Lev bass and even some crafty gtrs into a new form to fit into my Notronic mood. I played lots of Vdrums, wave drum, Taos drums, handsonic and rattles- recorded by Munyonhead. No computers were harmed in the making of this record.
14. ‘Side Window’ –Project X.
During the recording of King Crimson TCOL, we had some interesting outtakes. since the gtr players didn’t want to work past 5:00, and there ain’t much to do in Hermitage, Tennessee at night, Munyon and i decided to make a little pro tools studio in Adrian’s garage so we could slice and spice outtakes like this. later we moved the Pro Tools rig over to the apartment we were sharing with Trey (and some times his son Ezra). one slow day we asked Adrian to do some spoken word, then cut and pasted that into this arrangement.
15. ‘Sitting by the bank’ – Tu Live in Russia
Live improvisation, based on themes from 'Azam ' and 'Fandango'. i think this was in Yekaterinburg- where ever that was, the sound man did a damned good job, outstanding considering we never met before our brief sound check.
16. ‘Hush’ - Mastica 99,
Another piece concocted in my garage during the time crimson stopped in ‘97 and i went looking for musicians near my new home in Austin. this was one of our first attempts at writing, with Gumby on bass, cello and mandocello and his wife Monkey on bass clarinets, and various reeds.
17. ‘He stood in the rain’ - Quodia
Trey used to tell a story every night while putting his son Ezra to sleep, ad-libbing and adding to the sequel for years, until one day he thought to organize it on paper and put music to it. these were the same stories we overheard him telling Ezra back in the Hermitage apartment. years later he asked me to add drums to a few tunes.
18. ‘Ex Uno Pluribus’ BPM&M Crim
The Crim that never was. after Trey resigned in 2003, Crimson got together with T Lev in Sept 04. it was a tuff week in a room too loud for me to drum next to the guys, so i covered my drum kit in sheets and played with brushes and rods so they didn’t flinch every time I tagged the skins. later Munyon and i took some bits, like this, and cut and pasted arrangements in an attempt to give back and inspire the guys to continue the writing, but this is as far as that got.
19. ‘Cracker Barrel’- BPM&M
Another case of making lemons into lemonade . . from a Project 4 rehearsal Robert called ‘completely worthless’. Later going thru the tapes, i found this jam and added a Tribe beat box but most of the rest is just about as it was played. The name comes from the crappy, excuse me i mean charming, restaurant we ate at almost every night.
20. ‘The Use of Black’- Tunisia
From Pamelia’s 3rd trip to my place. no, that’s not me drumming, it’s those Dennis Chambers samples from 'Artist Drums Series' i cut and pasted. – if you go back thru both discs you hear these same samples of Dennis on three other songs. Pamelia played some Rhodes and bass but the rest is all Theremin, some I put thru amp farm and guitar rig.
21. ‘Sabre Dance’ – The Rad dance projeKct.
Yet another project that never got finished. this is pre-recorded Frippery and fresh David Singleton on bass. The ADAT masters for this one were lost, both the master copy left at DGM went poof, and the copy i took on the flight home went missing. Sometimes music can be like a bar of soap in the shower, one moment you got it, then next its down the drain.