Debug Yourself

So; what's the justification in me putting three tracks together from 4 years ago?

It's a bit strange, I admit.
Thee tracks have always been on my mind. Situation was meant to turn up on an ex libris records compilation that never happened, the other two tracks were meant to be a single or an album or something, which I tentatively called 'The Gathering' for some reason. I think it says something about the direction my music is headed in now, despite the fact that these are so old. To The Boats was a holiday from complex structures and out-rock. I want to do those things again.

I'm proud of this e.p., even though I feel i can't take the credit for it.

Sleeve notes:

A small but dense collection of archived tracks.

Situation Tragedy was an experiment in acoustic doom-core, improvised and recorded 'mostly live' summer 2006.

The other two tracks were meant to be... something more, but came out of the same era of recording in 2007. The Dirtbox Experience became 'tofu', when performed by To The Boats. Sacred Charm of Making (originally 'reed hove branch') will surface on a future project. While technically demos, they both have something that will invariably be lost by the time the 'finished' version appears.

See individual song pages for more detailed sleeve notes. All in all, I think these are three strange and different takes on metal tropes.

Situation Tragedy:
Recorded at collerabbey studios, portrush, during ex-fest 2006.
Guitar, piano and drums recorded live, one-take. Vocals recorded same day, also one-take.

Ideally the mixdown should be 6 minutes 66 seconds, but the outro was too nice to cut.

Dirtbox Experience:
The main riff here was originally played acoustically, and was written when I was living with Ian out of To The Boats. Back then, we played it in a way that felt like a Jansch/Renbourn Duet. I put this demo together, and the riff came out all distorted like, and when we put it together as a band, in our second iteration without bass-player Sam, it mutated again into a more funky thing.

I think this is a classic grilly track, with far too many incongruous sections, break-neck drum programming, and poor mixing. There's an attempt at a doom-dub crossover in the middle, followed by something that can't work out if it's break-core or spazz-core, followed by something attempting 65daysofstatic-style post-rock. compared to the other 'second batch' To The Boats material, which will comprise the 'In Case Of Emergence' album, Tofu has by far the richest structure, and this demo from 2007 is basically why.

I had the vocal sample, the open monologue from some random hardcore 'jazz' film, lying around for a while. It struck me as both nasty and faintly sad, as well as peculiarly trying to fetishise britishness, and I knew I had to use it somewhere. Also, she had massively overacting eyebrows, but that doesn't come across in the audio.

Sacred Charm of Making:
Originally entitled 'reed hove branch', inspired by my long-term association with that employment agency.

I never quite knew what to do with this track, until I watched John Boorman's wonderfully ludicrous 'Excalibur'. Suddenly I was gripped by using the sections of the song to tell the story of the rape of Igrayne, and wrote lyrics to that effect. Note the appearance of 'Anaal Nathrakh'.

I took it to the band, and there's a recording of us jamming for ten minutes on the middle section, which is quite familiar to a piece by Nick Cave and The Dirty Three, featured on the x-files album. However, they weren't happy about the ferocity of the main riff (possibly the closest riff i've written to my heroes, Ephel Duath) and wanted to slow it down, which ruined it for me. This happened to be the session when Corey announced his retirement.

Consider this a sneak preview of the material that will be featured in my next project, 'Kno', which will hopefully be more along the lines of this.