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DAY




Hazy "Day" MP3


A couple of years ago during a long bit of braindead workplace brainstorming, I hit upon the idea of creating a band name and five albums worth of lyrics plus album cover art. Sometimes the creative process is interrupted by a lack of inspiration on one front or another. This method would remove the guesswork. Cynically speaking it would reduce songwriting & album-making to paint-by-numbers.

It's fun sometimes to work in different ways. Perhaps unsurprisingly the songs are extremely hit or miss. I recorded them during a time of unparalleled personal upheaval & tried to do the vocals as quietly as possible. "Day" is one of the last songs I recorded for the Hazy project, which remains unfinished.

I recorded the first Hazy album, Atmos, during September and October 2004. In Wisconsin, I think it was, on a family vacation. I dragged along my Steinberger guitar & bass, Proteus 1 synth, Alesis MMt-8 sequencer and the little Fostex digi 8-track I had at the time. I recorded one song a day for ten days & mixed down the results onto my laptop.

The second Hazy album, Fall, was recorded apparently as an album-a-day on February 20, 2005. I didn't want to squander the Hazy ingredients on the album-a-day frenzy that was in the air at the time, so I set it all aside & haven't touched it since.

"Day" is pretty ominous-sounding. Listening to it now, it's like the longest two minutes and thirty seconds of my entire life. I think my blueprints at the time were Portishead, Massive Attack & Red House Painters. The vocals on this track were meant to imply that squonky vibrato like Beth Gibbons useta do. As for the dismal chord sequence, who knows. It's pretty depressing whatever it is.



4AD rejection letter for Samarkand. Even their rejection letters are things of beauty.

Comments

Darrin said…
Ah... the cool ol' AAD projects. I think I still have this album somewhere on my hard drive. Though, it's been shifted around so much, I'm not quite sure where it is.

I think it's funny that right when I finished creating the program that would scramble up lyrics that we stopped doing the AAD things. Every once in a while, I break that program out and scramble some lyrics just for giggles.
Ian Stewart said…
Yep, exactly, as soon as we finally get the greatest tool for creating random lyrics, we stop needing them.

Sorry 'bout that.

But I'm certain that the world is a better place for us not making any more AADs.

Yet.... ?

:)

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