** In The Hearts Of Seeds is my first full length album, in collaboration with Madam Roar, and can be listened to on my Releases page **
…continued from Part 2
In the Hearts of Seeds is distinctive folk music coming together with experimental sounds, arrangements and production techniques. Right from the beginning we set out to successfully integrate folk music and electronic music. We are referring to the results as Trip Folk. A brand new genre perhaps?
The making of the album was a truly creative process. We allowed ourselves to be open to some far out ideas. For example, all of the percussion in Heavy Pockets is composed of rocks striking each other or bags of rocks being shaken around. This song totally rocks as a result! Another example comes in Oh My Love: the percussive elements here are built of short samples of water dropping into a cave.
My work on this album amounted to at least 500 hours. It is the first album that I’ve produced and I got to put into practice everything that I learned in music production school which I completed not too long ago. I made some mistakes during the process and had to go back and redo a number of things, but this is a positive factor as it meant a deeper understanding of my field. In this way, In the Hearts of Seeds represents a professional coming of age for me. I am very grateful for this.
** In The Hearts Of Seeds is my first full length album, in collaboration with Madam Roar, and can be listened to on my Releases page **
…continued from Part 1
It was around this time that I was entering into what was to prove one of the harshest periods of my life. Everything that I had been building had fallen away. It was like I had been kicked into the middle of an endless ocean of quicksand and was slowly sinking with nothing around for miles to grab hold of. I was very scared for my future.
And then out of the blue, Christie asks to meet me for tea, where she tells me that she’s really into my music and wants to collaborate on a full length album. This proposal ended up being the rope that was thrown to me just before my head went under the quicksand. I am very grateful for this!
One of the big reasons I have stayed committed to this project is due to the gratitude I feel towards Christie for making this connection with me at this time.
** In The Hearts Of Seeds is my first full length album, in collaboration with Madam Roar, and can be listened to on my Releases page **
I first met Christie (Madam Roar) a few years ago through a mutual friend. I went and heard her play at an open mic in a coffee shop and through a few weeks after the show I didn’t know what to think about her music! This was very unusual for me, as being a DJ I’ve learned to decide if I like a new artist or piece of music in a short amount of time, often just a few seconds.
But with Christie’s music, I was held for a long time in this state of indecision. I kept playing her songs over in my mind and was very curious as to why I kept thinking about them.
Then I got a hold of her demo CD and after having a few special moments with it, I decided that she is a brilliant, cutting edge artist with a dynamic musical future ahead of her. My initial hesitation was due to the originality and experimental nature of her style – it’s unlike anything that I have heard and thusly I couldn’t quickly pigeonhole her music into my usual “like” or “dislike” categories.
As a few of you might have heard, I am currently working on a full length album entitled “In the Hearts of Seeds.” It’s a collaboration between myself and one of my best friends Madam Roar, a talented singer/songwriter with a bent well towards the experimental side of her craft. This album is fully avant-garde, a balance between acoustic and electronic, between waking life and dreamscape.
A few weeks ago, we recorded Ms Roar’s sister Jamie singing some parts on a few of the songs. It was her first time ever being recorded and she was a tad nervous. It took her a few takes to get into it and find her pace, but when she did the raw beauty of her voice totally blew me away.
At 52 seconds into the song (listen below) Jamie sings “I’m letting go” a few different times. I was so inspired by these few seconds of singing that it ended up being the pivot point around which I built and balanced the production and mix for the whole song. I was compelled to carefully frame her in this way.
I’m coming away from this experience with a renewed understanding of how inspiration builds on inspiration. This methodology is the life blood of truly uncompromised art and innovation.
Thanks Jamie, this wouldn’t be half the album without you!
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