We had recorded these four songs (Dante Damasco, Vowel Matt O'Douls, Wicked Retada, and Robbins Nest) when we recorded our S/T album at Expressions (see the previous post for recording info). We never ended up adding any vocals, because I don't think they had any. For some reason, we didn't think that they'd be a good fit on our album. Maybe we thought they didn't rock hard enough or something stupid like that. We never released these in any form, so this is their sloppy birth into the world. Looking back, two of these are some of my favorite songs we did (Wicked Retada and Robbins Nest). -Bruce
These four songs reflect the other styles of music we were interested in at the time. We shaved them off of the s/t album so we'd have a cohesive forty minutes of metal for an LP, and these misfits fell by the wayside. You might be able to tell that in addition to our stoner rock interests, we were listening to lots of Sonic Youth, Mahavishnu Orchestra and My Bloody Valentine. We played all of these songs live at one time or another right along side the heavy shit. -Clint
Ah yes, these four songs probably represent best the multiple personality disorder that was our music. But in a very good way of course! Listening back on these now is such a trip. I remember being a little hesitant myself about using them for an album, but now I realize just how much they hold up on their own. It would have made for a pretty interesting EP I think.
ReplyDeleteYou have the Faith No More inspired white-boy-eastern-funk of Vowel Matt O'Douls (the name came from some stoney afternoon lunch break when Bruce and I worked at our college's facilities dept one summer). The shoegaze/prog combo of Wicked Retada and Robbins Nest and the happy Led Zeppelin-esque (in my opinion anyway) dance-able Dante Damasco (the name of which is the result from I believe the same stoney afternoon lunch break mentioned before. Dante Damasco was a name found on a student roll sheet found randomly in the smoking lounge of the webster hall dorms).
What amazes me is that we still keep the multi-layered musical proficiency in these songs and the musicianship in general is pretty advanced for just a buncha oakland stoners. We definitely loved riffs and many many parts to songs, but we still kept the flow and were able to almost tell a story with the music. Pretty damn cool.
-Bryce