so, this is completely, totally done now, no going back to it. i boosted the bass in a few places and actually reverted back to the cd rip for a few of the sound collages. i think it sounds pretty good, actually, for the most part.
there's one specific track, the 8th, on the second demo that is causing me headaches. the mix is just so saturated and muddy that i'm constantly getting information overload listening to it. i'm having a hard time building reference points. i want this done with by the end of the day, so i can move on, so soon.
====
it took a little longer than i wanted it to, but i've finally got this cleaned up to a final state.
....and
now that it is mastered decently and has had a handful of bad decisions
removed, i have to say it holds up fairly well. when comparing it to
other late 90s electro-rock hybrids, it carves out a really unique space
in it's exploration of more abstract electronics. i'm not content to
recycle depeche mode or new order yet again; i want to mix in elements
of glitch, throw in sound collages and even get a little proggy
sometimes. really, i wish there were more people working in this removed
a space, both then and now. it's really rather refreshingly creative.
the
record/demo bounces back and forth between "songs" and "experiments".
while some of the songs are more compelling than others, the more
consistently interesting material is actually the experiments.
where
it drags is in the vocals, but only to an extent. the eighth track is
indefensibly bad; incoherent to the point that i don't even remember
what it was about, if it was about anything at all. the rest of it is
valid, even when it's trite, because it's real. that is to say that it
sounds like i'm 17 and less than well-adjusted. if it could be better
than it is, it would lack the authenticity of being a demo produced by a
troubled teenager. i might not articulate my feelings of being useless
at a very high level of thought or with much compelling poetry, but i'm
certainly feeling them and that feeling certainly gets across in my
unique and goofy sort of way. likewise, when i go into juvenile shock
rock i am actually convincingly juvenile and convincingly shocking
(unless i'm trying to be ridiculous, in which case i pull that off just
as well).
that means you have to listen to it from a certain
distance because a big part of what you're listening to is the spectacle
of a demented child being demented, but when you do that it comes off
as some of the most idiosyncratic leftfield synth pop i'm aware of.
you've never heard anything quite like this.
so, if i could
remove the 8th track without killing the flow of the disc, i would.
beyond that, the edits that i've made have left me comfortable with
throwing this out there as it is - under the existing caveats.
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inri-lp
====
my first cd demo represents a dramatic shift in sound that, at the time, was meant to be permanent but that ended up being merely a step in a long journey. on one hand, the shift in sound reflected my changing tastes away from alternative rock and towards industrial music. on another level, it was a return to my childhood roots in 80s synthpop. i was also expanding my tastes into glitch, noise and what could be called "musique concrete".
the shift to using drum machines was dominant in the new sound, as was the reality that i had a synthesizer available to me starting in the beginning of 1998. another major factor was the use of a pc. however, my main songwriting tool remained the guitar and these are still mostly guitar-driven pieces.
the guitar work is one of the things that separates the sound from a typical industrial aesthetic. i've never been a fan of heavy metal and largely shied away from creating that kind of thing. yet, i found myself connecting more with psychedelic guitar at this point than punk rock. industrial psych generally implies something like trance, but it need not to. industrial hendrix? well, maybe it ends up sounding more like synth pop, which has historical roots in psychedelic music and progressive rock. the point is that the music does manage to carve out a unique space between industrial music and synth pop that i don't know of any clear comparisons to. people have suggested mid-period swans, the legendary pink dots and nine inch nails - only the last of which was a significant influence, and none of which are really that close. a better comparison, although still not a significant influence at this time, would be joy division - who would become a significant influence after this phase. my actual influences at the time would have been more like brian eno (through his 70s and 90s work with david bowie, as well as his work with u2), early prog (genesis/floyd/crimson), peter gabriel, the beatles, radiohead, the smashing pumpkins, REM, sonic youth, the tea party and a bit of contemporary electronic music (prodigy, nin, coil, foetus, autechre, nitzer ebb, ministry, econoline crush, gravity kills, stabbing westward, skinny puppy and side projects). the sense of humour is coming from frank zappa and matt groening, if they are not actually the same person. i wasn't listening to much tears for fears, i don't think, but you can hear them lurking underneath everything.
some of these songs are reworked versions of tracks i had recorded previously. in almost all cases, i consider the versions here (and on the follow-up demo, inriched) to be the authoritative versions of these tracks.
the demo is consciously constructed to alternate between "conventional songs" and "experimental pieces", although both definitions are stretched. it generally takes the form of connecting passages. it's meant to give the record the feel of a cohesive work rather than a collection of songs.
lyrically, i'm still a teenager, but i'm starting to grow into myself a little more. there are still some points of embarrassment, but it's really only the 8th track that is causing me any serious grief. my singing style has changed quite a bit though - most of the lyrics here are in a spoken word style, rather than sung. it's partially the result of insecurities with my voice, but it's mostly due to the shift to something electronic. i found the dead pan vocal delivery more appropriate. it's something that stuck with me though until relatively recently.
some of this material was written as far back as 1994, but was only sequenced in the second half of 1997 and recorded in the first half of 1998. unfortunately, i decided that the songs sounded better in mp3 and consequently compressed everything before burning. i understand now that i was hobbling together a crude mastering process, but it means (unfortunately) that the closest thing i have to the finished tracks are low quality mp3s and a cd-r. these tracks were taken off of a cd-r and run through digital post-production in dec, 2013 in a process that also included minimal editing (mostly the removal of badly placed simpsons samples). this is my first official record; as always, please use headphones.
credits:
j - guitars, effects, bass, synthesizers, drum
programming, sequencing, sampling, vocals,
cool edit synthesis, windows 95 sound recorder, found
sounds, strategies, soundraider, hammerhead, sound design, metronome,
digital wave editing, production
released june 20, 1998
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inri-lp
