I'm sort of amazed that you could keep this feel going so long so I say bravo to that and the abstract style of it.
- the pieces tend to be twice as long and so I whittle them down - I also like to edit out stuff that sounds too literal -
Wow..wild birds noises! A glorious crescendo, Sir
- those bird noises are my trusty Theremin!
..caterwaul ... fabulous layers across the whole sound spectrum..and a deeper reverb than usual to my ears
:There's some fretless guitars there giving the caterwauls - they're doused in reverb like rabid dogs doused in flea repellent - probably my most extreme experiments in reverb, including wet only verb and then overlaying different versions of the same tracks, but slightly off - widened the scope of the whole thing at the mastering stages
That sludgy backcloth is most intriguing
Korg mini synths give great squelch!
I was rudely interrupted trying to listen to this the other day. .glad I'm back
Not as glad as I! The Grail King is a patient fellow, and his wake will last for aeons!
wild: ... and untamed ...
daringr: the art of daring is having nothing left to lose
mighty, as always.
excellent transition, with bats exiting the cave.
: The section before was originally the ending - I then cut out a middle section and overlapped it across the original ending, creating a new ending section - I then had to make that sound like it was one section moving into another - release the bats!
FrankenSound!: I toyed with using a title around the Frankenstinian, but realised Edgar Winter got there before me!
there is such dimension and detail in this caterwaul.
: In doing something like this, where I had something like 15 tracks to play with, and two of those tracks were pre-mastered versions of the same tracks .. well the detail was there - how to retain it within the wall of sound? That was the task - many details remain - like a vast etching
: yes. a vast etching in unknown stone.
: Probably the stone is remains of a far flung meteor, made from a substance alien to the Earth
such a cavernous din!
Cavernous is the word - I had for a while wanted to try something like this at the mastering stage, but usually once you have your mix you just want to put it out. Here, because I was unhappy with the mix, I experimented in putting a mastered version back with the premixed tracks, and then cutting up things from there - straight away I was able to achieve that cavernous sound where near and far versions of the same things were juxtaposed and then slightly moved apart from each other.
Loving the textures here. It is very dreamlike - back in the seventies, I used to dream of a Zappa album that did not actually exist, but I imagined that it did! This in many ways reminds me of that dream.
There is something very magical and unreal about Zappa albums! I haven't listened to that many, but I did listen to Hot Rats quite constantly at one point. I like the way Zappa solos on guitar - he has a composer's sensibility and tends to develop motifs in a way that most guitarists don't, but more like a composer working up a composition. I listened to that Shutp and Play Your Guitar thing too, - more examples of that sort of soloing and some killer tones -
Zappa in the 70s - he was playing the guitar like no-one else at the time.Hearing a new Zappa album was always an event: you had to listen to it once to get the layout of the music and the second time around you could start appreciating it. It was such a momentous thing that I often dreamt of hearing new, imaginary albums. Zappa was always at the forefront of sound technology, producing some of the most outlandish guitar sounds. I was fortunate enough to see him the twice he played Glasgow.
It's the shifts from section to section that make this piece for me.
Yeah, the original master was over twelve minutes long and there was some clipping. So I tried to repair the master and then cut out four minutes in the middle and overlapped that near the end - I then put that back with the mix and the original single tracks and tried to cut them up and rejoin - it was managing all those sections and their transitions which became the real job. *But* combining the master with the mix created that sense of the dimensional. I was thinking about Coryell who died recently. There was one thing he did back in the 60s with the Jazz Composers orchestra - he just had his hollowbody feedbacking against a huge jazz orchestral background. Loved that.
Just found the Coryell track on line - called Communication #9 on the JCO album, 1968 - it was the orchestration that influenced me, rather than the guitar, but the absence marks Larry's demise.
Almost went funk for a second there!
There's some funk bass and drums sections buried in there. Originally they were more prominent and dominant, but I wanted to bury funk just like it has buried itself in the history of sound
Love the transition.
That's main experiment on this one. I was going to post a previous version last week, but I wasn't happy with it then, both with the sound and the form. So I took it apart and reassembled it.
This is very right on. A horn section that couldn't be.: Whole load of guitars, of course. The last one I put I picked up this weekend - it's the Squire Mustang in the cover pic. Very very cheap, but I had to get that shortscale action which you talked about before. For the last two weeks I've been listening to the 6 CD complete Jack Johnson sessions where JMcL uses a Mustang throughout. Your guitar arsenal isn't complete unless you have a shortscale Squier/Fender guitar.
The first time I heard McLaughlin was back in the early 70s when I heard some of the Jack Johnson sessions played on the radio. It was a pivotal moment for me.
That album was the first notable example of jazz players playing real rock, and yet it still remained jazz - it wasn't yet 'fusion'. Have you listened to the complete sessions? They're quite remarkable - usually with outtakes you know why they left them off, but here there's about four album's worth of good stuff, especially guitar. There's a slow blues of just guitar, bass and drums [called Archie Moore, I think], where the sound of the guitar is so piercing - he's using the Fender Mustang with a vengeance. JMcL's creativity is at its zenith on these sections - his comping alone is tremendous. Not long after this he chopped the Mustang in for a Les Paul Junior - he couldn't afford a top of the line Fender or Gibson then, and had to hire a decent LP Custom for the Inner Mounting Flame sessions!
I have the album somewhere, but I think it is a one or two disc version. But then, it does not have the track that I can clearly remember hearing on the radio over 40 years ago. I remember not long after moving back to Scotland from Whitley Bay in 1970, one of my friends went to see Tony Williams Lifetime in Newcastle City Hall, as Jack Bruce was playing. He told me that the guitarist was John McLaughlin. It would be another 30 years or so before I found out he was raised in Whitley Bay.
lyrics
Wake of the Grail King
Gathering, in leafy play
Did the swirling hero, with
Garlanded gauntlets,
In rainbow sway,
Unleash feedback throes.
Blazing sunflowers,
Bluesy ,
knotted woes,
Wailing,
In the hall of mirrors.
[for Larry Coryell]
credits
from Viral Reality,
released October 14, 2017
Bill Boethius; guitars, bass, theremin, synth.
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