The People Under the Gun
Bomb Star
released December 2013
1. Bomb Star
recorded 2009
2. Dark Moments
recorded 2008
3. Hard of Seeing
recorded 2007
4. Kindness of Strangers (We Don't Like Your Kind Around Here)
recorded 2009
5. The Perils
recorded 2009
6. West Tone
recorded 2011
7. The Palestine of the Mind
recorded 2011
vocals, synthesizer, piano, guitar
'The Palestine of the Mind' began its long development the same month the People Under the Sun album was released. I would be persistently disappointed in its construction until realizing that the original four lines of the song (beginning, "The highway cuts through the trees") should be split up: the first line launches the song, all four of the lines end it. I also tried some non-vocal backing, but those parts were eliminated; so the track ended up as it is here, closest in style and form to the a cappella first album.
"Kindness of Strangers" and "Dark Moments" are also vocal-only tracks, but differ from other People tracks in combining vocal improvisation with song refrains. The latter in particular sticks to a strict set-up with mostly vocables (only a few utterances of what I word-forming, instead of wordless, singing) in the "verses" while 'Kindness' offers a bit more variety—it's even a bit theatrical.
The song, 'The Perils', dates from the first recordings done for the People Under the Sun record, in early 2005. Its ultimate form here grew out of the fortunate messing-about with an old digital Yamaha synthesizer from my childhood.
"Hard of Seeing" is a little ditty that surfaced when I was baning on a banged-up old guitar a housemate had.
The album was not completed in 2011 because I felt an insufferable boredom with the process of editing the tracks in Nueundo (eventually used Reaper). I also thought there should be one more substantive track, but alas none of the works in progress at the time seemed right. The inclusion of "Dark Moments," which I had been uncertain of, made the selection long enough to count as an album (32 minutes).
The People Under the Sun
Winter's
1. The State of Things (Self-Portrait)
2. Hell and Earth
3. Hone the Earth
4. I, I... (Prelude)
5. Sing Song (Part 1)
6. I, I... / Sing Song (Part 2)
7. Love and Social Death
8. Love and Social Death (Coda)
Winter's consists entirely of my vocals, recorded live without effects, except for "Love and Social Death," where a compressor was used. Some tracks consist of vocal parts over-dubbed to accompany each other, while others are bare, straight-to-tape performances. The record features songs, improvisations, and sound-poetry (or poetry-sound, as I prefer to name it). Yet, it explores the space among these three categories than it offers examples of each; such is the nature of the human voice, and of the language it speaks when it is instead sung. A song, like the opening track here, "The State of Things (Self-Portrait)," with words written before the fact and its performance rehearsed beforehand as well, would to those who do not speak English be sound-poetry/poetry-sound. Yet as far as I'm concerned, "Hone the Earth" features examples of the latter, for I improvised the varied vocal parts contained therein, and while in some of them I sound like I am intoning words - English words - I was not actually. Not at first. Words then did start to come out, including "hone," "the," and, "earth," forming the eventual title.
The beginning portion of "Hone the Earth" - the high-pitched squeals and growls - was an improvisation, as is "I, I..." and the two parts that form the bulk of "Hell and Earth." "Sing Song," like "The State of Things," was written and arranged before being recorded. "Love and Social Death" is another creature entirely: beginning only with the first two lines ("And it seems fate has brought us together / And yet it had carried us so far apart") I improvised the rest of the song, in real time: allowing the words to travel from the sub-conscious (super-conscious? ....wherever they might've been, or not...) to reach consciousness/fruition in the form of me singing into a microphone, alone, in the Athens, Georgia house I grew up in.
Order copies here via Pay Pal. Cardboard fold-out sleeve, paper insert, Mitsui CD-R, and two adhesive-paper prints (front and back cover). 40+ minutes. Six U S dollars, including shipping costs.
