60,000 miles from Mt. Fucking Idiot
September 25, 2020
Yeh!!! This is the first album I made that i thought was actually good. It's fine. But at the time I thought this was hot shit. It really was a step up from everything else we had done at that point: the songwriting is better, the arrangements are better and the recording sessions just felt good. Like it says in the bandcamp description, the recording sessions actually took a long time (COVID) and was amde up of way way more sessions than anything we did previously.
The opener is wicked. It's literally 2 chords (B, G#m) over and over again. I even fuck up the lyrics, qute obviously. Kai's drumming is perfect, understated when it needs to be, loud when it needs to be. Not to suck myself off too much, but the guitar at the end is great too. Not even sure how I got those sounds out of my guitar, really. The early version was awful. Really bad. I had just got an overdrive pedal and was going thru the phase of playing it as loud as possible, just awful. I dont think that version of the song even exists anymore. But the "proper" version was recorded in Kai's shed, which was barely big enough for the two of us and a drum kit. The acoustic guitar was added as an overdub in my leaking university dorm room.
Rocky Road(y) was another song we were immensely proud of; even in the room playing it we knew it was something great. I cant remember if that was recorded in Kai's front room or the shed. We played it in both, but i think it may have the sitting room because I remember Kai making the synth overdub on his phone after we recorded it. That version is flawed thanks to my sub-par playing, but from a composition standpoint it still holds up.
The closer was another good one. I originally wanted it to be insanely long and multi-parted (see attached picture) but it ended up just being 1 song. The chord progression and lyrics were probably influenced by David Bowie The Man Who Sold the World (not Curt Cobain). I wrote alot of lyrics for it too, but ended up just using the two verses that appear in the song. This one took a few takes to get right, I remember introducing it as an instrumental jam just to see if it "worked", and it did! The song let me show off all my new pedals too. It was really loud in that shed, I think we were using tissue paper as ear protection at the time (didn't work) but the song came out very well.
Another weird thing about this album was the "influence" from the game Dead Island. On the Bandcamp version, the song opens with a sample from the game, and the closer is named after the 100% completion achievement (which i have). I guess the album has alot to do with nature which DI also has, and the theme of apocalypse too??? much to think about either way.
The album came out in September of 2020, when I was 18. We had just survived the first wave of COVID and lockdowns. It was a very strange time. in terms of influences, I was probably into shoegaze by that point, I had become completely obsessed with Radiohead in the first half of 2020 (I remember me and Kai practicing Lucky from OK Computer as warmup rehersals) as well as Stripes still being a big influence with the whole 2 piece thing.
The album really represents a turning point. For me, anyway- it really marked the end of the afforementioned "pre-covid" era of the band, there was an interest in making something more resonant and thematic, and whole. It was the first time I recorded vocals on top of an instrumental instead of just singing in the live take (Quacks on Quacks), as well the instrumentals becoming more nuanced and varied, even if the chord progressions were primitive 2 chord jams. The penultimate track especially. Of course, it's still ametuer and flawed (as everything I make is) but there's something in there, at the core! Punk Rockers at the cusp of infinity!