Philip and I have known each other for (yeesh) a lot of years at this point. Something like 14 years. We came to our arrangement to record this album together because Philip has all these great songs and I have the means to record them. He allows me to produce the recordings, giving me some exposure, and I do my best to do the songs justice.

We started working on the project in 2006, on weekends when we had a matching schedule. It was never supposed to take as long as this to get it done. But there has been a benefit to all that time -- and that is that we've gotten a lot better -- or at least, I have, as a recordist, mixer and producer.

"Inkblot" was recorded over eight sessions between December 11, 2010 and March 22, 2011; and mixed and mastered in April. In our first session, Philip and I played together: he played guitar and I played the "bass drum" (it's a floor tom) and snare. The guitar was fairly well separated from the drums -- the amp was in a separate room -- but there was some bleed. And of course recording the kick and snare with one mic limits what you can do with them come mix time. But the goal was to work fast, and we did. We got the skeleton of the track down in under an hour.

Later that same day Philip tripled the guitar part: he played it again through this crazy blue speaker I have -- which has a great, really ratty sound -- and again on an acoustic guitar. Philip, I should note, plays all the guitars on this track, including the epic guitar solo at the end.

Other days were devoted to vocals, bass, filling in the drum part (cymbals and tambourine), additional guitars, and the guitar solo. A couple more sessions were devoted to editing and cleaning up the tracks, and finally it took a few separate sessions to get the mix and revise it.

We hope you enjoy it.

~ James Beuadreau

TRACK INFO / CREDITS:
Artist: Philip Lynch
Title: "Inkblot"
Produced by James Beaudreau
Philip Lynch: guitars and vocals; James Beaudreau: bass and drums
Recorded and mixed at Workbench Recordings, New York, NY by J. Beaudreau; December 2010 - April 2011
Mastered by: Scott Hull at Masterdisk
Original Workbench Recordings Post Date: May 2, 2011

FURTHER LISTENING:
Philip Lynch: "Magnetic Waves" (WBR 17)
Philip Lynch: "The Well" (WBR 21)
Philip Lynch: "It's Just a Room" (WBR 30)
Philip Lynch: "Half Empty" (WBR 26)
Philip Lynch: "Blue Water" (WBR 07)

15 MONTHS INTO THE WORKBENCH EXPERIMENT

"Experiment" truly is the right word: not as in a scientific experiment, but more the "I don't know what's going to happen next" sense of the word. Since the site launched in September 2009, the general premise of Workbench Recordings has stayed the same: a place where I presented my music, and others', for free, with the hope of the benefit of mutual promotion for all concerned -- and to create a unique spot on the internet for interesting, otherwise unavailable music. Within that scheme, the music was posted with the all of the trappings of a physical release, minus the mass: unique cover art, credits, and liner notes. And the release schedule was ambitious: new music every Tuesday.

That was the initial plan, anyway. It was executed faithfully for roughly eight months, but then dissolved into something different; something that involved a number of false starts and changes of direction, which hasn't yet re-materialized into something else.

The original plan for the frequency of posts was good; consistency is necessary if you want to build an online audience. Only thing was, I couldn't keep up with the schedule. When I launched the site, I had been at the same company for nine years, and in roughly the same position there for five. The job had become almost second nature, and I could do what I had to do and still have enough space in my head left over to concoct an ambitious moonlighting project like this one. But that began to change in December 2010, when I started doing some freelance work for Masterdisk. By May, when I was hired as the studio's marketing director, much of that open mental space had disappeared, and the new gig, which was both enjoyable and challenging, took over much of my remaining resources.

So in May I decided that Workbench would go to a once-monthly schedule. I knew what it meant: that the regular audience that the site had gained would dissipate; but it couldn't be helped.

Workbench wasn't a runaway success by May 2010 as it was. Interestingly, or at least it was to me, and not a little baffling at the time, was that the site's stats were pretty flat in its first eight months. (Today it's not so surprising to me; I really would have had to have given it a year or two of steady updating to see the gains in audience I was expecting after half a year.)

I measured traffic to the site for seven months, between October 2009 and April 2010, by how many times a track was played in full. The best month was January 2010, with 288 plays. The quietest month was April, with 135. I stopped paying attention to the stats after that, though as you would expect from the major slowdown in the schedule, traffic is at a trickle today. Overall, I counted 1,620 listens in seven months.

As long as I'm showing you around the back room, let's stop over at operations. Hosting the site has cost me around $200 since it started -- pretty cheap by my reckoning. Unfortunately, the "in" column has many less marks in it, though.

When I launched Workbench I thought it would stimulate CD sales, but that's not what happened. I wasn't expecting high numbers (it's funny to even say that), but I was figuring that there would be some ratio of free listens to sales; maybe something like 200 listens to 1 CD sold. In actuality, since the launch in September 2009 I have sold, I think, 2 CDs.

Actually, to get a more complete picture of what the free-to-sales ratio might look like, lets go back to 2006. Since May of that year, when I released my first CD, Java St. Bagatelles, I estimate that I have sold 65 CDs in total (including my second album Fresh Twigs). But the free downloads have been a lot more active.

Java St. Bagatelles was posted for free download (with my consent) on the blog Grown So Ugly (now defunct, unfortunately) sometime in late 2006 (and on another blog as well, called Closet of Curiosities). The last time I checked, in January 2010, between the two blogs the album had been downloaded over 1,500 times. If Grown So Ugly remained active beyond then, and I imagine it did, the number would probably have been greater.

In May I posted my third album, Astral Law, for free download at the Free Music Archive. Since then tracks from it have been listened to nearly 3,000 times, and the album has been downloaded over 560 times.

Later, in September 2010, I posted a handful of tracks from Fresh Twigs at FMA. Those have been listened to nearly 2,500 times times, and downloaded over 325 times.

My tracks have been played over 1,800 times at LastFM.

So, since 2006, I have sold 65 CDs, but my albums and tracks have been listened to and/or downloaded over 10,000 times.

Unfortunately, I can't draw much useful information from what is really at best a shoddy display of record keeping. I would be tempted to simply say that for every 173 free downloads I could expect to sell 1 album, but the fact is that most of the CD sales came before 2009, and most of the downloads after.

My music's dispersion and reception over the internet remains a mystery to me; a mystery in which I'm content to wait for clues. Like the guitarist Matt Stevens has said, "obscurity is the enemy, not piracy." I'll continue to make my recordings as accessible as possible, while hoping to gain listeners. And eventually perhaps more listeners will come who want to support my work by buying my releases.

Speaking of releases, I hope to offer a few more options for those future purchasers in 2011. For starters, there will be a physical release of my album Astral Law in a small run CDR edition of 50, mastered by Scott Hull. Eventually, provided there's enough funds, there will be a vinyl version.

In terms of Workbench itself, I plan to keep posting music here, though I don't know what the frequency will be. I had thought, when I launched it, that I would receive a lot of emails from artists about contributing music to the site, but it didn't happen like that; in fact I've hardly gotten any communications except for, oddly, a handful of different techno artists from the Former Soviet Republics. Again, in hindsight it's probably not that surprising: I have no payment to offer and no prestige, and it has become very easy over the past two years to post music online, in stylish and efficient layouts (see Bandcamp), yourself. So all I really had to offer was the individual attention each post would get, such promotion as I could provide, and a presence on a site that would perhaps grow in popularity.

But it didn't work out that way, and I don't have the time available to increase the release schedule again, which is what would be needed to gain more of a following. The time that I do have, I want to devote to playing the guitar, writing, and recording.

Though a couple of options have occurred to me as ways to make Workbench a viable project going forward. One is to invite a few people to act as curators for the site and share the work of an increased release schedule. The second idea is the same, but less intense; that is, to bring on contributors, but to make Workbench more of a blog than a netlabel, by posting music that may already be available elsewhere on the internet. Of course, the Free Music Archive already does this -- but the Workbench version would be a small and tightly focused space.

I suspect that there isn't a particular need for the latter, and perhaps, in 2011, there's not much need for the former either. I would be interested to hear if anyone thought otherwise. But in the meantime, the site will stay up, and will be periodically updated when things come up. If you want to follow what I'm doing, and what other Workbench artists are up to, see my Twitter and Facebook accounts and check out the blog -- all of which are updated very regularly.

The playlist posted above, courtesy of the Free Music Archive, contains of all the tracks released on Workbench in 2010 (minus the tracks posted from my album Astral Law, which is available in remastered form here) -- including one that hadn't been posted here before, "The Devil Is a Sad Spirit."

"Dunebuggy" and the other Marvelry Skimmer track ("Beachball") posted up here on Workbench (and at FMA) were inspired by something I read in a music review in The WIRE magazine, that one above. That they can serve as inspiration for more music is the primary reason I dig music reviews; a good turn of phrase can be great fuel for the imagination. Not that I'm necessarily prompted to turn whatever spark I can get off a review into a concrete project, but in this case it did happen that way. I think what I had been working on previously had been wearing me down, and the review presented an idea that seemed like straight up fun, easy fun. Yeah right. It did turn out to be pretty fun -- especially "Beachball" -- but it was also a helluva lot more work than I thought it would be.

So, the assignment: make 11 "summer jams." I made two and started on a third (which turned out to be not so much a summer jam) and by the time I got that far the summer was over. Blame it on "Dunebuggy:" it took a long time to make. Or at least it sure seemed like a long time.

Here's the blow-by-blow.

August 10. "Beachball" is posted to the Free Music Archive. I had already started thinking about what the second track should sound like; I thought it would be acoustic, campfirey.

August 15. A Sunday. I had set aside some time to start on the second "jam." The first thing I did was listen to "Beachball" and try to hear what should come next. The acoustic idea I had had a few days ago was gone; I couldn't really recall it. So I listened to "Beachball" a few times, trying to casually sneak up on the ending; to be loose enough to hear something start in after it.

This is probably an unusual way to work; often you won't write songs that are "pre-sequenced" like these two are. You'd just be writing a bunch of songs and dealing with the sequence afterward. But in this case, I knew what I was working on would follow directly after "Beachball" and I wanted to make sure the transition was a good one.

After a while I thought of the keyboard sound, the note "B", the fifth degree in "Beachball." And then the jangly guitar from "Beachball" over it, and thought that whatever happened next, it would happen in the key of B.

I opened a new ProTools session (called "Jam 2") and imported the jangly guitars and bass tracks from the "Beachball" sessions. To fix the tempo, I recorded an electric guitar track - just percussive noises, while listening to the bass. That way I could get rid of the bass -- which I wasn't going to use -- but preserve the same tempo in my new song.

I placed the jangly guitars about 20 seconds into the start of the song -- which at this point consisted only of the "tempo" guitar track -- leaving that empty time to introduce the keyboard notes. I found two sounds on the Casio keyboard I bought the week prior for $20 off Craigslist, and record the "B"s. It wasn't going to be as simple as that though. The keyboard's cheap digital technology sounded harsh and unmusical, and there was no pitch wheel to soften up the sounds, or any other options either. My solution was to use a few digital delays on the notes, riding the time settings to wobble the pitch slightly.

That was about it for the day's recording, but I needed to figure out what the actual body of the jam was going to be.

I started recording into my cheap mono cassette deck; my usual method of coming up with ideas. At this point, I still thought the jam was going to be acoustic, so I pulled out the steel string, tuned it to an 'open B' chord, and luckily I happened on a riff that I liked. Two riffs actually, one more complex, one less, and practiced them to get them smooth enough to get the idea on tape. Later on in the day, when I was doing something entirely different, I realized that the part would be better on bass than guitar. Here's the recording I made of the riff, from the practice cassette:

Dunebuggy (acoustic sketch) by James Beaudreau

August 16. Around 6 a.m. A brief morning recording session before work: I printed the keyboard tracks with the delay effect so I could start the song on a pitch wobble.

August 16. 9:00 p.m. I picked up the bass and tried the riff I wrote the other day, and it worked. I opened up the ProTools session and listened: at this point al it was was the keyboard intro, the "jangly" guitars, and the scratch electric guitar keeping time. I tried to judge where the bass should come in, and, deciding on that, set up to record the part. Since I wanted to record this song without a click track, it would be up to the bass part to keep the rhythm strong. I put the bass in "direct" through distortion and EQ pedals and did my best to play it solid for around five minutes. It didn't come off though.

August 17. 6:50 a.m. The bass performance hadn't been good, but the idea was solid. And I could tell at this point that there would need to be additional sci-fi sounds to announce the entrance of the bass. Which made for fun recording. I also now knew that the bass wasn't going to work without a click track, and that the tempo needed to be quicker than the scratch guitar tempo.

I decided to open a new ProTools session ("Jam 2b") to record the rest of the track so that I could set up the tempo without reference to the tempo in "Jam 2;" I'd edit the two parts together later.

By 9:15 I had the new session set up, the tempo chosen, and I stared the bass part. By 9:37 the part was done, I had a mean blister on my index finger (since I only play bass lately when I'm recording), and it was time to go to work.

August 18. 10:00 p.m. I put the Casio through an EQ and distortion pedal and found a sound that reminded me -- with some imagination -- of a Fender Rhodes through a ring modulator. By 11:15 I had recorded the keyboard lick in the verses and processed it with a flanger plug-in. At this point the shape of the tune was coming into view.

August 19. 6:00 a.m. I had known that I was going to want to have some bridges to break up the verses in this tune, and this morning I figured out where they needed to be. There would be chord changes in the bridges, and I knew the bass would need to be different in those parts. So I tried a couple of fancy ideas, but before long I accepted that I already had a part in mind -- I had been ignoring it, thinking it was too easy or simple. I muted the bass where those bridges would be. I looked for some keyboard sounds, something halfway between "ballpark" and "haunted house". Finding them, I recorded two keyboard parts in the bridges. By this point it was 7 a.m. and time to get ready to leave for work.

August 20. 7:20 a.m. A quick session to fix some iffy moments in the bridge keyboard parts.

August 20. 7:00 p.m. Now I needed to figure out the bass part under the bridge. It came together fairly easily, though it took a bunch of takes before I could get it down well enough to keep. The keys in the bridge didn't sound bent enough, so I ran them through a wide chorus effect.

August 22. It had been a week by this point, and it was time to get to the drum tracks. I don't have a proper drum kit; partially because of NYC apartment living space restrictions, and partially because I never seem to have the money lying around to go pick up a bass drum and a hi-hat. So, for the time being, I've made do with what I've got: a snare drum, a floor tom (rescued from the curb by Philip Lynch), and a cymbal. Though I since haven't done it this way, on "Dunebuggy" I recorded each drum separately.

At 1:30 I started with the "tom-tom" part. One of the "toms" is a detuned snare drum without the snares engaged; the other is the floor tom tuned up tight. I knew the kind of beat I wanted: a latin beat, something like the pattern played by Elvin Jones on the Joe Henderson track "El Barrio" (from the Inner Urge album). So I listened to that track, trying to figure out what elements I could take out of it and in a limited way, replicate.

The toms didn't take too long to record, but because they're on the very edges of the beat -- and I'm not exactly an expert drummer -- I had to shift some hits around in ProTools later. At 2 p.m. I re-tuned the snare drum and recorded the rim-shots.beat I have to shift some hits around in ProTools later. At 2 p.m. I re-tune the snare and record the rim-shots. Here are the isolated tom and rimshot tracks, each recorded separately.

Dunebuggy (toms and rimshots) by James Beaudreau

August 26. 11 a.m. - 12 p.m. I was working from home. I had more drums to record, but it's not something I can do too early or too late, so I squeezed in the bass drum and ride cymbal parts at lunchtime. I took the floor tom, put it on its side, detuned it, stuck a pillow in it, and voila, there's the bass drum. After I recorded the part I detuned it further by a few steps in ProTools to differentiate it from the tom hits and to give it more bottom end.

The ride cymbal track went pretty well. I recorded a take, decided it was too busy, and recorded a second take with a straighter rhythm. It turned out that the first one was the keeper. Here's the full "drum kit" mix:

Dunebuggy (full drum kit) by James Beaudreau

August 29. Weekends: generally better for making some noise. At this point it was Sunday, and time for electric guitars. Lately I've been playing a Parker P-44 guitar through a Vox amp. At around 1:30 p.m. I found a tone I liked using this set-up plus an EQ pedal, put an SM57 on the amp and did a few takes, improvising a part.

After a little while it was feeling like a waste of time. I couldn't seem to come up with anything good, and I started to think that the electric guitar wasn't the right texture. Called it quits at 3:00 p.m.

August 29. 5 p.m. After doing something else for a couple hours and clearing my head, I returned to the track and found that some of the guitar parts were pretty good after all. One of the takes was better than the others. I prune it down, editing in ProTools, and it's good to go.

August 29. 6 p.m. The rhythm guitar success had improved my mood considerably, and it felt like a good time to give the planned guitar solo at the end a try. I used the same equipment, but changed the settings on the guitar and EQ pedal, recording five takes in quick succession. I usually enjoy recording guitar solos and this day was no exception. The five takes took ten minutes to do.

Next it was time for some sound effects to ratchet up the freakout around the guitar solo. I chose one guitar take at random (take 5) to play back while adding the best sci-fi sounds I could get out of the Casio. Later I made the final guitar solo out of an edit of Take 4 (the first half) and Take 5 (the second half).

August 30. 8 a.m. To boost the end section I added an additional drum part (played on the Casio). I figured I'd put it in the left side of the mix, with the main drum part leaning to the right. This was pretty easy: I recorded the part with my left hand once through with a fix to the opening figure.

August 30. 6 p.m. Tambourine track added. Then I deleted most of what I had recorded, only keeping one spot in the beginning, and the ending. It would go with the Casio drums on the left. Here's a short sample that isolates the drum kit, Casio drums, and tambourine:

Dunebuggy (drumkit and casio drums) by James Beaudreau

September 1. 9:45 p.m. I tried adding some electric guitar fills here and there on the track, mainly in the second verse. None of it really worked, though I liked one particular lick which subsequently made it through to the first mastered version of the track before being dropped before the second mastering. Here are the excised guitar riffs; all of them were discarded the same day they were recorded except for the first one which made it through to the first mastering session.

Dunebuggy (guitar outtakes) by James Beaudreau

The recording phase was finished at this point.

September 2. The intro section ("Jam 2") and the main section ("Jam 2a") were combined into a new ProTools session ("Jam 2b") and I started mixing.

September 4. The "final" mix was finished. It was much more compressed than what I normally produce, partly because I was determined that the first, second, and third (the ending section) parts should all have their own intensities. And partly because on my monitors it was sounding good squashed. But the heavy compression would prove to be a bad idea. Here's a snapshot of what the final mix looked like.

September 9. 4 p.m. Today Scott Hull mastered the "final" version of the track. I was at the studio (I work there) when he asked me to come into his room to take a listen because some elements weren't sitting right and he wanted to check that it was sounding like I had intended it to.

In fact, it's wasn't. And here, fellow home recordists, is why you should always get your music mastered, even if -- ESPECIALLY if -- you're recording in a less than "pro" setting. There were problems with the mix that were fully inaudible to me on my home monitoring systems. In Scott's room the tom part (the detuned, snareless snare) was super loud, with a crazy bloom on it that obscured most of what else was going on. Additionally, some of the relationships between the instruments sounded skewed, and worst of all, there wasn't much that could be done to fix any of it because of the heavy limiting I had already applied to the track. Scott made an heroic effort to carve out some of the aberrant tom-tom and to glue the rest of the mix together, but in the end too much EQ surgery had to be done and the track sounded, ultimately, not worth all the work I had put into it. I took careful notes while listening in Scott's room.

September 9. 9 p.m. It was time to remix from the ground up. I removed the limiting, adjusted balances between some of the instruments, tweaked some EQ settings, and reconsidered the panning. The guitar lick I had recorded on September 1 got discarded. There was one downside to the rebuild: in my haste to correct all the deficiencies I forgot to add the a big wooshing flange that I had at the very end of the track on the previous mix.

September 10. 8 a.m. I discussed the mix via email with Scott and he agreed that it was a good idea to try to re-do the track. Before uploading my new mix to the Masterdisk server, I listened to it one last time and made a few adjustments. This time, I'd have it seperated into two stems: the drums in one, and everything else in the other. Scott mastered the new mix later that day with beautiful results: the final released version.

September 13. I heard the track over the weekend, and it sounded good to me, but my confidence in my home monitoring had been shaken. I was glad when I debriefed with Scott this morning and he confirmed that the new mix/master sounds good.

And that wraps it up... almost. The nights of September 13-14, from around 10 p.m. to 1 a.m., and the early morning of September 15 were spent prepping the Workbench post, choosing the artwork, and writing these notes (later edited and updated in December).

The process of building the track had it's ups and downs, but mainly, looking back, it sure seems like it was a lot of work. At the end of it, after writing the first version of these notes, I couldn't imagine wanting to do it again. But, as I wrote at that time, "I probably will."

And I did: the next track I finished took longer!

PREVIOUS POST: Marvelry Skimmer "Beachball"

TRACK INFO / CREDITS:
Artist: Marvelry Skimmer
Title: "Dunebuggy"
Produced by James Beaudreau
Recorded and mixed at Workbench Recordings, New York, NY by J. Beaudreau; August-September 2010
Mastered by: Scott Hull at Masterdisk
Original Workbench Recordings Post Date: September 14, 2010; reposted with revised text and musical examples on December 9, 2010.

FURTHER LISTENING:
James Beaudreau: "Blimp" (WBR 18)
Jim Hanas: "Nose" (WBR 14)
Andrew Paine & Richard Youngs: "Collodion Error" (WBR 34)
Philip Lynch: "Blue Water" (WBR 07)

But now the tide's turning back: I hope to post more frequent releases in year two. Not necessarily on a Tuesday schedule.

"Beachball" was posted to the Free Music Archive on August 10, 2010. It was to be the first in a series of unscheduled, at-will releases called "B-Sides," which would live on a different set of pages here at the Workbench site. But I didn't have the time to put the new pages together before the track was finished, so I decided to post at FMA first, and planned to put the pages together on the Workbench site a few days later.

Those few days turned into the rest of the month. And as they did the "B-Sides" plan lost steam, replaced with the simpler idea to change the normal posting schedule. So "Beachball" is getting a normal full-page release today and a standard catalog number, and it's follow-up, "Dunebuggy," will be posted as soon as it's back from the mastering studio. More soon.

PREVIOUS POST: Philip Lynch "Pop Song"
NEXT POST: Marvelry Skimmer "Dunebuggy"

TRACK INFO / CREDITS:
Artist: Marvelry Skimmer
Title: "Beachball"
Produced by James Beaudreau
Recorded and mixed at Workbench Recordings, New York, NY by J. Beaudreau; July 2010
Mastered by: Scott Hull at Masterdisk
Workbench Recordings Post Date: September 8, 2010

FURTHER LISTENING:
James Beaudreau: "Blimp" (WBR 18)
Jim Hanas: "Nose" (WBR 14)
Andrew Paine & Richard Youngs: "Collodion Error" (WBR 34)
Philip Lynch: "Blue Water" (WBR 07)

We've got to watch the watchers even if we know they're watching us. The notion that we, the people, are being monitored, watched, inspected for our thoughts, ideas, beliefs even feelings is not a new one. It's a classic. As exemplified by George Orwell in 1984, and Aldous Huxley in Brave New World. Both books have affected me deeply as a citizen of a country that included the "right to privacy" as one of its guiding principals (Bill of Rights).

It might make sense that a society that is being monitored would naturally indulge in voyeuristic pleasures such as reality shows. When we are the judges who can call in and vote a performer off for whatever reason, we feel as though we are in control. So I wrote a song. You've got to do something.

In urban settings there are cameras everywhere. Every time you use your credit card, metro card, debit card, log on to the internet, even make a phone call it is possible for someone to know. Identity theft strikes fear in the hearts of some who have a lot to lose and even those with very little depending on what type of person you are. The idea that someone could steal your name, social security number, password, image, credit card number, whatever, is enough to make me want to disconnect from the whole mess entirely.

When I played this tune at the now defunct bar, Keenan's (204th & B'Way, RIP) a patron who had enjoyed a Dylan cover I played prior to playing "Pop Song" opined, "whoa, you're paranoid man!" Heh maybe a little. -- Philip Lynch

PREVIOUS POST: Three Is a Green Crown "All the Pretty Horses"
NEXT POST: Marvelry Skimmer "Beachball"

TRACK INFO / CREDITS:
Artist: Philip Lynch
Title: "Pop Song"
Composer: P. Lynch
Produced by James Beaudreau
Personnel: Philip Lynch: lead vocal, acoustic guitar; James Beaudreau: electric guitar, bass, drums, backing vocal;
Recorded and mixed at Workbench Recordings, New York, NY by J. Beaudreau; June 2008 - July 2010
Mastered by: Scott Hull at Masterdisk
Workbench Recordings Post Date: July 27, 2010

FURTHER LISTENING:
Philip Lynch: "Magnetic Waves" (WBR 17)
Philip Lynch: "The Well" (WBR 21)
Philip Lynch: "It's Just a Room" (WBR 30)
Philip Lynch: "Half Empty" (WBR 26)
Philip Lynch: "Blue Water" (WBR 07) ]]> tag:workbenchrecordings.com,2010://1.56 2010-06-29T04:00:10Z 2010-12-31T18:17:57Z

Glasgow-based musicians Richard Youngs and Andrew Paine keep on trying to reach that edge - separately and together. Youngs is a humble bastion of UK experimental music: as a solo artist of dizzying diversity, as an erstwhile member of underground free-music originals The A Band and, more lately, as bassist in Jandek's live trio with drummer Alex Nielsen. Paine is a quietly determined generator of avant-sounds, documented and distributed through his CD-R label Sonic Oyster. The two have recorded together since the end of the 20th century, sometimes under their own names, and sometimes as Ilk, a project that takes the baroque narrative stylings of classic British Prog as a starting point from which to explore psychedelic Noise, drone and Improv.

With Collodion Error, it's as though they're trying to sneak up on the edge, pretending not to look as they spiral round, trying to catch it on the outswing, the outer arm of the Golden Mean. The galaxy spins down into a beach-stranded mollusc shell, into an atom of stone, down further into a galactic supercluster, You can hear the energy thrumming as your identity slips away. A minute and a half can be enough to see it all. Time enough to get close to the edge, anyway. -- Daniel Spicer

For further information on Andrew Paine and Richard Youngs releases visit the Sonic Oyster Records blog here.

Daniel Spicer writes about music for The Wire, Jazzwise and other publications. He presents an FM radio show, The Mystery Lesson, playing avant-garde improvised music. He also performs in the chaotic electro-acoustic improvising sextet, Bolide. He lives in Brighton, UK.

PREVIOUS POST: James Beaudreau "Devotional"
NEXT POST: Three is a Green Crown "All the Pretty Horses"

TRACK INFO / CREDITS:
Artist: Andrew Paine & Richard Youngs
Title: "Collodion Error"
Mastered by : Scott Hull at Masterdisk
Workbench Recordings Post Date: May 25, 2010

NOTE: "Collodion Error" is a previously unreleased track from the Andrew Paine and Richard Youngs archives. As a fan of their work, I'm thrilled to be able to present this track on Workbench. I hope you enjoy it. - James Beaudreau

FURTHER LISTENING:
Philip Lynch: Blue Water (WBR 07)
Jim McAuley & Andrew Pask: "Marxophone" (WBR 25)
E. Ryan Goodman: "Sun City Flats" (WBR 19)
James Beaudreau: "The Leaden Circles" (WBR 05)

Releasing an album this way, I found, really made me face up to each track in a way that I hadn't had to on my previous two albums. Not that any of the albums were packed with filler, but each one, including Astral Law, was designed as an album. Breaking it up into each constituent part put a lot of pressure on each track. I had my doubts about some of them along the way, but they all came through in the end.

You might notice a few changes here on the website, including the new comment capability at the bottom of each post. But the most significant change is that we're now going to be posting monthly instead of weekly. This is going to enable us to keep up, and hopefully increase, the quality of each individual post, and to offer works by some new artists -- something I especially want to concentrate on now that Astral Law is complete. To keep in touch between posts, join our Facebook page, or follow us on Twitter. Thanks for coming along with us on the trip so far.

Here's the track list for Astral Law with links to the individual posts.

1. Astral Law (posted 1/12/2010)
2. At the Foothills (posted 9/8/2009)
3. The Leaden Circles (posted 9/15/2009)
4. The Mirror Wall (posted 9/22/2009)
5. Quiver (posted 10/6/2009)
6. Reginald Earth (posted 2/23/2010)
7. Signal Stations (posted 11/24/2009)
8. Goodmorning Junction (posted 10/27/2009)
9. Nomos-Physis (posted 1/26/2010)
10. Easy Pieces No.4 (posted 3/23/2010)
11. devotional (posted 4/27/2010) download flac
12. Stellar Rushes (posted 10/21/2009)
13. American Gothic (posted 4/20/2010)
14. Listening (posted 2/9/2010)

Or, you can download the entire album here (52 MB zip file).

PREVIOUS POST: James Beaudreau "American Gothic"
NEXT POST: Andrew Paine & Richard Youngs

TRACK INFO / CREDITS:
Artist: James Beaudreau
Title: "devotional"
Composed, produced, recorded & mixed by James Beaudreau
Mastered by Scott Hull at Masterdisk, April, 2010
All instruments played by James Beaudreau
Recording dates: March 22, 28-29 & May 6, 2009; January 24, 2010
Workbench Recordings post date: April 27, 2010

Now "American Gothic" is pretty different from anything else on Astral Law, and probably from anything I've done on my other two albums too, but it's like falling off a log for me to play this way and I love doing it.

When I was a kid my taste in guitar sounds tended towards the heavily saturated and syrupy, like, say, Eric Johnson's. Not that there's anything wrong with that. But later I started to like the scratchier, gutbucket, mechanically-questionable sounds of players like Sam Brown circa 1974 (who recorded on Keith Jarrett's album Treasure Island using a Pignose amp, or so I've read, and so it sounds), and the various Steely Dan guitarists (Skunk Baxter, Walter Becker, Larry Carlton) and their scuzzy urban guitars. Why? I don't know. Maybe it's that ugly sounds are more characterful, or maybe it's that I know how much harder it is to play well using a chickenscratch sound like that, and I like the chutzpah.

In any case, I hope you like the unsubtle side of the electric guitar, because that's what you'll get with "American Gothic".

This guitar talk's got me thinking. Of Tetuzi Akiyama, the Japanese guitarist who recorded the immortal Don't Forget to Boogie!, a solo electric guitar album consisting solely of boogie riffs, for example. Tetuzi is clearly no stranger to the beauty of the ugly tone. And the chutzpah: the guy made a boogie-rock record with no bass, no drums, no nothing. I couldn't have done it myself, but the fact that Tetuzi did it makes me wonder what else could be done that I might never think of. I've only listened to the album once, but I have an image in my mind of what it sounds like -- just a second of it -- and that's enough that I don't need to hear it again. The imprint was made; the theory tested, and it worked. I do not forget to boogie.

Jeff Beck, too. His new album came out last week, Emotion and Commotion. I've listened to Jeff since I was a kid, and have played his 1975 record Blow by Blow lots of times, but I've never learned any of his solos or even any licks. Yet I think his sense of touch has seeped into my consciousness over the years. This is a guy that makes art out of the detritus of guitar playing: amp buzz, the odd harmonic, the squeak of the strings -- it's all part of his palate and he's been refining that palate for years now. Though Jeff was always masterful, he's a jedi now.

Sonically, Jeff's guitar has gotten pretty sweet sounding in recent times: he's famously indifferent to his equipment, and I wouldn't be surprised if he's mostly plugging into shiny new digital amp and effects emulators rather than good old vacuum tube amps. But he's still winning me over. I haven't heard all of the new album yet, but through the first half of it, no matter how shiny the sound gets, I'm still on the edge of my seat.

PREVIOUS POST: James Beaudreau "Gold Coast"
NEXT POST: James Beaudreau "devotional"

TRACK INFO / CREDITS:
Artist: James Beaudreau
Title: "American Gothic"
Composed, produced, recorded & mixed by James Beaudreau
Mastered by Scott Hull at Masterdisk, April, 2010
All instruments played by James Beaudreau
Recording dates: December 28, 2008; January 3, April 25-26, May 2-3, 2009
Workbench Recordings post date: April 20, 2010

FURTHER (ELECTRIC GUITAR) LISTENING:
Jim Hanas: "Nose" (WBR 14a) and "Nose (Instrumental)" (WBR 14b)
Philip Lynch: "Magnetic Waves" (WBR 17)
James Beaudreau: "Reginald Earth" (WBR 09)
James Beaudreau plays Deerhoof: "Fresh Born" (WBR 28)
Philip Lynch: "It's Just a Room" (WBR 30)

I realized after I finished my third album, Astral Law, that the second, Fresh Twigs, was the most experimental of the three I had made. There isn't really anything like "Gold Coast" on Java St. Bagatelles, or Astral Law, or even on the rest of Fresh Twigs -- but then Fresh Twigs is an album of one-offs.

When I say "experimental" I'm not talking about the genre -- I mean that it really was an experiment, undertaken with an unforeseeable outcome. And though the experiment that interests me the most in "Gold Coast" has to do with time, at least three other qualities of the track were experiments too. It's probably best to leave those qualities unnamed. It'd be a bad idea to discuss the nature of the source recording that I used, too. Unfortunately this makes for a short and obtuse sleeve note, but at least it doesn't tamper with the spirit of the piece.

The difficulty with the word "experimental" is that it's got a chilly feel to it. Lab coats and florescent light and steel tables. Better to say that "Gold Coast" was made by an intuitive process -- but let's face it, nobody's going to take you seriously if you say something as home-grown as that.

I have the most fun when I feel like my two minds -- the rational, organized and diplomatic one -- and the the other -- creative and elemental -- put aside their differences or duke it out (whatever it takes) and make something together. Music is one activity both can regularly agree on -- and finally, after a lot of years, each knows the value of the other.

PREVIOUS POST: Philip Lynch "It's Just a Room"
NEXT POST: James Beaudreau "American Gothic"

TRACK INFO / CREDITS:
Artist: James Beaudreau
Remastered by: Scott Hull at Masterdisk, March 2010
Assembly Dates: January 17 & 19, and May 2, 2008
Workbench recordings post date: April 13, 2010
Originally released on the album Fresh Twigs in 2008.

FURTHER LISTENING:
James Beaudreau: The Leaden Circles
James Beaudreau: Quiver
Jim McAuley & Andrew Pask: Marxophone
James Beaudreau: Nomos-Physis
Jim Hanas: Nose

And then of course when I do catch cold I remember just how much it sucks and then curse myself for having invited it in. Actually, this cycle has repeated enough that, by the age of 38, I've smartened up to the scam. Now I know that if I feel that cold coming on, and I feel good about it, it's time to slow down and get in touch with that smart section of my brain that's been waiting all this time to say "I told you so."

The last time that I had non-cold time to kill was in the break between Christmas and New Year's. I still had some vacation left at my job for some reason, and I realized the stage was perfectly set for an escape from the most boring workweek of the year. Incidentally, it's my wife's busiest time of the year, so I was going to have a lot of time to myself. Naturally, I planned to get tons of stuff done. Record this-and-that-project-that-I've-been-meaning-to-do-forever, tidy up the website, organize the studio, maybe even go to a museum or some other human-like activity. Very little of that happened though.

What I did get was a sort of flushing out of all the chatter that had built up in my noodle for god knows how long: in the absence of the centrifugal force created by my absurd get-it-done gyrations there was nothing to hold all that junk up there. The orbits wobbled, and stretched, and then the flinty little nonsense particles spun out of the system into cold space.

And then I was left with... a blank wall. A crack in the ceiling. The stars, and snow, and a coffee cup on its back.

This back-to-real-space world is the one I'm hearing about in Philip's "It's Just a Room". Now I don't know if that's what he intentionally wrote in there -- even as a "producer" of the track I wouldn't dream of prying into the background story -- I just prefer to have my own relationship with the song. And what I find in this one is a very visceral description of the experience of just being somewhere, and the wonder of it.

I should perhaps point out that this website itself makes for some of that nutty pace I was lamenting up there a few paragraphs ago. But it's not an endeavor I could do without right now. I've got to promote Philip's songs, and my own pieces, and the pieces by the other artists I post on the site. When you listen to as much music as I do -- and believe me, I am an obsessive listener -- you know when you've got something special. It feels right to celebrate good work; you pay your respects. You nap later.

PREVIOUS POST: E. Ryan Goodman "Halcyon Bluff"
NEXT POST: James Beaudreau "Gold Coast"

TRACK INFO / CREDITS:
Artist: Philip Lynch
Title: "It's Just a Room"
Composed by Philip Lynch
Produced, recorded & mixed by James Beaudreau
Mastered by Scott Hull at Masterdisk
Philip Lynch: steel-string acoustic guitar, vocal
James Beaudreau: bass, drums, slide & electric guitars, backup vocals
Release history: Originally released as part of the EP Four Songs (WBR 03) in June 2009. Remixed and remastered in March/April 2010.
Workbench Recordings post date: April 6, 2010

ABOUT THE ARTIST:
Philip Lynch is a musician, graphic artist, and actor living in New York City. Some of his paintings illustrate this website. Visit Philip's MySpace page, for music, blogging, artwork and more.

FURTHER LISTENING:
Philip Lynch: "Magnetic Waves" (WBR 17)
Philip Lynch: "Blue Water" (WBR 07)
Philip Lynch: "The Well" (WBR 21)
Philip Lynch: "Half Empty" (WBR 26)

In music and literature alike, there is a certain tendency to romanticize the idea of living your life in the past. Lying on his bed with his head on his hands, the artist loses sight of the present and roams the wonderlands of his childhood with a starry-eyed gaze. At a dream-like distance and yet as real as any physical object within his reach, it is filled with golden colours, intense aromas and mysterious sounds and every new emotion is sending shivers down his spine.

Nothing in the here can compare to this fantasy of first times. No word can evoke the same meaning, no song conjure up the same magic. Not even an unsuspected kiss or a much-desired caress is capable of arousing the same rush of blood to the head that those clumsy hands of his first love unconsciously released. And so he transforms his guitar into a time machine to take him back to when each moment contained a promise, when days would never end and everything was possible.

Even though I have never been one to glorify the past, the power of nostalgia can be overwhelming. The lamentable loops of William Basinski, the heart wrenching nihilism of Dostoyevsky, the touching tragedy of Once Upon a Time in America -- in the hands of an artful narrator, we can all be moved to tears at the prospect of how far from death we once were and how a single moment can contain the seed for everything that is dear to us. Again and again, these works would confront me with my own history, confront me with long-forgotten faces, left-behind places, records I no longer spin, books I no longer read, situations I can no longer return to and mistakes I am unable to undo. They would confront me with a sudden desire to pack my bags, forsake all rules and routines and head for those undiluted moments of happiness. And the fact that I knew how irrational, impossible and stupidly impulsive this wish was only made things worse.

And so, one random day, I decided to face these demons and pack my bags for real. I took a train to the city in the Netherlands where I was born and wandered though the old centre, which had by now become bustling, busy and bewilderingly modern. I took the ferry to the other side of the river, to the adjacent, much smaller town where I spent the first twelve years of my childhood and which, I only then realized, I hadn't visited for probably just as long. Once I again sat foot on land, I had the strange sensation that I no longer needed to ask any questions. Even though I was, through the distance covered in time, a stranger now, I could walk through these streets as if guided by an inbuilt map. I progressed to the old dam, with its rusty industrial sculptures and watched the giant cargo-ships as they passed by, some of them taking their freight to the dock of the company where my father had worked. I walked down to my old quarter, passed by my former kindergarten, passed by the house where we'd lived, and had lunch at the snack-bar where I would buy ice cream as a little boy. There, at my table, over french fries and soft drinks, I realized there was no pang of nostalgia and there were no painful memories. Instead, sitting on the same red fake-leather bench where I had sat as a little boy, I felt a strange sense of safety. It was then that I realized that the past is not some obscure fairytale-like space in our imagination. We always carry it with us like a compass.

In a way, "Halcyon Bluff" is telling the same story. Again, we see the artist closing his eyes to roam the lands of his past. Again, it is presenting itself to him in all its glory. Trees are green and sumptuous. The air is hot and humid. Mist is rising in the morning. Expectation is in the air. This time, however, the artist cannot stay, nor does he want to. There's no mystery to why things have to end -- they just do. It is no more than a two-minute tale, but Goodman is telling it with a consoling sobriety. It is equally a song about the wonders and the wants of the past, about how there is always a good reason for why things cannot stay the way they were. It is a view from a present in which each moment still contains a promise, days still extend into forever and almost everything is still possible as long as you're not merely living your life in the past. It is about where you come from and what made it beautiful. It is about going back without fear. It is about going forward with that compass in your hand. -- Tobias Fischer

PREVIOUS POST: James Beaudreau "Easy Pieces No.4"
NEXT POST: Philip Lynch "It's Just a Room"

TRACK INFO / CREDITS:
Artist: E. Ryan Goodman
Title: "Halcyon Bluff"
Composed, performed and recorded by E. Ryan Goodman
Mastered by Scott Hull at Masterdisk
Instrumentation: solo Spanish guitar
Workbench Recordings original post date: October 20, 2009
Workbench Recordings remaster post date: March 30, 2010

ABOUT THE ARTIST:
E. Ryan Goodman is a guitarist and composer living in Long Beach, New York. I've known Ryan for a number of years. We first really connected when we discovered we were both fanatical about the pianist Andrew Hill, and could discuss various obscure rock, jazz, and classical albums ad infinitum. It's a pleasure to be able to present this beautiful new composition "Halcyon Bluff" on WBR. There's more to hear: Ryan self-released his first solo album, Under the Lamp on CDR in 2008. Copies are still available -- you can order one, or download the album in mp3 format, and keep up with Ryan's work at his MySpace page, here.-- James Beaudreau

FURTHER LISTENING:
James Beaudreau: Easy Pieces No.4
E. Ryan Goodman: Sun City Flats
James Beaudreau: Pacifico
Philip Lynch: Blue Water
James Beaudreau: Blimp

Workbench Recordings has been online for over six months now -- though it seems to me to have been longer than that. It's not a disparaging comment. It's just that a time-greedy project like this one makes me forget what life was like without it. "What did I do with the time?"

For one thing, I played guitar, which is something I haven't been doing much of in the last six months. Not that the website is to blame exclusively for that. Generally I would get most of my practice time in before work on weekdays, and a couple hours each weekend day. But now those slots are going to the website -- whether it's writing, or working on the covers, or promoting it, or contacting artists, or any number of things. The to-do list grows faster than I can scratch things off.

Truth is, I'm sure I could still find time to play if it were a priority, but it's not. Though I was at the top of my game last summer, and had written a lot of the material that made up the Astral Law album, I look back and I think I was running on fumes. Practicing had become too much of something I felt I needed to do, needed to keep up with, needed to... "Need to" is a bad substitute fuel for what music requires, which is love. The engine can run for a while on need but it's going to seize up eventually.

Why it happened like that I don't know. On the one hand I was having a good time coming up with a series of (for lack of a better word) etudes. "Easy Pieces No.4" is one of these. I was also genuinely enjoying reading some simple classical guitar pieces and transcribing some jazz guitar recordings. But another part of me was getting tired of the same practice routine: time of day, position in the room, the sound in the room. The goal seemed endless: there was no session or gig I was preparing for. I was playing for myself and the microphone for too long. There wasn't enough sunlight; my practice had become hermetically sealed.

So, though the guitar had fallen off because of the website, I realized one day that I felt lighter not worrying about whether I was "keeping up" with whatever phantom goal I had been trying to match. From that point I decided the hell with it, I'm not going to badger myself about it; if I don't want to play, fine; good even!

I've left off practicing one other time in my life -- around 10 years ago, for maybe 6 months, or maybe it was a year -- I don't remember exactly. When I came back to it it was out of desire, and I became absorbed in my playing again, truthfully and happily. And that beginning impetus, the back-to-basics tack I took 10 years ago, had enough combustion to last a decade.

What this new dip means for my long term guitar practice, I don't know. Maybe I'll become re-absorbed in it, maybe I won't. Maybe I'll pursue a different direction. I'm not rushing anything. It feels good to be in between.

This week's track is one of the last solo guitar pieces to come out of last spring/summer. It shares some background with two other Astral Law tracks posted on the site: At the Foothills and Stellar Rushes; both of those started off as "Easy Pieces". And there is one other one too; it'll be posted here in the near future.

TRACK INFO / CREDITS:

Artist: James Beaudreau
Title: "Easy Pieces No.4"
Composed, performed & recorded by: James Beaudreau
Mastered by: Scott Hull at Masterdisk, February 2010
Visit the Masterdisk blog, The Masterdisk Record
Recording date & location: March 2009, Workbench Recordings, NYC
Instrumentation: Solo Spanish guitar
Workbench recordings post date: March 23, 2010

PREVIOUS POST: James Beaudreau Plays Deerhoof's "Fresh Born"
NEXT POST: E. Ryan Goodman "Halcyon Bluff (Remaster)

FURTHER LISTENING:
E. Ryan Goodman: Halcyon Bluff
James Beaudreau: Pacifico
James Beaudreau: Blimp

Zooming up to 2008: Deerhoof were releasing their album Offend Maggie. And they had this promotion where they posted sheet music for their song "Fresh Born" and invited all comers to record a version of the tune, before their own would be released. A pretty fun idea. So I went ahead and did a version. I was getting close to finishing up my album "Fresh Twigs" (lots of freshness in the air, summer '08), and was in a good recording routine anyway. I spent a Saturday evening, most of the day Sunday, and some of Monday morning on the track, from soup to nuts. I had a hard time getting going on it, but I powered through. The surprise was that I liked it, and I still like it fine.

I posted a link to the track on CASHmusic.org's Deerhoof page, with all the other takers, and there it's been since. It still gets downloaded frequently; sometimes through the Cashmusic site but not exclusively from there; I don't know how else people might be accessing it, but they are.

Before presenting it here on Workbench, I remixed "Fresh Born" and sent it to Masterdisk where Scott Hull mastered it, and put "the icing on the cake", as another Masterdisk engineer, Tony Dawsey, says.

This week's cover art comes from a photograph I took in Inwood Hill Park last summer; I was probably lucky that I escaped with the picture, and my sanity. That was a freaky morning. Too much coffee, maybe.

One extra bonus this week: since the Creative Commons license "Fresh Born" is protected under prohibits sale of the versions of the track, this week the FLAC file is a free download. A good chance to try out the FLAC format if you haven't yet. I hope you enjoy my take on "Fresh Born". -- James Beaudreau

TRACK INFO / CREDITS:

Artist: James Beaudreau
Title: "Fresh Born"
File size: mp3: 8.4MB; flac: 27.2MB
Written by: John Dieterich, Satomi Matsuzaki, Ed Rodriguez, and Greg Saunier
Performed & recorded by: James Beaudreau (all instruments)
Mastered by: Scott Hull at Masterdisk, March 2010
Visit the Masterdisk blog, The Masterdisk Record
Recording location: Workbench Recordings, Summer 2008
Workbench recordings post date: March 16, 2010

FURTHER LISTENING:

Philip Lynch: "Blue Water" (WBR 07)
Jim Hanas & James Beaudreau: "Nose" (WBR 14)
Philip Lynch: "Magnetic Waves" (WBR 17)
James Beaudreau: "Astral Law" (WBR 20)
Philip Lynch: "Half Empty" (WBR 26)

'Wick' is the fourth track on James' 2008 album Fresh Twigs. (I have copy #10 out of 250). The track was initially called "Stern Fifths" on a pre-master disc James gave to me. This is a personal and intimate rendering with careful attention to detail played on an old Gibson 330.

"Wick" begins as a curiosity, like waking up [0:00-0:08]. But a dark foreboding feeling enters the picture [0:09- 0:20] prompting further investigation which develops into an exploratory amble. We take a detour into a momentary middle eastern flourish [0:40-0:49] then return to an amber mood [0:50-1:00], sliding up to a jazzy riff [1:01-1:13], followed by a classical figure [1:14-1:37]. The run at the end of the piece reminds me of a progressive rock riff [1:38-1:46]. There are nice runs between blocks of chords. At times medieval, at times jazzy and definitely a uniquely "James' presence. The rhythm of this piece is tricky; between the arpeggiated moments and the chord-to-chord moments, the runs in between chords, sliding moments and harmonics -- it's got it all!

The last harmonics, our payoff, are like a little joke but still not entirely devoid of something lurking beneath the surface. It's been said there's a grain of truth in every joke. I think James understands this in music. The amble, the stroll in this tune comes out of a dark woods and returns there, but by the end of the track we feel better for it and for the climb. The last progression towards triumph; we'll be okay! (Two harmonics at the very end say, or will we?)

James has provided us with a feast. There is a lot of information in "Wick" containing both form and function in a mere two minutes. I warbled and tried to play along to "Wick" as a means to orient myself but ultimately it's not necessary and since I'm not trained in music not fruitful. What we have is a condensed travel-log -- apprehensive at times and dark other times but joyous in the journey always.
--Philip Lynch

TRACK INFO / CREDITS:

Artist: James Beaudreau
Title: "Wick"
Composed, performed & recorded by: James Beaudreau
Mastered by: Scott Hull at Masterdisk, February 2010
Visit the Masterdisk blog, The Masterdisk Record
Recording location: Home recording, fall 2006
Instrumentation: Solo electric guitar
Workbench recordings post date: March 9, 2010
Originally released on the Fresh Twigs album in 2008

FURTHER LISTENING:

James Beaudreau: "Strayhorn" (WBR 23) -- another solo guitar piece from Fresh Twigs

James Beaudreau: "Quiver" (WBR 08) -- solo steel-string guitar with eBow

E. Ryan Goodman: "Sun City Flats" (WBR 19) -- steel-string improv from E. Ryan Goodman

James Beaudreau: "Blimp" (WBR 18) -- lo-fi steel-string guitar improv along the lines of "Wick" from the album Java St. Bagatelles