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.

DOWNLOAD FREE FLAC FILE: Pop Song FLAC

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

PREVIOUS POST: Three Is a Green Crown "All the Pretty Horses"

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 2010-07-27T02:45:06Z

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.

DOWNLOAD FREE FLAC FILE: Collodion Error FLAC

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

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

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).

Our next installment will be on May 25. I hope you'll join us. -- James Beaudreau

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

PREVIOUS POST: James Beaudreau "American Gothic"
NEXT POST: Andrew Paine and Richard Youngs "Collodion Error"

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.

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

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

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.

So yes, "Gold Coast" was an experiment, but the result was a romance. I hope that's how it comes across.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

There's a beauty unseen or unrealized lurking everywhere around our reluctant protagonist in "Half Empty". He's declaring neutrality. But he's brandishing the kind of indifference you only earn from riding a ship to the ocean floor.

For whatever he's not interested in feeling, the voice I hear betrays chasms of experience, and from start to finish, "Half Empty" has the feeling of a hard-learned lesson. There's good humor in the song's bright, kick-along cadence. But the percussion borders on... vaudevillian. Is he, or is he not, putting on a show? Just how solo is this monologuist who knows all too well there's an audience measuring him, just beyond the footlights?

Love, when we first reach it, presents transcendent beauty. It's the kind of beauty that's hard to forget once you've seen it -- and there's no doubt that this now-placid figure has seen it. Lyrical e-Bowed guitar seems to stand in for a mournful wind, in memoriam. And it's this contrast that sticks with me the most: the voice of experience vs. the haunting.

Sometimes you embrace someone on the street, and something of their scent -- a cologne, freshly cleaned hair -- clings to your clothes as you walk away, and a day later, this scent has greater meaning. Then there are those objects that absorb our histories and take on lives of their own: the knick-knack we always find a place for, the T-shirt we never throw away. These things remind us of another time but more importantly, another version of ourselves, one with a different purpose, different convictions and a different heart. Maybe we remember beauty, and our former understandings of what it might mean to us, with the kind of nostalgia that lurks here.

This is a survival story, the last words before a hard conversation is (blessedly, finally) over. But the past is all over "Half Empty", dragging at us with a weakening but unforgettable grasp. Call me crazy. I think it's a crazy sentimental tune.

Then again, the best works of art are vessels for our own mythology. We recognize the destination. And we'll all fill in how we got here.
-- Anne DeAcetis

PRODUCER'S NOTE
"Half Empty" was originally released in a different version as part of Philp's EP Four Songs (WBR 03) before this website was launched. (See also "The Well" (WBR 21).) The version posted here has been remixed, and has had additional instrumentation added. All of the new recording took place in the instrumental break in the middle of the tune. The track was then mastered by Scott Hull at Masterdisk. It has definitely never sounded better; we hope you enjoy it.--James Beaudreau

TRACK INFO / CREDITS:

Artist: Philip Lynch
Title: "Half Empty"
Music and lyrics by: Philip Lynch
Produced, recorded & mixed by: James Beaudreau
Mastered by: Scott Hull at Masterdisk
Recording location: Workbench Recordings, Fort George, New York City
Personnel: Philip Lynch: steel-string flat top guitar, vocal; James Beaudreau: eBowed steel string acoustic guitars, electric guitars, Spanish guitar, bass guitar, drums & percussion
Recording dates: October 2008 to February 2009 & February 2010
Release history: Originally released as part of the EP Four Songs (WBR 03) in June 2009. Remixed with additional recording and remastered in February, 2010.
Workbench recordings post date: March 2, 2010

FURTHER LISTENING:
Philip Lynch: "Magnetic Waves" (WBR 17)
Philip Lynch: "Blue Water" (WBR 07)
Philip Lynch: "The Well" (WBR 21)
James Beaudreau: "The Nose (Instrumental)" (WBR 14) (Accessed via Jim Hanas' website.)

I had a couple of advantages when I released my first solo album, Java St. Bagatelles, in 2006. I had been a member of the band The Billy Nayer Show -- who had established an audience over the course of a decade before I even joined. I had also written some record and concert reviews for a few years. I was armed with a few contacts in the press, some knowledge of how the reviews machine worked, and some folks that would give my album a shot based on my work with a band with a reserve of goodwill.

Even so, trying to get new, original music heard is not easy, especially when it's a lo-fi album of genre-defiant solo improvised acoustic guitar music. It's not easy to find listeners for regular songs, let alone stuff that most people think is weird. But I had some luck, and got some reviews, and sold a few -- and I do mean a few -- copies of the CD. More importantly, I met people, made friends and alliances, and heard some musicians I might not have heard had it not been for the release.

It wasn't all cotton candy and rainbows though. Around release time, I was soliciting writers for reviews, many of whom I had never spoken to before. One fellow accepted a review copy and soon wrote to tell me that he could not review my CD. On the upside, he thought that my playing didn't sound like anyone else, which is a fine compliment since there are a bazillion guitarists in the world. Nonetheless, coverage would not be forthcoming; he would not publish negative reviews. It was down to "the recording quality of some pieces, and playing errors that you chose to keep".

Playing errors?

OK, there's some rough playing on the record, sure. You could call some parts sloppy -- I've called it that myself -- but, to my mind, always to a musical end. But "errors"? I never heard that before. I never even thought that before.

Despite the horrific comment, this was clearly a well-intentioned guy. You can tell because he not only listened to the album, but he took the time and effort to give a response, which most people don't do. But good intentions or not, since then, "playing errors" has stuck in my mind: part gripe, part badge of honor, part metaphysical conundrum.

You can't know how people receive your work. You generally don't know if it's received at all. And if it is, it will be in as many different ways as there are people to hear it. My thinking is this: since you've got no control over it, it's not worth thinking much about. But it's nonetheless a compulsively considerable topic you have to train yourself to exert some discipline against. The choicest comments (naturally, the negative ones have more truck) slip into in a mental file dedicated to the doomed task of constructing a composite model of what my work looks and sounds like to other people. Stupid file. Despite its uselessness, it's still open -- but it gathers more dust as I get older and wiser and more jaded.

This week's track is called "Reginald Earth". Let me say, explicitly, that not only have I chosen to create this work precisely as it is, but that there are no errors contained in its compass, and that every note has been considered, is intentional, and has been examined with an electron microscope and laser microphone, tested through Reed-Solomon error correction code, shot into space and evaluated through a powerful telescope, and weighed with a postage meter.

Fine, I haven't done any of that. It's a piece of music that I worked on until it sounded right and finished. Actually, it's my favorite track out of the fourteen that were to comprise the Astral Law album. I hope you enjoy it. And if you don't, well, I don't want to hear about it. -- James Beaudreau

TRACK INFO / CREDITS:

Artist: James Beaudreau
Title: "Reginald Earth"
Produced, composed, performed & recorded by James Beaudreau
Mastered by : Scott Hull at Masterdisk
Recording Location: Workbench Recordings, NYC
Instrumentation: flat-top acoustic guitar, electric guitar
Recording Date: May 4, 2009
Original Workbench Recordings Post Date: October 13, 2009; remastered version posted February 23, 2010

FURTHER LISTENING:
"Goodmorning Junction" (WBR 11)
"Strayhorn" (WBR 23)
"Nommos-Physis" (WBR 22)

I was glad I did. I loved the album; still do. Unfortunately, the review was not one of my finest journalistic moments, but at least my enthusiasm for the album came through, and, it gave me a reason to talk to Jim over email. It wasn't long after that that I sent Jim a copy of Java St Bagatelles -- and his, and his late wife Nica's, enthusiasm for the album did a lot to bolster my confidence. We've been keeping tabs on each others' work since. And we've been discussing, since September, what we might release of his on Workbench.

A few months ago Jim mentioned that he was working with clarinet and saxophone player Andrew Pask and pointed me to his MySpace page. There was (and is) some great stuff there. I was particularly taken with "Rest of the Skeleton" which is a crazy combination of reeds and brass and squelching, burbling, scratching electronics. Andrew's stuff is really interesting.

So when Jim & Andrew presented me with this recording from a January gig at the Eagle Rock Arts Center in California I was doubly pleased.

Jim plays a marxophone on the recording (hence the title): a fretless zither instrument that's sort of like an autoharp. It's popularly known, if at all, for its use on The Doors' "Alabama Song (Whiskey Bar)". Jim also creates the real-time audio processing you hear via software Andrew wrote using the MaxMSP programming language. Andrew says, "the system is designed to have a slightly unpredictable output, one which is not known from the start of the piece, and in this way the software partly becomes a participant in the improvisation." Andrew plays the bass clarinet throughout.

"Marxophone" is a beautiful piece, and I'm delighted to be able to present it on Workbench Recordings. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. -- James Beaudreau

TRACK INFO / CREDITS:

Artist: Jim McAuley & Andrew Pask
Title: "Marxophone"
Recording Location: Eagle Rock Arts Center, Eagle Rock, CA
Recording Engineer: Katy Wood
Mastered by : Scott Hull at Masterdisk
Recording Date: January 3, 2010
Workbench Recordings Post Date: February 16, 2010

ABOUT THE ARTISTS:
Jim McAuley is a veteran improv and session guitarist based in Los Angeles. He's recorded with everyone from Pat Boone and Frank Sinatra to John Carter and The Acoustic Guitar Trio with Nels Cline and the late Rod Poole.

Andrew Pask is a clarinet and saxophone player originally from New Zealand. He has lived in the Los Angeles since 1999, and works during the day for audio and video software developers Cycling '74, and in the evening as a contributer to the varied creative music scene in LA. He has released and appeared on albums from LA labels pfMENTUM and Nine Winds.

FURTHER ARTIST INFORMATION:
Jim's Facebook page
Andrew's website
Two Jim & Andrew rehearsal mp3s for download at Kaleidacousticon
An extensive interview with Jim at Paris Transatlantic Magazine
Jim's The Ultimate Frog album reviewed in The New York Times
The Acoustic Guitar Trio album Vignes at Long Song Records
Jim's The Ultimate Frog (duo album) at Amazon
Jim's Gongfarmer 18 (solo album) at Indie Jazz
Andrew Pask/Jonathan Besser's album Griffith Park on pfMENTUM records
Zoom Music: three solo Jim tracks for free streaming at Long Song Records
Andrew with Jeff Kaiser (The Choir Boys) CD at Indie Jazz

FURTHER LISTENING ON WORKBENCH:
E. Ryan Goodman: Sun City Flats (WBR 19)
James Beaudreau: "Quiver" (WBR 08)
Jim Hanas: "Nose" (WBR 14)
James Beaudreau: "Listening" (WBR 24)

TRACK INFO / CREDITS:

Artist: James Beaudreau
Title: "Listening"
Composed, performed & recorded by: James Beaudreau
Mastered by: Scott Hull at Masterdisk, January 2010
Recording location: Workbench Recordings, NYC
Instrumentation: Spanish guitars, percussion
Workbench recordings post date: February 9, 2010
"Listening" is track 14 on the album Astral Law.

FURTHER LISTENING:
James Beaudreau: "Signal Stations" (WBR 16)
James Beaudreau: "Quiver" (WBR 08)
E. Ryan Goodman: "Halcyon Bluff" (WBR 10)
Philip Lynch: "Blue Water" (WBR 07)
James Beaudreau: "The Leaden Circles" (WBR 05)