Welcome to the second post of the Workbench Recordings netlabel / multimedia-project. If this is your first visit, you might want to check out the introduction to last week's post, "At the Foothills" and/or the About page for some preliminary information about what the site is and how it works. This week's track is the second from my album Astral Law, which is being released serially on this site.
Sitting down to write about "The Leaden Circles", it occurs to me that I have at least three different starting points when it comes to making a recording. The first puts the act of recording at the service of something that already exists, whether it be a thought-out composition or (oddly but true) an improvisation. This is the standard way that recording is used -- to capture a subject, like a camera. In the second approach there is no particular musical material to train on at the beginning -- the germ of the track is an image, feeling, mood or abstract idea. It is invented through the process of recording; in a way, the subject of the work is the recording itself.
Though there's enough to distinguish those two approaches from each other, I find that in practice there is often a blend; in the process of building a piece I may use one approach now, another later. Yet when I think about each of the tracks that I've made in the past few years, I can sort most of them easily into one camp or another. Last week's post "At the Foothills", for instance, is a product of the former, camera-like process of recording, and this week's "The Leaden Circles" is squarely in the latter, scene-building camp.
The third style I mentioned doesn't have an example on the site yet -- more about that next week.
There are two 20th C. novels referenced in this week's post, the first of which I read for the first time not long before the recording took place. The second novel I read when I was a teenager, and re-read as I was launching the website. It was a much different experience the second time; instead of preoccupation with the humor, beautiful language and fantasy, I found a cynical center and was often surprised by its cruelty.
"The Leaden Circles" was the first creative work I did following the death of my close friend Alex Dulberg in November 2008. It was recorded on Monday, December 22 which is, coincidentally, my birthday. The singing bowl struck at the beginning of the track, and ringing throughout, was a gift from Al, who had a collection of singing bowls and a fine appreciation for well-made things.
-- James Beaudreau
