Welcome to Workbench Recordings' final post of 2009, our 16th since the site launched back on September 8. Instead of posting something new today, I thought we'd finish the year where we started, with the track and artwork for "At the Foothills". There's a nice symmetry to the choice, but that wasn't the main reason for it. The overriding factor will have to remain a secret until sometime in January. But I promise it will be very interesting, and perhaps surprising news.
Workbench, from the beginning, was planned to cover an eclectic, broad range of music -- and it'll only get broader in 2010. Today, though, let's take a look back at where the site's been so far. Instead of going in chronological order, I'll group the releases according to some rough categories.
SING A SIMPLE SONG
WEEK 13: Philip Lynch's "Magnetic Waves"
"Magnetic Waves" was the first, and to date only, vocal song posted on Workbench, and it was a strong start for what I hope to be a more regularly featured genre in 2010. It's one of the more popular tracks on the site, which is no surprise -- Philip's style is unique: his songs are catchy, harmonically interesting & lyrically rewarding. We'll hear more from him in the coming months. Incidentally, the artwork used for this track was initially in the running for the cover of Philip's EP Four Songs, but with the alternate color scheme shown above. One other note: the short outtake guitar solo included in that post was set up for streaming only, but if you'd like to download it, here's a link: Magnetic Waves Outtake
ALCHEMICAL EXPERIMENTS
WEEK 2: "The Leaden Circles"
WEEK 3: "The Mirror Wall"
WEEK 6: "Reginald Earth"
WEEK 12: "Signal Stations"
All four of these tracks are part of my Astral Law album, and each one features different layering -- or as its commonly called in recording parlance, overdubbing -- techniques. (I go with "layering", myself, because the word is more tactile and fits my feeling of the process better.) "The Leaden Circles" is a mini tidal wave of sound, built mostly out of found objects and four very insistent classical guitars. "The Mirror Wall" puts two complimentary images of the Spanish guitar into a stereo collage with the idea that sometimes the best conversations have a little tension in them. "Reginald Earth" presents a juxtaposition of a freely expressive bottleneck guitar against a more reserved electric guitar. You might think that the electric guitar would be the brasher of the two, but that's a bit of a stereotype, isn't it? "Signal Stations" is another dialogue, this time, an energetic and singleminded classical guitar is accompanied by a lone splash cymbal which (somewhat heroically) endeavors to tag along and make conversation. These tracks may be a little unusual on the surface, but really, at bottom, I think they're pretty conventionally expressive pieces of music. But that's me.
WEEK 5: "Quiver"
WEEK 8: "Goodmorning Junction"
WEEK 14: "Blimp"
WEEK 15: E. Ryan Goodman's "Sun City Flats"
These solo improvisations were not necessarily the most popular entries in the Workbench catalog (with the exception of "Sun City Flats" which has done very well in its first week) but the feedback I got about these tracks was some of the most enthusiastically positive I received about anything on the site. Personally, I'm real happy with the three tracks listed here -- particularly "Blimp", whose existence still surprises me. (That's an alternate cover for "Blimp" above, by the way.) "Goodmorning Junction" is a track that pivots on two moments. The first is at 2:45, where the generally sunny atmosphere darkens, and the second is at 3:15 where... I'm not exactly sure how to describe what the music does there, nor do I really want to. It's the moment that makes the track tick, one of those complex things that happens in improvisations, but rarely in a composition. Or at least not in any compositions I've made yet. "Quiver" is another story with a long development: its defining trait only appears at 2:30, near the end. If there's depth in "Quiver"'s beginning, it's thanks to its ending.
