21 Jun 2012

Preview #1

As sort of a countdown to RTX, I thought I would start releasing little previews of some of the songs off of our forthcoming album Flying By Wire.

I am not picking these songs in any order. The next one will have a little video to go along. But you gotta start somewhere, and so I picked one of the weirder songs on the record, but with a bit of a story:

A few years ago, I went with Gus and Esther to Sydney and Auckland. While in Auckland, I went to used CD stores foraging for local stuff.  One of the CDs I bought was a compilation of field recordings from rural parts of Southern China released on this awesome NZ record label called Ode Records. (I am a field-recording junkie.)

I completely fell in love with a solo mouth harp piece, and wrote the president of Ode Records who generously gave me permission to use the sample Trocadero record. 

I really wanted to get in touch, or even just to know the name of this guy who did this 4-minute long mouth harp piece that was so beautiful and inspiring, but no one seemed to know his name. 

Oh, right, the preview: Dancing Bull. So this track starts off with the sample (I've included a little of it in the preview), and what follows is Violet, our new keyboardist/guitarist/singer, listening to the field recording, and then playing it on guitar. 

The title of the song, Dancing Bull, comes from the other featured instrument, the venerable Moog Taurus I pedals.