The rewards of Sisyphus.

Rolling the rock. Up and up. That's what it feels like sometimes keeping a band together and keeping material flowing, the excitement fresh and the many egos content. It is very tough and very tricky. This time however it seems like an exception to the rule.

The writing for the CD is well over half done; we are resurrecting a couple of old tunes I had written years ago (decades even) along with some brand new ditties fresh off the pencil. Now that the band is a four-piece, it makes a lot of arranging decisions and production directions easier to assess. The problem earlier incarnations of the band had was that often times we would create something in the studio that was almost impossible to re-create live. On the other hand, when we did have a larger ensemble other songs that didn't really require that many people, usually had to be re-arranged.

In this case however, we have found a happy medium in terms of size and have also discovered we have a strong improvisational sense. Often when we rehearse we often let ourselves take some part or section and jam on it. That has yielded some very interesting asides and alternative arrangements.

For example, at our last two gigs (Rosfest after-hours party and Quebec's Ninkasi gig) we brought out a new tune that was only several weeks old. It started life as a gtr-synth ditty (more demoing patches than actual composition) and gradually evolved into a showcase for Ange's vocals and sax. I wrote the basic melody and structure with my gtr-synth (A Brian Moore thingy which can switch from synth to gtr etc.) and my new pedal board (thanks to Rob Dontigny for that) and brought that to the band. We played it through and everyone added elements to their parts. After several rehearsals the tune had transformed into an alternative-indy type song with a Pink Floyd-like vamp. Very interesting.

This actually accented the idea I had had for this album. We are a prog band so it is almost incumbent upon us to have some epic tunes (that and the fact I LIKE epic tunes). I hear a lot of criticisms of "padding" and "lack of discretion" levelled at bands with epic tunes, as if to say that if the band had better chops, editing skills and taste, the tunes wouldn't have been epic but rather a succinct songy-song that actually works, instead of a "cobbled together" sprawling mess. I have read many threads on Progressive Ears that state that an CD with 40 minutes of well written music is better than 70 minutes of good tunes and not-so-good padding.

Well I like songy-songs and I like epics (and I often wonder just how familiar people are with the suite form) so we decided to cater to everyone! What we intend to do is around 40 minutes of songy-songs (and by that I mean non-epic tunes both vocal and instrumental) and then a roughly 30 minute suite (note I say suite and not the popular but ultimately meaningless "epic form"). For people who hate padding they can eject the CD before the big EPIC.
For those who like their CDs packed to the brim they can listen on. Seems fair eh?


So the songy-songs will have a loose relationship to the albums title ("We Are In The Time Of Evil Clocks" in case you've forgotten) and the epic is tentatively titled "The Discovery of Witchcraft". The term is not my own (are any?) rather it is a title of a manifesto written in 1584 by Reginold Scot. I don't know how much actual stuff we'll take from the manisfesto itself (other than the name of course) but along with Scot we do intend to use a lot of verses from Ben Jonson's The Masque of Queens.

I am a HUGE Robertson Davies fan and of course in his book, "A Mixture of Frailties" one of the characters (Giles Revelstoke) is a composer who has a piece that uses Scot and Jonson and is coincidentally called "The Discoverie of Witchcraft". His piece is angular but apparently doesn't use "wrong-note modernism" whereas mine is angular and abounds in it. I use 12 tone rows a lot in this one (although they are far from modern so I suppose only the "wrong-note" aspect is true).

As an aside, I once had an idea to use another Robertson Davies idea; the concept of the Seven Laughters. In The Lyre of Orpheus, the character Maria, while waiting to fall asleep, is worried that her academic prowess is being chipped away by a comfortable marriage. To assuage herself she reviews some of the learning she has acquired. She dredges from her memory a creation myth called The Seven Laughters of God. As she is a Rabelaisan scholar, I thought the Seven Laughters was some monkish writing (obviously I am NOT a Rabelaisan scholar). As it turns out, I am not the only one inspired by Davies, as painter F. Scott Hess has a fairly famous series of paintings called "The Seven Laughters of God" (he doesn't hesitate to credit the idea to Davies and although he gets the right trilogy, he names the wrong book). Apparently it is an Egyptian creation myth. Who knew? (no-one I suspect).

In any event " The Discovery of Witchcraft" is coming along beautifully; the trick is to try and limit myself to something that is playable by four-pieces live, although, like Gentle Giant say, I have no real objections to re-arranging a studio construct for live performances leaving out all the many overdubs and ancillary counter-point parts.

So...with any luck this venture will be something in the nature of a reward for old Sisyphus. When he reaches the peak this time he can sit back and smoke a butt and watch the sunset.