Description
Synchestra plus DVD. Disc two: 50 minute ‘in studio’ live performance and
‘Storm’ video.
| No | Title | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Let It Roll | 2:52 |
| 2 | Hypergreek | 2:20 |
| 3 | Triumph | 7:08 |
| 4 | Babysong | 5:30 |
| 5 | Vampolka | 1:36 |
| 6 | Vampira | 3:27 |
| 7 | Mental Tan | 2:15 |
| 8 | Gaia | 6:03 |
| 9 | Pixillate | 8:17 |
| 10 | Judgement | 5:55 |
| 11 | A Simple Lullaby | 7:09 |
| 12 | Sunset | 2:31 |
| 13 | Notes from Africa | 7:42 |
| 14 | Sunshine and Happiness | 2:35 |
This one was written in tandem with Alien, as almost a direct response. The original ideas for some of the songs are decades old. (I remember writing the midsection of ‘Triumph’ when I was 15 and working at a sheet metal fabrication shop. The humming of the brake press ‘wrote’ that bit actually)… Anyways, because City was so hostile, I felt I needed to counteract that sentiment with some humanity. Synchestra was written as almost entirely one piece, and it was recorded in a completely piece-meal fashion. We tracked the drums at a big studio after we had demoed the whole record in the Jamspot, but from there, it became my first real ‘engineer’ recording I had done. No additional engineers, so it was trial and error on my part. I wanted to learn how to mix so I could get away from relying on other people that ultimately I ended up consistently dissatisfied with. Beav (Brian Waddell) at this time played guitar and Dave was on keys, and much of it was done in my basement. Steve Vai contributed a solo to ‘Triumph’ and overall, I was really happy with this record. I mixed it over 24 hours at a nice studio, and the mix as a result was pretty rushed and the frequencies are often wrong to my ears. This is one of a few records I recorded on a Digidesign 02, (which I think was a little gross in terms of fidelity), but ultimately, I just hadn’t really ‘figured it out’ yet in terms of compression and eq. The record is fairly ‘sunny’ and counteracts Alien in a lot of ways, yet it was still pretty out-there and in hindsight, I find myself forgetting about this record a fair bit. We took the album footage at the Bloedel garden conservatory in Vancouver (which I’ve always loved, and in itself is a single organism) and the name ‘Synchestra’ came from an old meditation tape I used to listen to. The idea behind Synchestra is that the whole world is a single entity and we are all elements of that.
