Here’s Side 4 of the studio production notes for the 2022 Church of Hed album, The Father Road. On this installment, we dive into the recording of this Lincoln Highway aural travelogue from the mountains of Western Pennsylvania to its ending at Times Square and sea beyond. The prologue of this series analyzes our studio setup, recording approach, and the hardware and software used on the album. It also includes background information on the overall Rivers of Asphalt concept. Read it, if this all seems a bit confusing!
One knob to rule them all! Photo by Angela Williams.
In addition to the prologue, The Father Road’s recording notes span four sides, almost like a vinyl edition of the album that will probably never happen. Nevertheless, the metaphor works well for splitting this collection of notes into five parts.
A Ship In The Mountains serves as a requiem for the S.S. Grand View Ship Hotel located along the Lincoln Highway a few miles west of Bedford, PA. Like many cool spots along this nation’s two-lane rivers of asphalt, the building of the of the Interstate (in this case the execrable Pennsylvania Turnpike) served as the death knell for the hotel. Each time we drove past the site when on tour, we made sure to stop and pay our respects.
The track itself is another golden oldie, originally considered for Rivers of Asphalt. In fact, I used the chord progression from this composition in Trace The Rubicon from Electric Sepulcher. The coda of the piece is essentially an elegy for the Grand View with its delayed piano melody. The Yamaha MM8 combines with the classic Line 6 DL4 and Elektron Analog Drive, providing us with a bespoke grungy piano sound. Also look for a picture of the grand view beyond the hotel during the coda.
17. The Many Souls Of Byberry 04:49
Another track from The Father Road that speaks to a specific location, The Many Souls Of Byberry memorializes the Philadelphia State Hospital at Byberry, in the Northeast section of the city on the Lincoln Highway. One of the country’s first mental asylums, it stayed in operation until 1990. Pennsylvania’s Benjamin Rush State Park currently resides on some of the hospital’s original grounds.
This song mixes subtle influences of psychedelia and Philadelphia soul with a 7/8 rhythm inspired by Chris Squire’s excellent track, Lucky Seven, from Fish Out Of Water, which ranks as the greatest solo album ever released by a member of YES. Dink (Stan Lyon) did a great job coming up with a bass part inspired by his one true musical hero. The hazy ambience in the bridge section provides an elegy for those lost souls.
18. Approaching Gotham 02:24
Approaching Gotham offers another piano interlude as The Father Road approaches the ending of our aural journey. As such, it combines with Sierra Ascent 1 to provide a sense of symmetry to the album’s composition. Also listen to the dark ambient sound of the Interstates paralleling our trip along the old road.
The inclusion of organ on this track probably pays tribute to Van Der Graaf Generator. This makes sense, as Hugh Banton and Peter Hammill are probably my biggest keyboard influences not named (The Prodigal) Jay Swanson. Our bespoke organ sound mixes a patch I created years ago on the Kawai K5000 with an organ patch from the Waldorf Micro Q. Of course, the Moog Sub 37 serves up that hot synth effects action.
19. The Palisades 02:36
The New Jersey bluffs overlooking Manhattan are known as The Palisades. This track slows down the pattern from Avoiding Toll Roads At Night, with a slightly funkier beat as we approach the end of the Lincoln Highway. The 6/8 rhythm supports that classic Bruford trap kit style, with those rim shots still very possible on my TrapKAT.
For the lead synth sound, we combined the Korg Z1 and the Modal Electronic Skulpt SE, a different approach than our usual MoogCoast. These two synths blend well together, with a razor sharp lead sound. A synth effect from the Moog Sub 37 makes an appearance during the track’s ending, in concert with the tympani from Spitfire Audio’s Hans Zimmer Percussion library.
20. Times Square And The Shining Sea 03:37
Times Square And The Shining Sea concludes The Father Road as The Lincoln Highway terminates in Manhattan. This is another song written during the initial Rivers of Asphalt composing sessions, as it restates the theme from the album opener, Skyline. However, the coda of the track returns to the sea, or at least Long Island Sound, as we hear the album’s Midwest motif for the last time. The ambient mood of the ending also hearkens back to the fog-bound beginning of Golden Gate, thousands of miles – and 72 minutes – earlier.
In the end, The Father Road is effectively a 74-minute composition. When combined with Rivers of Asphalt, the entire piece provides a nearly two-and-a-half hour aural travelogue chronicling a surreal journey down two of America’s classic old roads. Be sure to revisit these roads and albums, time and time again.
Check out the other installments of the series cover the recording of Church of Hed – The Father Road!
Side 3 of the studio production notes for the 2022 Church of Hed album, The Father Road, covers the recording of this aural travelogue from Western Illinois to the Appalachian range. Check out the prologue, where we analyze our studio setup, recording approach, and the hardware and software used on the album. The prologue also includes background on the overall Rivers of Asphalt concept.
More fun with the Alternate Mode TrapKAT. Photo by Angela Williams
In addition to the prologue, the recording notes for The Father Road span four sides, ironic considering no desire on our end to release a vinyl edition of the album. Nevertheless, it serves nicely for splitting these notes into five parts.
Open Road Illinois LH essentially restates the motif of the original Open Road Illinois from Rivers of Asphalt. However, since the LH covers fewer miles in Illinois compared the Route 66, the track sports a shorter length. The absence of the original’s Berlin School synth freakout keeps things more concise.
Here’s the original 2010 video from Rivers of Asphalt.
In addition to the relative brevity, Open Road Illinois LH boasts a more intense performance of the piano-powered 5/8 pattern. A Moog synth melody also adds to the track’s sense of propulsion. I improvised the coda based on the breakdown from the original version before that track descends into the synth freakout.
12. Plainfield Crossroads 03:38
The Lincoln Highway and Route 66 cross paths in Plainfield, Illinois; even sharing the same roadway for a few blocks. Plainfield Crossroads marks the occasion with a short synth-based interlude featuring an LFO-driven Moog Sub 37 patch and the Make Noise 0-Coast, per usual. The combined MoogCoast remains my main synth for leads, sequences, and arpeggiations, with the 0-Coast effectively serving as a third oscillator.
Here’s the studio version.
And a live in-studio version!
After two “verses” of the piece an arpeggiation appears, allowing for a restatement of the Midwest motif that first appeared at the end of Prairie Waves. For this arpeggiated take, the motif chord progression sports the combination of the Korg Z1 and the Streichfett, creating a bespoke string synth sound as opposed to piano and organ. This modern sonic approach better serves to document the old road across the southern suburbs of Chicago.
13. Avoiding Toll Roads At Night 03:01
The interstate from the Chicago Skyway to the Indiana Toll Road remains one of the worst stretches of highway in the country. Is there a better reason to traverse Northern Indiana on a nighttime journey along the Lincoln Highway? Old roads offer the best opportunity to truly understand the land, as opposed to arriving as quickly as possible.
After an opening of spacey road ambience, Avoiding Toll Roads At Night features a fast DrumBrute pattern with kinetic electro trap kit drumming overdubs. Synth melodies from the MoogCoast continue the evolving story of our surreal road trip before ending in a blaze of string synth, as we prepare to enter Ohio. The piano-based chord and rhythm sequence returns later along the journey when The Father Road reaches New Jersey.
14. The Red Brick Road 05:01
The chord progressions and song structure from The Red Brick Road were written for a track from Rivers of Asphalt that didn’t make the album. The melodies are new; featuring a mix of MoogCoast and an electric piano from the Yamaha MM8 run through an Elektron Analog Drive for a measure of grit.
The long coda from this track remains one of my favorite sections from The Father Road. The trumpets last seen in the valleys of California in Sierra Ascent 1 finally return along with a distorted piano pattern. I originally planned on having Stan or someone provide an epic guitar solo over it, but went with the composed melody in the end.
15. Flying Teapots Over The Alleghenies 04:18
Flying Teapots pays tribute to the World’s Largest Teapot which sits along the side of the Lincoln Highway in Chester, West Virginia. Once again, the old road begins climbing the mountains, with the range being the Alleghenies. As such, the track features the same drum machine beat from Sierra Ascent 2 and Wasatch Descent, with a slightly different bass synth line.
Ultimately, this slow jamming groove features a spacey piano with a reverb contributing to a sonic vibe that simply welcomes you to crawl inside. Lately, I’ve been playing a version of Sierra Ascent 2 and Flying Teapots as one long jam. Look for it in a future live video from Church of Hed.
Check out the other installments of the series cover the recording of Church of Hed – The Father Road!
Here’s Side 2 of the studio production notes for the 2022 Church of Hed album, The Father Road, an aural travelogue tracing the Lincoln Highway from San Francisco to New York City. Check out the prologue, where we cover the studio setup, our recording philosophy, as well as the hardware and software gear used for making the album. The prologue also includes background information on the entire Rivers of Asphalt project.
Fun with the Moog Sub 37 synthesizer. Photo by Angela Williams.
We separated these recording notes for The Father Road into four sides, ironic considering the lack of a vinyl release of the album. So dive right in to learn about the production approach of this double album, had we released it on vinyl.
Side 1 offers insights on the album from the Pacific Ocean outside of San Francisco Bay to the desert border between Nevada and Utah. This article covers the production from Utah to the Mississippi River when the LH crossed into Illinois. Side 3 takes us through Illinois all the way to the foothills of the Appalachians. Side 4 covers the LH from Bedford, PA to Times Square and beyond.
6. Salt And Snow (2:37)
The salt and snow of Utah highlight the Lincoln Highway’s pathway through the state. This track began on the iPad using a string patch from Garage Band. I created the initial chord progression years ago and thought it worked well as an interlude when traveling through the Salt Lake City area on the way to the Wasatch Mountains.
Playing around with a few delayed piano ideas inspired some of the few overdubs on this piece. Reversing the audio on the piano track added a welcome psychedelic sense to the proceedings. Other overdubs, especially Stan Lyon’s trippy e-Bow guitar serve as additional scenery as we approach the Wasatch range.
7. Wasatch Descent (2:16)
The track takes the mountain motif (and drumbeat) used on Sierra Ascent 2 and effectively flips it. It serves as an interlude as we prepare to cross the State of Wyoming at nighttime. Stan provides an absolutely bizarre guitar solo to go along with his bass work.
Even though the Arturia DrumBrute pattern is in 4/4, I mostly played a 3/4 drum beat on the track. Polyrhythms when traveling old roads like the Lincoln Highway remain fun. This mountain beat returns in another slightly altered format – and a different bass synth sequence – when traversing the Alleghenies later in The Father Road.
8. Under Wyoming Stars (5:11)
What eventually became Under Wyoming Stars first appeared as a sequence using Arturia’s excellent CS-80 V synth plugin. Soon after deciding to develop the piece for the Wyoming section of The Father Road, Stan and I crafted a few ambient overdubs, him on guitar and bass in addition to me on synth. However, over time, this track seemed less inspiring compared to the rest of the album.
I changed things somewhat by adding a “sequenced” bassline using the Farfisa plugin from Arturia’s V Collection. Finally, the piece found its sonic home and remains one of my favorite tracks on the album. However, this new part altered what served as a chord progression on the track.
Stan’s original bassline didn’t fit and he never made it back to record a new one. However, I kept our original ambient overdubs as they still worked. Copious amounts of dreamy reverb (from Valhalla DSP and Eventide’s Blackhole) give this track a sense of the lonely two-lane under the nighttime stars.
9. Prairie Waves (3:37)
As the Lincoln Highway crosses the Great Plains, the music needed to take into account those wide open spaces. Additionally, an obvious influence of American progressive rock also came to the fore, namely Kansas and their main composer, Kerry Livgren. The track Prairie Waves embraces those influences in spades, with its mix of piano, Moog synthesizer, and the Waldorf Streichfett string synth. All three made up crucial components within Kansas’s sound, with the ARP String Ensemble replacing our modern Waldorf.
The rhythm section parts allowed Stan and myself to also return to our prog rock roots. Yes’s classic pairing of Chris Squire and Bill Bruford remain our two biggest influences on bass and drums, respectively. In the end, Prairie Waves provides a concise three-minute slab of prog, appropriate for a concept album tracing an old transcontinental road through the plains.
Note the track’s coda which serves as an introduction to The Derecho and marking the first appearance of the midwestern motif on the album. That motif gets repeated a few times throughout the rest of the composition, finally ending over Long Island Sound in Times Square And The Shining Sea.
10. The Derecho (3:38)
At one time, I considered combining Prairie Waves and The Derecho into one track. However, the entire album is made up of two to three-minute vignettes and interludes with the exception of The Loneliest Road. As such, keeping the two separate made more sense. With repeated listens, the sharing of common motifs, chord progressions, and melodies throughout The Father Road become more apparent.
The sonic palette for The Derecho also draws from 70s prog rock, combining piano, electric piano, strings, and analog synth effects. The ending section expresses the time when a derecho scraped across Iowa in August of 2020. Like Prairie Waves, this track also provides a hint of country music underneath that prog veneer. Middle-American comfort music for progressive rock fans.
Check out the other installments of the recording notes for the Church of Hed album, The Father Road.
Welcome to Side 1 of the studio production notes for the 2022 Church of Hed album, The Father Road. Check out the prologue, where we cover the studio setup, our recording philosophy, as well as the hardware and software gear used on the album. The prologue also includes background information on the entire Rivers of Asphalt project.
Paul on the kit. Image by Angela Williams.
We separated these recording notes for The Father Road into four sides, ironic considering the lack of a vinyl release of the album. So feel free to dive right in to learn about the production approach of this double album.
The Sea And Golden Gate begins in the fog-laden seascape outside of San Francisco and its famous bay. The swirly strings and synths transverse the Golden Gate, leading to the syncopated intro: one of the first pieces written for the Rivers of Asphalt project nearly twenty years ago. Notably, Spitfire Audio’s top-shelf sample libraries make their first of many appearances during the brooding ambience of the intro.
The meat of this track underwent different changes over the last few years during its arrangement and recording. Transposing the root bass note throughout the track added some necessary tension and depth to the proceedings, while the generally busy nature of the piece reflects the Lincoln Highway traveling through San Francisco itself. I held back on adding a separate drum track to foster a minimalist approach to the mixing, but I sometimes want to go back and add some overdubs. Music is mutable after all. By the way, note the fortuitous accident of the track length!
2. Sierra Ascent 1 (2:48)
We considered combining the three Sierra tracks into one, but ultimately decided to keep them separate. All three leverage a similar chord structure – all four California tracks do in a sense – with this first version focused on solo piano, road atmospherics, and eventually a melody using a trumpet from Spitfire Audio’s LABS.
In fact, the recording of Sierra Ascent 1 happened last since I wanted a mellow interlude between San Francisco and climbing the Sierras. I played the chord progression from the in-progress Sierra Ascent 2 and wrote and overdubbed the trumpet melody. This melody reappeared on Sierra Ascent 2, played by the Moog Sub 37 MIDI’d with a Make Noise 0-Coast – the “MoogCoast” –. A bit of road atmospherics from the Modal Electronics Skulpt SE finished out the overdubs on this track.
3. Sierra Ascent 2 (2:18)
On the album, I wanted to use a similar motif for the mountain sections of The Father Road: effectively the Sierras, the Wasatch, and the Alleghenies. After all, it’s the same Lincoln Highway. It needed to be something with a swampy drum machine pattern allowing a Levon Helm-inspired groove over the top. A sense of climbing was also important. The Arturia DrumBrute analog drum machine provided the right feel and sound, with Acustica’s Cream plugin offering the old-school tube EQ.
The MoogCoast handled both the synth bass and lead roles. Stan Lyon’s bass work served as the special sauce for this groovy ascent on the LH to Truckee. The crest of the Sierras awaits us.
4. Sierra Crest (3:49)
The bulk of Sierra Crest appeared suddenly out of an improvisation during one session. A fortuitous Moog arpeggiation serves as the pulse of the track. The Waldorf Streichfett MIDI’d with the Korg Z1 restates that same California chord progression heard in the previous three tracks.. XILS-Lab’s XILS 4 shined in the role of analog-sounding synth effects overdubs.
The relative simplicity of this track made mixing an ease and it remains my favorite track on The Father Road. Real-time synth improv as found on Sierra Crest always serves as a respite compared to our pieces featuring more left-brained composition. It just might be my new focus moving forward. Still, I’ve had a difficult time trying to perfectly recreate the Moog arpeggiation when playing this track live in the studio.
5. The Loneliest Highway (8:39)
The album now travels the Lincoln Highway on Nevada’s famous Loneliest Highway at nighttime under Nevada stars. This track shares a sonic palette with Rivers of Asphalt’s Enchanted Mesa, which transverses Route 66 in the New Mexican desert. On both, a minimal bass synth sequence serves as a bed for a landscape filled with droning sounds and effects. The Moog Sub 37 provided that sequence on The Father Road track.
As work on the track continued, a critical change in the sequence and the delay time on the Moog MF Delay pedal happened, enhancing the sense of loneliness throughout the entire track. Stan rerecorded his trippy bass chord part using a similar technique as the first version of the track. A distorted piano – thanks to the Elektron Analog Drive pedal – and the standard array of string synth and effects round out The Loneliest Highway’s sonics.
Stay tuned for the final three installments to the recording notes chronicling the production of Church of Hed’s The Father Road.
Editor’s Note: Jerry Kranitz is an aficionado of spacerock and psychedelic music, as evidenced by his work with Aural Innovations for nearly two decades. He is now focused on a new book: Cassette Culture: Homemade Music and the Creative Spirit in the Pre-Internet Age chronicling the underground cassette music scene. It’s scheduled for publication in 2019 by Vinyl-on-Demand. Yeah!
Church of Hed – Sandstoned. Cover photo by Dan Engelhardt.
Church of Hed is Quarkspace founding member Paul Williams’ solo project that he has immersed himself in since the mothership band ceased activities. Sandstoned is the new album and is what Williams describes as “a surrealistic window on an early 80s evening on the North Coast of Ohio. Psychedelic postcards sent forward in time.”
I’ve been following Williams’ music since first discovering Quarkspace in the mid-90s, and I’ll say right out of the chute that I think this is one of his best solo efforts. We’ve got bits of Quarkspace, the trademark Church of Hed beats and loops, a deep space inspired brand of prog rock, and an impressive sense of thematic development as well as a soundtrack vibe permeates throughout the set. The music is all Williams on an arsenal of synths, keys, drumming and loops, with guitar and bass assistance from Quarkspace alum Stan Lyon on five of the ten tracks.
The set opens with the title track, which combines floating space ambience, Berlin school electronica, cinematic classical prog and, of course, the electro beats that characterize all things Church of Hed. This is followed by Synth Cadence, a short drum and robotic grooves ditty. We then launch into intensely majestic space-symphonic prog territory with 1AM at the Dean Road Bridge, which blends a fully orchestrated sound with shades of Quarkspace. Dig that looming Mellotron sound, piano, pounding timpani, and eerie effects.
We veer back into the cool grooving beats, piano and flowing streams of space synth action on Quarrydosing, before soaring back to Berlin (ed: Amherst?) with 2AM at Crownhill Cemetery, with its syncopations and cosmically haunting magic carpet ride drift. Williams injects lots of fun effects but also drones that create a tension between meditative space and anguished intensity. Field recordings conjure up imagery of someone perhaps prowling the cemetery in the wee hours of the morning.
I like the way the music zips between and combines heavy prog, space electronica and beats/loops. Dark Matter Sandstone has a flowing space melody that sails along with off-kilter dance grooves. Wallace Lane is another track with an aura of the old Quarkspace sound. But it’s a bit different due to the clattering percussive ensemble that crashes steadily along with a playful electronic melody. Cool and strange contrasts!
Most of the tracks are in the 2-5 minute range, but at nearly 11 minutes, 3AM at Hole in the Wall is by far the longest and is very much like an old Quarkspace epic. I love how the music dovetails between heavily majestic and theme developing prog rock and spacey meditative drift. The Prodigal Swanson (Jay Swanson was Quarkspace’s keyboardist) is a brief yet intensely frantic piece. And Sandstoned No. 2 closes the album with the most pounding dance floor grooves of the set, and an old sci-fi television soundtrack theme vibe.
I keep saying this but I’ll summarize by emphasizing that there’s a lot going on throughout this album, bringing together oddly contrasting elements that mesh, morph and blend beautifully. Williams is deep into heavy classic prog territory, yet there are plenty of seriously spacey elements, and it’s all very soundtrack/cinematic feeling throughout. Bravo Paul!
Interview with Church of Hed’s Paul Williams
JK: Describe the inspiration around the album and its title, Sandstoned. You mentioned something about a night out along the North Coast in the 1980s.
Yes. Sandstoned is essentially a collection of surrealistic postcards chronicling a weekend up in my home environs back in the day. Some of the places in the song titles should be familiar to many folks along that stretch of Northern Ohio’s Lake Erie coast. It’s a sufficiently vague concept that helped me tie together the album.
Musically, things are catchier for the most part. For some tracks, I focused more on beat creation, using the Arturia DrumBrute, Teenage Engineering PO-12, and other devices/software. In fact, the album started off even more beat-oriented. The three “AM” pieces were composed to provide more balance.
JK: On Brandenburg Heights, you only used hardware instruments during the recording. The Sandstoned gear list includes software synths and such. Why the change in approach?
Brandenburg Heights is the outlier in this case. For most albums I typically use a mixture of hardware and software gear. Brandenburg Heights Part 1 took form as a 20 minute Berlin School improvisation using a variety of hardware synced together. I took that as a sign to make the album software free other than using Pro Tools for recording.
There are just too many great synths available for the desktop and iOS platforms to restrict yourself to a hardware-only approach. Although, nothing beats the tactile feel of a Moog synth.
JK: You mentioned the iOS platform. Did you use the iPhone or iPad?
The iPad makes an appearance on a few tracks. The excellent SynthScaper provides the ambient vibe of the Lake Erie shore you hear during the title track. I also used Moog’s otherworldly Animoog, Model 15, and Model D apps, in addition to the Arturia iMini. Simply top notch sound from all.
The field music sounds you described from the Crownhill Cemetery piece involved a granular synth app called Borderlands. I wanted to use my own recordings of voices talking about the cemetery, but the mic on my iPad isn’t working. I don’t have an audio interface for it, so I ended up using some of the included sample libraries from the app. They worked great. Granular synthesis is quite cool.
Some iOS musicians use their iPad as a full DAW, creating excellent sounding productions while mobile. Since, I’ve got Pro Tools (soon to be Ableton Live) and a decently-appointed studio, I prefer to keep my recording on the PC and use the iPad as a sound source and a beatmaker. When a synth app takes advantage of a touchscreen interface, magic happens.
Additionally, a few top notch desktop synths and effects made an impact. PolyM is a great model of the Polymoog, providing creepy sonics throughout the album. Objeq Delay is used to great effect on the beat of Sandstoned No. 2. Crownhill Cemetery features Rob Papen’s Predator 2 on the arpeggiation.
Of course, I run anything from the iPad or PC through analog delays and other effects when recording. This helps them fit better in the mix. Always remember delay is the antidote for anger.
JK: As I’ve noticed in the past with Church of Hed, you seem to easily merge different styles of music into something unique. Does it come naturally?
Yes. I listen to and am influenced by so many different musical forms, and that definitely gets reflected in Church of Hed. Too many bands doing work in niche genres seem to focus on regurgitating stylistic markers, which is fine. Fans of these niches tend to appreciate it.
I am on a quest for innovative sounds and song structures, but am always trying to find a good melody or riff. The latter is ultimately the most important. Genre labels are unfortunately more of a marketing term than anything, which adds to the hassle of self promotion.
JK: It’s nice to see Stan Lyon as a guest on Sandstoned. The most recent Church of Hed albums before the new album were truly “solo” projects.
Indeed. Dink reached out last year and came down for a weekend to work on Sandstoned tracks. He provided some energetic bass lines, in addition to freakier bits using his eBow on bass and guitar. It definitely added to the sonic scope of the album.
He also recorded with me a few weeks ago. We worked on some future Church of Hed albums, as well as another venerable project we’ll keep nameless for now (well, at least until the end of the interview). He hopes to come down at least twice a year.
Darren Gough from Quarkspace is expected later this summer. Hopefully he is able to make it – the family man abides. Chet is still in California, and we still haven’t been able to get hold of Jay.
JK: Speaking of Jay, I assume he’s the Prodigal Swanson? Why that track, since the playing doesn’t really sound like him?
Yes, Jay is that Prodigal Swanson. We all miss him and hope he is doing well. Darren and I regularly reach out to him to no avail. We aren’t giving up! (Sorry Jay!)
People forget Jay is an incandescent synth lead player. He tends to be remembered for his piano playing, but he slays on lead, especially on Drop and Spacefolds 7 after Dave Wexler left. There was more space to solo, since Stan takes an ambient approach on guitar, and many of the leads from those albums that get attributed to Stan are really Jay.
The Prodigal Swanson track is my attempted “tribute” to his synth lead skills. I heard a rumor he’s more fluid than Jeff Beck.
JK: What’s coming up for Church of Hed? Are there any projects to report?
I am working on The Father Road, the sequel to Rivers of Asphalt, slated for release sometime next year – hopefully. Stan is planning on playing bass for most of it, so I need to put together demos of the pieces he isn’t on currently. We’ve recorded a few of the motifs used throughout this transcontinental journey along the Lincoln Highway.
After that is Cycle, which is the “seasonal” larger work I’ve been threatening for a while. The Autumn Shrine and Cold White Universe title tracks are being enhanced and two new pieces for spring and summer are in the works. I know a musical project based on the seasons is a pretty big cliché, but so what. I can’t help what comes out. It’s gonna be cool!
The Fourth Hour is another project in the pipeline. It features a more psychedelic Berlin School style, with a lot of improv in that loop-based structure. Stan is helping with that one as well.
I may revisit the unreleased Quarkspace album as well; putting it out in its current unfinished form. The instrumentals and improvs have always been complete; the hangup always involved the vocal songs. This would be a digital only release. I make no promises that it gets released, as Church of Hed remains the priority, short of Chet, Jay, and Darren showing up on my doorstep together!
Nevertheless, we stay busy! Thanks for your questions and your kind words on Sandstoned. Off to the next project!
