Many years ago, I was in a band. We achieved a minor following, but more importantly, I think we wrote and recorded some incredible music, and played dozens of shows. We’re preparing a digital compilation “album” of sorts, with our favourite tracks. Here are my selections, in chronological order, from our catalogue. I don’t support any of the streaming services, so I’m linking you to Apple Music where you can preview and perhaps *gasp* buy them. If you do Spotify, the tracks can be found there, too.
This was the first song off the first album, Psyche Self-Defense, which was written and recorded entirely by Steve. I thought this song had a killer chorus, and it was a lot of fun to play.
The middle section always stopped people in their tracks and made their ears perk up. Steve recorded it as a synth part, but live, I always played it using a weirdly modulated and fuzzed-out guitar tone, and I did the octave sweeps with my foot. It was a killer effect, and it also killed my ankle playing it, so we had to be careful where we put it in the set.
I always thought this track was a lot of fun to play, and the drum ’n’ bass beat is killer.
We’re all suffocating
while you suck air,
We’re all freezing
while you’re stealing heat.
This was the track that made me want to join the band, and I can’t recall a time when it wasn’t in our set list.
The understated gem of the Psyche Self-Defense album, in my opinion.
06 The Æther
I always loved the mood of this track, and it was a great kick-off to our second release (and the first as a band, The Elementals.
I never tired of playing this one, and again, was a long-time staple of our live shows.
My favourite track off The Elementals… I loved the juxtaposed guitar lines, and I feel this is arguably one of Steve’s best vocal performances. The middle break with the floating, soaring Indian vocals is one of my favourite musical moments in the history of the band.
I always enjoyed the total neck-snap change of direction in this song. Another one of those “audience attention” moments.
10 The Blood Singing in Your Ears
Comfortchurch was our third release, and we wanted to try to make a heavy-sounding record without falling back into the trap of using loud, distorted guitars to convey that feeling of urgency. The atmosphere and guitar interplay in this song nailed that, in my opinion, relying on dark and dense textures to create a feeling of “heaviness.” Throughout the writing and recording process, I was frequently reminded, “No distortion! No distortion!”
11 Corpses
Because heavy. This was the title track of our third recording, an EP with the title, Corpses… of the DEAD! The main riff just kind of fell out of my guitar one night, I think after we ran through Lethargy Therapy. I still had my thick, octave-fuzzed guitar tone selected, and I just hit this low chord on my 7-string guitar…
GRRNNNNGH…
GRRNNNNGH…
GRRNNNNGH…
GRRNUGGH-UHHH!
12 Targets
This time the target is targeting back. This was the lead-off track from what is to date our last recording together as a band, We’ve Lost Contact With Monster Island. (We also made a video for it.) I could have just listed every single track off Monster Island here, because it really was, from beginning to end, a masterpiece. (If I do say so myself.) Writing, recording, mixing, and mastering it was difficult and painstaking work, but the collective vision for the album was razor-sharp, and we were all immensely proud of it when it was done, even if it did take a couple of years.
13 Rendering
I absolutely love John’s drumming on this, and Steve and Ed did a phenomenal job on the mix, which sounds huge.
I love everything about this. The “string” part was a sample Steve sourced from I don’t even know where, and we thought it would be cool to include real cello on the track. One of my former students played cello, but needed sheet music to learn the part. So I sat down and dissected the demo string/synth loops with my guitar in my lap and my laptop in front of me, and banged out the score for Kathryn, one note at a time. In three-part harmony. Of course she nailed it, and her lines added that perfect, raspy grit to the sampled sounds and the heavy guitars at the end.
15 Diabolik
This was probably one of my favourite grooves to play.
16 The Beach
I love the way this song slowly builds in intensity and tension over the course of three minutes. This is another song where I think we succeeded in creating something “heavy” without falling back on the easy way to achieve that using loud, distorted guitars. Just a little bit of crunchy high-end on Ed’s bass tone, and Steve and I playing intertwining single-note lines that bloomed into slightly overdriven chords before plunging over the precipice.
Brilliant lyrics, another top vocal performance from Steve, and some of our best guitar/texture interplay. And once again, an incredible drum performance by Mr. John Lalley.
All the punch cards,
so carefully prepared;
lie strewn about the floor.
All the calculations,
all the higher maths;
don’t compute any more.
18 Urawaza
I think if any track sums up the entire Organical musical journey, this is it. A suitable swan song, lyrically, musically, texturally, structurally.
BONUS TRACKS
These ones don’t appear on any of our recordings, but perhaps we’ll search our archives and see if we can pull out usable versions from somewhere.
19 Man O’ War (live)
It would be a shame not to include this audience favourite (a Radiohead cover), but i’m not sure we ever really captured the best rendition of it in the studio.
20 How to Build Gods (live)
If there’s a track where the studio version didn’t quite live up to the live fury, this is it.
DISCOGRAPHY
And just to cap things off, in case you’re interested, here’s a nearly-complete discography:
2002 Psyche Self-Defense
2006 The Elementals
2007 Comfortchurch