a quiet end

the shaping of things to come

It has been some weeks since the EP was released, and as expected the focus in now shifting to what happens next. Recent weeks have consisted of striking a balance between the ongoing work of trying to get the music around to people and places, rehearsing and general planning. In that time the possibilities as to what I’d like to see happen here and with the project over the coming months (and year) have been gestating, and as a bit of an update I thought I’d share some of them.

There might be a couple of videos for songs from EP; exciting, as it would be a collaborative effort with some folks who I think do really good work. It’s something I’d like very much like to happen, but don’t know for sure yet, and it may take some time.

Rehearsing has inevitably led to working up some new songs, and in some cases having even newer songs occur, as well as development of what the shape of the eventual long form LP will look like. There are two in particular that I’ve known for the past several weeks are somewhat in between in terms of where they belong. They didn’t fit at the time with the EP, though have some things in common with it, and they don’t seem to place with the eventual LP either. They could be recorded with the same resources, location etc, that was used for the EP. They’re decent songs, and a little different so I’m going to record them as sort of ‘one-offs’ and release them when they’re done, or as a sort of free A/B side digital single, with no real A-Side. They head off in a different direction a little bit, and I’m excited to get working on them in more detail.

There is a moderate pile of old/unreleased stuff kicking around. Not all of it is light-of-day-worthy, but if there’s enough interest some odd things might find their way out in some fashion. There is a plan in place to remaster a series of semi-improvised piano works from a while back, and make a shortened free release of them, initially doing so one at a time as an interdisciplinary and collaborative music/photography/writing series. 

Another bit of work at the moment involves looking and applying for funding and support to help the project go forward. In an effort to expand its scope, any help, however small, goes a long way.

Shows? Hopefully. Working on it, or towards translating the songs suitably. They’ll have to be stripped down at first, but I’m hoping a larger-scale format will emerge soon. 

For anyone who hasn’t heard it, you can listen to and purchase the EP over here. Also, If anyone wants to help in circulating it, that would be most welcome — please pass it on to anyone at all who might be interested, and if you have any ideas or suggestions as to how to reach more ears, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. There are a limited number of CD’s available, and if you’d like a copy, know someone who might, or where one should be sent, please write to: aquietend@intimatehistory.com. 

What would you like to see here in the coming months? Please post any suggestions, notions, or questions in the comments, and I’ll answer them directly or in a future post.

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Trying still to burn more, and brighter.

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birthplace st.

Early on it was decided that ‘Birthplace St.’ would lead off the EP, mostly because it had slightly more immediacy than the others. Despite knowing this, it was referred to simply as ‘three’ for the longest time and spent much of its life without a proper title. The biggest reason for this was that the lyrics were the last to be completed. They didn’t come easily for some reason, and were only fragments for the longest time, none of which I’m completely sure made the final or not. The initial ‘complete’ draft was quite a rushed effort stemming from the need to have finished lyrics to sing when I was pulling together the songs on relatively short notice for a show last summer. ‘Birthplace’ was one I wasn’t so sure about playing, if for no other reason than I felt like I had to force the lyrics to some degree, but with effort I managed to hammer something out I felt serviceable.

Revisiting it later in an effort finalize the lyrics and vocal parts for recording, I ran into the same problem. I didn’t particularly like what was already there, it really seemed forced to me, but it did have something of a theme running through it; something I’d had loosely in my head when rushing out those first words.  It took me a lot of time, rewrites and rewording to get something I was somewhat satisfied with, but even then I wasn’t sure how I felt about the end result, and yet again it’s getting finished had more to do with the imperative of needing to have it done rather than it’s feeling like it was ready. Running with what was already in place, I ended up keeping more of it than I thought I would, even though the slight dissatisfaction hung around the whole time. I said before that there were moments where I would have liked to have spent more time on lyrics in general, but had someone asked me at a certain point, I’d have said these were the ones I was least satisfied with, which is kind of funny considering they were also the ones I spent the most time on.

Looking at them now, it fits, or at least is fitting. ‘Birthplace’ had the intention behind it of pointing forward musically in some fashion, but also ended up thematically touching on the idea of new times generally. In this way it sits alongside ‘An Intimate History’ – which while being the last song considers different times ahead while surveying what has come before – as more future-oriented in its content, and is removed from the more recent past considerings of ‘Allies’ and ‘Resumption’. The first/song last song bookending and how it lines up with the subject matter of each was a fitting synchronistic accident. 

‘Birthplace’ wasn’t so much glancing forward at the rest of the EP that followed, but taking a longer view of what might come later. In this way too, it’s probably the song that most actively pushed the limits of the resources at hand. I’d originally intended it to be a much fuzzier affair overall, but it just didn’t end up that way for whatever reason. The early demos testify to this idea, with piles of overdriven guitars as an early stand-in for what I’d thought to make a gauze-wall of distortion. There was no active decision to not do this, only a sense of it sounding and working better with a different kind of wash. A rising minor scale, more obvious, guitar solo was the only major alteration when further into the recording process, replaced by something I felt was more texturally and compositionally interesting.

Another interesting thing is that ‘Birthplace’ ended up being the only song on the EP that is not in an atypical time signature or alternate tuning. I’m not sure to what degree this helps create the song’s immediacy that sets it apart slightly from the others, but it seems to be the one most people latch onto first, and not because of its position in the running order of the EP. The rest too, wasn’t consciously intended to be ‘less immediate’, or different to force some kind of diversity upon the songs as a group. It was always a question of what worked best, and which things best fit with certain tones and moods. Maybe it is these very differences, and the fact that there are quite a few, that help the whole to function as well as it does. 

A Quiet End - Birthplace St. by aquietend

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(…)

Following ‘all things always’ as the second instrumental track on the EP (click the link to read that entry), ‘…’ was written shortly after and both came together arrangement-wise within a couple days of each other. I’d hoped to create a stark difference between the two, while rooting them in a similar style and aesthetic that kept them separate from the more song-oriented tracks on the EP. While sharing the same dna, in terms of what they evoke, one is filled up with possibility, the threads of time winding together, while the other is at a loss in a sort of downtrodden acceptance of not knowing anything. In this way they end up representing the different ends of the darkness/light dichotomy to some degree, a theme I’ve found to often be unconsciously reoccurring. It’s in this way as well, that the instrumentals flesh out the overall contextual arc of the EP while maintaining a relationship with each other, one that has a dynamic of its own but also sees them stand independently as their own unique pieces.

In wanting to fill the EP out more, it would have been easy to pull another already written song from somewhere and add it in. In expanding it though, I wanted to add something totally new, something written just for this purpose and not added haphazardly just for the sake of having more. At first, I didn’t know if the instrumentals would be included it all, it was a kind of experiment in that way, and there was even a moment in the last month of finishing where I considered taking them out completely.

For whatever reason ‘…’ was far easier than ‘all things always’ to mix and master. There was still a little bit of trouble with the piano sound, thought not nearly as much, and then it took some time to balance out all of the elements texturally to get the proper amount of space while maintaining a full sounding mix. There is also a lot of dynamic range between the first minute, and the end of the song where it fills out more, and maintaining clarity so that it could have a sense of sweeping upward, and not crunch when it all really starts to swirl around at the end took some extra effort as well. There was also a bit of an issue in trying to get the violin to sound ‘natural’ for some reason, or at least when it was placed against everything else.

When I’d decided not to refer to the instrumentals as ‘Segues’ any longer, I had so much trouble trying to think of what to call this one. Everything I’d come up with seemed to try too hard to capture the tone of the music and sounded forced and silly. What I found though, is that I’d sit around asking myself what the music made me think of, and where it had come from for me, and what it meant. The answer I always seemed to get was always ‘dot dot dot’, something that seemed wholly appropriate for what the song represented, or at least where it sat in my mind. 

A Quiet End - (…) by aquietend

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resumption

Before the EP as a project came into being in a more a more tangible sense, there was other music of different kinds. As noted in a pervious entry it was things made and mostly shelved away, or that were leant to the projects of others; these things still had the name ‘A Quiet End’ attached in some fashion, albeit often vaguely, and mostly only in my mind. It had yet to come into being as an actual entity, even though there were slight steps towards this, it was still mostly only a foggy notion somewhere.

A while before embarking on the process of defining the project more formally and making the EP, I returned to my hometown under less than ideal circumstances. I had been living on a distant side of the country for awhile, and my unplanned and sudden return seemed to be the latest upheaval in a series of seemingly never-ending collapse/rebuild binaries of varying severity in different areas of life. I’d worked on, and even finished some things out there – though not particularly well, I’d have to say – but had largely not done anything with them. I didn’t know what was going to happen; life seemed uncertain, where to go next was very much a question on every level, and I spent some time living out of boxes. One thing I did know was that I didn’t want to continue what I’d been working on or retread that same region of material, but going forward wasn’t fleshed out in any particular direction either. Static seemed like a bad option, and with what had just happened part of me wanted to keep moving, maybe for fear of falling into some familiar traps.

So I decided to do a bit of an exercise. Over the first few weeks I’d try to just write without thinking too much about it, see what came on a more immediate level, and then would maybe make something relatively small and simple with whatever happened along. No arrangements really, stripped back to just songs; maybe mostly acoustic, not scrutinized in the way I’m often wont to do with things. I thought it might yield something new enough that I’d want to do something with, and at the very least, would help in grounding some of the energy flying around.

A number of songs came out of these initial writing sessions, maybe six or seven over the course of a couple of weeks. By the end of the third, it was obvious that there were four that seemed to be more complete than the others, and fit together thematically. I’m not sure what happened then, life stepped in and the need to keep moving became more of a paralyzing feeling of being stuck; one that would persist off and on for some time. I had recorded rough cuts of the four and had intended to do cleaner, yet still simple, versions that maybe would see the light of day, but never quite made it.

A few months fell off the calendar where it seemed like nothing happened; somewhat lost, there was some toe-dipping here and there, and halfhearted work on different things, but the idea of working on a particular project would still take some time to arrive. When it did, with some encouragement and help, it seemed like whatever the notion of what ‘A Quiet End’ was, would finally become an actual thing, as opposed to something that previously only existed in theory.

Around that time, I took stock of the many songs that were packed away in their various states of being to try and decide which might lend themselves to a short EP, and were also feasible with the somewhat limited resources at hand. Those early four seemed worth revisiting because they lay on simpler end of the scale and were still relatively recent. Ultimately two of them were tossed to the scrapheap, deemed too obvious, but the other two were decided to make up the majority of what was at that time only going to be a three song EP, and ‘Resumption’ was one of them. It was the first of the original four that I’d recorded an early version of, and was probably also the first written in those early weeks. Then in beginning work on the EP proper, the acoustic guitar part on ‘Resumption’ was first thing set down. 

Writing this now, it sort of lends an interesting take on the title, mirroring on a smaller scale the bigger concept in the song’s subject matter. It was always called ‘Resumption’, named for one of the common themes in my life at that point. A sort of circularity found in picking up something that seemed done, and then having to leave it behind once more and come back again to something else also thought long over.

The lyric parts are not all from the same perspective, and some lines are intended to be in quotation marks to illustrate this difference. Without this explained, I figure it might sound like a mess of contradictions constantly running into each other, but isn’t that also what happens with your feelings when you can’t see where the circle ends?

A Quiet End - Resumption by aquietend

The EP can be purchased here for only 2$. If you’d like a free digital copy, please write to aquietend@intimatehistory.com.

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(all things always)

A Quiet End - (all things always) by aquietend

The first of two smaller instrumentals pieces on the EP that were initially referred to only as Segue I & II — preliminary namesakes that make reference to what the original intent was behind them. At first the EP was only going to be three songs, less material meant it would take less time to make, and also that in being more concise it would lend an immediacy to people hearing something for the first time from what was essentially a new project. Easily digestible and simple to share, centering the focus on a small number of songs might draw listeners in more easily than something with some sprawl. It seemed like a good idea, but, and this is the point where my friends laugh, I’ve always been more inclined towards more widescreen notions, grand narratives, and overarching flow or purpose that falls on the more detailed side of things. Also, to me three songs felt more like a single than an EP, and in launching a project more widely for the first time, and calling it such, it felt like it needed to be slightly more extensive. Even a six song EP, which at the time was only five, is limited in how far it can extend itself as far as vastness goes.

It’s not that the instrumentals were included as filler; they seemed like an appropriate way of both fleshing out the music as a set of songs, and extending the scope of the whole. Acting as a counterpoint to more traditionally song-oriented bits of work, and trying to find the large in the smaller moments; they sprung more directly out of my own background with classical and contemporary music. Over the last few years as well I’d done some small film score work, and even a series of semi-improvised minimal piano works – things that remain largely unreleased – which probably influenced the urge to add something somewhat different to the group of songs, and also to represent another mode of interest. I thought that working up something in that vein could help add cohesion, and also draw out more dimension over the entirety of the EP. So I began with a vague notion of a couple of interludes of some kind (hence the parentheses), and working with the piano as a starting point, and even having them modulate keys from the preceding song to the one that would follow.

The piano part to ‘all things always’ came rather quickly, and the once that part was written, the arrangement did too. I thought recording would be a fairly simple affair, and happen faster because it was less dense arrangement-wise than the other songs. It did record quickly, but would become somewhat problematic upon reaching the mixing and mastering stage. Something about the piano was always difficult, it never wanted to sound right somehow, and even re-recording it didn’t seem to help. Then the whole thing together didn’t quite blend as well as I’d hoped, or quite how I had in mind anyway, and seemed to trip over itself often when it was all threaded together. In the end, it was probably the song I really had to settle the most with at a certain point, and I was tweaking the mix and master right up until the end.

I’m not sure at what point I’d decided on proper titles instead of just calling calling them ‘Segues’, but ‘all things always’ was fairly easy to name. When the piano part was first written, it came along with a kind of mental picture; one of looking at memories through a haze of saturated light, like that emitted from a setting sun seen through a wide window. It made me think of that feeling of being on a train, or riding in car for some extended period of time, and watching the horizon as the sun dips while you’re carried away by your thoughts. And the sense that occurs in such moments that the present, future, and what came before, all exist at once. 

As always, the whole EP can be found here.

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an intimate history

Not only the last song on the EP, it was also the last one written, and its inclusion was a bit of a tack-on to what was already largely settled on. Recording was well underway, and the songs had long been decided upon, even if some of them were only in their preliminary stages; even the running order was firmly in place. Indirectly though, it felt like there was something missing. Not that I was pushing for another song or anything like that, there were plenty sitting in the cupboard ready to be brought out should the need arise, more that the idea of concluding the EP with ‘Allies’ didn’t feel quite right for some reason, and no obvious, suitable alternatives had sprung to mind. Then seemingly from nowhere, and with that lurking in my mind, ‘An Intimate History’ appeared as the obvious solution to this problem.

The song emerged in one of those strange and rare moments where an idea comes, and then immediately takes complete shape, almost as if it’s dictating itself. In the case of ‘An Intimate History’, I was actually on my way to the shower when the lazy bass part floated its way to the front of my mind. By the time I was out, the whole song had played its way around my head, fully formed, and I immediately set to work on putting down a rough demo to see if it would hold together as well in reality, and to try and capture the idea before it disappeared. In the end, the final recording matched up almost exactly with the original impression of the song, which is I think, also a fairly rare occurrence.

Lyrically, it’s probably the song I’m the most pleased with. Lyrics are something I would have liked to have developed more with some of the songs, and writing generally is something I take very seriously, but those of ‘An Intimate History’ were written in one go, and didn’t change much after that. In fact, I don’t think there was much in the way of editing at all, aside from a few scratch-outs and re-words immediately as they were put down. It has less words than any of the other songs, but also contains what I think is my favourite line on the whole EP; one that perfectly captures a core truth, and something that has been slowly shifting in the time around the writing and recording of these songs.

The title is a bit of a wink at my partner on the administrative side of things – it was something he came up with as a potential name for a record label we dreamt of starting eventually. It sounded good, but more than that, the name suggested the truth of our often shared personal history, one with ties and webs that extend beyond anything that could be understood outside of the people within them. Themes that were also found in many of the life events of the last two years plus. Originally, the song was called ‘Atom Bomb’ as a placeholder, but the more I thought about what it was about, the more it became obvious that it was a re-telling, or more, and examination of an actual intimate history. One that bookends the subject matter of the songs that precede it, and is a kind of final survey of a broad set of whys before moving on.

A Quiet End - An Intimate History by aquietend

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Yes, I am still afraid

Minor confession time: I have been recently.  I suppose this is nothing new, but after feeling more at ease lately than possibly ever, it was a bit of a surprise. Even more so because the last several weeks have seen such strong developments in so many different areas of life; in many ways it seems as though it was finally opening up more fully. So, why now? It’s something I’m still trying to unravel, but on the heels of the successes and strides of late, I find myself wondering how much of the anxiety and tension is coming from that old self-sabotaging part of self that wants things to stay static, finds comfort in feeling badly, and wants to hide away from the possibility of change. The probability that things will change.

The last two months have seen vast personal strides towards balance, easy fun, recording and work progress on every front, joy, first shows, heaps of positive feedback, optimism, potentially more shows, hopes of a more personal nature starting to materialize; and really all sorts dreams and hopes fading their way into present reality. It’s been quite something, and in the last few weeks it has been particularly grand. Something I’ve been waiting on for what feels like forever. So now that it’s begun to enter, why the backslide? It’s true that despite the good things, there are certain aspects of my nature that I’ve never fully conquered, and maybe lately I’ve indulged them, and their accompanying bad, limiting habits, because I’m afraid. Afraid of what? I keep asking, even though it seems fairly obvious. All of these little lessons occur to illustrate the point: My friend who keeps telling me I criticize myself far too heavily and often, a dream where my brother tells me I build problems around things, and of course, the person who knows much more than I who said I was afraid of success. All true. Tied up with other things, but so true.  I’d been having a much easier of time sifting through all of it and seeing clearly, but all of the hope and success seemed to not only dredge up old fears/worries/sadness, but actively push me to turn away to a degree. Instead of seizing the momentum and continuing on, I stuck my hands in my pockets, cowered slightly and retreated. It hasn’t gone on for so long yet, but now I’m afraid that it will continue. I can’t let it. I won’t let it.

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held up

After nearly a month of solid forward momentum and intense productiveness, this week has taken on the characteristics akin to climbing to the top of a small hill in order to better see surrounding landscape, only to become lightheaded and winded forcing you to slow the ascenhet. I’d like to be able to point to some particular thing as being problematic, but it’s an overall vibe - something in the air. It could be that it’s on the heels of week where sleep didn’t come often enough and work often wound its way well into the evening while still never seeming like enough. Mental exhaustion can certainly have the effect I’ve described, what becomes tricky is keeping perspective, knowing that some days, or weeks, are just like this. That it’s not a sign of imminent failure, a widening creative desert, or more broken deadlines. Just a little hump, nothing more.

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what once was gone is here again

Sometimes I find it difficult to work on things that have sort of passed me by emotionally. It’s not that the related feelings and events have become entirely outdated or irrelevant; no longer holding a place for me; but more that the immediacy of feeling from the particular moment in which they emerged isn’t quite as vital. I find retreading that mental space can be somewhat tricky. Often, it has to do with a sense that maybe I don’t understand whatever it is as well as I did at the time more than any sense of intimidation in revisiting old ideas and moldy feelings. With some things it’s negligible, barely even noticeable; but with others the path to re-entry into that particular world seems blocked. And so it sits.

There is another end to this, in that many things have a tendency to circle back around. What was once considered to be representative only of a past moment, finds itself even more illuminating in the future. It’s not entirely that events are cyclical - though at times they are and certain themes often reoccur - but artifacts sometimes have a way of resonating later on in a variety of ways. Most of the time they simply find themselves feeling fresh and interesting once again for whatever reason, but in some special cases, the newfound meaning transcends whatever the original intent may have been, augmenting its purpose and adding to its power.

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something old

The following instrumental is well over a year old and was commissioned for usage as part of a video installation. When I was asked to do it, the artist told me exactly what they had in mind for that portion of the installation, and provided me with an idea of the overall vibe, but essentially gave me free reign to do what I wanted.

I found it quite different to start working with a specific set of imagery in mind. I had done it before on film work and so on, but that was different - more ‘boxed in’ somehow in its writing process. This song seemed to spin out of itself quite easily in a very organic fashion, basically dictating itself as it went along. Recently I’ve been playing around more with writing from a particular set of imagery, and have found that in some instances it’s quite a useful tool for centering the overall feeling of a song, and even allowing the music to direct itself.

When the artist told me they had abandoned their initial idea for that part of the installation and were trying something else, I got a little worried. The song was more or less done, and I was concerned that because it had been so inspired by the visual component of the original idea, it would no longer fit. I ended up very happily mistaken, and the final work (called ‘Celestial Bodies’) was much, much better than the initial concept.

I would have liked to post the video but unfortunately I don’t have a small enough digital copy. The song is best on headphones.

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