Couple Of Questions

progmetaldan

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Nov 25, 2006
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Firstly, the new album is a piece of tech-metal genius, and i'm loving every second of it!

There's a lot of info in the liners about these various kinds of mental issues to do with the brain, is this something that was researched to be part of the theme of the cd, or did one of the band already have a knowledge/interest in this sort of brain science?

Also, I'm pretty sure there's some 7 string action going on in this album, but there's no 7 string guitar listed under your guitars Ron on your website. Is this a new aquisition, something you've built recently, or did you just borrow one from someone for this album?

Cheers
 
I didn't have a 7 string at the time I recorded the Machinations material , but I do have one now. It's a stock BC Rich, but I'm going to build a different body and transfer the parts. I used two gtrs to record the Blotted CD, one tuned to E (E A D G B E), and the other tuned to drop A (A E A D G B).

Alex and I were looking for a theme to base songs on and the brain/sleep disorder topic came up, so we went with it. I did a lot of reading on various brain related subjects, but didn’t know too much about the medical side of things, so I got some help from people who were more knowledgeable about the subjects. I did research enough to find ways to make the music tie in to the topics…

The ‘Adenosines’ (‘Buildup’ and ‘Breakdown’) are the same sets of tunes, but played backwards.

‘Oscillation Cycles’ taking the same musical theme and plays it at 4 different speeds (getting there via metric modulation), mimicking the 4 stages of sleep.

‘Amnesia’ plays 3 main themes, then during the 2nd half of the song, the same themes are played but lots of the notes have been left out or “forgotten”.

The main theme of ‘EEG Tracings’ plays the notes EEG in various timings.

Then there were the songs where we just tried to basically write a score to fit the titles, including Night Terror, Bleeding In The Brain, Laser Lobotomy, Vegetation, Sleep Deprivation.

Probably the most fun was the nightmares song “Activation Synthesis Theory”. Alex said he has dreams of suffocating, and drowning in quicksand. ‘Dead Guy’, ‘Monsters’, and ‘Flight In Space’ go back to when I was a kid. Probably my favorite though is ‘Spiderchase’ where I wanted a real fast melody line for spiders, but the music also fit for being chased, so we combined the two and came up with ‘Spiderchase’.

‘REM’ is a guy sleeping, then having the twitching eyes, REM sets in, then he wakes up.

‘Narcolepsy’ has the scattered string/filmscore sections where the subject is falling asleep, then waking up right in the middle of musical phrases (as if he is awake then nods off at random).

We also wanted to have a band/project name that could work with various themes and concepts should we decided to do another record. Of course the “Science” ties into the techy side of things, and the “Blotted” refers to where Alex and I came from, the ink blots, and Cannibal CD covers usually being full of blood splatters.

Ron
 
I think my favorite within the Activation Synthesis is Flight in Space. It has like a jazz fusiony funky beat to it, and it mixes well with that guitar tone and that instrument in the right channel. That first section until 3:18 makes me think of a bunch of cartoon characters moonwalking and doing the robot dance or something.
 
I think the best fit for Vegetation would have been the first part for 'Headache and a 64th'. Too bad it had been used already! I just didn't get quite enough of a catatonic vibe (if that makes sense) from the track. It's still awesome though.

Alright, I'm going to bed. You guys are probably all watching Hanna Montana.