[Music] Tapewolf - Who Is This Daryil Guy Anyway...? (LP)

[Tapewolf]

Here's my latest effort.  Most of the tracks have already appeared as demos on FA and Weasyl.  These are the final versions, mixed in late October, mastered by Alex Balzama at Swift and neatly finished with art by the wonderful Keetah Spacecat.

I would appreciate it if folks could look through the booklet for typos, since I'll want to get them printed next month for Confuzzled and Anthrocon.

The album and stuff is here:
http://dougtheeagle.com/witdga.htm
Also here:
https://www.jamendo.com/en/list/a144873/who-is-this-daryil-guy-anyway...

And the booklet is here:
http://dougtheeagle.com/witdga/who_is_daryil.pdf

Recording notes follow.




This is my 11th effort, recorded in 2013-2014.  The closing track just grew and grew so the album ended up with just five tracks so that it might stand a chance at fitting on a 12" vinyl pressing if I eventually do that.

1. The Man Who Should Be King

This was originally written in 2013 while Merlin and I were illustrating the backstory of how Werrew the Usurper overthrew his king in our comic, Project Future.  I found myself singing some silly, but horribly violent rhyme which gradually became the opening verse.  I was also reading the Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones series at the time.  The chorus followed swiftly and the song assembled itself after that.

2. Panther Factory

This is a concept I've wanted to look at for a while, now, a musical interpretation of intelligent robots being mass-produced.  The industrial press noises were produced by using the base samples from the Triton's industrial loop and creating something closer to what I had in my head.  It was then overdubbed with several layers of stuff from the Minimoog.

I was rather pleased with the vocoder effect at the end, though the thing wasn't behaving terribly well at the time.  It took a lot of takes and in the end it still distorted rather more than I'd have liked.

3. I'm Daryil

This is a song based on the title character of the album, where he sits down and explains who and what he is to a new member of his family.  I've had a bit of a love-hate relationship with this song... in the end, I guess I wasn't as happy with the vocals as I could have been, but I do really like the instrumental passages, especially the ending.

The track was complicated to mix, especially where it breaks into the finale.  In the end I had a mix where the first part of the song was great, but the fade-out went wrong on the finale.  Taking a leap of faith, I remixed the finale and then did a razorblade edit to stick it onto the end of the song.  It worked first time.

4. Are you there...?

This was originally written to test out the Memotron's tape set of the organ at St. John's Wood.  How it gew into what it is now is a journey I can't quite remember.  I ended up using the Solina tape set as well, though.

Thanks to Rebecca for coming up with the title... for a long, long time it was simply "Song 260".

5. A Hundred Years, or 'The SAIA Song'

Inspired by DMFA, this can be seen as a followup to 'Born with Wings' off the Incubi and Succubi album.  That song left the protagonist with the promise that there is a school out there willing to take them in and shelter them from their persecutors.  This song explores the pro's and cons of attending that school.

I'm very fond of the bass solo which appears around 3:00.  It's reprised a few times, not least because it makes a good link to join two disparate parts of the song.

Around 7:15 we change course entirely and have a tour of the school in a manner very reminiscent of Karn Evil 9 from ELP's classic album.  As with 'I'm Daryil', this was a pain to mix and I ended up mixing the song in two halves which were razorbladed together around 6:50.  I think.  The edit worked well enough that I can't hear it anymore.

Bela Santiago and his Exploding Head band was a concept I was playing around with a few years earlier but wasn't able to incorporate into a song until now.  One of the more interesting parts of recording it was having the final word 'band' sung at the same pitch until I ran out of breath, and then doing a chord change by varying the tape speed for each track.  Fun, but not quite as striking as I'd hoped.  The cough and other sounds which you may be able to hear in the run-up to the vocals on that part were accidental and occurred while recording the backing vocals, however I decided to leave them in as it gave a slightly shambolic feel to the section which was exactly what I had in mind.

Recorded using the Old Ways at The Lab, Cwmbran 2013-2014
Mixed 21-24 Oct. 2014
Mastering by Alex Balzama at Swift Solutions, London, Feb 2015.

Greetings go out to Keaton, Ren, Wuff and Chaosmage, Merlin and co.
Thanks go out to the Rosegarden team, to all at RMGI, ATR, MRL and HomeRecording for keeping the analogue dream alive.

Cover by Keetah at Spacecat Studios: http://spacecat-studios.com/

Logo by Luke Turner.  Recorded on SM911 and ATR Mastering tape
Mixed to ATR Mastering tape.

[Merlin]

1. The Man Who Should Be King

This was originally written in 2013 while Merlin and I were illustrating the backstory of how Werrew the Usurper overthrew his king in our comic, Project Future.  I found myself singing some silly, but horribly violent rhyme which gradually became the opening verse.  I was also reading the Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones series at the time.  The chorus followed swiftly and the song assembled itself after that.

That bit with Werrew is probably my favourite side-bit that we did for Project Future so far. I love how well the colours turned out, altogether it turned out fantastic.

I haven't listened to all the tracks yet, but I am sure I will love them all! I remember the SAIA song - I think you ended up having to post the full version on weasyl because FA doesn't let you post big things? I really like that one, it's fantastic.

Also adore that cover image, Keetah did a fantastic job of it!

[VAE]

Ooh!
Gonna download later today, probably the evening.

Also grah because my mp3 is kinda sortta maxed out and then you bring this x3