[Music] Tapewolf - Dr. Gwendolini's Amazing Medicine Show (LP)

[Tapewolf]

If anyone's interested, I have just released my fourteenth album of progressive rock, recorded in 2017 - 'Dr. Gwendolini's Amazing Medicine Show'
Thanks to Keetah Spacecat for drawing the cover!



The album itself can be had for free here:
http://dougtheeagle.com/dgams.php

There's also a Bandcamp page if you think it's worth paying for:
https://dougtheeagle.bandcamp.com/album/dr-gwendolinis-amazing-medicine-show

This is the third outing for the 2" 24-track machine.  I haven't made any significant modifications to the setup since the last time.

I have been experimenting with new styles, however. The title track featuring the sounds of the Optigan, a bizarre home organ that used celluloid discs to play back scratchy, lo-fi sounds and accompaniments. On 'Saludora', experiments with time signatures resulted in a bassline so far beyond my skill that I resorted to tape speed trickery and overdubbing to make it work. While on 'Dictator', a minimalist approach is taken which attempts to fuse punk and psych into an angry rant about the state of the world. The album is topped off with the usual extended piece.

Hope you like it!

All songs recorded on 2" 24-track except 'Dictator', which is on 1/2" 8 track.

All songs written and performed by J. P. Morris, Copyright (C)2017
Recorded using the Old Ways at The Lab, Cwmbran 2017
Mixed 6-7 Dec. 2017. Mastering by Alex Balzama at Swift Solutions, Apr 2018

Greetings go out to Keaton, Ren, Wuff, Keetah, Sofox, Merlin and co.
Thanks go out to the Rosegarden team, to Brian Roth and all at Pyral, ATR, MRL and co for keeping the analogue dream alive, also Pea Hicks at optigan.com
Cover by Keetah Spacecat, logo by Luke Turner. Organ recorded at St. Grod's. Recorded on SM900 tape, mixed to ATR Mastering tape.

The PDF booklet can be found here:  http://dougtheeagle.com/dgams/gwendolini.pdf

Track Breakdown:

1. Dr. Gwendolini's Amazing Medicine Show (parts 1 and 2)
Okay, this is one of the strangest and most expensive songs I've made so far, where a snake-oil salesman gets in trouble with the Mob. It makes extensive use of the Bluegrass Banjo disk from the Optigan for that authentically tacky medicine show feel.
I came up with the idea about two years ago, in 2016 and attempted to use the Dixieland tapes for the mellotron, but this didn't work out and the project was shelved until I obtained some samples from the Optigan, a strange 1970s home organ which used 12" disks of photographic film containing optical soundtracks to provide this weird lo-fi sound with actual recorded accompaniments. Aside from the Bluegrass Banjo disk, samples from the experimental mandolin disk were also used.
I was also rather saddened by the untimely loss of Keith Emerson, and as a result one of the instrumental sections veers off to do some weird sample-and-hold things in the manner of Karn Evil Nine. Hope you like.

2. Numerology
This is a song about numbers and their power to predict the future. Or something. It kind of took a detour when I ended up in the unfortunate position of having two verses inspired by the Gypsy in Ultima 6, failed to write any more in that vein and ended up with more 'cubi stuff for the last two verses. I am particularly pleased with the chorus though.
Guest starring my talking clock, which goes really peculiar when the batteries run low. I have done some slight cleaning up in Audacity to remove the laughter on the original recording - easy enough since the samples are identical. However what it is saying now remains exactly what it said at the time.
I also remembered that when I was a child, learning the times table, the entire class would fall into a particular rhythm and intonation. I was also intrigued to find that my dad chanted the tables in the same exact way some 30 years earlier. So thanks to the wonders of multitracking and varispeed tape drives, I have preserved that here for posterity.

3. Mordrith's Song
A love song for evil people. This is based on two of the minor characters from my comic, who have very evil pasts.
I came up with the idea of the ending based on the medieval dance, "Branle de l'Official" better known as the melody from the carol 'Ding dong merrily on high'. I figured it would make a nice ending for the first half of the album.

4. Dictator
While I usually avoid touching on real-world politics, I was feeling a bit bitter about the state of the world and came up with this. Musically it's a weird fusion of punk and 1960s psych with the ubiquitous combo organ along with a pinch of The Stranglers.
While nearly everything I've recorded in the last 6 years has been done on a 24-track machine of some kind, this was done entirely on the 8-track TSR-8. Which made it easier to mix for the most part.
lyrics

5. Saludora
Recorded in February 2017, this was the first track laid down for the album. Like 'Dictator' it reflects my irritation in the politics of the time, though in a less obvious manner.
I wanted to experiment with unusual time signatures, and ended up with something that channelled both Van Der Graaf Generator and Threshold's debut album. This proved to be a problem, as I ended up composing a bassline on the sequencer which I was not actually able to play.
I could have done this on a DAW, but that would be boring. So instead I slowed the tape machine down and switched key to make it easier. I also recorded the bass on two channels, which simplified things further but also made for a nice stereo effect. These varispeed games during tracking are also how the song is able to end on a note which is impossible to play on a 4-string bass with standard tuning.

6. King Ordros
As has often happened I've ended up with most of an album's worth of material and then been stuck for that last track. There is an instrumental I was grooming for that position, but I got stuck and went back to a song from a few years ago, variously known as '256.cwp' or 'The Windows Song'.
Originally this was a gripe about the monopoly of a certain software giant, but fortunately the world has moved on somewhat from those days. Still, I liked the music so I decided to finish the song first and then worry about writing new lyrics for it afterwards. And that was a problem, until I hit on the idea of taking my side comic 'The Dark Angel' and wrote lyrics for a very abridged version of that story.

The playout at the end with the spacey noises is something I did before on 'Demonhunter' but I decided it was time to try it again.

[Merlin]

HELL YEAH ANOTHER ALBUM OF SONGS THAT GET STUCK IN MY HEAD FOR MULTIPLE DAYS

i can't even pick a favourite but it's probably between dr gwendolini and saludora

[Tapewolf]

HELL YEAH ANOTHER ALBUM OF SONGS THAT GET STUCK IN MY HEAD FOR MULTIPLE DAYS

i can't even pick a favourite but it's probably between dr gwendolini and saludora

For a long time I wasn't happy with Saludora.  I think the intro was probably a bad idea.  However it did have some things I really liked, including the Threshold-inspired bit with the stereo bass.  I re-recorded some of the vocals and the bass and I like it a lot more now.

[VAE]

Ooh!
I'm, granted, a couple months late but I'm so giving this a listen when I get home from work!

[Tapewolf]

Ooh!
I'm, granted, a couple months late but I'm so giving this a listen when I get home from work!

Hope you like!

Here's one from the next album:  http://www.furaffinity.net/view/27847103/   (Hoping to get part 3 mixed this weekend)