today's post is the first rabit is wolf single completed in it's second phase, once the talentless, arrogant ass guitarist got turfed for not showing up and then whining like a child about it.
as mentioned before, this material is fundamentally different than the more serious pieces i was working on for my own projects, even if i would eventually reclaim the piece as instrumental. so, it's both something else entirely and a kind of a throwback to the more song-oriented material from the inri phase.
sean never liked this piece, which i suspect is about.....me. he never consented to putting it on the album/demo. but, i think it's the best thing we did.
while both sean and jon were at the drive-in fans, i was not interested in that type of commercial rock music at that time and mostly wrote it off as boring radio music with a nasty "nu metal" vibe, the latter of which is something that neither sean or i liked (but jon did), and something i held in much more contempt than sean did. i think sean at least listened to a lot of nu-metal influenced or nu-metal integrated stuff. i couldn't stand the stuff - i took reznor's side, ideologically, in denouncing it as the low point of music. and, in hindsight, wasn't that correct?
nonetheless, it is curious to note the overlaps in approach that this recording has with the tremulant ep, which was happening roughly contemporaneously (although i was more trying to emulate the division of labour seen in early skinny puppy). this could also pass as very early witch house...
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the core loops involved in clarity were initially created in the late summer of 2001, with the intent of being the opening sequence in a new inri project (with the long kicked-around working title of 'trinri'). while i had fairly firmly put the inri moniker down around my 19th birthday (late 1999), i was also coming out of a lengthy "serious music" phase and was getting a desire to write in a more structured, synth-pop type direction, as i had for years previously. this urge was happening about the same as i was being coerced into starting a rock band with some high school acquaintances.
around october, i started working on a separate noise project that was meant to splice harsh electronic noise with anarchist politics. this produced two tracks at the time, which are now available as a short single as inri051. at the time, it wasn't clear to me where those ideas would lead.
by november it was clear that the rock band wasn't happening, but it turned out the singer had tastes that correlated reasonably well with what i was thinking about creating for the trinri project. these two projects consequently merged into rabit is wolf, and the material i was kicking around for use in trinri ended up becoming the core of what rabit is wolf became.
as i was recording parts for clarity, i ended up reusing ideas from the noise project. i further reused those ideas in constructing a 2004 noise collage for inclusion on the record that finally came out of the noise project. both noise collages are present in order to comprehensively explore the ideas existing within clarity.
zen was recorded with sean over december, 2001. i have chosen not to complete a version of the wave (inri053) that was also being discussed at the time, but would have fit into this release well, conceptually.
clarity was completed (with vocals) over january, 2002. the nature of rabit (along with the songs i had written for it) took a sharp turn towards folk almost immediately. this collection is consequently quite different than the official rabit demo, which is much more song-oriented. over the years, i've always wanted to have a rabit release that was darker, noisier and more chaotic and am glad to have it in the form of this ep-single, which could be viewed as a secondary demo. put another way, this is the comprehensive representation of the second (electro/noise/industrial) incarnation of rabit is wolf.
however, there are two factors complicating clarity as a solely rabit is wolf production. the first is that sean was never really happy with the result - a shame as i consider his vocal performance and lyrics to be the best of the songs we did together. the second is that i always felt the track was "mine" and should have had an instrumental mix. that is, i've always regretted not saving an instrumental mix.
for these reasons, i've revisited the track as an instrumental and left two snapshots - 11/2001 and 01/2002. the second snapshot becomes the final mix.
recorded in late 2001 and early 2002. track 6 was constructed in may, 2004 out of files recorded 1999-2001. tracks 1-4 were reconstructed over october, 2014. final mixes were finished on october 18, 2014. released on oct 21, 2014. disc closed on oct 30, 2017. as always, please use headphones.
the album version (track 4) appears on my sixth record, jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj^2 (inri063): jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj-2
the 2002 vocal mix appears on the rabit is wolf demo (inri057):
jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/rabit-is-wolf
this release also includes a printable jewel case insert and will also eventually include a comprehensive package of journal entries from all phases of production (2001, 2002, 2004, 2014, 2017).
released february 1, 2002
j - guitars (electric, acoustic, nylon), mandolin, sequencers, synthesizers, drum & melodic programming, electric air reed organ, digital piano, flute, drum kit, sampling, digital and analog effects processing, digital wave editing, sound design (loops, granular synthesis, noise generators), production
sean - vocals/lyrics (3,5), harmonica (4,5)