today's post is inri056, the single for the track time.

as mentioned, the suggestion that i ought to write folk music hit me as a sort of a mind fuck, as i didn't actually listen to folk music. i consequently had to kind of recalibrate myself, and i'll admit i like a good challenge, but i ultimately had to draw on some of the post-punk, progressive and psychedelic music that i actually understood, and not this weird white bourgeois thing that i had no real meaningful grasp of. in hindsight, i realize that sean had like jefferson airplane and the beegees around the house, in place of the crimson and genesis and floyd i had lying around, so he was able to conceptualize this in ways that i had always culturally othered. again: that wasn't clear to me then, and he may not have been aware just how not into hippie culture i really was, at the time. i mean, he knew i was an old timey punk rocker, but you'd have had to pick at the surface to get me to go into an anti-hippie rant and i doubt that actually happened.

is the result compelling? i think it is, but this is about as much as i could have squeezed out of this, and i'm already breaching the walls as it's unfolding. i quickly found myself getting bored with what sean wanted and missing jam sessions, myself...

so, these tracks kind of sat, as i felt kind of stuck. i had ideas, but they didn't fit into this bullshit folk thing, and i resented being stifled, even if i was stifling myself. i always knew i had to finish them without sean, eventually.

in the end, the b-side here (psi) was left unaltered because it's just too good a pairing to disassemble (intentionally or not, the demo ended up done in the end, after all. that happens sometimes.), but the primary track was completely remastered and blown up into something else, entirely. the way this was rebuilt was really as a consequence of the fact that the constituent tracks sounded outstanding through remastering plugins. i put the guitar part through a reverb and slowed it down a little and it just caved my head in; i put the bass solo through an amp simulator, and it just came to life. i guess it demonstrates how powerful the tune might have been even at the time, if i was still approaching it from the more creative perspective i was with clarity, rather than trying to tone it down to be more palatable for a pop audience.  

don't get me wrong: sean's vocals near the end of the track are pretty epic, but it's not a coincidence that this could have been played in between a radiohead song and a smashing pumpkins song on a modern rock radio station in 2002 and his vocals are otherwise reflective of the fact that that's really where his head was at, and i was consequently all of a sudden in the unwanted situation of just trying to manufacture a product for the market....

but, of all of the saves i did over this period, this save is perhaps the most substantive - i took a competent if unremarkable pop song and turned it into a real psychedelic gem, as i had long intended to do. so, get some headphones, please - this is some lush shit.

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time & psi were partially a rejection of the folk idea in favour of glossy, somewhat experimental pop. i realized that it was reasonable to move in a more commercial direction, but folk wasn't something i understood well, so it was a weird direction for me to be moving in. experimental or psychedelic pop, on the other hand, was something i had a solid grasp on... 

time had been initially recorded in the fall and was remixed in late february to integrate a drum part. no original files exist. psi was recorded quickly in early march. 

the track, as it existed in rabit, was a conscious pop compromise. i had ideas that weren't explored to keep it poppy and that have been expanded upon in the remixes. 

the time machine is added here as a bonus track. it's based on an earlier classical guitar composition that was always meant to be reinterpreted as an idm tune and finally was in early 2014. the thematic overlap makes it relevant, but there is otherwise no connection between the two songs. 

i started working on what would become my seventh symphony very shortly after the material on this ep was completed, and it really represents the point where i lost interest in rabit as a concept, under pressure to continue moving in a direction i didn't have any interest in. there are folk and psych versions of the track; sean never caught on to the psych version, and i never had my heart in the folk version. there were final folk demos recorded as late as the fall, but the disconnect was not solvable. the vocal version of the seventh symphony is in some way a corollary of but is ultimately too separate from these files to include here. psi & time, together, consequently comprise what is the fourth and final ("psychedelic pop") phase of rabit is wolf. 

written & recorded in late 2001 and early 2002 and mixed in early 2002 and late 2014. released on nov 19, 2014. expanded, re-released and finalized on nov 2, 2017. as always, please use headphones. 

the 2014 instrumental version (tracks 1 &2) 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 (2002, 2014, 2017). 

released march 10, 2002 

j - electric & acoustic guitars, bass, synthesizers, digital effects & treatments, drum manipulations, programming, digital wave editing, loops, sound design, production, composition. 

sean - vocals, lyrics (3,7) 

greg - drum performance sample source (1-3, 5-6) 

the rendered electronic orchestra on track 8 includes acoustic bass, synth bass, electric bass, brass, orchestra hit, drum machine, electronic drum kit, nylon guitar, electric guitar, synthesizer effects, music box, piano, bells and mellotron.