This is our concept album portraying exactly what the title mentions. Our experiment with music in a narrative form. Our goal was to conceive of and complete an album in a single night.

Surreal, impressionistic, psychedelic, sometimes interior monologue, this album is meant to be listened to all the way through, which should only take around 30 minutes of your time. The tracks here were recorded in the order presented here, played as a continuous and improvised session. The exception is that "Holidayz,"--which was still recorded in the same session--was split in two during the track ordering to create a better progression and a comfortable space for "Modernity Daydreams". We also liked the sonic idea of someone running away with our song and us reclaiming it from the thief.

Thank you for listening!


NOTES:

We were mixing external to GarageBand with Alaric's Allen & Heath ZED10FX mixer, and since we created these songs through improvisation without monitoring, the songs' mixes did not always emerge ideally balanced. The ZED10FX is a USB mixer, mixing external tracks down to one track within a DAW, making post-tracking mixing impossible. The magic of this initial take would have been lost in repeated attempts, so we kept the songs as they were. Initially it would have been one fluid performance all the way through, but we had to cut out some noodly bits to focus on the material that worked.


Shaman Awake!

Alaric: Colin picked up my guitar and just busted out some old-timey blues all of a sudden. It was awesome. I just stood back and let him do his thing. Toward the end I jumped on the keyboard and added some chords to transition into whatever was going to come next. We've always worked best by creating from the jam, so after Colin started us off, I just jumped in.

Colin: This was basically the amalgamation of a lot of different blues and country songs I had been interested in without really investigating deeply. It’s strange how naturally this “intro-cantation” flows into the rest of what is essentially an acid trip record. The “Rosie” in the first few lines refers to (I think?) a girl I used to know in college who shot me down on Halloween my freshman year. Also, this is super nerdy, but I love the weird tape-break before Alaric brings his synth drone in near the end. I’ve always appreciated sounds that “break” the song. Pretty sure this is in drop-D.


He Said She'd

Alaric: I remember hanging out with our friend Robbie one time in the weeks leading up to recording Blue Shaman. We were enjoying some particular fungi and walking on the bridge to Autzen Stadium over the Willamette, and at one point I leaned over the side of the bridge to watch the river's current and the ripples. I started singing to myself and the river then: "said she'd go my way said she'd go my way" etc. like it sounds on the record, and then forgot about it. When it came time to record Blue Shaman, my brain accessed that melody, which apparently had stuck somewhere in my memory, and there it was.

Colin: The guitar part here is the beginning of the Pink Floyd vibe we dip into throughout the record. I’ll be honest and say I have no idea what effects I was using, how much distortion I was using, even the kind of guitar I was using, save that it was Alaric’s, but it was around this song that I started really exploring the guitar sound -- tuning in to the cascade of overlapping notes and using that to build thematic/sonic momentum in a song. I love how creepy Alaric’s vocal is here, like a deranged schoolboy’s chant that fractures and breaks down.


His Sister

Alaric: Easily a favorite of mine on here; I'd love to do it again live someday. I had never sung a vocal like that, and it just happened. It felt really powerful to release that kind of energy. I really love Colin's vocal in this, and I think the song would have been better if our vocal levels had been the reverse. This was one of those tracks that I wish we had been able to mix differently, because when we were playing this I imagined my vocal really as the background vocal, and it became the lead kind of by accident. Colin's guitar playing also adds so much psychedelic power in this song!

Colin: I actually like how present Alaric's vocals are in this song. It creates a kind of circular chant that bounces around the headphones, an effect Alaric created without panning or anything like that. That counter-melody of “say it” is one of my favorite vocal tracks on the record, and not just because I sound like a whinnying goat/Stevie Nicks. There’s a lot of emotion in this track, highlighted by the title “His Sister” and Alaric’s absolutely mind-blowing note sustain about halfway through. Most of my lyrics here are based around things that make me happy, namely: skipping down streets, working with children, family, expressing yourself (“say it!”), etc. I think it’s important to declare those things so they’re out in the universe.


Magna Vox

Alaric: This song feels to me like some kind of Pink Floyd track, especially with that "have you ever seen the sky" part. I think I was also channeling some weird energy here, vocally, like Johnny Rotten or something.

Colin: Yeah, this song is insane! That “have you ever seen the sky” part sounds like an Airbender on an air-bender. Trippy.


Holidayz (both parts)

Alaric: The entire Holidayz song is my absolute favorite on this whole album. Colin's ideas for his vocal were so sick, and somehow we just clicked on the relationship between his vocal and my piano. Certain phrases in the lyrics just stick with me: "squeeze it out of your windowsill", "wonder if my teeth are showing," "I put on my monster clothes and go outside", "remember you're my favorite being," "attach an alligator to your leg and see if that works," "a coffin for Christmas a coffin for Easter"....there are so many! I love the emotional register of this song. I just love everything about this. I sang "got a white rabbit center" because I was looking at a large tie-dye tapestry on my wall, and the blob in the center of the spiral looked like a rabbit's head. Also a cameo of our phrase "flood no mystery," which refers to a great song that we wrote and still have yet to release--one day! Also, I don't know anyone named "Christina."

Colin: Big fan of the interplay between my frantic word-scrambling and Alaric’s calming, soothing melodies. Alaric’s piano trills on this always paint this image for me of like a master pianist trying out pianos in a mall pavilion, specifically a mall from the 80s. I don’t know why, but the absurdity of that image captures this song perfectly for me. I remember saying “And my friend says?” over and over again until Alaric responded. You can hear my impatience in the song. Alaric’s radio monologues in the First Part are a call back to our mutual love of “old-timey” ads. I always appreciated how this song shoots all over the place lyrically, starting out as a kind of indictment of modern capitalism/the journey for meaning in a world that sells and markets that meaning and ending on a really cathartic note. Definitely my favorite song to sing. I do know someone named “Christina.” She’s a very nice lady.


Modernity Daydreams

Alaric: Survival manuals, in case of disaster.

Colin: Hahaha, Alaric name-drops “Check My Style” at the beginning of this one! “Check My Style” is our unreleased dude rock song and “cool guy” mantra. Tongue firmly in cheek, of course.


Alligator

Alaric: Another track I'd love to perform live one day! I love the interplay between our vocals. Also you might catch the moment early in the song when I slipped in "Alaric ate her" instead of "Alligator". I thought it was cool how Colin's guitar brought us back to the intensity of "Magna Vox" as well, although this is another one that I wish we could have mixed a little better, because I'd rather hear Colin's vocal in the front than my own here.

Colin: After “Holidayz” I had forgotten there was a guitar strapped around my neck, so this song is a return to the exploration of “Magna Vox” for sure. That weird mantra I’m repeating halfway through the song is actually a hatha mantra I had learned that semester in yoga (yes, UO has a yoga elective – are you even surprised?). I love how Alaric chews the words like taffy at the end of this song, and my “Why don’t you eat more?” line is something my family would say to me every time they visited me in college.


Passerby

Alaric: This monologue is so haunting to me! When I first listened to the recording, the "take it easy man" felt like one of the loneliest damn things I've ever heard. Now it just punches me in the stomach with this kind of selfish indifference of the speaker.

Colin: It was about this time where life was starting to feel more like artifice than learning, and I think that feeling is more relevant now. You’re surrounded by people who are trying to learn but also trying to articulate an identity for their adult life, and a lot of that identity can feel contrived. The speaker’s self-importance – “Yeah I’m really busy” – is all an act. That “take it easy man” at the end just kills me.


Shaman Passes...

Alaric: I thought of this as a transition. My monologue came from a note I had written in my iPhone.

Colin: I was picking up the alligator theme with the “scales” lyric at the beginning before this turns into an ambient jam. One of my few regrets about this record is how late this “Shaman” title appears, as though we forgot about him until this song. Absolutely adore Alaric’s monologue here (he wrote it himself!) ‘cuz it serves as a mission statement for Spring Cell in general. “You shirk from the adventure of description” is just *kissy noise* bella.


Dying Sound?!

Alaric: An "interrobang" is a punctuation mark that is a combination of a question mark and exclamation point. Our friend Robbie, who I mentioned earlier, taught me that on the same day that I thought of the vocal for "He Said She'd". We called this "dying sound" because we listened to this, forgetting that we had even recorded this moment, and it was so damn intense and surprising that we concluded: "This is the sound of dying!" as if these sounds were representative of the cognitive transition from life into death: sudden, overwhelming, and a bit like a psychedelic rollercoaster whirlwind, or something.

Colin: WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS SOUND AND HOW DID WE MAKE IT?! Give me a million years and I still wouldn’t be able to figure out exactly what combination of instruments/effects/cosmic coincidence made this song happen. It sounds like fairies doing Adderall in Oberon’s nightclub.


Scrape the Earth

Alaric: The beginning of the lyric came from something else I had written in my iPhone. I cannot remember why we called this "Scrape the Earth."

Colin: Sounded cool, I guess.


Shaman Asleep!

Alaric: "Shaman Asleep!" obviously forms bookends with "Shaman Awake!"; stylistically it brings back Colin's blues, and to me it feels like the showstopper of a musical or something with the keyboard part I threw in there. We wanted to bring the album out of the psychedelic journey we had been on and return to something concrete. If you listen to the album on repeat, it cycles pretty smoothly too.

Colin: And here’s the “outro-cantation.” My favorite part on the record: Alaric’s synth line at the end of song. It just makes me want to dance! I absolutely agree with bringing the listener back to something concrete after such an intense dive into the psychic abyss, but you can still hear those roiling guitar notes underneath the Delta blues licks. What a trip.