One of the things I’m most proud of this year is learning new skills in remote collaboration and creativity. Just like every other aspect of life I experienced it sounds and feels a little different but with persistence and determination we did it. For that I am pleased and excited to share it with you today.
Setting the scene let’s take it back to May of 2020. Feels like 8 years ago but it was 8 months. About 2 months of panic and isolation was in full effect. I was living in an apartment on Capitol Hill in Seattle which you may now know as C.H.O.P from April to August of this year as I had been for the past fourteen years. My drum set was at Cat our lead guitarist’s house across the city. She had a bedroom she generously designated to our practice space but since it was the height of the pandemic and we were all washing our bags of chips while under a stay home order I didn’t ride the light rail over to her house to play in close quarters like we always did. The journey across town happened later that summer. For now, in spring, I was separated from my drum set and it was tough especially since I use it as an emotional regulation tool. It was hard not to be able to hit those drums with full force during those months! I pitter pattered around the kitchen making sounds with random things like drops of water in tea cups and spaghetti pot drum sets. The 8 PM nightly cheers for health care workers became a ritual music experience involving a violin that I dusted off from under my bed and a clarinet my partner projected out the window.
I checked my email and it was May 10th when Carrie Biell first sent me the track she named “Faultlines”. Carrie had been making actual music in her basement studio. This was a welcomed relief from my mindless yet meditative tapping on things. Embarrassingly we tried the Zoom band practice as ya do in the beginning of the pandemic in 2020 only to find out very quickly that there is a delay when playing music on a video call. So that wouldn’t work. I had a super simple Alesis SamplePad 4 that I was working on to create beats to her vocals and bass line. I did this by playing her audio track on one device and recording myself on another. MacBook Pro 2011 and iPhone 8 were the tech specs for this process. I had the Garageband App and I tried using it but wasn't an expert so I went analog and just recorded myself to her recording and sent that over to our keyboardist Gabe who is skilled in multi-tracking instruments. A note about the drum samples I was working with on my pad. Aaron C. Schroeder of Pierced Ears Recording Co. had recorded samples of my drum set during one of the Moon Palace “Shadowcast” recording sessions. So thankfully I was able to have some semblance of my kit’s sound to play digitally. The familiarity of that felt comforting. After I played along to Carrie’s voice memo on my sample pad and recorded a video of myself on my phone I sent it to Gabe, AKA, Fred AKA exceptionally talented synth player dreamboat. They referenced some Angel Olsen to get drum tones and when they sent back the tracks mixed with Carrie’s parts it sounded splendid to me. We went back and forth a few times with different mixes. I asked questions like “Could you tone down the echo or loud room effect on that snare a little? Would you deaden that splash a tad so it doesn't feel so overboard/epic?” We continued to share random notes like that until it felt right. From there each member sent parts they had been writing in their respective homes to Gabe and Timothy Robert Graham who co-produced the track. We created a collaborative Spotify playlist called Faultlines with Tim to share tracks that inspired us so he could reference the different sounds we liked. We added bands to this playlist from June through November. At first it started out with just whatever music was inspiring us at all during this traumatic time. Just a little bit of creativity to spark a potential song in the future. Then when Carrie actually sent the track we added more songs. The inspirations were all over the place but when focusing specifically on referencing how we wanted the vocals to be up front we zoned in on Sharon Van Etten and Deep Sea Diver as major inspirations.
"Faultlines" was mixed at Beacon Mountain Recording in Seattle, WA by Timothy Robert Graham. It was mastered by Ed Brooks at Resonant Mastering in Seattle, WA. There is a second song from this EP in production right now. It’s called “Ego Death” and the lyrics were written by Cat Biell. “Ego Death” has live drums on it as it was written and created during the summer when restrictions were lifted and we were able play in a bigger space with ventilation.
To me “Faultlines” is like a cozy blanket you wrap around yourself by the bonfire in this cold dark time. “Ego Death” is the heat you feel after burning what you wanted to get rid of on the Solstice. Both are wintry mixes of moody moonlight and twinkling stars of hope.
To hear more of Moon Palace follow us on:
Twitter @mo0npalace
Instagram @mo0npalace
