Notes By Sunlight, or How The Sunlight Variations Came To Be
The Sunlight Variations EP consists of three recordings from what I am calling the first ‘phase’ of Shortwave Dahlia (November 2004 – April 2005), and as the name implies are three variants on one original idea.
The initial demo for all three of these tracks was a recording tentatively named “Sunlight”, which was inspired to some degree by The Postal Service, a musical project of Ben Gibbard (from Death Cab For Cutie) and Jimmy Tamborello (of the curiously named dntel). Specifically, “Such Great Heights” was the song that fueled my muse but early on it occurred to me that I couldn’t possibly touch Mr. Tamborello’s prowess at programming with my limited knowledge of software.
“Waiting For the Sunlight”, the first track, was actually the last thing I worked on for this release. By the time I had gotten TrEE’s vocal (see below for that story) I had remixed the song and extended its length to over nine minutes. My own lyrical theme had begun to form—a song about my college years and the fun and insanity I found myself mired in. There are allusions to the summer nights I spent driving aimlessly in Clarendon, Arkansas back when all the kids would drive around in circles all night, hanging out with all the beautiful freaks in smoky gay bars, and to road trips I took with my friends to see concerts. The overall point of the song is that you can’t possibly know how to live until you’ve just put yourself out there and done it. Sometimes that lesson is painful, but it’s the only way to learn.
Originally, Shortwave Dahlia was going to be exclusively collaborations with other vocalists, and concurrently I became aware of a very exciting Kraftwerkian group calling themselves Konsumer. In the process of doing a remix of their song, “Bedroom”, I asked one of them to consider a collaboration. TrEE indulged me, and did the vocal you hear on track number two, “Sunlight”. What you hear on the track is the recording as he mixed it (my attempts to mix it were tragic, so we finally agreed to stick with the track as he sent it).
Track number three is a dub version of that original demo. It’s a reflection of my recent interest in the production ethics of King Tubby, whom many people regard as the pioneer behind dub music which in effect was the basis behind ‘remixing’. I plan on eventually releasing an album of dub versions of SD songs. ”Sunlight Dub” was my first dub, though, and I think it adhered to the original idea of that style of music quite well.
For this release, I want to give thanks to my wife and child, TrEE for his ambitious work, and all of you for actually wanting to hear this. That’s it. Enjoy the music.
xoxo
Jack