This album came from the same batch of recording sessions that produced six improvisations, as outlined in greater detail on that page. It was also released on Khalija Records in December of 2009. We left these two tracks together since they came from the same session, in the basement of the animation school at CalArts, and we felt they worked really well as a pair in their full length, rather than edited down to fit on the other album.
We’d done an earlier session at CalArts, just Sam and I, and found the vibe down in the basement, while the school was empty for summer break, to be very strange, and perfectly conducive to playing. With that in mind, we came back with a small audience, which increased the vibe and also gave us some extra hands to help us carry all of our gear across campus.
To be clear, this required essentially breaking into the school - the campus was fully shut down for summer break, and certainly at 11pm, when we were showing up, there was no above-board reason for anyone to be wandering the halls. We parked Sam’s car off in the shadows, and schlepped all our gear across the darkened campus, through an unlocked side door, down 4 flights of stairs, and into the literal labyrinth that is the animation school’s sublevel. The walls down there were covered in 30 years of graffiti, and only some of the lights were on. After setting up, and waiting for one of our helpers/audience members to return from a beer run, we got to jamming. We somehow managed to perform for about an hour without attracting any attention from security, and disappeared back into the night.
The cover art is a photograph by Chas Crandon, who was present at the session.
We’d done an earlier session at CalArts, just Sam and I, and found the vibe down in the basement, while the school was empty for summer break, to be very strange, and perfectly conducive to playing. With that in mind, we came back with a small audience, which increased the vibe and also gave us some extra hands to help us carry all of our gear across campus.
To be clear, this required essentially breaking into the school - the campus was fully shut down for summer break, and certainly at 11pm, when we were showing up, there was no above-board reason for anyone to be wandering the halls. We parked Sam’s car off in the shadows, and schlepped all our gear across the darkened campus, through an unlocked side door, down 4 flights of stairs, and into the literal labyrinth that is the animation school’s sublevel. The walls down there were covered in 30 years of graffiti, and only some of the lights were on. After setting up, and waiting for one of our helpers/audience members to return from a beer run, we got to jamming. We somehow managed to perform for about an hour without attracting any attention from security, and disappeared back into the night.
The cover art is a photograph by Chas Crandon, who was present at the session.