When musicians are working on a “song” or a specific “piece”, they are using a certain part of their conscious brains. But before the super narcissistic band leader shows up and takes the reins, they will often hang out making stream-of-consciousnesses music that is often more interesting than the conscripted “songs”. In many cases “songs” are what keep musicians from doing their best work. These scraps of music that get lost forever in practice rooms are often more like the artist or bored receptionist’s doodles. Purely subconscious spelunkery. The Necks, Ornette Coleman, Jackson Pollock, Negativland, David Lynch and William Burroughs certainly knew the subconscious is where the real wisdom lives. Let the animal in you rule. It has no pretense. It hates your job. It uses repetition only to get high.

Interesting things happen when a musician is playing out of her comfort zone. This can be achieved by playing an instrument that you don’t usually play or by playing out of your usual genre. If you hand a guy an electric guitar and he grew up on rock and roll, the outcome is somewhat predictable at this point, mimicry of 50 years of rock and blues players. This is why virtuosos are boring to watch after a few minutes of amazement. I cannot count the number of times I’ve been asked to “play dumber” when recording drum tracks. I spent much of my youth learning hot drum licks, then my early 20s learning not to ever do them.

As I facilitated these recordings I steered these amazing players away from the tired tropes of rock and roll. On “Is Adam OK?” I sat at the piano prepared with sweaters across the strings. Virtuoso, multi-instrumentalist, super-freak Greg Saunier sat beside me at the piano and off into the abyss we wandered for 22 minutes. As the brilliant players of Joyful Noise showed up at Postal Recording on a frozen December day, we gave them little instruction. Their inner animals knew just what to do. There is no such thing as a mistake in this kind of “composition”. This is not the path for control freaks.

On “Grief Comes in Waves”, Andy Stack, Monk Parker and I played layer upon layer of sax and clarinet in 7 minute slabs. We added some other bits and bobs, then sent them to others to have their way with them. Jad Fair, Ohmme, and Adam added things I never would have thought of. Hearing them again was like opening birthday presents. Magic.

I started “Kindest Regards Mr Mapfumo” hoping for a Steve Reich kind of 12/8 piece, but ended up with a Thomas Mapfumo kind of 12/8. A pleasant misstep. The driving instrument is an electric tongue drum that I built. I will soon put instructions for building one yourself on Instagram. I ran it thru an Old Blood chorus/delay/distortion pedal.

None of the contributors were given any instructions. The parts they came up with are beyond my weirdest hallucinations. This approach relies on trust. I have always had a knack for finding the brilliant people and forcing friendship upon them.

- Thor Harris