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[iframe_loader width=”300″ height=”355″ style=”position: relative; display: block; width: 300px; height: 355px;” src=”http://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/v=2/album=219503889/size=grande2/bgcol=FFFFFF/linkcol=4285BB/vis=plasma/transparent=true/” allowtransparency=”true” frameborder=”0″>Bittersweet Horizon by Awake! Awake!]
The story of Bittersweet Horizon…
It was 8:00 a.m. on a Saturday morning, and while most people were sleeping off the night before, we were hauling in our gear to Bonhoeffer’s, a local gathering for music and coffee. The air crisp, our eyes blurred, we were there to take advantage of the peace the early hours bring. I arrived with a freshly brewed quart of black as I often did. With our thoughts clear and filled with nothing but creative expectancy, we began to write. It’s what we’ve always done, just not like this.
Several more early morning sessions passed, and we began to sense our disjointed ideas starting to take shape into something more solid. We weren’t finished yet, but we knew we had to start before the songs waned. Combining efforts with some great friends, we managed to capture drums for twelve songs in a weekend. I remember us laughing at Bono’s dancing skills in the video for “I Will Follow” before rushing off to fourteen-hour sessions in the basement studio. We mixed and matched equipment, rented a snare for $25, and tested the patience of the pregnant woman upstairs. On the last song, Blake’s crash cymbal buckled under the weekend of beatings and cracked. We don’t know where in the track it happened, just that it became part of our sound. With the long hours past us, we celebrated on the deck with a Fat Tire. Drums were quite an effort, but exciting, because they marked the dawn of Bittersweet Horizon’s physical arrival.
In the days to follow, I began carefully weaving music in between the beats. Our philosophy was “try everything” and we did. Countless tracks were recorded, only to be discarded. It’s much like a sculptor carving definition out of a block. Thought must go into his work before it’s attempted. Our busy schedules of day jobs and families allowed just that. It was decided early on that our sound would take a modern approach on the New Wave era of the 80’s. Synth would play a large role in the communication of our emotions and we would strive to make it just as genuine as the folk singers with their loosely tuned acoustics. June brought the bass booming and wrapped the songs in warmth. It was a grateful effort, a favor from a friend. Words began filling in the final holes in early July. Writing was still occurring, because we and our sound had grown quite a bit by this point. September flew in and we all had an unmixed version of our new album. Mixing began in the last of September in the same apartment room that most of the tracking was completed in. Among lots of belongings and a baby’s crib, I carved large spaces for the songs to breathe. This was an indie project. We borrowed, asked favors and worked long, late hours to complete it. We didn’t let our surroundings defeat our music…we just allowed them to shape it.
creditsreleased 01 July 2010
Copyright 2010 Awake! Awake!
All Music and Lyrics by Awake! Awake!
Album Art by Blake Noel
