Lyrics for Archaic Tocsin

Rush-
You shoud have seen the sky
it was burning red
you could develop film
in its crimson shade
but you were closing eyes
in a cave blinding fold

you gotta spill your eyes
in this tower here
it has everything
that you would ever see
it has everything
that you'd ever need

you must have felt the burn
of my boiling flesh
these are my cannibals
these are my prediters
say hello or they wil eat you alive

I couldn't see the sky
i was saving her
and my eyes would not
have kept an interest
all this time I was
cutting off my own arm

I built that tower there
with my own blood and sweat
to get away from the world
and your everything
it had everything
that i'd ever need

Archaic Tocsin

I have an album out in

napster and rhapsody called "Archaic Tocsin". I would like to give you a behind the scenes view of what all went on while making this album, and maybe you'll purchase it.

The first track "The Wake-up Call" is an instrumental that sounds much like its name. It is a warmup for your ears on what's to come. If you decide to skip over it, your ears will be rusty for listening. Everything is in reverse so i had to learn in reverse to record it. Simply i had to record this song and mix it once so i could learn it again to record it a second time. I am very proud of this accomplishment.

"Rush" was particularly organic to write but i only had an 8 track recorder so its kinda rough. It goes from 16th notes to triple-lets back and forth which gives it a catchy rhythm. The bridge has an odd rhythm but it simply cut time. The lyrics simply deals with one character so excited about this new view on life and another who missed it because he was sacrificing himself for his lover. He later adds that he himself gave the other character his view.

"The Ill" has 4 different time signatures. The intro and chorus are 10/4, the pre-chorus is 4/4, the verse is 9/8, and the bridge is cut time. Josh Levell played the drums and helped with the structure and yells. The verse vocals have one octavator going up and another one going down to make it sound jolty. The lyrics can mean whatever you want them to mean.

"Kiss My Knee" is simple and sweet. The most accessible song on the album. If has hints of "Metric" melodies with my voice droning the pleading lyrics. After the subtle build up the song erupts and explodes into a post-punk jam.

"Electronica Anthem" was written on the spot with Josh Levell in my studio. We started with drums then bass, synth, sounds, egg shaker, trumpet, recorder and finished with lyrics and radio tuning. We typically discourage looping but we were to lazy to care at the time so the drums and bass are looped while everything else was was cut to fit. The lyrics involve another set of two characters or groups. The first acknowledges the fall of man and the second takes initiative to profit from it.

"Let Them" was written by Josh Levell and I helped structure it and put words to it. This song is very different then anything we've ever done and was a huge challenge with the equipment we had at the time. In the middle of recording the 8 track had filled up so we had to dump what we didn't need and put it into the computer to continue recording. Even then we lost the main vocal tracks and I had to go back and record the bare necessities just to record my vocals. So the main vocals you hear were not recorded with the instruments and backup vocals. All in all we were able to fit three electric guitars, acoustic guitar, stereo acoustic piano, mellaphone, bass, drum set, and two vocals (total of 12 tracks) on an 8 track recorder.

"Speechless" was entirely written, structured, and lyricized by Josh Levell. There is an earlier version where he plays all instruments and vocals for the recording. On this version he sings and plays acoustic guitar and drums. I play the bass and lead electric.

"She's so Cool" was written about two years ago but I didn't get around to recording it till this summer. At the times I was taking jazz guitar lessons and i couldn't get the those chords out of my head so I wrote a song with them. The end was all meaningless improvisation that is really nice when you're about to fall asleep.

"The Redeemed" is two songs in one. Radiohead loved to combine several songs together and we loved that idea and they fit well together with the second song being a slight relief or a "settle down". I wrote the first song and the first verse lyrics and Josh wrote the second/third verse of the first song, the second song and it's lyrics. For texture we decided on using a trumpet in the pre-verse. I don't know what the words mean at all. But since Josh wrote the second part I can say the second part is worth waiting for 10 fold. Its an amazing piece of work.

I'm really excited to talk about "Phonocamptic". About a year ago we had written a 11 minute song called "The Epic" and liked only parts of it but it was cool because we had written and recorded it in a day. Ever since we made it I always wanted to remake it and put different material in it but keep the good stuff. One day when josh and i were improvising with my brother on drums and I fell upon this guitar riff. I wanted to make another "epic" out of it but it turned out we were able to fit it in the old epic. Restructure after restructure after transition after transition we linked everything together with ebb and flow. We could start recording. Luckily i had my 16 track at this point. The piano starts of with just simple subtle notes. Hidden in those notes is actually a descending chromatic phrase. This phrase collides with an A minor-F major progression for the lyrics and vocals till it continues the chromatic descent to D major. The guitar quickly interrupts to bring in all sorts of chaos and brain damage. The vocals are so relentless your ears barely get a chance to breath. eventually it calm down and transitions to A minor and a haunting psychedelic jam. The jam then is interrupted by a Chorus the interrupted by structured noise (that transitions to F) then softened by a trip rock "postal service" mood only to fade out. The very last part was conceived by Josh Levell. I would have to listen to this song with you to point out everything and pause and rewind to tell you who did what, where.