I Passed Through Minor Chord In A Morning - Its a Quantum Americana Album - notes on the tracks and recordings and conceptual flow.

 

 

I PASSED THROUGH MINOR CHORD IN A MORNING

14 track album . out November 11th 2024

Cover image by Izabella Shaw.

Could be called our basement tapes album.
Our studio is downstairs.
Could also be our most post-punkest of albums. Certainly our most auto-harped album.
Some songs started life twenty years ago, some six or seven years ago, two built from processed and distorted sounds recorded almost thirty years ago. Four began life as bass and drum improvisations into a single mic four months before the albums release and two as fresh as three months ago.
There are some two minute songs and several almost ten minute epics.

After we finished our April 2024 album (strangely)(emotional) Clare Moore suggested I do an album of freewheeling lyrics and perhaps even talking/speaking. That’s where it kind of started. 

Elvis Never

(words Dave Graney/music Dave Graney)

Dave Graney, found sounds, 4 track bounces and cuts and pastes, vocals, keys, bass, guitar. 

Australian colloquialism. When its said "so and so never..." It means that didn't or never had to do somethin.

This and Still Got The Truth were slabs of cut and paste chaos which I’d been experimenting with since 2021. I had bought a 4 track cassette recorder and was bouncing sounds into and out of it and bringing them into the digital realm. I had no grid or sequence to cut it all to but I could hear a beat and sang to it and then cut and pasted and deep fried it all some more. I was most happy that the songs were barely two minutes in length.

 

 

Still Got The Truth
(words Dave Graney/music Dave Graney)

Dave Graney, found sounds, 4 track bounces and cuts and pastes, vocals, bass, guitar

 

Its true- I still got the truth. But like the song says- you got to choose your battles!

This and Elvis Never were of a pair in cut and paste madness and squall. Also both worked out of base material that was decades old. I was most happy that the songs were barely two minutes in length.

 

Acceptable Back Story

(words Dave Graney/music Dave Graney-Clare Moore)

 

Clare Moore, drums.
Dave Graney, bass, reverse guitar sounds, vocal
Stuart Perera, guitar
Mark Fitzgibbon, piano from 2007 treated backwards (sorry Mark)

Some people need trusted sources if they are going to give you their attention. They are easily spooked.
Music  came from an improvised session of bass and drums being recorded by one mic and a stereo Zoom recorder in our studio in July 2024  just before we headed off to do some shows interstate. We then forgot about them. I just wanted to have a long groove that drifted in and out of focus that I could talk over. It had a funny quality to it in that we were both hearing the one in different places (as in 1-2-3-4) but it still all held together. I brought in some backward sounds from older recordings. I also used a few studio plugins that had a life of their own. Its all very improvised, even the studio stuff. 

"the principality of Werona" refers to the street I grew up in in Mt Gambier.

 

 

Parking Lot Scenes

(words Dave Graney/music Dave Graney)

 

Dave Graney, beats, loop, bass, vocals, autoharp
Stuart Perera, guitar

 Parking Lot Scene takes it title from a movie about Grateful Dead fans who would gather inforce and go off piste in the parking lots around the giant venues they would play.
This and Emcee Bitz were both studio improvisations that happened when I learned how to loop a drum beat. Then I strummed my autoharp and cut that to the beat. Stuart Perera flew his guitar in later.

 

Did You Have Servants?

(words Dave Graney/music Dave Graney-Clare Moore-Stuart Perera)

 

Clare Moore, drums, backing vocals
Dave Graney, bass, vocal
Stuart Perera, guitar

From the improvised bass and drums into one mic session. Then Stuart Perera added some hard rock tones and turned it into something else.
I tried to keep the vocal steady and deadpan but commanding. I didn't want to get all emotional/angry.
Surely you have met people who have always had other people following them to clean up their mess?

 

 

I’d Rather The Frills

(words Dave Graney/music Dave Graney)

Dave Graney, guitars, bass, autoharp, vocal
Clare Moore, keys, bass drum, percussion

 

Goes back to 2004 and an experiment with open D tuning and some 12 string raga guitar moments. Clare added a stomping bass drum and keys. When I had first dug it up and out and spruced it a little she thought it was a track by the Moodists.

 

1985

(words Dave Graney/music Dave Graney-Clare Moore-Stuart Perera)

 

Clare Moore, drums
Dave Graney, bass, found sounds, effects, vocal
Stuart Perera, guitar

 A roundabout song which in a roundabout way refers to the year before 1985. A famous year that promised a dystopian world. But here we are decades later.
From an improvised session of bass and drums being recorded by one mic and a stereo Zoom recorder in our studio in July 2024  just before we headed off to do some shows interstate. We then forgot about them.
Stuart Perera added some guitar and it seemed he heard a different song as he transformed the whole vibe, like a jazz player taking off. He added all these changes that were not there before. Changed it at will from minor to major.

 

A Rampart Across Time

(words Dave Graney/music Stuart Perera)

Clare Moore, drums, organ
Dave Graney, bass, vocal
Stuart Perera, guitars

 

Stuart Perera sent me this music that he had recorded to his phone back with his nylon string guitar in 2021.  I turned into a song and sang along to it. Stuart added some more guitar parts. Lovely kind of Bill Withers feel to it.

 

Girls Are Famous
(words Dave Graney/music Dave Graney-Clare Moore)

Clare Moore, drums, keys
Dave Graney, bass, autoharp, vocal

 

From the improvised session.

Clare added some keys from a new/old module she bought after we got back. The original jam was about ten minutes and I cut into it at about half way through, when we had found a solid groove.
The lyric is deadpan. The singer is a man and he is addressing the listener who has to be another man. Talking about girls. Women. Famous things are objects. That “people” stare at, consume, touch. 

 

 

I Passed Through Minor Chord In a Morning

(words Dave Graney/music Clare Moore

Clare Moore, drums, synth bass, vibes, keys
Dave Graney vocal, fuzz guitar
Stuart Perera, delay guitar

 

This was started by Clare Moore with a beat, keyboard bass synth and vibes in 2008 and she had Stuart Perera play some guitar on it. Its been sitting in the archives since then. The lyric is talking about Minor Chord as a physical place - a town that the singer passes through. (I generally avoid minor chords- and three/four or 6/8 time) . I thought the title had a cosmic folk ring to it. In some ways this is a Quantum Americana album. 

 

Emcee Bitz

(words Dave Graney/music Clare Moore)

Dave Graney, beat, vocals
Clare Moore, organ, piano

 

Music is a powerful force for the listener but also for the player. It can be toxic and dangerous. Dealing with forbidden, unspoken, antapped stuff. As well as many other positive things.
This and Parking Lot Scenes were both studio improvisations that happened when I learned how to loop a drum beat. Emcee Bitz is a lyric about performing your life story.

 

 

I’m Against it (whadda you got?)

(words Dave Graney/music Dave Graney)

Clare Moore, drums, keys, backing vocals
Dave Graney, bass, guitars, keys, vocal
Will Hindmarsh, backing vocals

 

Have you ever seen the movie The Wild One? The scene where somebody asks Marlon Brando what he is rebelling against? His answer was "whadda ya got?"
Music based on a rhythm track from 2016. And that was based on a track from 2007.

 

Et Tu, Doudou?

(words Dave Graney/music Dave Graney)

Clare Moore, drums, percussion, backing vocals
Dave Graney, bass, guitars, autoharp, keys, vocal

This dates from 2017 and concerns a story Georgio “the Dove” Valentino (who we had just been touring with) told us about a childhood totem he had taken with him on an epic journey of many years from Florida and around the USA and Europe and the trauma he felt when it was stolen from his car one dark night in Belgium.

I kept piling on guitars and autoharp and keys and using processors and the 4 track bounces and compressors over and over. The chords being strangely (for me) MAJOR.

 

                                                photo Greg Thorsby

The Trojan Egg

(words Dave Graney/music Dave Graney-Clare Moore)

Clare Moore, drums, organ
Dave Graney, autoharp, vocal

The Trojan Egg was built up from the skeleton of a song that appeared on Fearful Wiggings in 2014. Its a nice prog ending to an album of strangeness and-hopefully-quirks and charm.

I PASSED THROUGH MINOR CHORD IN A MORNING is a digital release and is available/ accessible through all digital outlets. I see us in a period where we will be releasing lots of music and its not possible for us to make physical releases of them all.

This is available through our Bandcamp site as a digital release with t shirt bundle if you would like.

 

T Shirt with image from the album I Passed Through Minor Chord In A Morning. Digital album released 11-11-24.
Available in two colours. Navy and Camel

Image by Izabella Shaw.

 
Sizes S M L XL 2XL
and
WXS WS WM WL WXL

This t shirt comes with a digital copy of the 2024 studio album I Passed Through Minor Chord In A Morning.