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The final piece of the puzzle, unearthed in December 2022.
The last track I recorded for this project was a cover of Autechre's Garbage EP closer, "Vletrmx". Some computer error mysteriously misplaced the project files before I'd had a chance to finalize the mix. I'd bounced a rough mix to listen to on the go, but I suddenly couldn't find that anywhere either. I turned over every log & stone, but it became clear I had to accept the track was gone forever. It was like I wasn't meant to include it on the record, so I swallowed the annoyance and pushed forward. Fast forward 8 years to Winter 2022. I'm looking for a picture in my Google Drive when I happen upon a folder I hadn't seen before: "unbearable lightness pre tape wavs". I open it up and... there it is! EIGHT YEARS later, I find the last mix of "Vletrmx" I ever got to export to wav. I played it. It sounded incredible, even more completely mixed than I was sure I'd left it. Had some angel finished the job and snuck it into my cloud storage? Just short of a decade after the fact, it turns out it was meant to be after all. I no longer have the waterlogged Sanyo deck, it was destroyed during a move across the state, so I converted the track to its final degraded form with a Portastudio 484 and the cassette that was in the Sanyo deck when the basement flooded!
I think "Vletrmx" is one of the most underrated pieces in all of ambient music. It's so simple yet so powerful. It's triumphant, like the second coming, or the end of days as a relief. Playing it on guitar in one take, with all the ridiculous swells & trem picking, gave me a feeling like runner's high, so I recorded two takes to play against each other. It was payed on a Squier Strat that my brother eventually ran over with a car. I'd always heard that the middle pickup tone is a Strat's weakest link, so I tried recording the first take with the middle pickup to see if the rumors were true. I don't know where I heard that now, but it's total hogwash, position 3 on a Strat is pure glory, like a bell chiming and a horn blatting fanfare all at the same time. Listening back, I realized, a Strat on the mid pickup NAILS the "Vletrmx" tone, making this probably the 1st instance in history that a guitarist has ever said the phrase "nailed that tone" about Autechre.

credits

from .​.​.​And The Days Maunder On, released December 13, 2014

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The Unbearable Lightness Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

The abstract soundtrack to the human experience.
For the moments you feel dizzy with sensation.

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