** Warning: Entering The High School Era **
Content may be low quality, poorly written, sloppily performed, badly produced, childish, unlistenable, or otherwise cause you to wonder why I am even letting people hear it.
I wasn't even ultra-diehard as far as including demos that never went anywhere, which is saying something, because I have still included quite a lot of unpublished work that is bad at face value simply because of some weird sense of nostalgia (mixed with overanalysis) that makes me think it is worth remembering or important in some deeper way. Maybe I miss being able to create so much content so quickly, without having to worry about anyone hearing it!
Problem is, I created way too much content in these days, so it's difficult when going through the archives to distinguish an intriguing "unpublished demo" from a "random thought in mp3 format" that has no intrinsic value.
2010
Mandolin
For my senior project in high school, I learned mandolin technique, challenging myself to examine the musical style I half-jokingly called my nemesis (country) and instead learn, understand, and embrace one of its deepest forms (bluegrass).
I have yet to insert any serious level of mandolin into any of my music, though it makes an appearance on the instrumental version of Iron Krill's "Memories" for instance. Here are a couple clips for proof of just how far I took this experiment.
** CONTENT MISSING **
ALACATAAD / ALINROSES
An accidental experiment or a lesson in songwriting, take your pick. I created two versions of the same basic song idea, which would eventually be merged into one unified "ALACATAAD" on Iron Krill's 2013 album Prognosis.
In the process, I challenged myself to understand why some parts were "disposable" and to avoid staying attached to individual riffs or melodies.
Unpublished / Other
This period was rare for having a few of my only ever attempts at clean singing - and perhaps the only ones where I did so over “soft” music. Turns out no amount of Autotune can make it work.
2009
Untold
My next full-length album didn't have as much of a grand vision behind it as the first, but its sound in my opinion was much more listenable, and the first three songs in particular became much more memorable. "The Ice Cream Man" and "Untold" would later get re-recorded and reworked into on Iron Krill's album "Diagnosis" two years later.
June 28 Krillcore Demo
The demo Iron Krill put together for our first show on June 28, 2009 was a chaotic mix of material. Some were essentially just reference tracks I had made in a hurry to send to the other band members so that we'd be able to have a full set's worth of material, and others were just random things I was working on at the time that I decided were either "done" or simply not good enough to appear as a song on my solo album so I may as well release it somewhere.
Redefining Beauty
My submission to the PTA Reflections composition project. In my opinion it sounded much, much better than my submission the previous year, but it did not win anything, suggesting that my award the previous year may have simply been out of fear ("oh no, don't make the metal person mad, make sure his song wins!!") or that they did not want to award me because I used instruments I did not actually play (drums) this time.
Unpublished / Other
Some of my best joke songs came from this period.
Not included:
Decaying Lawn - Nwal Gniyaced
Decaying Lawn - The Finer Things in Life
Decaying Lawn - Work Was Really Slow Today
Decaying Lawn - Yobby Goes to the Mall
Decaying Lawn - Dragons Moshing
Decaying Lawn - The Tale of the Cowboy and the Sumo Wrestler
Decaying Lawn - Hardcore Jonny Talks Too Much
Charlie Garcia - Nothing Left (As I Lay Dying cover)
2008
Spark the Sullen World
My first full-length solo album, at the time of release, was truly the culmination of everything I ever hoped to accomplish related to music. For the longest time, I had been obsessed with figuring out all that is involved in making an album, from writing to recording to mixing. I would eventually realize it was not too unusual for one person to handle it all, but seeing as how I had started so recently, I treated it like a challenge.
In fact, I took pride in the fact that I was inspired to make music largely as the result of hearing Underoath's 2006 album "Define the Great Line" and wound up learning how to play guitar, learning how to scream, writing an album, recording an album, mixing an album, and publishing an album before their 2008 album "Lost in the Sound of Separation" was released.
Entangled in Eternity
** MISSING CONTENT **
The Moose Calamity
Instrumental album
Unpublished / Other
“Thanksgiving Album 08” - I don’t know how much of this was really unique as opposed to just a “new” batch of instrumental songs to hand out to some family at Thanksgiving, but I found these as new songs that hadn’t appeared before:
Presentiment (Jacob Brown and Charlie Garcia) created a few additional songs during this period, but they eventually lost interest and pursued other projects, leaving these songs in an eternally unpublished state.
Looking back on them now, they have a unique place in our timeline because they have a much better sound than Presentiment's actual "album" only a year earlier, yet they still follow the extremely underground, bedroom-recording-studio aesthetic.
Jacob Brown - All music (except some guitar on When Gold Isn't Enough)
Charlie Garcia - All vocals & lyrics (except some vocals on Forever)
2007
Fury of the Doorknobs
Decaying Lawn is... something else.
I’ll add description here later. (Probably)
Primarily, it is me on music and Brian Bridges on vocals. I’m pretty sure it was all just a big joke making fun of something, but I can’t tell what.
Looking Up
First actual album I appeared on. Music on all songs except "Not So Far Away" by Jacob Brown.
Christmas Album 2007
Instrumental album
Unpublished / Other
2006
It may not be the wisest idea to post anything here, but I can't stop now.
ABC Recordings
To understand the full picture of how I ended up making music, it is important to understand two important van rides that took place in 2006.
One was a van ride from Maple Valley, Washington to Calgary, Alberta. I listened to Underoath's album "They're Only Chasing Safety" an incomprehensible amount of times and resolved to learn more about this kind of music when I got home, ultimately seizing upon their radically different albums "Cries of the Past" and "Define the Great Line" as motivating factors compelling me to make music of my own.
The other was from Woodinville, Washington to Maple Valley, Washington. While I had been starting to play guitar aimlessly, vocals were not yet something I could take seriously. I was fascinated by the "whisper scream" concept, that whispering with the right tone can sound almost identical to a scream to the person making it. I combined this with a bit more "vocalization" to make random sounds in the halls of school to confuse people. This was expanded upon during this next van ride because I had brought with me a cheap voice recorder and made a few "songs" with friends. These were then supplemented by additional "songs" at our destination where more friends had gathered and happened to have some guitars with them (not always plugged in, as you can hear).
Despite the horrific quality, these have a special place in my musical development because they helped inspire me to want to actually make songs instead of just fool around.