THE NEW ALBUM, MILLIONTH VILLAGE
(The Story So Far, Chapter V)
IS AVAILABLE NOW!
Buy or listen now on Spotify, Apple Music, iTunes, Amazon, YouTube, or wherever you consume your digital sustenance.
BIG NEWS!!! On March 21, 1991 I completed what would become the first chapter of “The Story So Far” with “One Odd Stone”. Now, 30 years to the day later, Chapter V – “Millionth Village” is complete! To help celebrate the concluding album, I decided for the first time to do something visual. I’ve always wanted to muck about with some stop-motion animation and this odd little beastie for “The Lost Clan of Bold Manoeuvring” fell out of my head. The self-imposed caveat in making this – no money would be spent. All the characters, props, and general weirdness were made from things I had lying around the house from other projects. Modeling clay, my daughter’s drawing manikin, bits from the motorcycle build, spare LED lights, a rusty brake rotor I never got rid of… you get the point.
To be transparent tho – I -did- have to spend $4.99 on a can of fluorescent green spray paint to make a stand for some of the green screen work. 😉
Ok, back to the full story, starting at the beginning:
Back in the late 80’s I began procuring what little synth gear I could as a struggling fresh-outta-college film freelancer. My soul wanted some classic analog gear in a time when Roland, Yamaha, Ensoniq and the like were pioneering the first somewhat-affordable digital gear. I started out with a Yamaha DX-100 and a TX81Z module, a QX5 sequencer, RX21 drum machine and a MT1X four-track cassette recorder. Just prior to that my drums were analog tape loops stolen off of any vinyl I could find that had a drum beat with nothing over it. I still remember splicing the tape together, draping it off the playback heads over the front of my bedroom dresser with a spare take-up reel dangling at the bottom of the loop for tension. Fun times!
I added a Roland MKS-50, Roland D-110 and Oberheim Matrix1000 modules a couple years later, and eventually scored a monster – an OB-X for $100 from a neighbor just up the street. A Roland Jupiter 4 landed in my lap for several years. I had done an album project with a friend, “Jerrod’s Dream”, a very 80’s sorta ethereal rock, but besides that and writing all sorts of crazy crap at home had never really attempted anything very ‘large scale’, as it were.
I was/am/will forever be a huge fan of Jean-Michel Jarre and Vangelis, for different but distinct reasons. Jarre for the brilliant spooky analog perfection that hooked me the first time I ever heard “Oxygene”, Vangelis for both his gentleness and emotional power. His Blade Runner soundtrack is in my all-time top 10 (as is “Oxygene”). That being said, I can’t deny the influence of Larry Fast’s “Synergy” albums which were perhaps more cinematic and spoke to me in a loud voice. Definite nods to Chip Davis’ mid-80’s “Fresh Aire” work and of course Mike Oldfield.
So. I started putting together what would become “One Odd Stone” in 1990 with the above mentioned gear and an Ensoniq EPS as my keyboard controller, and dabbled at making long ambient samples for that album, to moderate success. Those old samplers were weird to work with and I never quite got the hang of it. Still, some cool sounds came out of the process.
As the music started to evolve, it became clear to me that a story was unfolding as well – the tale of a dark-age-ish village unearthing a stone of unusual and awesome power, and their struggle to contain it. It was vaguely based off of some of the ideas in Tolkien around the Silmarils, but with a sci-fi vibe.
It became a challenge – how to tell a story using nothing but an album title, the music therein, and the name of each song. Hopefully it was successful enough to let your imagination take the lead.
Side notes – the final song “Ascending” is actually the very first thing I ever recorded in 1986 with the four track cassette deck, my guitar, bass, a tiny micro toy Casio keyboard and a couple effects pedals – but it fit the mood so well I added it to the tale. Most of “One Odd Stone” and “Falling From Grace” are re-builds from the original MIDI files using as many of the same instruments and samples as possible since the 4-track tape versions mostly only exist as stereo masters and they were a bit tape-hissy. I took a few liberties in changing up sounds to match what I had in my head but didn’t have in equipment back in the early 90s, but the music itself has remained virtually unchanged. I’ll create an ‘about’ page soon and go into more detail on the recording process.
One Odd Stone – Chapter I – 1991
The next bit came pretty quickly, as our heroes struggle with what’s right as factions emerge and quickly begin to understand how little they know about control.
Falling From Grace – Chapter II – 1992
Years then went by, and my focus shifted to band things, loud crunchy power-pop-ish magic was made – and then one late November day in 2013 I snagged a copy of the Arturia V Collection and decided it was high time I pull up the “Modular V” VST and start to teach myself proper modular synthesis, which ignited the old passion in a flurry of sound design. For the first time I began to really understand the process, and probably 80% of the sounds on this album were programmed from scratch. I may be the most proud of this particular piece of the puzzle.
Story-wise, our heroes have come to understand and control the powers unleashed. Now things are good in the world. Generations have passed and eyes are not only looking to the stars, but they have taken their first tentative steps into the universe.
Building a Bridge – Chapter III – 2014
I finished “Building a Bridge” and thought I was done for the time being, but I kept going back into the studio and messing about with new sounds and for the first time not limiting myself to sounds I could create via hardware/software synths, but also with some creative editing in the mix process – doubling tracks and throwing one a beat or two out of sync, or inverting bits, time-stretching, basically anything that sounded cool. Before too long I realized the next bit was writing itself.
For our heroes, looking up was perhaps overly ambitious, as they clearly bit off more than they could chew. Elated, terrified, overwhelmed and gobsmacked they run to ground and lick emotional wounds trying to just get on. But once a nest is poked, it’s hard to keep it contained. Sometimes things you went looking for decide to come looking for you.
Vessels – Chapter IV – 2017
And now, as we near March 21, 2021, the story comes to a close. Future and Past, Here and Beyond have come to terms with each other and an uneasy truce has been put in place. Far afield our heroes, now in many places on many worlds have begun to claw a living out of alien rock alongside creatures who tolerate them but are almost beyond comprehension. They are observed, but left to their own devices. Life is tough but also full of awe and promise. One day an innocent feels a tugging in the back of his mind, an urge to dig. Almost unable to stop himself, he does just that. Then one strange day, he finds another – and much older – mysterious stone, and the cycle begins again.
This album has been brewing for a few years, but I got a little stuck about half-way through. I had been hammering out a bunch of daily pop/rock songs as part of a Pandemic songwriting gauntlet I threw down for some fellow musicians back in April 2020, and that seemed to be the spark I needed. This time around I did a lot of work with analog sequencers and clip editing in the mix to make some groovy sounds. I also pulled out the few bits of hardware I still have from when I recorded that first album back in ’91 – a Roland MKS-50, my Oberheim Matrix 1000, and a handful of the reconstituted samples I resurrected from my old, long-gone Ensoniq EPS played via Kontakt. It seemed only right.
The rest of the toys involved – my main beast- a Dave Smith Prophet Rev 2, Korg Minilogue, Behringer Neutron, the absolutely brilliant Arturia V Collection and a handful of Roland Cloud synths. The final track on the album, “What Comes Around”, clocked in at a whopping 168 tracks. When I think back on how I built “One Odd Stone” with the EPS, a Roland D110 module, the MKS-50, Matrix 1000, D4 Drum Module and a vintage Oberheim OB-X, sequenced on a Yamaha QX-5 and put to tape on a Yamaha MT1X 4-track cassette recorder…
I mean, limitations make you get super creative, and that’s part of why I made the ‘no-budget’ rule on the video for “The Lost Clan of Bold Manoeuvring”, but I gotta admit I really dig having a richer palette to pull from.
Here are a couple cuts from Millionth Village. The whole album is available on Spotify, Apple Music, iTunes, Amazon, YouTube, and many others.
Millionth Village – 2021 – Chapter V
All the above music copyright kent g meloy for their respective years.