By now many of you will have heard the Diurnal album, and many of you will have purchased the CD. Thank you to you all for your support, as always.
Diurnal was an album that was a long time coming. Life intervened for Nine Stones Close, in many ways. Everyone involved had their personal problems and life changes to deal with, especially myself. We also had a pandemic, lockdown, etc. It’s been a strange period. I remember saying in an interview with Leo Trimming for Progradar.org , when asked about the next album that “it will definitely not take 4 years this time, if it does then it will never see the light of day! I can’t go through that again.” …… it didn’t …..… it took 8 🙂
When Brendan and I were working on another, very different, collaboration called Deforestation (which is currently being mixed and will see the light of day in the coming months), I suggested a new Nine Stones Close album and he was very enthusiastic about the idea. So we started to write stuff. We also resurrected some recordings which were started a long time ago, so I thought I would share a little insight into the recordings that made the album.
Birds, Insects & Kites was something Brendan wrote and sent me back in about 2013. It was originally earmarked as a Riversea track but Brendan wanted to keep it as an instrumental. I added all the guitars back then, and when we came back to it very little needed to be changed; only the drums to be done by Lars and a few tweaks here and there.
The Veil was written on the fly in one of our many Zoom sessions. It started with a basic track created by Brendan, and I improvised as we spoke and sent it back, then Brendan added stuff and sent it back again, and so on .. the whole thing was done in about an hour over the internet.
Ghosted is something I wrote for the Deforestation album but came back to with fresh ears. Suddenly the lyrics and melody came to mind and with everyone else adding their touches it came together quickly; Joachim’s double bass gave it different feel.
Angel Of Flies is possibly my personal favourite on the album. It all started with a sequence idea that Brendan sent me. Over a Zoom call again I added the initial 7/4 guitar over the 4/4 sequence and we built it up sending files back and forth on the call. The heavier section came from an idea I had for a rhythm part and the chords just appeared out of nowhere to give it that lurching feel. The solo is one of my personal favourites, I wanted it to be unexpected in sound and feel, which I think I managed.
In Remembrance is pure Brendan, a beautiful melancholic piece he wrote. I added nothing because it didn’t need anything more.
Frustration / Sedation started from a demo track Brendan sent me, which he created maybe 20 years ago! The heavy mellotron intro section was what first grabbed me. I reworked it into an intro and chorus and built the rest of the track around it with everyone adding their parts fantastically. The intro solo was a first take while having fun playing the track back in the studio … I recorded it on my phone too, fortunately, so here you can see and hear how it happened in real time ….
I used a lot of different guitars on this to get the textures I wanted, including my Ibanez FZ, Ibanez 12 String electric, HB 8 string electric in a tuning I made up myself, Martin and Faith 6 and 12 string acoustic guitars and couple of other HB electric guitars. Paul van Zeeland was with me in the studio those couple of days and got to see first hand how I just created and added stuff on the fly. Most of what you hear on guitar are first or very early takes. I always find those first few takes are where the magic is, even if they sometimes include a mistake or two.
Golden Hour. This was another Zoom call effort with Brendan, which started with some piano chords he created, to which I added layers of guitar parts and sent back and forth for more keyboard embellishments. Very happy with the short solo on this one.
Dusk is something that was written by myself and Christiaan Bruin in my old studio in Leiden in The Netherlands in 2016 just after the release of the Leaves album. Initially it was just called ‘dobrodity’ due to the dobro part and the fact there were no lyrics at that point. We actually wrote an entire album worth of material in those sessions, all of which remain unused for now apart from this one. Pretty much all of the parts from the original recording remain intact on this version, including my dobro part. The double bass, bowed double bass, drums and more guitars were added. Brendan then added a superb string arrangement and additional keyboards. The lyrics came very quickly as soon as I had the first line, and I recorded the guide vocal in one quick session. Aio then took this to the next level with one of his finest vocal performances so far.
Paul van Zeeland mixed the whole thing superbly to ensure that the mix was open and detailed, adding the final polish to make the whole thing shine.
Hopefully you enjoy listening to it as much as we did making it, and that this gives a little bit more insight into the creation of the album.
Cheers
/Adrian