FUCK YOUR PROCESS THROW YOUR LIFE AT A WALL
released MARCH 3, 2023
ALBUM 44, RELEASE 125
I believe this is the only Hello Whirled album recorded entirely on tape. In late 2022 I acquired a Yamaha MT8X. I made an album with it. I tried to make another album with it but, even after getting it repaired, it proved too unpredictable a machine to rely on. Still, I got this out of it, and while it's not my favorite thing I've ever done, it's still got its moments.
"I See The Light" was written to be a hit. I had planned to put it in the setlist for the full-band lineup to learn. For whatever reason, we only practiced this once before moving on to the songs I'd written specifically for this lineup. The other real hit on here, and the one we not only played live but even recorded as a full band later, was "Love Is A Dead Rodent". That was my months-late memorial for my dog Penny, who my family had from June 2014 to March 2022, when she crossed the rainbow bridge to go bark at all the other dogs over there. You can see her from behind on the Falling Short Of Heaven cover. "Pride of the Catch" is solid too but I've never thought of it as more than an album track. Really that's most of this album. I recorded most of the songs in that order on a single side of tape, and then did "Detroit Lombardi" on a single side of a different tape. That song was written at the tail end of Detroit's time as the butt of the NFL. They've been solid, if not very injured, since. Good for them. It's a shame this ended up being the only project I finished with that 8-track. It was a beast to use, and its motor ran at inconsistent speeds so it would speed up without warning. This made it impossible to record overdubs without being wildly out of tune with the recording, so I sold it after less than a year. It's a shame because I really like how this album sounds. The 4-track I have doesn't sound anywhere near as good, but we'll get there later when that's relevant.