I KNOW - Shameless self promotion, but this album is very important to us and we are very excited to release it. We thought we’d share with all you Moogers a little background on the album !
Let’s back up a bit. We released our 2nd album “Moogsaic” in September 2007. It was originally going to feature Brian Kehew on the Mellotron.
However Brian had to leave a few weeks early to prep with THE WHO, for touring. So instead, we asked the other half of Moog Cookbook to play - and with an amazing sonic outcome! Roger Manning Jr. laid down his classic style and sounds on “Science” and “Clarity”. As wells as Ross Harris, who also contributed sonic greatness to the album!
When bassist Justin Meldal-Johnsen heard “Moogsaic”, he emailed me to ask if he could play on a track for the next record, and I was like “Hmmmm… OF COURSE!”. That inspired us to start working on the next album right away. Rossangeles let me borrow all his awesome vintage drum machines so the whole album is 808 and LinnDrum beats. And Brian was done touring with The Who for a bit, so we finally got a chance to get his amazing Mellotron style recorded.
It was a slow process for such a short album. We were tweaking it all around and recording here and there. About ready to finish we decided to hold out a little longer and have Bernie Worrell play on the album. Bernie is like my #1 inspiration to Moog madness, as well as the most copied, sampled, duped, synth patch inspiring keyboardist EVER! At this point it’s November 2008, and Bernie was coming to the west coast for a tour. He needed a Minimoog for the short tour so I let him use mine. His tour ended in Humboldt county where I was going to be visiting my sister at the time. So I was going to meet up with Bernie at the end, pick up my minimoog and do the recording session.
Little did we know - when we left home in Santa Barbara, California to drive 500 miles north to Humboldt to do this session - that our house would BURN TO THE GROUND! The day before we were to record with Bernie Worrell (who played the famous synth solo on Talking Heads “Burning down the house”) we lost our home and almost all our belongings to the “Tea Fire” in Santa Barbara, Ca on November 13 2008.
We did however have alot of our synths and equipment (including my laptop with all the files for our new album) with us for the session! So we had everything essential we needed to still be The Volt per Octaves! Alot of you Moogers and Moog Music helped us out tremendously at this time and we thank you all so much!
We then relocated to the Portland Oregon area and finished the album.
What a crazy journey it has been… We are so glad to finally be able to release it. We are having two CD release parties, in Portland, Or and Santa Barbara, Ca in MAY! Check out our site for more details and to get a peek at the new album.
It will be available May 1st through CD Baby and at your favorite local music store. Available soon thereafter on iTunes!
Thanks!
