21 June 2008


I was 12 when I bought my first record, Machine Head by Deep Purple. Back then, no one in my school year was listening to that sort of stuff, and I remember how occasionally as I was listening to the album, I was also wondering if I might be the only person in the world listening to it at that particular moment.

I think it’s a little bit the same with independent music. There’s this kind of “exclusivity”, that when you listen to it, there’s a good chance that you’re the only person in the world listening to it (and not necessarily just as that given time).

I was always much more into “Vintage” music than current stuff. I think the reason is its’ longevity; the relevance and appeal which remains. I don’t trust fashions (can they really suit the mood and needs of so many people at once?), so ‘The Exodus Is Here’ doesn’t try to imitate recent musical trends, nor compete with the glossy sounds of current releases.

What it did set to achieve is incorporating in one record all kinds of guitar and vocal related ideas that have excited me through the years, and thereby making the type of record I wanted to hear, but no one was making.

What's In A Name
To focus on that - the working title throught the recording process was 'Time To Have Fun, Who Cares If It’s Commercial Or Not’. After that, a few more titles were considered. Two that nearly made it are ‘Internet Artist’ and ‘Unsolicited Material’. The latter appeared on this website in early publicity, and only got abandoned following a search through Google, Amazon and CD-Baby, which gave five (!!!) different results of albums with that name.

Around that time, I was listening quite a lot to the album, ‘Who’s Next’. Somehow, every time I listened to it - even when it was just in the background - I always noticed the line “The Exodus Is Here”, which is in the second verse of the opening song, ‘Baba O’Reily’. I didn’t make much of it, until I happened to read an email from Amazon telling me about a 30th anniversary release of Bob Marley’s album, Exodus, at the same ‘Baba O’Reily’ was playing in the background, and a flyer I picked up earlier that day about a special screening of a new digital version of the Paul Newman film, ‘Exodus’, lied on my desk next to the computer.

At that point, it suddenly occurred to me that this could be the title, and thinking about it I realised that it does fit the album in many ways - including the image on the cover, which was actually purchased over the internet at the point when ‘Internet Artist’ was the title.

Computer Man or Truly Vintage?
I admit that my PC did help me for that purpose, and I also use it for my promotion and distribution, but the album wasn’t recorded on a computer. I wanted it to be simple, and not go crazy with all the options you get with recording software. I also didn’t use Auto-Tuning (though some people might think that I should have had!..ha-ha!) and I didn’t have any means to fix timing mistakes once they occurred. I did use a digital-recorder, but one with only 8 channels, which meant I had to use the bouncing track technique to get more channels per song.

It wasn’t necessarily an easy album to produce, and it took a fair bit of time, but nevertheless, musically the focus remained on having fun, improvising, and keeping a sense of adventure. That’s why not everything in this record is 100% smooth - but then again, what Exodus doesn’t have a few bumps along the way and an element of hardship?

Thanks for reading; I hope you’ll enjoy the record.

ALIEN ALRIGHT

© 2008 Pomleroy Records

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