New Phideaux album "Number Seven" now out

Go with the Crayfish!  They are downtrodden, and really are our ancestors!  (sorry to hear about your shrew infestation, though!)  Meanwhile, I think the shrews look pretty mean on the album cover.  It's sort of like Spy Vs. Spy...  You never know which one to root for...

Hope y ou like what you hear Liquid and thanks for the kind words, Natewait.  Please do write a review.  Currently it's just a lot of ratings and some of them are from folks who have only ever reviewed 2 or 3 things.  It doesn't lend a lot of legitimacy to our standing (although we do thank them for their love)...

Well, I went ahead and ordered from CD Baby because, after all CD Baby loves me.
I decided to try a Discipline CD with it based on the sound samples.  Thanks again for the recommendations Phideaux. 


Edited by Slartibartfast - July 10 2009 at 11:53

^ Looks like we have another fanboy on his way to raiding the catalog. 
I think you'll probably like everyone you get.  I know I did.


Edited by Slartibartfast - July 10 2009 at 13:24

Just a fan, not a fanboy. Phideaux's music is strikingly less bizarre than I usually go for, actually.

LiquidEternity wrote: ratings on Number Seven, while certainly going to drop, are still pretty impressive at the moment...

Thanks for the vote of confidence Liquid!  :-)  hahahaha, I guess you're not digging Seven all that much!  Actually, I was thinking it was pretty much of a bubble of hot air that was going to burst soon...

Naturally I hope people regard the album highly, and a few written reviews would certainly add legitimacy!

Meanwhile, it's good to know we're strikingly less bizarre than many other things in your queue.  I always think we are too bizarre -- probably we are to the general publick, but those with more discerning tastes can handle us.

Although, I do know what you mean because for me, the music is always very ordered and pleasant, not a lot of cacaphony or chaos -- although that is on the list of things to explore and places to go with the new live band format -- and with group writing and all that.  Hitherto I've written most of the stuff and then experimented with it as we build it up.  That does allow for some surprises, but not that many.

My natural bias is to "beautiful" and "melodic" music so I cop to the notion that ours would be the less bizarre in a collection! 

cheerio and thanks for the discussion.  We are naturally curious to see what people make of our new album, the direction we've taken...

px

Received my copy today,what an excellent album!

Liquid, I'm just joshing you.  I totally know what you mean about the initial rating, in fact I was saying the same thing to band mates who were glowing over it.  I reminded them that those who initially vote are the ones who wanted to hear the album to begin with.

Also, I don't in any way mean to be responding to folks comments in a way they feel they need to justify or explain or make me feel good or whatever.  I definitely appreciate the candor and folks true opinions.  As for staying true to our sound, that would always be the case, but as with you and your musical tastes, we/I too have many different things which percolate in and eventually find their way into the music.

I have for some time been trying to push at our boundaries a bit.  For instance that's why we have the 7 min instrumental Love Theme on the album - to try out some heavier/jazzier stuff and get away from the vocal bias.

cheers and gratitudes for the talk and opinions - pro and con...

Hi Phideaux,

As I was listening to the album while driving yesterday, I was thinking about how you recorded the album. Did you it act by act? How did it go? if you don't mind me asking.

Avestin, it's a long story, and I'm going to write a long winded thing that I will repurpose as a blog on my site as well:

In 2007, Phideaux, the 10 piece band, performed at Festival Crescendo in beautiful France.  We paid for a four camera crew to record the performance on video.  When we got the audio tracks from this production company we saw that 75% of the tracks were corrupt and had drop outs every 3 seconds.  The only track intact were the drums and vocals and guitars (but the acoustic guitar was submixed with the electric guitar which was waaaaay too loud).  So, in order to salvage something and try to create a passable soundtrack for the video (as well as to remember the arrangements for these live performances) Gabe and I had the members come back to the studio to re-record their parts over the intact drum/vocal and guitar tracks (although we replaced the guitar tracks as well ultimately).

ANYWAY....  After one of the sessions we had an extra day of studio time booked as we'd gotten more accomplished than we thought.  So I had Rich the drummer come and record some new material.


I had written the two long songs that were to comprise the album "Infernal" (Infernal and Eternal) which is the third part of the Doomsday Afternoon trilogy.  However, this was not something I wanted to get into right away because it too complicated to do in a day.  But, there was another song written called "Waiting For The Axe To Fall" -- about 12 minutes long.  This was considered an outtake and not something I had a vested interest in, so we could experiment and knock it about a bit.  Therefore, we spent the day putting down and piano/drum track for 75% of that song.  At this time, we had two songs "In the bank".  One was Tempest of Mutiny (8 min) which had been recorded with Rich Mouser the previous winter and the other was Out Of The Angry Planet (9 min) which we'd played live in France but had now been "re-recorded" over the bones of that live performance.  I thought these two songs should be released.  And now that I had another pretty good 12 minute song shaping up, it seemed a good idea to put together an album of odds and sods.  I decided to call the album "Number Seven" a neutral title that I hoped wouldn't seem like it was the third part of the trilogy we had begun in 2006.  I knew I didn't have the psychic energy to undertake that album at this time.

Later, I went to NYC to rehearse the remaining portion of Axe with Rich and ended up writing some extra bits to take the song into a more dynamic direction.  At the same time, we rehearsed some songs that were in the early stages of development (Gift Of The Flame, Have No Fear, Infinite Supply, Search For Terrestrial Life/Fistful).  By this time, I decided not to put Tempest on the album because it was a different producer and different musicians, so we needed needed new stuff to compliment Angry Planet and Waiting for The Axe.  Rich and I recorded, as we normally did, the basic tracks for the rest of these songs.

Now, I also had an outtake from Doomsday Afternoon called Darkness At Noon which was orphaned from Infernal.  So, Number Seven was going to be comprised of:  Waitin For The Axe, Darkness At Noon, Have No Fear (which is like Prequiem but heavier and with drums), Gift Of The Flame, Search For Terrestrial Life/Fistful, Out Of The Angry Planet and Infinite Supply.  Have No Fear was going to kick in right after Darkness, like Prequiem now does.  But with the drums and the tempo change, it sounded too strange.  It also sounded like an "end of album" song and that slot was to be Infinite Supply.   So, then Gabe and I recorded a more mellow and slow version with no lyrics which came to be known as Prequiem.

FLASH FORWARD:  Overdubs.  As the various members came and made their contributions to the album, I realized that there were many wonderful things that people brought to the songs and they were being pulled in a thousand cool directions.   There was a lot of opportunity for members to own a little piece of the album and make things their own.  As the tracks were shaping up, I felt there was something missing.  I also felt that Out Of The Angry Planet, because of its live/unlive recording history, wasn't up to the snuff of the rest of the album.  So, now I had another 9 minute hole in the fabric.  I called folks back to L.A. to do our first ever live recording with most everyone in the same studio at the same time.  For this purpose I composed, with some help from keyboard player B (Johnny Unicorn), the song Love Theme From Number Seven (including Storia Senti).  Everbody heard the demo, but we all rehearsed and recorded the song in the same weekend.

Now, the album was complete and there were only final overdubs and vocals and icing to put on the cake.  It was during a guitar session that I improvised the Dormouse instrumental theme.  We recorded it and then as the day wore on I'd keep playing this bit in between takes.  I wrote humourous words about Dormice and we recorded the Interview with a Dormouse track live.  Overnight I wrote the Dormouse End track and we recorded it the next day. 

While pulling together the lyrics, I noticed a flow to the theme of the music and realized there was a story happening, a hero's journey as it were.  Axe was about someone being trapped in a cult and their loved one leaving them behind (in order to save themselves).  Darkness saw a person being carried away on a boxcar to their death but claiming their soul/mind as their own.  Gift dealt with people who give up vs. people who fight for their lives.    Search is about waking up from insecurity/addiction/ineffective living and claiming the abundance that is available to all people if they want it.  Infinite is an extrapolation of that, perhaps from the perspective of a person who has come through it and realizes that the universe is so immensely wide they are but a speck -- but a speck that is a part of this amazing whole.

So, I saw a story arc and then seeded through the various elements I needed to pull them all together into one strand.  I always knew the basic structure and we were conscious about how one song would end and deliver us into the next, but we did record it all in bits and pieces...  Once the Dormouse pieces were written though, I had decided to organize the album around those pieces (which are a tongue in cheek reference to "Peace - A Theme" from The Wake Of Poseidon by King Krimsun).

I wonder if that answers your question, Avestin....

^ well shoot, I won't bother waiting then :)  Looking forward to seeing you next month.