The album is named after my beloved East Colfax, where I’ve spent most of my adult life. It is probably safest to call the album a mostly darker experimental bass thing, genre wise. Left-fielding out here on this one, no doubt, staring into the stands. Or into the dense grass and the leather of my glove. Such is my nature. 😃
Kicks and snares are swung SWUNG for much of this work, plenty of amen breaks, big reese basslines in some cuts too. So DJ's, much of it’s not really designed for DJing, especially the lower tempo stuff, and many times I just let my finger-drumming sit where it was under 100 BPM. Sorry, and by “sorry” I mean “not sorry at all.” 😉
Generally speaking, CR is the place I turn when I don’t like what’s going on, and feel stuck and powerless about things in our society, in our culture. A slow rolling climate crisis, a fentanyl and opiate crisis, and a federal wage floor of $7.25 an hour that hasn’t increased since well, 2009. I did put a few lighter tracks in it, just so it has some breadth emotionally. If the lighter stuff is your jam, feel free to check out the one ambient cut on the album She Wakes up Next to Me, or the song I clearly wrote about my girls, and my hopes for their lives, A Song of My Daughters. I would peg that one towards the Porter Robinson and Flume direction, stylistically.
I wrote some uptempo lighter jams on it too, those are probably the most DJ and club-friendly. No 8 or 16 bars chunks with no drums in those. The breaky and steel drum-driven Percussive Discipline feels neutral to happish to me, and the tropical/club inspired The Peace I Find is very much lighter, emotionally-speaking.
I did put one 4-on-the-floor track on it, HellJay, named after the homie LJ Hart, and written for her while we were dating. She was hanging out on my couch on a lovely fall afternoon. It’s a darker electro house jam, maybe leaning a little more indie dance. Arp driven, with a few acid house flourishes. Expect more of this style from my forthcoming Shoestring Disco project. I don’t see me doing much 4/4 for CR, maybe some brutal techno sometimes. Who knows really? I’ll go where the work takes me….I can say I look forward to seeing how CR evolves over the years, could be into 3 albums of IDM, who knows. I don’t. lol
If Witch-House is your jam, dope, me toooooo, I wouldn’t call any of it straight Witch-House. Cracked Vessel and Modern Gothic are probably the closest to the OG version of the form Salem started. The Cold Fax steers in that direction a bit too. For D&B and Halftime structures The Conversation and Route 166 are alright. I like Route 166 best, I wouldn’t call it club or dancefloor-friendly though.
East Colfax Hymn #15 is one of my favorites. Scattered amens, heavy reese, and then, well, like an Amapiano kind of percussive structure in it. This one and Cracked Vessel are probably the most representative of what I would like the project to be emotionally speaking.
I got about three more in development for the project, and I hope to continue releasing CR stuff at least quarterly. Mainly steering towards the more witchy trap vibes, and that strange beautiful percussive place where Breaks, D&B, and Bass are meeting around 130 BPM. Maybe some electro or techno every now and again as well. Again, I’ll make no promises about the future. I do know the next one I got finished after this is a more brutal techno/breaks hybrid.
Hope you dig it as much as I liked writing it. I hope you find some sense in the darkness, some light…or at least a little meaning. Remember, I don’t get my ~$.003 unless you listen for a whole 30 SECONDS. 😉
Huge thanks to Chris Cox and Chase Dobson for the mixing and mastering, any faults you see in either are squarely my own. Thanks for cleaning up my poor mixing and sometimes questionable sound design choices fellas. Big appreciation to Joel Umbriaco, my label partner, and Michael Stone for the visual. Huge shouts to the squad DBS. Producer homies, if you want stems, do the same. They are ready to roll.
❤, Roth