music : asleep in the arms of the sea

Metadata

Artist: Glider
Album: Asleep In the Arms of the Sea
Date: February 2013
Format(s): Digital, CD (limited)
Label(s): none

Track Listing

#	Title	Time
1	Excelsior	05:39
2	Catch the Breeze	04:19
3	Ignited	08:15
4	Holding On	05:28
5	Sunrise	05:20
6	Light	01:53
7	Teddy Bear	04:41
8	Outro	02:47
9	Blue Waters	06:17
10	Godspeed	06:40

Personnel

Brian Evans: Songwriting, Guitar, Bass, Vocals, Programming, Misc Sounds, Piano
Rory Carruthers: Songwriting, Guitar, Bass, Vocals, Misc Sounds, Programming, Recording, Mixing, Mastering
Christopher Bright: Drums, Backing Vocals
Nathaniel Wehe: Guitar
Farah Mohiuddin: Art

Notes & Thoughts

This was the big one for me. It remains, even with its all of its flaws, one of the things I am most proud of being a part of. I am writing this in 2020; 12 years after we began writing this album. It feels like an eternity ago. Rory and I were living in a really shitty apartment on the 2nd floor of a place in Costa Mesa, CA. Our drummer had left to pursue other projects after our first album. We had recorded some songs, sketches really, that eventually found their way onto a "b-sides" collection. We put an ad up on craigslist for a drummer and met Christopher. We got on well and he was solid and reliable. Rory and I had been writing little pieces of ideas for a bit and had recorded some of them. We rented a lockout in an industrial area of Santa Ana so that we could play whenever we wanted at whatever volume we liked. We took a lot, but not nearly all, of our gear there and started to try out all sorts of ideas. Eventually we went into a studio co-run by a friend from another band. We recorded three trakcs: Godspeed, Ignited, and Sunrise. We were not thrilled with the way they came out.

So, we started re-recording at home in our apartment. Things went much better. Christopher got an electronic drum kit and we did all of the drums with it and a nice drum plugin for the drum sounds. Songs started to come together much more quickly. We were not playing shows with Glider at this time at all, but we all played in other projects too. We spent a lot of time rehearsing and recording. Kind of all of our time not spent working shitty jobs (I delivered food and did some part time work in an office, Rory also delivered food).

Eventually my friend Nate tracked some guitars on Sunrise and on Godspeed. We liked them, so he started learning parts for other songs so that we could actually play them live. We practiced for months and eventually booked our first show with this lineup. Nate and I both drank too much at the time and Christopher and Rory did not drink at all. This, coupled with some youthful attitudes caused some friction over time. We played the show, opening for The Autumns. It was the best live show I have ever played and I had sooooo much fun doing it. I do not remember the set list, but I think we only played songs from this album... maybe one or two off of the first album. Not sure. Anyway, this new album was not out yet when we played the show. In the weeks and months that followed things started to degrade as differences of opinion cropped up more and more. Rory eventually moved up north to be with the woman who would later become his wife. Nate stayed awhile longer and we lived together for a bit. He eventually moved further north with the woman that became his wife. Christopher and I kept in touch from time to time but eventually that dropped off.

Rory and I had some beef over financial matters from both Glider and the record label we had run for a number of years prior. Things werent great, but we still wanted this thing to get finished. I flew up to Santa Cruz to help finish the mixing (this is a few years after that initial show). I did some vocal overdubs and we mixed a good chunk of it. It would be years before it finally saw the light of day. The hard drive the tracks were on eventually failed and all we had were the mixes that had been bounced out. So that is what you hear on the finished album. The momentum we had had with radio, music press (a favorable comparrison to Mogwai in AP + good reviews), etc. from the first album was gone. We sold some copies, but mostly we just faded out.

It was a crazy time, and one of my most creative, but also self-destructive. Rory and I have since gotten back on ok terms with each other, though we dont talk too often. Nate and I talk a lot and if we ever end up living in the same area would likely start a band. I have not heard from Christopher in many years, but I hope he is doing well. I have made a lot of music and I dont know if others would consider this my best or not, but it is the music that stands out to me as special. Probably because of how much we all put into it, how much time we spent together making it happen. It was a really special time.

For gear... we used all kinds of stuff. We used a Fernandez strat copy, a Fender strat, a Squire Cyclone, and a Fender Telecaster for guitars. I think the bass was an Ernie Ball Music Man Sterling. For amps we used a Roland JC120, a Crate combo amp, a Vox combo amp, and the bass used a head and cabinet but went direct out from the head into a preamp of some form... but I cannot remember what it was. Rory would probably know. Everything went into Pro Tools on the Mac Mini we had for our apartment studio. We used an ebow on some of the guitars (mostly Nate's parts) and a huge amount of effects pedals that I wont even try to list. A big part of the sound was a BOSS RV-5 reverb and a few delay pedals though.

My most memorable moment recording was when we were doing the vocals for Holding On. Toward the end after everything has built and is being released there is a part with a bunch of screaming. It was recorded through guitar pickups. There were no words for it, jsut sheer screaming. I started screaming into the guitar, which was running through an amp that had a mic on it, then jumped off the bed I was sitting on and slammed the guitar into the floor while screaming into it. Apparently it was so loud and blood curtling and the thump was so intense that my neighbors rushed up from the floor below certain that someone needed an ambulance. They were cool about it though (they threw loud parties and we never complained, so they didnt make a big deal of the noise).