Some words from Whettman Chelmets about the ideas and making of A New Place
Shout-outs too x
Hi friends - hope all good :)
Big thanks again for all the love and support for qd18 - was something different to most of our previous releases yet still anchored by the core idea behind the label, artists I love and their interpretation of the phrase quiet details.
Whettman made something very special and full of nuance, a perfect meeting of him and all his influences and our concept. To see all the kind words from so many people shows you all get where we’re coming from and really understand what we’re about - means so much, thank you x
Digital half-price until Friday and some CDs left if you want.
I asked Whettman if he’d share some thoughts about the album, the inspiration and making - huge thanks to him for being so open and giving us so much.
Like most of my work, the concept of A New Place came probably 3/4's of the way through recording. My last two albums were largely culled from speeding up and slowing down audio clips, running those through pitch recognition software, and converting the audio to midi clips for triggering different instruments. The results were satisfying for a couple of years, but I really wanted to get back to playing music on this one. I moved my family 2 hours away from our home for a bigger city and a better job opportunity. I found myself playing guitar more and playing in Open G tuning. I learned a number of chord voicings and some fingerings for major scale shapes and found I just never tuned my guitar back. It's been that way for 2 years now. On top of this desire to "play" music, moving created this domino effect in my wife's mom and dad dying within 9 months of each other, rather abruptly too. It was all very sad and felt like we had somehow jumped into a different timeline and became these different people suddenly thrust away from our comfort zones with just us in a new city. It's still an adjustment 2 years later.
I had recorded a number of pieces for this album when I was having an improv session with my daughter in October of 2023. I was playing with my Organelle, using a live sampling patch, and she started improvising this song about how she was "ready to die, and ready to cry. Ready to go to a very new place." She's 6 years old, and the heaviness of the words just really struck me. I'm not sure she fully knows where the words came from, but it felt profoundly human. We all long for new things and new places. And we strive for these things. It's what make us human. But part of what makes us human as well is this inability to live in the now. We constantly strive for new things, and when those new things are here, we strive for even more newer things just on the horizon. We are never satisfied. And this is fine. It's what pushes us to do better and to be better. But we often sacrifice the now for this. And we simply cannot do that. This album is my attempt to remind myself of this, and needing to watch this within myself.
Most of this is guitar and field recordings. Recordings of new places. My kids both show up from time to time as well. I fed a trumpet into a sampler in spots because I cannot play one very well, but I can hit one note and record that note and arrange things from there. Not a lot of computer instruments on this one. Most synth sounds comes from the Organelle. I fell in love with this instrument 3 years ago.
To me this shows an artist that’s both sensitive and deeply receptive to the world around, with all the musical and technical skills to bring to life the ideas in his head.
Now some shout-outs:
New friend Kirk Gautier with the excellent and insightful review over on noobheavy.com
Neil Mason featuring A New Place (and as En Sten For Solen) on weekly fav Moonbuilding
Bepi Crespan playing two qd18 tracks here and here
Leigh Wright playing a track from qd17 on the Zadagan Keep on Tak Tent Radio
Peter Van Cooten with a lovely review of qd11 Cat Tyson Hughes
Always grateful to this wonderful people for their support, listen/read/share/help them anyway you can x
Thanks again friends, much love
Alex
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