At long last I am replete with excitement to tell you that the second Night Heir album A Maze Of Evenings is available for you to hear. Though it will likely need the mastering touches of hands beyond our own eventually, it stands before you now a rugged & raw colossus.
Two years in the making, and much like giving birth, the process of creating this album was beautiful but ugly, exciting yet painful. Hopefully this truth shows within the music itself.
Two great talents joined me this time around and I can't say enough about these gents and the unbelievable sounds and ideas they contributed. Samuel Rosenberg, who now lives in Sao Paulo, was an insightful and extremely enthusiastic aide during the entire writing process and then proceeded to conjure up a flurry of bass lines, incredible rookie slide guitar, backing and choir vocals, and even stepped up to the plate as half of the twin lead guitars for the flagship song Inamorata. He also pounded obnoxiously on my door many terrible mornings in a row to get me out of the damn bed and into the studio. Very much appreciated.
Andrew Diluvian's contribution came from a wildly different direction, adding an almost musique concrete kind of ambiance to several areas of several songs. Among other things he used a filing cabinet and violin bow to produce the most ungodly din you can imagine, he concocted the sound of a massive rolling wheel, he turned lots of knobs on his big collection of science fiction gear, he provided atmosphere and texture through field recordings, he sang and shrieked and howled. When I asked Andi to emulate the droning peal of a huge Tibetan horn for the song Solar Plexus, he did it. He used a chair and our dining room floor and that's about it. Amazing!
Including myself, a total of fourteen different people sing on this album.
Choir sections were filled out by a colorful cast of wonderful people. Among them, Justin Wiese, Wolfgang Ratzlaff, Adam Muscleman, Trevor Giblin, Clinton Agresti, Miranda Ariel, Lauren Oberle-Hall, Morgan Ray Denning and Heather Wiese. Also, the lovely sisters Crystal and Angela Lariza lent the game-changing angelic grace of their voices to songs like Slowland and Inner Female.
I'm very gracious to these fine humans for helping to piece together this monster.
The songs are as follows:
1. Inviolate
2. Inamorata
3. Daymare
4. Giver & Receiver
5. The Wheel
6. The Curator
7. Solar Plexus
8. The Snakewife
9. theme from Slowland
10. Draw Me Down The Moon
11. Inner Female
12. Inviolate
It clocks in at around 72 minutes and is a rather larger affair than the first release in every way. The vain promises of a release last year seem laughably naive now.
There were plenty of difficulties and obstacles to traverse throughout the whole journey and we had more than our share of technological woes, seasonal depression and vice. It's all right there in the music, folks.
The album has been uploaded to the Bandcamp site and is available as a high quality Aif download and you can choose your own price. Also, because I like to ensure better quality links right off the bat before anyone has a chance to spread shitty versions around, here is a direct Mediafire link as well for mp3 format. (This link has been changed, see more recent posts for the mastered link.)
As of right now this thing exists solely as downloadable digital files. Of course, the ideal is to eventually release it in beautiful physical form. We are still deciding how to go about this, whether through the audio cassette route again or, should the fates smile on us, maybe a friendly label will help us press records this time. More on that later, for now I feel it is important to bring the music to the masses as expediently as possible.
Huge thanks to the people who bought the tapes and shared their interest and kind words.
Your patience is greatly appreciate and I hope you will not be disappointed.
Enjoy.
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