Seeing, hearing and interacting with music in new ways is something that makes me genuinely excited and the more I hear about SAND, STONE, GLASS – the more excited I get. Nuisance is the name for a collective of composers, musicians and artists who have come up with a fascinating triple album concept. Each album, titled SAND, STONE and GLASS contains the same 19 songs that run at the same runtime but they have been arranged and performed in totally different styles. You could play one, two or all three of them at the same time and you’d get even more variations on the tracks but the fact that the album has been thought out to be played like that is just the surface.
At the beginning of this project, the idea was to create a selection of custom musical instruments to only be used for recording an album. This process involved lots of bespoke sampling of sounds and eventually, 31 custom digital instruments were created. These instruments are available to buy alongside the album, creating a fourth layer to the project and essentially opens up the music to dual performances or artists adding their own remixes or arrangements to the songs.
The album creation process began with Ryan E. Weber (REW<<) composing the musical foundation of the album. He then shared his versions (SAND) with William J. Seidel (Decibully; Dramatic Lovers) who provided lyrics and vocals to the tracks. After the vocals were returned, templates with the vocals and midi data (no instruments) were provided to Scott Robert Allen and Eric Osterman (Eric & Magill). Scott and Eric then assigned the midi data to instruments they selected from the 31 bespoke instruments the band built having never heard what was originally used, composing and mixing their STONE and GLASS albums respectively. It sounds like a fascinating experiment,
‘Sepia’ is the lead single from the project and below are the three versions so you can hear the difference that the experiments created. The track is a mixture of modern classical piano, ambient soundscapes and indie rock sensibilities. Think sad but quirky indie film about coming of age and you’ll be in the right ballpark. The trio of albums are out for pre-order now and is due for release on the 3rd of March. You can also visit Poetic Devices for information about the digital instrument library and to purchase it.
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