I'm releasing the Harshest Realm album right now.

Ҩ wrote:Paves, did you go to any of the Sun Ra shit last week?

I did not!

I went to one of the screenings of those two documentaries at the cultural center. During the question and answer session with the director this towering, older dude got up and announced that he was in the Arkestra throughout most of the 50s and toured for three years with Sun Ra. We all just sat there for like 20 minutes while he shared a bunch of hilarious stories about what that was all about. It was pretty cool.

I wish I could remember his name. I'll try to figure it out maybe.

coyote wrote:I love listening to this.  It's so strange, like if I didn't know paves I'd think it was some recluse obsessive with an 8 track, groove machine and assortment of band instruments attempting to write a jazz fusion record that's equally inspired by Mahavishnu Orchestra, Miles Davis, Soundgarden, and Yes or something.  Maybe I am describing Paves totally right now, I don't know.  Anyway, mostly people record weepy acoustic folk with their amateur musical lives.  Glad you skipped out on all that.  This is pretty inspirational by the way, even though the music is not really my cup of tea lol.

That is a pretty accurate description of me, I'd say.

Since I started recording music on my own I've always been into finding sounds that I can "access" (via playing styles, digital presets, whatever) and then figuring out how to get them into songs, and then in my history of being in bands I've dealt quite a bit with people not wanting/being able to learn difficult music or not wanting to work with certain sounds for fear of being called gay (really.)  So I just listen to the records I like and try to make weird little connections and find examples of sounds and aesthetics that stick with me and then incorporate those into my bedroom music compositions.  

I think the jazz fusion stuff came from me trying to make some normal-ish house music and then fucking it up with guitar overdubs and time signature changes, which I've just gotten more into over time.  Part of that is me wanting to take advantage of technology while not skimping on the "playing" aspect. I've definitely spent way more time this year listening to albums featuring John McLaughlin than ones made in the 21st century.

coyote wrote:Was this all done by you?

Yes, apart from a small number of outside samples.  It's mostly done with a synth and a guitar, recorded direct-in and edited with Ableton Live Lite software.  It's "Lite," so only eight tracks!  Most of the sounds that aren't guitar come from the synth, including the drum sounds.

There are some exceptions, like a bunch of guitar parts in "Kim Thayil," where I recorded hours of improvisations with two mics on a Peavey Classic 30 amp, built extended passages out of the better parts, then put overdubs over those.  Then the basic tracks for the last five (?) minutes of "BOOTYZONE" are loops and software instruments from Logic.  I took a film scoring class in college and made that as a last minute final project.  Over a year later I started adding guitars and other sections and that's how that song came to be.

"Apartment Voyager" was the earliest song and was done entirely on a Fostex 8-track, the thing that I first started recording with ten years ago.  At some point during those (mid-'00s) days I thought that that recorder was totally broken (before it suddenly started working again) so I got a second one, which is what I first tried recording the new sections of "BOOTYZONE" on, but because of how the device is designed coupled with my tendency to redo little parts a million times trying to get them right (when you record something and then press "undo," the data isn't actually "erased"), that particular recorder crashed and I lost everything on it.  So that's why I had to switch over to software.  

Even when I was making "Apartment Voyager" on the older 8-track there would be terrifying moments where suddenly the "record" or "play" buttons wouldn't work at all, so the switch was inevitable.  That recorder has some built-in effects, though, so I did make use of a weird pitch-shift effect for a section in "BOOTYZONE."

Then there's a really short section in the second half of "Kim Thayil" where it gets super loud out of nowhere...that was done on the recorder that died on me, back when I was recording everything super distorted and horrible sounding with the gain all the way up.  That was just one part of an eight minute hard rock song that I never finished and that I didn't want to bother finishing and asking anyone to listen to, so I took out my favorite part and constructed the whole rest of the song around it.

Tracks four and five on disc one are built around samples that I had been meaning to do something with for a while.  Same with "Ghareeb Nawaz," although that one is a "field recording" that I captured on my own.  And then there are a couple more smartphone recordings that pop up.  I was kind of addicted to collecting that stuff for a while, thinking that I could build crazy pieces of music around them.  But I accumulated so many that trying to go through them is just beyond ridiculous, so I managed to incorporate a few favorites and leave it at that.

The two longest tracks here were the biggest mindfucks to make, especially considering that certain other ones were done over the course of a few days.  I've gotten way more efficient about using the software and incorporating improvisations, trying to reconcile perfectionist tendencies with the fact that I like to finish things and move on.

I'd be happy to answer any more specific questions that anyone has.

Paves - save it for when you get that big interview with one of the Pelly sisters.

Oh, I definitely had to stop myself from making that post ten times longer.

This is still the best thing to happen in 2014 IMHO.
Thanks Paves.

This is still the absolute best shit ever. I still got this and that Shredfest joint on regular rotation. Now playing at an airport bar.

Is paves still making or releasing music? Anyone know?

I hope so! Last thing I heard from him were two house mix playlist DJ set type things he uploaded last year with some of his original stuff and some sampling. I suspect he is busy with work/life, but am always waiting for him to drop Shredfest vol 2 2020 or whatever.
https://m.mixcloud.com/garret-kriston/harshest-realm-ultimate-motherfucking-house-classixx/

I asked him about this, a few months ago. His honest and simultaneously inspiring and disappointing response was that, as Ned more or less suggested, having a full-time job and an elite girlfriend has made it all but impossible to do any serious recording. Not enough hours in the day. Good problems for him to have, obviously, even if they're kind of sad for the rest of us. He's all grown up!

How can Paves have a full-time job and an elite gf when he's only 17?

Thought he was 14 imho.

Ha. Marshall Stacks is still intermittently kicking out some jams, though. He moved to LA and has recently released "Cloud Amnesia II," a mix. Little-known fact: it's actually a sequel to the original "Cloud Amnesia" mixtape!!!

https://www.coolattalounge.com/

https://primordialvoid.bandcamp.com/album/out-for-justice-2

YES

This is a really fun thread to revisit. I will probably search for the SHREDFEST2016 one too. Takes me back to some very good times.

This album is really fucking good btw. A top thing of 2022 or 2023 even.

Looking forward to listening to this new recording.

These are my favorite Paves releases as of right now. I assume there are quite a few that I am missing?


1. Harshest Realm 2015 triple album (15/10, reinvented the entire concept of music, had album art that included a pic of the vampire in brooklyn dvd, included best ever sampling of a burger king commercial from I assume the early 1990s).
2. Harshest Realm presents "Summer Memories" album on bandcamp circa 2020.  13/10, the closer "Trauma" is really doing it for me right now, I feel like I forgot about this and underrated it but just listened and now that I think about it it's probably more like 14/10.
3. SHREDFEST 2015 (13/10, soundtracked my first career failure and approximately 400 miles of obsessive distance running over the course of a weird ass year)
4. Timeless booty anthems mixtape 2018ish volume one. 25/10, had a really great sample lyrics that went, "I got a big dick" and "ooooh, your shitty ass" and it was a really good thing to jam out to in earnest and also in hilarity. But mostly in earnest cause it just slays.
5. Garrett encounters Maja Ratkje. I don't remember this at all, but I remember it was cool.
6. Standard tuning guitar noodling with a stuffed animal picture on the cover.  I enjoyed listening to this a bunch of times in 2018 but then he dropped the other 2018 album that I got more super into.
6. Timeless booty anthems vol 2?  This was a lot like the first one but I don't remember it.

One time Marshall Stacks sent me an album and it was him doing Kid Rock's "Cowboy" at a karaoke joint called Tortilla Flats.

This is also a gem:

Little Neddy goes to war wrote:5. Garrett encounters Maja Ratkje. I don't remember this at all, but I remember it was cool.

I remember downloading this but the file would not extract/open so I never heard it.

Possibly the only annoying thing about streaming music through the Bandcamp app is that artist names will frequently be replaced with label names when it's a release that's uploaded via a label's Bandcamp presence. This messes up scrobbling quite a lot.

This time around for some reason, it's deciding to randombly scrobble the artist name the first time I listened to it and then the label name the second time around.

^ agree with this 100%.

I love this new album. I think he’s grown tremendously in compositional terms. One Night In China has such a good flow, it doesn’t reach crazy heights, but the subtle build that happens throughout the track is like the first cup of coffee for the day. The interplay between his guitar and the synth patterns is like a conversation between a few friends, sometimes one is a little louder then the others but everyone gets a turn. The choice of sounds is like progressive vapor jazz. Some tropical sounding synth motifs, vintage drum machine sounds, and of course his soaring, neon colored guitar licks. This combination draw a line between 70s hero’s Return to Forever and modern hero Oneohtrix Point Never. One of my favorite albums this year.

What is “scrobbling?”

I’m listening to SHREDFEST2015 and it’s the absolute best shit ever god damn.

When’s the last time you guys listened to the hour and fifteen minute long magnum opus, “Kim Thayil?”

Fucking god damn.

This fucking jams

https://harshestrealm.bandcamp.com/track/born-to-chug