A Television Landscape

Hey all,

I'm currently sitting in Studio B at Clinton Recording Studios in Hell's Kitchen.  We're listening to rough edits of tracks from William Brittelle's new album Television Landscape, which will be released on New Amsterdam Records this Winter.  It sounds like it's going to be an amazing album, and what's especially cool is that I've been able to see the whole process, from printing the scores, to hiring the musicians, to recording, to editing.  I've been pretty involved with it for a while, doing pre-production editing in Logic, working as a techie at the live show, lending an extra ear in editing, buying food for the players, etc.  I've even been involved in the promotional planning, researching how other Indie albums succeeded, the best websites to promote it to, etc.  It's encouraging that both Bill and the producer, Lawson, seem to go through a similar process that Allen and I do.  They start with pre-recorded vocals that Bill sang at home, then craft a sound environment around it, finding players who fit the parts, re-writing little things, running out for Milano cookies, etc.  Though they have things a lot more set beforehand than we do... Bill had mock-up Logic files complete with software instruments playing all the parts before they even hired the musicians, whereas Allen and I often write our shit in the studio.  One of the benefits of playing most of the instruments ourselves, I guess.

Lyrically, Bill is all over the place.  His last album, Mohair Time Warp, was super spastic and just generally ridiculous.  This one is much more focused and (I think) enjoyable.  I don't want to disclose too much, but here's a snippet of lyrics from the title track, which we're listening to right now:

"beneath each moment, there's a television landscape"

The album is essentially an homage to 80s rock, but seen through the lens of a trained classical composer.  Bill used to sing lead vocals for a post-punk NYC rock band until he blew his voice out.  Now as one of the co-presidents of New Amsterdam, he's trying to synthesize the super-separate worlds of Classical Music and Everything Else.  To give you an idea of the score of TVL, he quotes Prince, the Beach Boys, and Ravel as major influences.

It's interesting to see how Bill has negotiated the weird divide between the notated tradition of Classical music versus the improvised tradition of Rock in this album.  He has scores for every song, but they're not very specific, especially in the drum writing, which is sparse and simple.  In order to make the whole thing work, he had to get versatile performers who could: a.) read music really well, b.) be open to improvising off a score, c.) blend all of these things together in a sophisticated but accessible way.  So like, the drummer read the music but added his own fills, etc.  So far, so good-- the level of musicianship on this album is pretty unbelievable.

Oh, Sting popped his head in the other day to say hi to Lawson, but I missed him!  I had been working on a new piece for string quartet and was a running a few minutes late.  Oh, the sacrifices I make for my art.

Gotta get back to work... more soon.

Ell