10 improvised experimental instrumental pieces, each featuring drum loops by Bill Bruford.
Guitar, bass, keyboard, and additional percussion parts recorded by Steve Peters over the course of a week during the lockdown in June 2020.
The descriptions written for each song capture a moment in time, one artist's experience of a pandemic. Things have already changed since these impressions were laid down, but the unique experience is preserved like a fly in amber.
1. Twenty Twenty
We often hear media pundits speculating on how we'll look back on the SNAFU that is 2020---quarantines, disinformation, misinformation, monstrous abuses of power, misguided crusades. Well, you know what they say about hindsight...The music in this piece is like the year: starts out straightforwardly enough, but doesn't take long to devolve into complete nonsense.
2. Boxed Consciousness
Our normal field of vision is so much larger, but we spend so much time (even moreso now that we're stuck indoors) restricting it to a box we hold in our hands or on tabletops or on our walls...and then divide it further into smaller boxes withing the boxes: comments, links, advertisements...
3. Alone Together
Sociable people are missing the physical presence of their friends and family...fortunately the internet has allowed us to remain in contact. Some people have even been in touch with folks they don't often speak to. Some are using the opportunity to make brand new connections.
4. Without A Net
All of these songs are improvised, so they sometimes go off the rails at any given moment. Sometimes a song goes great then comes apart at the last moment. Navigating the pandemic is similar---we have no precedent for this experience; we just muddle through and try not to fall off the tightrope.
5. Murder Hornets
People have found the arrival of these potentially ecologically harmful Asian hornets to be symbolic of the mess that is 2020 and have included them in their Bingo cards of plagues that have befallen us. I thought it was a badass song title and found the music in this piece to be evocative of these creepy crawlies.
6. Meat Clowns
Many of us discovered Duncan Trussell after his series The Midnight Gospel dropped during the pandemic. One episode shows a world powered by meat and populated with meat clowns, based on an actual existing loaf of meat product. I thought the music here suggested a demented circus.
7. Black Lives Matter
This statement needs to be repeated and emphasized until our brothers and sisters are treated as equals. It is shocking that we are now in the 21st century and that is still not the case. The amount of racists and ideologues out there is heartbreaking.
8. Advancing Unmasked
Almost as disappointing are the people who refuse to wear masks during a global pandemic because they are uncomfortable or because they impinge upon the wearer's freedom. They say that they are willing to take the risk, but they fail to see that by doing so they put others at risk.
9. The New Normal
If we had a crystal ball a year ago and saw how we are living now, we might be horrified. We accept the way things are because many of the changes happened incrementally over time, like a dictatorship taking over a country gradually by spreading misinformation, militarizing its police force, and sabotaging its postal system.
10. Zombie Virus
During the pandemic I discovered and devoured Kengo Hanazawa's zombie manga, I Am A Hero, which hugely inspired me. I felt the manic atonal drive of this song reflected the bizarreness of the series and its highly unique and grotesque take on the genre. Our own real-life virus brought all sorts of strange and unexpected zombies out of the woodwork. We can only hope that in the end, this is all to the good.
The first album in this ongoing project, the eponymous album The Fright Watch, had a number of musician friends playing the various instruments, and about half of the songs used Bill Bruford drum loops. Having no access to other musicians during the height of the quarantine, I decided to record everything myself (other than the drum loops, as I'm not a drummer) for the Pictures of a Pandemic project.