Clarifications, Works 1997-2000 originally titled Clarification was produced over a period of three years in Minneapolis, Boston, California and parts of Japan. This album was recorded utilizing mainly a Roland VS880 digital workstation at a time when a major shift in the recording industry was taking place which I was not oblivious to but maybe a little overwhelmed by.
For me this was an era of total experimentation and this album is a wholesome documentation of it. Not only because of all the different recording mediums used but the approach to creating music in general is almost totally different on every composition. Sometimes being influenced by a single sample that led to a multitrack monstrosity or simply writing chord progressions on an unfamiliar instrument. Letting go and having fun with technology was also a key factor during this growth period. However, simply picking up my bass guitar and letting it guide me has always been the more natural approach and it is evident on a good deal of these recordings. Later on in my life I began recording my solo projects under the ten72 Moniker and chose to play all of the instruments by myself. On this earlier youthful version of me I had a little help from my friends - Peter Vircks, Satoru Ohashi, Joshua Herbst, John C.S. Keston and a little engineering cameo on one track by Mr. Tony Axtell.
It took me a little over twenty years to realize that I’m rather proud of this body of work and I’m almost ashamed of, at one point, balking at it like it was just an infantile attempt at producing a record in my younger days. It seems that enough time has passed for my ears to hear it as if it were new again even though it is as familiar to me as music that I’ve just composed. The memories start to trickle in as well, like using my Sony MiniDisc recorder to sample trains in Japan, capturing my fathers perfectly out of tune piano in California, asking Alex Danovitch if I could use his Nord Lead just one more time or sifting through an endless sea of Iomega Zip drive discs which only held a couple hundred meg at the time.
Somewhere at the tail end of 1999 I think I had realized that these recordings as a whole were starting to lack continuity. This was due to the fact that I kept finding new ways to record and I did start utilizing computers towards the end. I was also extremely busy playing everynight back then with so many different bands and this project was worked on with no priority even though it was the most important thing in the world to me. I felt a little discouraged so nothing was really done with it. What genre would this stuff be categorized under anyway? I designed several different album covers, burned multiple versions of it and ended up giving them away at various shows and sold a few here and there but that was about it. I think I even gave a copy to Clyde Stubblefield after I played an ultra cool show with him in Madison. We had a really nice time hanging out afterwards. I remember him talking about how he was going to be in the studio with John Scofield, Medeski and Woods the next day. Always wondered if any of those folks ever listened to it, If so what did they think of it?
Long story short, I kept running into stashes of Clarification while my wife and I were redoing our basement last summer and so it's “calling” couldn't be ignored anymore. I gave in, and I'm glad I did. I cleaned up some of the audio a tiny bit but chose not to do any further mastering, leaving it the way it sounded all those years ago. I almost included some bonus material that I found but I managed a little self control and kept it real.
Release date 5/28/2021
