First of October
16 Oct 2023Every year on the first of October a band (which gets together with the sole purpose of making a record) meets in a studio and records an album in a day, or 12 hours to be precise.
It has become a bit of a ritual to listen to the album upon release, just out of mere curiosity.
The act of making music or art under constraints has always intrigued me, and music is even harder because you can so easily fall into a flow state where it feels somewhat… wrong… to leave something unfinished. Yet there is the flip-side of this which is that it is uniquely beautiful to hear something as it ended up, a bit bare, something that didn’t undergo the grueling (and often most time-consuming) act of tinkering with a song until perfect.
And the results are always raw, random, and beautiful as-is.
The latest album called “Across the Road” was filmed in Abbey Road Studios, and is absolutely amazing. From the process of creating the album to the final result, year upon year they have improved; it feels like the first years were about “can we do it? rush!” whereas the latest one feels more like “we know the drill, let’s put effort into where it belongs, and do revisions and add the non-essentials towards the end”, and it goes to show… the song structures, the arrangements, the little funny bits here and there, yet grave seriousness of some of the other tracks provides a very nice mixture of textures, themes, genres, and more.
The mere fact they recorded it in Abbey Road (using some of The Beatles’ instruments) was a source of inspiration that transpires through the musical themes of the album.
Hats off to Rob and Andrew as always, and looking forward to next years’ edition!