Issue 44. Black Box
Another Breakthrough Shine reissue goes live today
We made Black Box back in 1992 on the beloved Fostex X15 4-track cassette recorder, in our one bedroom apartment on North Orange street in Media, Pennsylvania—“everybody’s hometown.” It was mixed down to a VHS tape master, and a few years after, we ripped it to CD, which is what I used to remaster it for 2024. Stacy came up with a new cover design:
At the time the songs were composed, we had imperceptibly passed from our mid-twenties to late-twenties. You can detect the angst that goes along with that time of life.
Plenty of songs on Black Box hold great significance to me for different reasons. We had been through some rocky times in our relationship, and I was still clueless about who I wanted to be, what I was, and why. We were also expanding musically, exploring new sounds and ways of crafting songs.
For the reissue, we re-ordered the tracks and shaved 4 songs from the original tape, relegating them to bonus tracks on our Bandcamp release of the album. It feels like addition by subtraction. The better songs sound better together.
I hear a lot of keyboard on this one. Our original keyboard, a Kurzweil K1000 was fairly new still, and we were having a ball exploring its many textures. Most of the tracks were prepared partially on a MIDI sequencer called Music-X for the Amiga computer. I have so many fond memories of those sessions! The keyboard was multitimbral, which means you can playback multiple synth patches going at the same time. We could layer drums, percussion, bass, organ, and synths in Music-X then playback and record that to the Fostex using only 2 tracks, freeing up other tracks for vocals and solos. It reduces the need to bounce tracks.
As I was remastering the digitized album last week, I couldn’t help but smile at how good the Kurzweil sounds. I’m sure it’s nostalgia, but it brings me back to that very small room where all the gear was. It wasn’t much bigger than a walk-in closet, but boy did we make some music there. Every piece of equipment was within arm’s reach. You could barely fit three people in there at a time.
Some comments on a few tracks: