As a listener of alot of my favorite bands, I sort of like them to repeat what it is that I like about them. I think that's safe to say about most fans of bands (sans maybe fans of the Melvins....but I also know plenty of people that don't like "Prick", either, nor their experimental noise). Also, if I go into a restaurant and I want a hamburger, the last thing I want you to do is give me something else that you'd think i'd like.

    Some of my favorite bands have also released drastically different albums, and I ended up loving them. The Supersuckers' "Must've Been High", while it's not the screaming AC/DC/ Motorhead rock of the other albums, also stands up as an amazing, albeit vulnerable album. The Stones changed up so much in the 60's, that some of the albums are better than the others, but they had rarely made the same album twice. Same with the Beatles. Or the Flamin Groovies, from Sun styled rockabilly revivalists, to Stones-y blues rockers, to power pop garage.

    The reason I say this is that I was debating whether or not to release an album under the High Watt name and under another project title, but have decided to do so under the HWE name. It wasn't without alot of deliberation, but I feel that artists and musicians should challenge themselves and their audiences, and seeing as that I never want to make the same album twice, the only logical step is to proceed forward. The only real rule is that there are no rules, there's no record company breathing down my neck to do anything a certain way. But I do think that, as "Desert Opuses" ended off on "Stripped Ruins", this sort of continues that vibe. There was various songs completed for a heavy album, but I felt that there wasn't necessarily the "shock" involved with it at this point, that maybe it was expected. Some people have told me that they like "Desert Opuses" more than "Night Songs", and vice versa, I think, because they're not the same record, and that's perfectly valid. In a perfect world, I don't think that anything's perfect--everyone is going to have their records or songs that they like more than the others.

    As the band name implies, something has to be a shock (death by electricity), or it least has to be unexpected. And this album is definetely a shock, if for nothing other than the 360 in style that it has. Some time early next year, the album "Endorphinated" will be released. I like albums that describe what you're getting into, this one is a sleepy, mellow album. It taps into the spiritual/ ethereal side of HWE's chaos (occasionally veering into space gospel and narcotic soul), and that's something that I think that people caught onto or enjoyed--that no matter how heavy it was, there was still melodies, three part melodies, lyrics that were sung instead of shouted or yelled, spoke/ whispered instead of vocalized.

    And whereas the last two albums were more bleak and claustrophobic, this one is more optimistic and had some challenges,  like using barely any fuzz and expanding on the vocal harmonies to even 4 part vocals. Sounding alot like Floyd, Spiritualized, as well as Big Star (particularly "#1 Record" and the layering of vocals and guitars and the meticulous execution of it) and Love's "Forever Changes", it's a drastic change, but well coordinated and executed. There's a bit of Byrds in there, too, kind of approaching some of their psych stuff---12 string guitars, etc, but I think that "8 Miles High", still has a good contrast of terror versus optimism. It's not pop for pop's sake, and it's not spacy or ambient just for ambience's sake, so it's not exactly straightforward, but not un-straightforward, either, as it still has a good immediacy within not the most immediate music.

    It has the ambience of maybe My Bloody Valentine, but not as distant in the vocal delivery, more harmonies, more guitar solos, more of a pop feel, or Big Star or the Byrds with the 12 string guitars at half speed and more tremolo/ phaser/ flange/ reverb with more laid back vocals. It's not Beachwood Sparks (to which I think are great but I didn't want an indie friendly following, there's a sense of "irony" artists can't seem to surpass as a result, like being "indie" is being "ironic"), but it's not Pink Floyd, either. It's not as accomplished as what they've put out, obviously, so it's somewhere in between being the indie obscurist's Floyd (let's face it, the whole shoegaze movement could be otherwise termed as such), and maybe the poor man's Floyd, ha ha. But it certainly is not "ironic"....I think that "ironic" is a lazy term for people who think that artists are making a detached, going through the motions of imitation by numbers type of homage.

    As a big Spiritualized fan, I think that there's also a much bigger influence that came out on this record than was apparent on the last ones. In bios and things like that, i'd put the Spiritualized reference in there (perhaps in vain), but I think that it got closer to Spacemen 3's stuff most of the time. It was something in the soul that maybe didn't surface as much as I wanted to, but it's pretty hard to balance an album of alot of disparate influences where you want them to all surface, without getting too formulaic and blatant with things. Mercury Rev, too, is an influence and I love the symphonic nature of some of their albums, but I didn't want to have zany lyrics and vocals. ELO (trotting out guilty pleasures), I love the merging of symphony and huge, seemingly mechanical vocal harmonization and things being way more bombastic than they probably need to be. Love's "Forever Changes", I love the economy of the playing and the arrrangements on the album, and how things ebb and flow quietly instead of crashing and banging.

    The songs on "Endorphinated" are pretty much mostly 3 minutes long, aside from a couple of 5 minute ones. That, in itself, was a challenge to keep the album to an economical nature, when it's always been easy to create longer droning songs and then build them up in the studio. With this one, there had to be some sort of traditional pop songcraft--more "verse/ chorus/ verse" type stuff, but also not your traditional pop songs, it had to be a bit distant and laid back, but also somewhat immediate, in that it wasn't to be an obscurist's album (admittedly an aim of mine for the last two), it was to be for anyone.

    It's still spacy and has a slightly detached feel to it, but there's not the walls of fuzz guitars and noise this time to hide behind, I think that it's more vulnerable and "mature", and I know that people generally hate the word "maturity" in regards to their bands, but the truth is that by the time a band releases an album, they're usually sick of it already! They've rehearsed those songs, recorded them, then listened to them in the mix ten zillion times, and there's a need to deviate, to move on. I always think that, by a certain point, the songs you create become nostalgia to a certain extent, by the time that muscle memory kicks in and you're not questioning why things are there or how to improve them, they're already sort of a part of history by the time you play them live. By the time that an audience connects with those songs, the band is already past them, looking to the next album. Certainly in the 70's, when artists often released 2 albums a year, there was no possibility of looking backwards.

    It's not exactly what I think that people expect or expected, or even what they want. But as i've also deliberated the differences between what people want versus what they need, and while some may want another album in the vein of the last two, what I think they need is what's on this record. Particularly in the feedback and reviews of the albums, there's one (if you look) that comes up in many of them: Floyd. There's alot that you can learn from your own feedback, namely in what people are hearing in it....i've never referenced Floyd in any bio, nor any time other than in this blog, but they certainly are an influence in both the Syd and Dave eras. Perhaps that's an easy pop-culture reference point, but it's still a reference point that keeps on coming up.

    I'd really wanted to do something that kept the sense of two and three part melody on the last two albums, but configured it in a way where you don't have to be a purveyor of obscurist noise to really understand where it's coming from. In truth, the sound on the last two albums was difficult, because on one hand, the loud fuzz noise type songs would repel the people that would probably like some of the quieter songs, and if one sums up a record by the first 30 seconds that they hear--understandably-- I can understand that there's no reason why anyone would realize why as many dimensions exist on those records. At the same time, some of the mellower tracks may have broke up the momentum of sludge that certain people liked. For better or worse, this one consistently mines the introspective laid back mellow vibe in that there's still different dimensions to it, but there's not the need to, say, have "Into The Abyss" with the crazy heavy fuzz part at the end. There's not the need to have as jarring of dynamics with this one.

    There's still "difficult" albums in the future that have been mapped out and tracks done for those records, but for now, this is where it's headed--it's the most relaxing, optimistic, feel good album that i've done. And I really, really had a blast doing it and provided lots of challenges for myself to keep progressing as a musician and producer, and hopefully, for the fans, too. Every band will trot out the cliche, "this is our best record yet", and while "best" is subjective and I love all the other past records, I will say that it does what it does the best in HWE's catalogue, simply because it's so different. And there most likely won't be another release by HWE that sounds like it, preferring to burn a template after each record.

    In the next month or two (this is November of 2009), songs will be released from the record. And i'm still grateful for the ability to self distribute in today's age, and not having to worry about labels forcing things on bands or demanding more of the same, or something that you didn't want to do; instead having the option to expand and grow as you feel as is necessary for yourself and the fans. There's no pressure for anything, and i'm grateful for the time to allow these songs to have got where they were, with no rush job. The production on the last two albums was big and meticulous, but oddly enough, it may be more meticulous here, probably more time and money spent on it.

Cheers,

R.S.