DESCRIPTION:
Music by Glow as Ember / Words by Andy Holmaas

9:52 pm I feel like I'm in a writing class - as I know I could probably type at least three hours worth of memories, I'm forcing myself to stop right at the hour mark. The Setting Solar - a notable song in the annals of Glow - definitely a crazy time in life and the need to re-group in many facets was chomping at me.

Looking back, you can say this was the punk rawk era of Glow as Ember. Everybody in the group (albeit me) had that look, and in fact, Andy sported a Mo-Hawk during most of that tenure. I always enjoyed Emily's persistent sound, look and feel in her bass playing when she was with the Chubby Knuckles entourage so I pleaded her to help Glow-corp out. Boy, I lucked out. Andy's previous group was winding down and I think I picked up Nate due to him just being a really cool cat that never took anything too seriously, unlike me of course. They all fit that 'raw rawk' look that was both unintentional and intentional - we went for it.

But it was obvious this phrase would not be for the long term, we all had broken down cars with minimal gas, each averaging a 35-minute drive between our small towns. I recall a time having my car's heater go kaput in the dead of winter, being so cold that our breath would fog up the front windshield almost killing Emily and me on the way to Nate's place. Fun time but I never said I was intelligent did I?

The Setting Solar kind of summarizes this era of Punk Glow though with still maintaining some of the intricacies that you heard from previous iterations. Nate had such a rawness and passion to his drumming and I feel it comes out in this recording. Of course, Andy's love of prose and spoken word is proven and Emily's melodic bass playing is demonstrated throughout. I guess if anything, I had to take on more of the production role and let everybody play what they can play and I'll filter and keep what's needed. We played a decent amount of local shows...looking back, perhaps I should have waited and let us develop into a new solid sound but like most young groups, the motivation of practicing isn't there unless there's a gig to shoot for. Reflecting on this time, each member was capable of playing multiple instruments that I often wonder if this was the right configuration. Perhaps we could have even let each of us switch off on the keyboards. It is what it is, so it is. I just hope that all of us had fun spending time with one another.

Building the recording breakdown:
March 22, 2003: Recording began on this day; laying down the drums at 3:52 pm. How do I know all these specs 10 years later? Thank goodness for computer file timestamps. We hauled all the Cellar equipment I could muster into Nate's basement and isolated him for three takes in one bedroom while Andy and I positioned ourselves in the "control room" on the far side of the house for the guide track. Three takes Nate...we're good, I'll composite them later.

Leading up to March 28th: I tracked my clean guitar lines - recalling that I had that staccato lead stuck in my cranium and looped over and over to the chagrin of my household as I normally hum these lines over and over again until they're out of my system- like always nobody having any context.

March 29th: Andy and I were really into our hero, Henry 'Hank' Rollins at the time. Since Andy was the resident spoken word member of the group, it just seemed natural that we'd pull one of his writings into this creation. So a factoid that had slipped the recesses of our memories until now - the spoken parts were recorded on a.....wait for it.....Archos jukebox mp3 player in his dad's office and he creatively emailed them to me just so we could have them in time. He just let it rip, without any musical reference track or anything and later, I just flew the lines rhythmically on top of the musical bed.

April 1st: Letting the song 'mature' for a bit: here goes H hauling the CRT, mixer, and bulky desktop to a little village south of Minto, ND where Emily lived to track her bass lines. Emily was a talent and I thoroughly enjoyed collaborating with her in dissecting what she played live and enhancing it into a more melodic state. I'm sure that both she and I worked on the bass intro lead together...if not, I'll let her take all the credit :)

April 12th: We wrapped up tracking on with pickups of Andy screaming at the end.

From what I recall though, Andy and I were on an extreme deadline because we had to get enough material to release a full-length CD by our mid-July tour so things were pretty stressful in the editing bay. Recall that this was the days of extremely slow processors so editing was a fairly grueling task. 10:52 pm