#1

Hey Friends! I’m super excited to share a full length LP with you called Voyager. It’s being propagated across various streaming services right now, but I wanted to reach out to the Lines community first, because the tools, scripts, and discussions had on this forum over the past year were incredibly formative for me. This record would not have happened without this community, and I mean that.

The A Side is mostly explosions in the sky esque post-rock. Side B slowly morphs into an evolving, ambient soundscape kind of a thing. This record represents the first leg of an exciting musical journey for me; a move out of my comfort zone and into unfamiliar waters. This community was so important in helping my find my way.

Special thanks to these Lines folks:

@youngweather for engineering, drumming, mixing, and just being one of the kindest and most talented people that I get to call a friend
@taylor12k for adding his special touch at the mastering stage
@tehn because norns, grid, mlr, awake, and lines are woven into the dna of this record
@dan_derks cranes was pivotal in laying down textures on this record
@Justmat your scripts are all over this record

Thanks, and happy listening!

Here’s a link to several popular platforms. I’ll update it as the record becomes available elsewhere.

https://linktr.ee/mattlowery

21 Likes
#2

love what I’m hearing! The past year I recently gotten back into guitar after focusing mainly on making synth-based music for a couple years, so I feel a special connection to a lot of things on the record :slight_smile:

Love the crushed drums that start the record and towards the end of Arroyo Seco. How’d you do that if you don’t mind me asking.

Also, what’s your norns-guitar setup like? I love using all of the cool looping apps people have made for it with guitar, but it doesn’t seem to like to be in front of or through the effects loop of my ac30 that much…like I lose some of the touchiness.

2 Likes
#3

This is great! Thanks for sharing !

3 Likes
#4

@jlmitch5 thanks for listening, I’m glad you’re enjoying it! I’m the same way. I’ll spend a bunch of time getting deeper with norns and various synth stuff, but playing guitar centers me and feels like home. To answer your question, I place norns after my amp, between a load box/cab simulator and before my interface/DAW. That way everything I’m capturing possesses whatever color I’ve dialed in on my AC15. The other thing is that the inputs on the norns are line level, and so are the outputs on my load box; so that saves the hassle of dealing with an impedance mismatch.

That drum part on Arroyo Seco is maybe my favorite part on the record. I’ll let @youngweather speak to the specifics (for this and the beginning of Midway), but I believe he laid down a couple of takes on a crappy old cassette deck, then did some flex time adjustments in Logic to help it stay in time.

@Justmat thank you for listening! It truly means the world to me! Can you find Bounds and Otis on this record? You don’t have to look far! :rofl:

3 Likes
#5

The drums at the top are a little Soundtoys magic - I don’t have the session in front of me but IIRC it’s FilterFreak 2 with a lot of hi-resonance modulation (hence the tuning radio effect) and maybe some Decapitator as well…

For Arroyo Seco (if you know the place, you know why it’s lovely) - I used an old Califone cassette recorder and its built-in mic and played a few polyrhythms on a mix of old Gretsch floor toms, a massive cheap kick drum, and some Taos drums - the crunch of the Califone is nice, and I used Flex Time in Logic to both tighten up the timing and play with the truncation-interpolation (Tempophone Mode usually).

Thanks so much for listening, I’m proud to call Matt a friend and honored to have been a wee part.

5 Likes
#6

What are you using for a load box/cab simulator?

I’d love to record through my mesa!

#7

I use a Universal Audio OX. Though, if I were in the market today, I’d probably check out the GFI CabZeus. I hear I lot of great things about it. And, beyond that, there are quite a bit more options than there were a year ago when I jumped in with the OX.

But, yeah! It’s probably the single most important piece of gear that I own, because it allows me to track guitar parts that I’m proud of at my house in near silence. My kiddo was 2 when I started writing this record, and I’m not sure how I would have done it without some kind of cab simulator.

2 Likes
#8

arroyo seco is incredible
thanks for sharing this thing

1 Like
#9

Magical stuff!!! It’s really nice to hear guitar and synths together, one of my favorite hallucinogenic combinations…

:+1::+1::+1:

#10

@glia @eblomquist thank you all so much. It’s an honor!

1 Like
#11

Listening to this again this morning as I grade final papers. Really excellent record, so inspired/inspiring!!!

#12

@eblomquist thanks so much! Glad you’re still enjoying it :grinning:

1 Like