This is the final reissue in the series of releases that sees the entire, out-of-print catalog by mrmoth made available for those who missed them the first time around. This is the first album, The Ether from 1999. Warts and all.
The album was recorded track by track, overdubbing each instrument digitally. I had been recording music in this way on 4 and 8 track cassette systems for quite a while before this. I handled the keys and the bulkload of guitars, but was helped along by Bryan Leighty and Shawn McBride, who provided additional bass and guitar bits respectively.
I have been tempted over the years to re-cut certain parts, and indeed may one day do that, but I’m happy to own its faults. It is an ambitious album made by someone naive enough to try something outside his skillset. While I do indeed cringe at some of it, it’s worth noting that everyone starts somewhere and I had to fail a lot to get better. This record is the sound of me trying hard to push through my initial shortcomings. It doesn’t sound like anything anyone’s ever done before or since and in that way, is probably the purest thing I’ve ever made. Its most brilliant moments are still some of my favorite things I’ve done.
While I don’t like most modern remastering, I did do some minor remastering to this record, in that I completely resequenced the album digitally from the original, individual master recordings. Also, it was originally intended to be listened to in a single sitting (like Prince’s Lovesexy), but due to the limitations of the way it was released, It was broken into four chapters instead. Of course, no one would tolerate a single unbroken album anymore – least of all me – so it is broken into individual songs here for the first time. This is also the first time this record has been released in lossless format (for those of you who know what that means).