OK- so I didn’t put any kind of liner notes in the actual packaging of The Insane Warrior-“We Are The Doorways” album for a reason-I wanted the listener to have as little preconceived notions as possible while listening. But now that it’s been out for a while, I wanted to supplement the brief explanations I’ve provided about the making of the albums. While it was largely inspired by film scores of horror and sci-fi movies, there’s another critical piece of the making of it; each song was, whenever possible, intended to be an exercise in minimalist production techniques. Put another way, I tried to limit myself to just ONE tonal instrument on each song(this was successfully achieved on most of the songs, but here and there, my own rule got broken). So aside from drums/percussion, I would try to get as far as I could without relying on my usual writing techniques of adding “the kitchen sink”. This is another facet of this record being an “escape” from my normal means of making an rjd2 record. Where normally I’d reach for another instrument to add texture to a new section of a song, I wanted to remove that crutch, and force myself to focus solely on the writing to provide movement to a song. So you could think of each one of these songs as a “desert island exercise” of sorts.  The challenge of pushing any particular instrument to get as many different textures out of it was an example of how setting limitations on yourself can be hugely inspiring. One last note on the macro-approach is that within the songwriting, I was pushing myself t get away from doing typical intro/verse/chorus song structures, thus, some passages of the album are a bit meandering. That was intentional! Here’s a look at each song, and a few thoughts about the process:

“Thrust and Gain”-This song is all recorded on a Yamaha CS-80, and drums.  It’s got a VERY wide palette of both tonalities, and expressive capabilities, which made it quite fun. My good friend Chuck Palmer is playing drums on it; I had to push him to do those very over the top drum fills-he was laughing while he was doing them, cause it was such a ham-handed style compared to his usual tasteful and reserved drumming.

“The Water Wheel”-Hammond organ was the focus of this song. All the drums were programmed on an MPC. I ended up cheating a little with one pass of rhodes, but everything else was the Hammond.

“Within The Maze”-This song is all Elka Synthex and MPC. The onboard sequencer of this early 80’s synth has a really cool function where you can trigger it with audio, so I basically programmed the chords on the Synthex, but the rhythm inside the MPC, triggering the sequencer. This is how I got the syncopated feel for the synths at a super high tempo.

“Then You Hear Footsteps”-this song was initially supposed to be ALL horns; all the parts were written on the CS-80, and I tried to replace them all with horn parts, but it still didn’t have the “weight” I wanted it to, so I left in some of the synth parts. Dan Scofield and Elliot Levin played all of the horn parts.  All drum fills and parts were programmed on the MPC.

“Black Nectar”-Again, CS-80 and MPC. Elliot Levin played the flute solo. The second part of this song being so soft and expansive was meant to contrast the first part of it, but with a similar tonal character.

“Saint Ignatius Belsse”-This song was supposed to be all hand percussion (which it is). Glockenspiel, vibraphone, kalimba, marimba, and kids bells. Again, Chuck Palmer on drums.

“The Mountain”-Guitar and drums. I played drums on this track, and also included clavinet, as guitar and clav are pretty much the same instrument family, really.

“Trail of Fire”-Synthex and MPC, that was it for this one.

“Seldom Seen Smith”-this song was all done on an MPC and a Moog Micromoog. This was one of the bigger challenges on the record, as it only plays one note at a time. Many overdubs are needed to make a chord, but again, limitations become fun.

“Sunshine”-this song started as an attempt to do a song just on the Arp Pro-Soloist, but I ended up cheating and using the clavinet as well. Again, the monophonic synths mean several overdubs to achieve the richness of a chord. Myself on drums here.