Sovereign Circle - Safe Camp Session

For the Safe Camp jam this month we decided to do Sovereign Circle. Parts of the Descensus album are a bit overlooked, perhaps even forgotten at times. I should speak for myself I suppose, me being Brendan. Maybe not for fans but for myself I forget some of our catalog even exists based on the songs we tend to choose to play live. This is one of those songs that we've played very little on the road. Descensus was a weird album in that, for the most part, we didn't get together and write songs before we got to the studio. This was the first time that had ever happened with circa. There were a few songs I had put together instrumentals for, Sovereign being one of them and when we hit the studio Anthony and Will Started working on those while the rest of us started writing songs. 

That writing session was the first time I really figured out how to put songs together on my own in a way that people could really hear the big picture. Logic and the Logic Drummer were a massive step forward for me in this way. I still didn't really understand or perhaps have the patience to sit down and put a beat together with a piano roll. Also, I simply do not understand drums in the way most post people do. Specifically, If i am creating my own beat I do not understand drums from a drummers perspective. Most of the things I work on need at least a third arm or a second drummer. Logic drummer was like easy mode in a way and gave me an in and a level up for my creativity. It was inspiring because i could simply set some parameters and then magically have a beat in 5/4 that was interesting just from dragging a dot around on a screen. If it wasn't something I wanted I would just drag the dot some more and eventually i could write to that.  I'm pretty sure that's where sovereign came from.  It was also in a way the beginning of me becoming generally less interested in guitar and more interested in grooves. Which is weird considering most of the material i contributed to the next few albums had really weird grooves. Again that probably partly comes from the things i said above. Not really understanding drums or time signatures and then saying oh 7/4 how can i take this beat and put a bass line down that makes you nod your head. That became a fun challenge for me.

Anyway, I've always thought this song had really strong melodies and lyrics and thought it would be nice to hear them over music that was a bit more straight forward and stripped down. And yet now I'm in Ableton and actually building beats and by the time i get something together i have so much going on it sounds like a Phish drum circle and I have to start peeling shit away.  Hope you enjoy. 

Brendan