My original instrumental demo for 'Most Dangerous Commercials'

When we were writing On Letting Go I went through some kind of manic period of creativity.  After almost 2 years of solid touring the band was living in our second house and in a down swing as far as our ability to communicate & write songs. I think now reflecting back on it we were all just regrouping from the exhaustion but at the time I felt like we needed to be producing a lot more than we were. To complicate things our practice/writing space was tiny, unventilated and it was very difficult for multiple people to be in there for more than 1-2 hrs max. 

 I was ultra pissed about the Iraq/Afghanistan wars, the reelection of George W Bush, eyeballs deep in the new found youtube wormhole, conspiracy theories, psychedelics, severely abusing my adderall prescription and had a newly budding obsession for making visual art as well. I was barely sleeping and when I wasn't writing music, drawing or painting I was going down these insane internet rabbit holes or reading bizarre books about mind control, aliens and how to navigate an interdimensional reality. (Shoutout to the works of Robert Anton Wilson for essentially saving me from a complete mental breakdown)  

Anyway, no surprise that all of this basically crushed my relationship with my girlfriend at the time which pushed me even deeper into a space of non-stop isolated creation and mania. I would get up at 7am, workout, go into our practice space at 8 or 9 and pretty much work until midnight with the occasional break. I was recording these super sloppy full band sounding instrumental demos like it was my job because well it technically was. I think there was over 60 of them in total by the time we were actually in the studio, some of which found there way onto OLG, others BSN and even a few on VW. 

It was interesting that during the Juturna era we had really veered away from anything traditionally "heavy" having all came from Hardcore/Metal bands previously we were perhaps overly concerned with staying far away from those genres.  But this time around with the support and subsequent confidence we gained from the first album it felt exciting to explore some heavier sounds all with imagining how the songs would feel live. Touring on Juturna had informed this because of how high energy the shows became. Our record that we had perhaps naively interpreted as much more shoegazey, proggy and or chill had still resulted in mass sing alongs, pile ons, circle pits (albeit pretty peaceful ones LOL) and it elevated not only the way we performed those songs but the way we wanted to engage with you all on the next album.

So I somewhat ironically dubbed this idea "Mosh" when I wrote it because it had that classic half time groove of a hardcore breakdown as it's chorus vibe. I think I was sorta channeling some combination of Turmoil, Glassjaw and then throwing in a White Zombie vibe with the slide ( that Brendan promptly rejected for this one upon collaboration LOL) 

I don't think I need to explain why this sounds like shit right? Beyond the fact that I'm not  amazing at any instrument, the whole thing was just a brain vomit affair,  I couldn't really play the drum parts I was hearing and I knew it didn't matter because Steve would make it a zillion times cooler if we actually made it a Circa song.  I recorded all of these parts in one day just trying to get the idea out. It's awesome to listen back to all of these now. It was a special time in my life and as unhealthy and unsustainable as it was for me personally, I'm glad it occurred and we have all of these interesting trees that grew out of my haphazardly planted seeds. 

Eventually the band found its footing communication wise and a bunch of much more collaborative songs were written.  We wound up with a really exciting balance of ideas by the time we went in with B MCT.

We recorded the studio version of this song while tracking OLG but didn't know if it'd be on the record until we were in sequencing. We ultimately decided that it would make a wonderful Bside seven inch if paired with the other ultra heavy song from this time, '1000 Witnesses' which we wound up putting out as a means of raising money for various friends of ours over the years through multiple pressings. 

That is the tale of 'Mosh'. LOL. Hope you enjoyed this little flashback friday.

 Comment PITTING if you're circle pitting in your room right now. 

<3 

C