PARAMAX (3)

By: Max Glenn
September 27, 2021

We are pleased to present PARAMAX, a three-part series in which talented musician and HILOBROW friend Max Glenn guides our listening to his latest release, Maxtape II. Spotify users, scroll to bottom of each post for a track link.

MAXTAPE II TRACKS: I | II | III.

III

The first section of “III” was made with the Middle Collegiate Church — which was a few blocks away from my apartment, this past year — in mind. The church, which served as a women’s shelter, burned down in December. Luckily, no one was hurt. The fire went on for a night and a day, the clean-up took about a week. I wanted to compose a track with this tragic fire in mind, so I’d walk past and record the fire trucks, clean-up crew, and pedestrians’ comments. I paired these noises with a piano improvisation I did in California.

The next section was recorded in the living room of my same apartment with Nate on vocals and Kat on the Roland TR8. I hosted a fair amount of jam sessions there, even though the living room was not much bigger than my closet-sized bedroom. The music we made in those sessions was never intended to be released, but I snuck this interlude in — because it represents the sounds of that time and those people and the shelter we created from the winter’s cold.

The next part of “III” is “5656”, which I released before Maxtape II. I recorded and produced this track in one day entirely on my phone. A few days before, I was put on to Dean Blunt’s song ‘as long as ropes unravel fake rolex will travel’, and this is where that inspiration took me. It is a continuation of my experiments with repetition; I wanted to create a little sound world to live in for about seven minutes. Most of the guitar elements have a lot of delay, so by looping the track the wet and dry signals connect in specific, syncopated ways. I used the synth to try to sound like whitenoise or feedback (which is already very present because of the guitar amp I recorded off of), but a whitenoise that I could control the tone of. I put a lot of rain noises subtly throughout, so it kind of becomes a lullaby.

The last part of “III” is the second installment of ‘all my voicemails’ from the first Maxtape. I had a whole new batch of sweet messages left by tons of people in my life that I wanted to share. I really love the overlapping goodbyes at the end, it made me tear up the first time I heard them all together.

***

PARAMAX (3)

Categories

Tags