Black Trenchcoats & Swastikas ‘N Shit

Demos, Outtakes & Rarities: 2003-2006

“The five years spanning from late 2003 through the end of 2008 were not a time of sustained inspiration and productivity for me. Six months after the release of the first Forms Of Things Unknown CD Cross Purposes in June 2003, my recording system crashed irreparably after I pretty much ran it into the ground with the prolonged sessions of intensive micro-editing involved in recording and mixing ‘Interrupted By Interior Design’ for The Bone Tickling Nightmare Pig CD compilation. Exhausted from months of effort in recording, producing, and then attempting to promote and distribute my first self-released album; drained and demoralized from working a miserable day job that brought me after four years to the brink of a nervous breakdown and a subsequent two-year period of unemployment and disability; and finding myself without the technical means to go about making music on the level I wanted to, I produced very little new music for a number of years. Occasionally, I got an invitation to submit work for a CD compilation, or an evanescent burst of inspiration to play with recorded sound, and some small creation would emerge. Most of the pieces on this collection were recorded through a cheap mixer with a basic multi-effects unit (a Lexicon MPX 100) fed directly into a two-track stereo CD recorder. No editing was possible with this setup, and the only way to overdub was to record live with effects onto a CD, then to play the CD on a portable Discman player through the mixer along with live accompaniment into the stereo recorder for a combined recorded mix of two separate performances, with no possibilities of remixing once recorded. Despite the unfinished quality of some of these recordings, I feel that the substance of the various works merits listening by those who might have an interest in my music, and so I decided to collect them together on this album (along with a fully remastered and expanded edition of Cross Purposes) as a summation of the first phase of Forms Of Things Unknown.”

Ferrara Brain Pan

Forms of Things Unknown