Album Notes

Tubtime has its roots in work in the unholy union of drummer/engineer Geoff Chase’s “Directive 4″ project that featured rock improvisation with various Boston musicians and guitarist Scott Collins’ goal to be able to work with musicians of such a high caliber that they could perform a full set of improvised material that sounded pre-composed.

Over the course of 2003-2004 Tubtime ended up with several cds worth of material that will all hopefully see the light of day. The music is being finally released after numerous relocations and other various hold ups, because we kept running into people who had heard of us (or heard the tracks) despite having never played live. While we haven't performed since then - the threat of more music is always a real one.

“We Bleed The Sun And Make It Pay” was the culmination of 4 such sessions. All of the music was written and tracked live and in real time (although, Geoff took some of the improvised material and used it as transitional material on transitional tracks.)

The poem on the cover photo of the burning poem (taken by Joe Rauen) was inspired by a quote attributed to Dick Cheney who rationalized a series of governmental policies by saying, “this is out due.” It was such an incredibly brazen sense of entitlement that the poetic fragment was written around it. In case you can't read it from the jpeg the poem is

"There are no words that you can say
that will our course of action sway
This is our due - This is our day
We bleed the sun and make it pay"

Visually, the Tubtime project was working around a “disturbed child” aesthetic with lots of pictures with distorted perspective and coloring outside of the lines. I think that the music captures some of that as well. There is a certain honesty of immediacy that comes from real improvisation – and hopefully that translates as well.

There was no real concept when we recorded the tracks, but I developed one when assembling the cd. As the tracks were mixed and sequences there was a specific story line worked out involving themes of narcissism, paranoia and altered states of perception.

“We Bleed The Sun and Make It Pay” is a type of sonic documentary of where we all were at the time of recording it. As it takes a couple of minutes to develop each of the pieces – I think It works best as a bumpy 58 minute sonic journey. I hope you enjoy both the turbulence and the scenery.

The tracks were performed by:
Patty Barkas – vocals
Geoff Chase – drums
Scott Collins –guitar & loops
Keichi Hashimoto – trumpet
Joe Rauen – bass & clarinet

Tubtime: We Bleed The Sun and Make It Pay

copyright 2004 all rights reserved.