Album Notes

who ...

Recorded between August of 2001 and January of 2003, "nightmare variations" literally documents a night spent dreaming through the collaborative talents of five local musicians.

Prior to the project, the five had never been in the same room together at the same time. At the end of the project, the five had been in the same room only once.

The guilty parties:

Michael Catalano - Best known for his jagged but dynamic guitar work with surf/punk/trash outfits Hunchback and The Blood Sucking Geeks, Catalano has lent his technical skills on the guitar - as well as his desire to integrate outside sound elements into hard rock compositions - to countless acts and projects. In addition to recent musical exploits, Catalano was one of the founding members of The American Bandstand Communist Brigade (formerly The Dick Clark Five) in the mid-1990s.

Dw. Dunphy - An enigmatic and diverse musician whose solo releases over the last 10 years have become the material of local legend. An innovative guitar player and vocalist, Dunphy has spent much of his creative energies in recent years mutating the familiar sounds and structures of pop music, and lending hi-fi experimentalism to lo-fi recordings.

Michael Finnerty - A hard-hitting punk and post-punk drummer and percussionist with serious jazz leanings, Finnerty was a key member of rock bands The Tree Bark Orange, Saturday Night Jaluu, and Race Against Space. While not providing strange time signatures and an aggressive backbeat to several rock acts, Finnerty lends his performing talents to the stage as an actor. He is currently keeping time in an as-yet-unnamed band that has been playing sets around Brooklyn.

Inbal Kahanov - Kahanov is a student journalist who is becoming increasingly known by many for her tender singing voice. While Kahanov is making her Secret Decoder Records debut with "nightmare variations," she has performed as a vocalist and solo pianist for several years. Beyond invaluable guidance with the recording and editing of the record, Kahanov lends the voice of the siren to the record's third track.

Justin Vellucci - A self-taught guitarist whose early releases hinted at the role of the lo-fi singer-songwriter, Vellucci's most recent works have been intricately composed soundscapes and collages for guitar, voice, and found sounds. To paraphrase, Vellucci's songs are often written as much with silences and storms as they are with the fretboards of his guitar. In recent years, he has worked to intrinsically link more academic-minded modes of composition with the emotional weight of somber acoustic ballads and post-rock musings.

what ...

"nightmare variations" is a broken record, a literal document of a night spent dreaming, a series of compositions recorded and cut together with attention drawn to the stitches and the seams, a soundtrack to the recorded rhythms of nightmares and dreamscapes.


where ...

"nightmare variations" was recorded nomadically within the borders of New Jersey, in Clifton and Plainsboro and Point Pleasant Beach and Middletown and Manasquan.


when ...

Street date: 05.04.03.


why ...

This is a broken record.

Dreams and nightmares are non-linear and are beholden to no particular structure. Modern music, however, is so dependent on structure that almost everything in the last four decades seems oddly akin to each other.

Justin Vellucci had the initial idea, less than a phrase in the back of the mind ... This is a broken record. In fact, it breaks with many long-held traditions. Excepting one song on "nightmare variations," there is no reliance on the verse/chorus/verse crutch. Even that solitary song is a break - once you think you've figured out this recording, you're thrown for another loop.

If there is a concrete "why" for "nightmare variations," it is the desire to drop the plate on the ground to find the beauty and the patterns in the fragments. It's an attempt at
music that is inherently unfamiliar. It is a broken record.

Why "nightmare variations"? Why not?

...

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