Album Notes

The story of noise626 began in 1991, when a then young guitarist named Ant Graham was asked by a more than unusual gothic rock band called Mime of Sin and Repent to join their merry lot. He did, and in the year that followed learned many things. He learned the joy of performing, and joy of writing music with a brilliant, if somewhat mad lyricist, the joy of playing with a truly astonishing band and how all of those things can go wrong. It was a great and terrible time. And in the end, it soon became apparent that he could no longer tread the boards with the Mime, but before leaving the band, he did have the opportunity to meet a wondrous keyboardist and bassist named Brent Heinze.

This would prove very, very important as time went on. For eight years, Ant stayed away from his guitar, and instead tried his hand at learning how MIDI music worked on his PC; he, in fact, began recording an all MIDI cassette under the name Noise Inc that he had designs for as an underground release. But, his personal life took a turn for the weird, and he was never able to follow up on it. Woe is him.

Cut to1999. He began writing songs again on his acoustic guitar. Not having any real ideas of releasing it, mind you. Just something to pass the time. He had always written poetry that was well received, but had never really thought of doing much with it (aside from a few spoken word shows here and there). For a year he wrote, until he had filled three notebooks full of random musings and brain droppings.

Then, in 2000, during a chance meeting with the aforementioned Mr. Heinze, he accepted a gig to lay down some acoustic guitar tracks for Brent's band, Christus Christus, who had just gotten signed and who's leader, an enigmatic fellow named S. Murray Solida, wanted to try something different. And what started as a one off job playing a little guitar ended up as a membership in one of the most aggressively creative, mind altering and downright earth wobbling bands in existence, Christus and The Cosmonaughts (notice the name change). And, not only that, but he was given a chance to record an album on Solida's label, Ol' Scratch Recordings.

Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, he set to it, reworked the original name of Noise Inc to a more soothing moniker of noise626 and transformed a few scratchy acoustic recordings into something called Gothic Progressive Rock. Muscular and challenging like prog rock, but eerie and melodic like goth, The Art of Falling Forward, his first album, is in parts a moody collection of set pieces on faith, obsession, despair and love as well as a throwback to the days of the concept album/rock opera, with the title track being a four part 20 plus minute piece about a man in search of joy in stifling perfection.

And that's just the beginning....