This is my favorite Astro Al album thus far.
From the songs, to the performances, to the sounds, its a big beastly thing riddled with static and power mad thoughts.
Lyrically, its a combination of impressionism, mourning for lost hero-villains, trying to understand the incomprehensible, and facing addictions.
Musically it has some of our most heavy playing so far.
There's only one spoken word piece on the album and even that has vocals. All the other tracks are songs.
1 Ghost Dinosaur Trips - The thickest sounding recording on the album. I lost count of how many tracks we used in this recording. Oscillators upon oscillator tracks with sequencer tracks layered all over each other. Multi-tracked guitars and vocals. This song took a long time to nail down not just in recording but in mixing. Then again so did the whole album. I think every song was completely re-mixed at least once. Very proud of DNA Girls guitar slinging on this one. This song started off with a sequencer track I created and some lyrics I wrote. Then we built it up from there. Originally, I had thought about singing this one, but DNA Girl got it. I wanted a wall of sound on this one and I think we got it.
2 Are We Clear, Amigo? - Discard ego and release understanding. Inspired by a real incident. Did you ever mishear song lyrics? Did you ever misunderstand your life? This song was tested out once "live" on the radio show, On The Town with Mikey Dee on WMFO. We played around with it a lot and think we got it where we wanted it to go.
3 I Dream of Joe Meek- Joe Meek was an amazing producer, but a very deeply troubled man. This is our ode to him. This was the first song we wrote for the album and we re-wrote it and re-recorded it multiple times. We also played it at a lot of shows to test it out, including the Sonic Rock Festival in England. With this one we sought to emulate Joe Meek's time period of music (50's/60's). DNA Girl's vocals nail the time/style of this song.
4 My Last Dollar, My Last Beer- The last song we recorded for the album. We re-wrote the words to this one a lot and they got better as we threw out everything that we didn't need. There are all kinds of addiction and thinking that you are worse than you are, believing that you have no worth, is probably the worst addiction of all because it leads to self-fulfillment of self-destruction. We discussed adding a lot of tracks to this song, but then felt it was better being sparse, because all the other songs on the album are stacked with layers. We had thought about adding bass and foley style sound effects (sounds of people at a bar, doors opening, etc.) and tossed it all aside. Glad we did. Just vocals, cigar box guitar (with beautiful DNA Girl slides!), and harmonica. With the way the lyrics were originally written, I had thought about singing part of it, but DNA Girl got it better than me so I didn't want my voice messing things up, plus as we tossed more and more of the lyrics it became more female centric.
5 There's Something Behind Me- A horror tune. What is behind you and what does it want from you? To quote my favorite line from Dracula with Bela Lugosi, "There are far worse things awaiting man, than death." A statement I would agree with. What's behind the character in this song is worse than death. Lots of Aztec Death Whistle sounds swirling in the background on this track.
6 The Irish Ballad- A song crafted by the great songwriter Thom Lehrer. He released all of his songs into public domain years ago. This song of his is a favorite of ours because the lyrics are so deliriously, darkly, comedic. We decided to turn it into a pagan acid folk song which I think it lends itself to quite well. The second half of the song is a pure freak out track that could happen in some haunted forest while human sacrifices appease forgotten spirits. We did do a fun short version of this song for a video. Back in the daze when DNA Girl and I used to act in dinner theater murder mysteries, she would often sing this song as part of the show. It never failed to get a big laugh from the crowd. The way we did it here is far removed from the mostly acapella version that she used to sing.
7 Ghost Cries- This a kind of spoken word track, but also not. Part of the vocals for this experimental track were recorded in the dark arch in Fort Warren on George's Island. This room is as black as pitch and so acoustically rich with reverb that it was a joy to record there. We had to set up a couple of flashlights and then go for it. It's hard to get time to record uninterrupted in that space because lots of tours pass through it. A nice spooky way to take you out of the album.
There were a few songs we had planned for this album that we never finished, including a space rock instrumental. Maybe they will wind up elsewhere.
DNA Girl does all the vocals/voices on this album.
She really led this album and I think she did a spectacular job guiding this album to life.
This is the first album she did all the voice stuff on and I'm very proud and pleased with that happening especially because I had done all the voice stuff on Place Commercial Here. That had happened unintentionally. This album started off with plans for me to sing a few of the tracks and backing vocals but DNA Girl just nailed it all and by the end of it, I figured it was best to just leave it all to her.
It was probably our longest gestating album. We started work on it in 2020 and didn't finish until this year (2026).
Now you may wonder a bit about that, because we've had a bunch of other releases come out during that time. The way we work is that we have multiple audio/video projects all being done at once. Each one takes the time they need to take. Some are fast. Others take a lot longer.
As I type this, we have many other albums partially done that someday will be finished.
The wonderful cover art is by Ingrid who was the lead singer for one of my favorite bands, Trance to the Sun. She is a super gifted artist and I am so glad she was kind enough to make this cover for us. Thank you Ingrid!
Yours in another album write up,
Count Robot
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