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1-11 - Disc One - characters and fundamental themes
12-22 - Disc Two - stream of consciousness

23 - Bonus track from limited edition

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You See The Echo was the 2010 follow-up to Nemo's 2009 Orson Welles themed sound collage album "A Few Moments Of Illusion In The High Old Style", which had garnered unforseen positive feedback, attention, and successes.

I wanted the follow-up to be of a similar level of "quality" (which intangibly includes depth, humor, musicality, "moments", and more), at least to my own perception/judgement (which is ultimately all a solo artist has to go by).

Personally, I feel I have the best results when the subject/source material connects with me in deep and genuine ways, the resulting music at least has more of a potential to continue that chain, and resonate with listeners more deeply, as opposed to a contrived approach chasing after someone's idea of what they think people want to hear.

I chose Star Wars as the source material to work with, not just because of what it means to me, but as a sound collage artist/musician there is a lot of potential for many themes that could be explored, and the potential depth of the final result.

The real thanks goes to the content of the original stories, and the wealth of source material, which made it easier to transition from emotional content, intellectual, and humor, which was brought together by my pre-existing familiarity with the movies, albums, radio shows, tv shows, comics, books, etc, which allowed me to leapfrog from one thing to another.

I discuss this further in the album's original liner notes, which are included below. This is just for some context on first glance, before diving in.

Each disc is sort of like an album in its own right, and have their own identities, much like a 7" single, where the A-side and B-side compliment each other, but have a slightly different tone and feel with respect to one another.
Enjoy.

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Liner notes from the original 2010 CD release:


Nemo - ne-mo (NEE-moh); n. Latin: No one; no man; nobody

Star Wars has come to connect in some way with so many people around the world. Few people lack an opinion about Star Wars - from avid fans to detractors, and even those who claim ambivalence - nearly everyone has SOMETHING to say about these movies and the characters. Even many have an anecdote about how and when they first experienced that galaxy far, far away....

On the film's opening day, May 25th 1977, I was 5th in line for the first show, at the UA Cinema in Seattle. I managed to see Star Wars 21 times during its initial run. The movie came out at what seemed to be an ideal age for me; the characters, the "hero's journey", let alone the fantastic, used galaxy that George Lucas created, really fuelled my imagination, as it has with so many people, and continues to do so.

My previous project was the 2009 Orson Welles-themed album "A Few Moments Of Illusion In The High Old Style" which was a return to the sound-collage form/style that I explored throughout the 1990's. After the unexpected positive attention "A Few Moments Of Illusion..." garnered, I decided to begin a follow-up project for Nemo.

Like the Orson record, I was hoping to make this album equally as enjoyable to create, and with luck, it might be as enjoyable for me to listen to, hoping to make it rich with ideas thoughts, humor, and music. I wanted to work with some themes and source materials that were already intimately familiar to me. Even though I had always avoided using the Star Wars films in the past, this time they were an obvious choice to me.

When it came to my approach in making "You See The Echo" I wanted to continue using essentially the same criteria that I used in creating the previous album: I started with many of the musical backdrops and elements, and looked ahead to the finished whole, and decided how I wanted the narrative ideas broken down into the individual "songs." Before long, Disc 1 came to be character oriented, while Disc 2 was more fun and stream of consciousness.

As far as the actual process of putting together the bits of dialogue, and the overall piecing together of all the elements, my process was essentially the same that I used on the Orson record - I almost exclusively edited "by hand," favoring multiple passes for cycling sections, as opposed to using delay effects, or digitally copying parts.

In some cases, I would even go back and forth between the different versions of the films and music, creating a looping/repeating part, but with subtle differences (in some cases maybe with inaudible variations).

I favored the sense of being in a crowded train station (or space port), where different phrases of dialogue, sounds, or music may come to the surface on repeated listens. I also used both analog and digital sources as a means of recording, but no PC/laptop computers or programs, just a Tascam 424 and 788.

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Tydirium was chosen to be the final track relatively early on, and when the album grew into a double disc set, it retained its status as the final track of Disc 2.

But then, in the interest of having some sort of special, additional content for a limited edition release of the album, the song What's A Jedi Warrior came into being, and was added to the Limited Edition version of the album, though only the CD tray artwork was altered (the Limited Edition version of the CD features an entirely different collage artwork on the back and inside the CD tray, than the standard release version).

When it came time to decide which version to make available digitally, I chose to give you the Limited Edition version with the extra track, because ultimately it isn't about any rarity or collector value - no, to me at least, it's about your enjoyment, and I hope you DO enjoy this; it was a complete labor of love.