For starters and Here I Am, Here Is Infinity Part 1

So, I have contemplated doing this for some time and finally stopped being lazy, and no this is not a new years resolution type deal.

I hope to do this regularly, but with anything I do, I cannot promise that.

Considering the massive and rapid changes that I have been going through personally this year, I am hoping that next year continues the positive changes of this last quarter. Maybe being a chronicle of change in part, maybe being a chronicle of my past, or musings on a distant future, I think that this title is pretty apropos...

A small lesson, The Hidden Archives of Dar es Balat is a fictional hoard of journals of the God Emperor in Frank Herbert's novel God Emperor (an excellent book and one which I would highly recommend it as well as the series to which it belongs).

The Hidden Archives of Dar es Balat is also the name of the "record company" which my band Gholas (another reference to Herbert's work in his Dune series) uses to release what is thus far a grand total of one record, our debut EP Here I Am, Here Is Infinity. Producing this record is one of the most satisfying (and stressful) accomplishments in my life so far. The band spent the Saturday and Sunday of Presidents Day weekend 2008 in Red Planet studio recording 4 tracks (3 songs and one ambient sound piece which we chopped up and peppered throughout the other three songs). In all honesty we rushed to the studio in order to participate in a planned split record with another band (Near Dark which is a fun band and the one guitarist, Joe Smiley, engineered and helped produce our record at his studio); but what we did was capture us in a creative mode.

Tracking of the instruments was accomplished live with some overdubs on Saturday during a long session. Since it was the band's first time in the studio we experimented very little at first, but we captured musical performances which all involved were satisfied with given all of our constraints (money, time, etc). I did thoroughly enjoy producing the ambient track (playing the organ for it was a pretty excellent experience) which greatly increased my desire to pursue more artistic expressions like it and fomented plans to do so for later dates. After the bulk of the tracking was completed we switched gears to vocals...