6 2x4s: An InCoAlMo Retrospective
New Jersey, USA
Check Out the Album
Original Concept:
For a few different reasons, i've decided this year to do a spoken-word retrospective sharing thoughts on the five InCoAlMo challenges that i've completed to date -- a "rockumentary podcast album", perhaps? The plan is to record six pairs of 4-minute tracks. For five of them, each pair will discuss the production of a previous year's challenge, with one track describing the album overall and another focusing on a selected piece from that album. The last pair will be dedicated to the InCoAlMo concept itself, serving as sort of an "intro" and "conclusion" to the record. There may be one or more uncounted bonus tracks, as well. My hope is to deliberately avoid talking about things already covered in the "liner notes", so as to provide new insights into how the records were made, and what i've learned over the past 5 years.
Artist Post-Game:
This year's InCoAlMo record was actually pretty straightforward, which i guess isn't surprising given what it was. The concept and process were both very straightforward, and the album execution pretty much went as expected. The only real delay to final release was getting around to mastering the record, which also included selecting and prepping some "bonus tracks" which are included in the Bandcamp download (which is available at no cost).
That said, writing and recording this album was actually a little bit of a surprise in how much i enjoyed re-examining these past projects. By the time i was done, some themes had surfaced that bore out how these InCoAlMo albums had progressed over time, leveraging some lessons learned along the way, but also remaining subject to both new and ongoing challenges imposed by the aggressive deadline. In the end, while this retrospective may not prove terribly interesting to the average music listener, i think it might provide some neat insights to fellow InCoAlMo artists and/or to the rare hardcore fan of my own work who's actually listened to all these crazy records over the years.
One thing i can say is that taking this little retrospective journey has definitely gotten me looking forward to next year's challenge and to finding out what new experiences await!