My third Western Blot album 5/4 is out today, streaming on Spotify, Apple Music, Soundcloud, and all the other usual places. You can buy it on Bandcamp, or get the whole Western Blot discography at a discount.

For years, I wanted to challenge myself to write an entire album in the 5/4 time signature and release it on May 4th someday. While I was working on the Materialistic album in 2017, my father Richard Shipley died, and I started writing a song about him in 4/4, but the melody seemed to work better in 5/4, so I went with it for "Sill Catch Myself." Then I realized that my dad passed away on May 4th, so I kind of took that as a sign to make that album and dedicate it to him.

Lizzy Greif sang on "Still Catch Myself," which was recorded with Mat Leffler-Schulman and originally released two years ago on the Too 30 EP. Then I wrote 8 more songs for 5/4 and recorded them with Doug Bartholomew, who I previously worked with on Woodfir's first EP. Mat mixed the album, and the session we'd scheduled to record more vocals was canceled by the COVID-19 quarantine. But Koye Berry stepped up and self-recorded vocals for "The Empty Space" and e-mailed them in just 3 weeks ago for the final album. Dan Coutant mastered it, and DeadmanJay did the cover art. I spend a lot of time working on these albums by myself, and do as much of it myself as I can stand to, even moreso on this album than the others. But every single thing that anyone has done to help me get to the finish line means a lot to me, thanks so much to all of these folks, and John and Ishai of the live incarnation of Western Blot, who I wish I could be out there playing some shows with right now.

 

This entry was posted on Monday, May 04, 2020 at 11:50 AM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.