Nick and I have been friends for a number of years and played together in various bands (Funk Shui, The Nate Hammond Trio & Disappear House) and in most of them he was the principle songwriter. Disappear House disbanded in late 2007 when Nick moved to LA and when that happened it ended the long musical relationship that we had which involved me writing parts for songs that Nick wrote. The void of music for me to write for that was created when he left is what led me to record this album.

Soon after moving Nick recorded most of these songs with just guitar and voice along with some electronic music which he put up on myspace as two projects titled “Killing Everything” (Figurine, Winter and Black Skys) and “Forever” (Today has Fallen, Gather & Go and Guide). Soldier is a great example of the Nick Barnett style of song writing and was worked on briefly by Disappear House but never materialized into something that we kept. Kill Bill could have been a Funk Shui song but the band disbanded before that could happen. It then was worked on by another one of Nick’s bands (Earthworm) but that didn’t stick either. Nick then played the song in a duet he formed shortly after moving to LA. I had always liked the song and had already written a good deal of guitar and keyboard parts for it when we stopped working on it. These parts were then reworked, mainly on guitar and then recorded backwards. The recordings of Soldier and Kill Bill used for this album are the original demos Nick made which in my opinion are still the best versions.

After spending the majority of 2008 listening to the tracks that Nick recorded I added drums, guitar, keyboards and various samples to them in December 2008 and it was by far the quickest project I have ever worked on in terms of recording. That said this album also had one of the longest mixing and mastering phases of anything I’ve recorded but over all I am very pleased with the result although the best part for me was the fact that Nick was unaware of my work until after the recording was finished.