Sunday, September 28, 2008

Album of the Week #46: Thru the Vent

Project name: ORC
Album name: Thru the Vent
Release date: September 23, 2008
Release format: CD
Studio name: Metal XOR Studio

ORC - Thru the Vent

Tracks:
1. Mariner's Lament
2. Pruritus
3. Chicken Quest
4. Giu
5. Brown River
6. Exquisite Blackness
7. I Wish You the Best
8. Land of Make Believe
9. HipHop HobGob
10. We Go Down
11. Here We Go

On Saturday, September 20, 2008, Jason and Jimmy connected on their computers with the Voice Over IP program called Ventrilo, as they often do. That particular night Jason had his recorder going, recording everything that was said or done by either of them.

Jason started the evening by working on music for a new project. Jimmy was also playing around with his own music. When Jason finished, he started playing an online game called Vanguard. But Jimmy kept working on music.

Behind Jason's game sounds, Jimmy was playing music and singing, making up the lyrics as he went along. After a few songs Jason joined in by singing as Jimmy played his synthesizer. After they logged off for the evening, Jason went back to the recording and pulled out eleven songs that they created that night. And those eleven songs are what became this EP.

It is a short album and hardly any thought went into it, but it is the first ORC release since their debut album in 1999, Purging the Great Abyss. Their attempt at recording a new full-length album in January of 2008 ended before the album was finished. But for this latest impromptu jam, the album was released just three days after being recorded.

The Asian theme of the packaging came from the picture used on the front of the album cover, which Jimmy had as his desktop wallpaper at work for a while. They agreed the picture should be used in some way with ORC, so when it was decided to release this as an album, they already had their album cover. The rest of the packaging followed that theme.

And the title of the EP came from the fact that the music was created over the Internet using the program Ventrilo, or Vent for short.

There are more EP's of such live jam sessions in the ORC catalog. Plans are to release more of them in 2009.

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