This year’s theme for the EP is “13″.  It all started with a collaboration we did with our Patrick Graham back in 2006.  Patrick had all these cool rhythms in meters relating to thirteen: 13/4, 13/8, 13/16, 13/32 etc…  We put together a song based on his ideas and performed it together a couple of times.  Recently Patrick called and asked if we’d record parts for the piece for his upcoming album and we did a long distance recording collaboration.  The piece, now called “Strikes 13″ turned out to be a lot of fun and is on his upcoming album and on our EP.

Since then I’ve been thinking a lot about ideas in thirteen and started writing a post-punk inspired piece in 13/8.  Like if Joy Division wrote a song in an odd time signature  what would it sound like?  Many times when I’m working on a piece I try to follow the ideas where ever they might lead and try not to get too attached to a particular concept too early…  I feel like I have all of these competing points of inspiration in my head, clamoring for attention.  It’s anarchy…  I’ll have an idea that starts out sounding like Anti-Pop Consortium and ends up in Bali.

Once I had ideas down for the  song I started hearing it as a more jazzy thing kind of a kind of an EST meets Sigur Ros in 13/8.  So one thing led to another and now there are two songs based on the same tempo and groove.  I decided to try to finish them both and see if they fit together or not…

I was so saddened to hear about Esbjorn Svensson’s passing in a scuba diving accident earlier this year.  Kelvin initially turned me on to EST and they have become one of my favorite trios.  If you aren’t familiar with their music check out this live performance of “Dodge the Dodo“.  Esbjorn left the world with some amazing music and is source of inspiration for many musicians around the world.