Released July 14 2023

Background

Hourglass of Exile is the latest and (in my opinion) greatest album from tB Project, and this thing was in the works for over a decade, all said and done. Don’t let that statement fool you though. A lot happened during that decade, including not really working on this album for a long time, as you’ll come to read about below.

The earliest material for this album was written in 2012 or so, that being the song The Messengers. Initially, I had the idea to make a gapless album, where each song leads into the next one, effectively making one big piece of music across the entire album. Like many of my ideas, I borrowed the concept from Between the Buried and Me, who have more or less been making nothing but gapless albums since they released Colors back in 2007. Due in part to this gapless idea, writing for this album took a very long time and wasn’t fully completed until late 2021. Up until 2021 or so, I used to write all my music exclusively in Guitar Pro, which is a guitar tablature program. For anyone who doesn’t know what that is, it’s basically sheet music for guitar players. In this program, it uses cheap sounding instruments to play back what you write into it. It had worked for me up until then, but late into the writing process, I decided to try writing music in my recording software instead, since it would let me play with tones and effects a lot more. Riddles of Exile was the first song I wrote this way, and I can honestly say that I wish I had adopted this approach much sooner. It allows you to explore many more ideas and opportunities that just aren’t as easily possible in a notation software alone.

It was still early in my college career when I started writing Hourglass, and I remember writing some of the songs while I was in the lounge of the Old Main building in between classes at WSU. If you’ve read some of the notes for my other albums, then you’ll know that I had a lot going on until 2018 or so when The Salty Sardine came out. College courses and graduation in 2016, landing an internship, meeting my future wife, completing the Salty Sardine album. This is a big part of why Hourglass took so long to come into being. I remember I was in the midst of writing the song Zeal/Appeal and I made some good progress one day and decided to wrap up for the evening. Next thing I knew, I hadn’t worked on it again for 6 months. Maybe I had a headache the day after or something…? Who really knows? But that was the type of ‘on and off’ nature of the writing process for this album.

As I mentioned before, Hourglass of Exile wasn’t fully written until late 2021, and by this time, I had already moved to Canada. Prior to this, it was my initial plan to play the drums and perform the vocals for the entire album, but it quickly became evident that this wasn’t going to happen. Like many folks, I was and still am a bit self conscious about my singing voice, and recording drums was going to be a challenge since I lived in a different country from where my drum kit was. I had also considered getting Anna Armstrong (vocalist on Salty Sardine and Space-like) to return for vocals, and we did do a few sessions where we tracked some parts for Hourglass, but the logistics of travel, scheduling and working around Anna’s newfound parenthood proved to be less than ideal. It was at this time that I turned to the internet for some help.

One day, I received an email from Zach Kamins, who is the main member of an instrumental prog group called An Endless Sporadic. I had been a fan of his for awhile, and I must have signed up for his newsletter at one point because that’s what his email was about. He was doing open Zoom calls for those interested in talking with him, so I said “why the heck not?” and reached out to him saying I was interested. Him and I had a great chat and he gave me some insights into producing my album I hadn’t considered until then. He said to try getting some guest features for the album, for solos or whatever I wanted. I thought that was a good idea, so shortly thereafter, I asked him if he’d like to do some solos and he gladly obliged. He also referred me to a friend of his named Matt Graff, who is an incredible drummer open for doing session work. I reached out to Matt and booked him to record the drums for Hourglass, and MAN, what a gold mine Matt is. His drumming is incredible and the way he recorded everything was really well done. A consummate professional if there ever was one. From there, I landed the other guest features on the album, Jarod Fedele and Mattias IA Eklundh of Freak Kitchen fame. Jarod was a fellow I&W Prog Discord member, so getting in touch with him was pretty easy and he was very open to laying down a solo for the project. Mattias too was very open to it, and I decided on him because he’s a very underrated guitar player who is insanely creative and talented, and I was very happy with his ONE TAKE solo that he put down for the song Resign.

From here, I had some ideas for horn parts in the songs, and though I could have maybe gotten away with samples, I decided to get actual horn players for authenticity’s sake. I found Miles Izzo and Michael Pilley to fill the roles of trumpet and trombone respectively, and Drew Vandewinckel, another of Zach’s friends, was able to do all of the saxophone parts. Each of them did a stellar job and I wish I had more material presently that could use their talents, because they all were great to work with. Maybe a future tB Project album will have more jazz, who knows?

Lastly, I was left to find a new vocalist. I had no idea who to ask, so I asked several members from the I&W Prog Discord among a few other servers. Got a few samples from people, but nothing quite felt right or seemed to fit. Then I was having a chat one night with Galen Stapley, the amazing guitarist of UK based prog act Azure. They said to try asking their singer, Chris Sampson, to see if they’d be interested. At first, I was a little hesitant, because I knew asking someone to sing all the vocals for a nearly 77 minute album is a big ask, and I figured Chris was busy with Azure related things. After all, they have their own band to write for and manage. I hadn’t really spoken much to Chris before either, so I felt kinda like a stranger asking a huge favor to someone who doesn’t know me. But all the same, I sent them a message with some of the demo material and Chris replied saying they absolutely loved it and wanted to contribute vocals to the whole project. It really can be just that simple sometimes. And how grateful I am for Chris’ involvement in the album, because I think Chris really understood the tone I was going for with a lot of material. Chris, along with every other musician that played on this album, really elevated the songs into something special, and I absolutely cannot wait to work them again on future projects.

Unlike my other albums, I wanted to do some proper promotion for this release because I really felt the material deserved it. I had a decent video release schedule, and I had become somewhat of a regular on the I&W Prog Discord, so I had at least some small audience that would give my music a shot. So far, it’s been the most successful music release I’ve had, even netting some reviews and press coverage. I’m hoping to continue building on this with my next album, which is already well in the works. Hourglass of Exile is my crowning achievement so far, and it’ll be a hallmark in my musical career, to be sure. Though, I think this next album of mine is shaping up to give Hourglass a run for its money. Stay tuned for more.