...

I made this album last year by this point. It's 2024-09-07 at the time I'm writing this, some details are probably going to be foggy.

First off, the album cover. I still don't have my mind made up on it by this point, it was an impulsive joke I made. For a while I had the album cover sitting around without text on it, I was planning on using that version. One night I'm talking with a friend of mine and he's surprised I live in the same town as the American Football house, so I get off my ass and I make a parody of my album cover with the American Football font. By that point the album's like 99% done, I was sitting on it for months by then. Most of it I had done by April. I thought the new cover was funny enough that it actually made me get up and finish the thing. So like, no shitty parody cover, no album. Or at least that's how I justify it now, I dunno. I think of it like it's the scene of Chambana in general, kinda crossed with how I'm on the mend too. We had some one hit wonders, a few cool DIY guys, but I never really go out to see shows ever. There's a few cool projects here and there but it's like, I dunno, nothing's really put us on the map in over 20 years.

So I guess it's a little bit of frustration that we're the American Football town, just kinda sating our misery in times before most of us were born. I guess I might feel different about them if I was alive to see them on the rise, the whole phenomenon I guess, but I'm just kinda alive next to a house people think is cool. I only just recently found out about Ebert Fest, how that's a whole thing. Man, I've lived here like half of my entire life by this point. Don't get me wrong, I love the music. It's a cool vibe, I just think it's kinda funny how that's all there is. It really says a lot about Chambana how we're like "Check out this house! Isn't this a house?" instead of trying to make anything new. Maybe it's seeing all the goofy kids showing up just to take pictures of someone's house for their social media, I dunno. I just think it's sad. I like the music, I haven't really heard the new American Football reunion albums yet but I've heard good things. I heard the Hum reunion album, that was pretty good. It sucks that I can only name off the top of my head artists from here that were over 20 years ago.

Not to say that I'm like, making the big breakout Chambana album that's changing everything with this. I dunno, I made what I could make. A few songs on there I had a broken collarbone while I was recording them, like I was in actual physical pain. Pain wrote those songs, like I had to stick to cowboy chords and not go up the neck or else I'd have been screaming instead of singing. I was trying a little bit to capture that detached numb feeling that kratom gives me, being dissociative and stuff. The songs were really just kind of a vessel for the production I wanted to put on them, like I wanted an excuse to take a thing that I recorded and make it sound like it was a reflection of a reflection. I had to have a song to do that to, so I made some songs first and then I did that to them. I still like a lot of them for what they are, live field recordings in a second story apartment I dubbed extra vocals on and threw a VST filter on before calling it a day's work.

Anyways, none of the album is about American Football. I guess I like mentioned the city once or twice, but that's pretty much it.