The Langara Sessions
This was the first real demo that I made. As is mentioned on the previous page, I recorded it in a boat shed while living and working on Langara Island with the most basic of gear. I was in a big rush to get the material recorded so I could hand it over to the people at Nettwerk Records. You can see all the toxic stuff in the background of the picture. This literally was a working boat shed complete with all sorts of nasty stuff. I'm sure it took a few months off my life trying to get this album finished in time to hand off. 
The island that I was living on at the time is called Langara Island (pictured left). It is the North-Western most spot in Canada. I did all sorts of jobs while working there. The highlights included running the 24 foot Zodiac, pictured below, on safety runs around the island. It is huge water out there...the west side of the Charlottes is pretty much as big as water gets around the BC coast. We used to do all sorts of crazy things in those boats including racing them against
the other lodges. We'd be running at full speed, launching the boats out of the air on each wave trying to spray each other with the wake from the boat...stuff my bosses at the time I'm sure would rather not hear about.
I also worked as a fish cutter there. This really affected me and fundamentally shaped who I am and how I feel about the fishing industry on the coast. While there I would often dress, fillet and bag over 50 fish per day, sometimes much much more that this. I have had 60 pound salmon on the table and have dressed 250 pound halibut. These are fish that my children will likely not have the opportunity to see in their lifetime unless something dramatic changes in how we treat our oceans. I fell into the fishing industry by fate and ended up working at one of the top places anywhere in the world for recreation salmon fishing. Everyone from the Prime Minister to crazy super corporate business types seemed to end up there. Seeing all those fish on the cutting table everyday really affected me after some time. To this day I still have real struggles with the fishing industry on the coast. Over 20,000 pound of dressed fish leaves that one area every week. It makes me sad to know that much of that will sit in freezers never to be eaten. It also really saddens me to think that the majority of those fish are never respected as living creatures; that they are viewed as something to fight for the fun and for the challenge.
Many aboriginal cultures felt that salmon were the fundamental basis of all life- they are the swimmers who make a huge sacrifice for us on this planet. To me, it never seemed right to take life without deeply valuing it and respecting the sacrifice that it made.
The music that you will listen to is stuff that I had written on my little MC-303 while going to University. Again, it is all electronic music as that's where my head was at as far as music recording went at the time. It is funny that I wasn't writing more guitar based songs at that point as we often would sit around outside after a long days work and sing songs and drink beer. Electronic music was just what was calling to me the most at that point.
This is lo-fi boat shed music at its finest.
Enjoy!