The Mayfly Glimmer began with drum loop/rhythm ideas that Rob and I had come up with. We found we could explore much more complex percussion arrangements, time signatures and world rhythms that way. We used found samples and loops, beat boxes, actual percussion instruments from our arsenal etc., basically anything goes. Once we have a loop we like, we put it on a CD and jam to it, Rob on Chapman Stick and myself on guitar. We'll jam to it until we start to find ideas we like, then we'll mesh out a structure for a song. Many times I would come up with a riff for a verse and Rob would suggest a key change for a chorus or vice versa. Once a song started to take shape, we'd track some basic parts. Next we would take those tracks home and start to think about vocal parts and lyrics. At this point real songs were developing, so we took our Akai 12 track machine over to Morrisound and used the good mic's and effects (and Jim Morris' expertise) to record the vocals. Jim Morris is one of our secret weapons, he contributes a lot to the backing vocals and has a pretty incredible range. He sings the bass vocal on Sleep Forever. It just blew us away after he sang it. In most cases the person who came up the lyrics is the person who sings the lead vocal. For example, that's me singing lead on Make Right with Rob singing back up harmonies. The following track, Oblique Eye, has Rob singing the main vocal and myself singing the higher harmony part. After getting the vocals down we'd overdub the guitar solo's, Stick, keyboards, or whatever was needed. More...

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