|
"We are nothing but echoes. We have no thoughts of our own, no opinions of our own, we are but a compost heap made up of the decayed heredities, moral and physical." – Mark Twain Adam Payne has spent the better part of a decade building up to "Dead Head," the new Residual Echoes album on Teenage Teardrops. Growing up in a musical family in the Silver Lake and Echo Park neighborhoods on the East Side of Los Angeles, Adam took some piano lessons, but found his calling playing drums. In fact, he might have become known as a great rock 'n' roll drummer, but he couldn't practice in his college dorm in Santa Cruz, so he picked up a guitar. Within months, he had put together the first incarnation of Residual Echoes (called "Residual Echoes of the Great Explosion", a misremembered line from a Frank Zappa song) and they started playing live gigs. One night while hanging in his dorm room in 2004, Adam dropped some LSD. As a true music fan, he started going through his records looking for "the perfect acid album," but couldn't find one, so he decided he'd make it himself. The resulting album, "Residual Echoes", was recorded in the very same dorm using Acid 3.0 (that's music software – and also a happy coincidence) with the help of a couple of friends. Knowing that he wanted the world to hear it but not knowing how, Adam pressed up a few hundred copies of the record on vinyl and sent some copies out to people he thought might like it. Among the early supporters were Phil McMullen of Terrascope, the great Julian Cope (who called the album an "unbelievable folklorique cosmic jamrag", and Holy Mountain Records in Portland, Oregon, who helped Adam with his distribution and encouraged him to continue making his unique brand of music. His home-made debut was followed in 2005 by "Phoenician Flu and Ancient Ocean" (Holy Mountain), his first to be recorded in a studio and "MFI-GBSP" (Rocket Recordings). The following year saw the release of the vinyl-only LP "California" (Holy Mountain) which marked his last Santa Cruz recording. Returning to LA (and drafting another group of musicians to be his Residual Echoes), Adam recorded the CDEP "Firsts" (Elevation Recordings) and soon thereafter released the cassette-only "Get Yr Wah-Wah's Out! Live!" which featured live tracks from the old Santa Cruz lineup. Although his music was rapidly maturing (comparisons to both Dinosaur Jr and Neil Young abounded), Adam couldn't stay in one place long enough to build a following and refused to just keep playing his existing material. He broke up the band, moved to San Francisco, and kept recording. Some of those tapes became "Seconds EP: Penitentiary Loaf" (Gifted Children Records), which was released in 2008. Adam once again returned to Los Angeles, and at the urging of John from Holy Mountain, took a short trip to Portland to record a solo LP, "Organ," a "lyrical pop album". With six years as a bandleader and eight releases under his belt (not to mention the several limited edition CD-Rs and cassettes), Adam decided to form a permanent line-up of Residual Echoes and record an honest-to-god rock album. With Adam on guitar and vocals, Greg Arnold on bass and Allen Bleyle on drums, this line-up has lasted an unheard-of two years and counting. "Dead Head" (Teenage Teardrops) is a 9-song distillation of what they do best. The history of rock music in a single platter, played by 3 guys who give a fuck. If you've never heard Adam's music, this is one hell of an introduction. And if you're familiar with any of his prior releases, this is the one you've been waiting for. "The cosmos at large / It's so very big / It's so far away / The comets ... the craters ... the vapors / The solar wind / The residual echoes ... the residual echoes / The residual echoes from the great explosion / Where they say it beginned." – Frank Zappa |
