IPECAC - Best of IPECAC 2

This was our first song with Jon's keyboard, which sounded much more electronic than our earlier efforts. We got to program the rhythms, but everything was looped, and therefore repetitive. We learned over time that repetition favors simplicity. This album is full of "busy" rhythms that repeat endless and become annoying. The synthy sounds don't help. Jon's sax is drowned out by all the keyboard noise, too, which is a shame, because he was the good musician.

For the first song we chose to remake "Numb" (from Catharsis). I re-arranged the song heavily, moving lyrical blocks around like legos. Okay, that simile is about as playful as this song gets. It feels too serious, too labored, too devoid of humor. The only lively bit is the chaotic section near the middle, which was supposed to represent the descent into Hell.

The tape cover says that this is the "January version" of "Numb". I think all the other songs were recorded in February, making "Numb" the odd-ball.

Here we got a little simpler, musically a least. Unfortunately, the lyrics are still dumb, and there's very little humor. You can still barely hear Jon's sax above the heavy-handed synths.

And what's with the clapping? Was that our attempt to liven things up? Ugh.

This is the second instrumental remake of "Share, Peace, and Love"; the first was on Leaping Leper Limousine. It gets the Best of IPECAC 2 treatment, which means busy rhythms, annoying synth sounds, barely-audible sax, and annoying clapping. On the bright side, at least this is an instrumental, and the solos are pretty decent.

This is another overly synthetic-sounding remake, again with very little sax poking through. At least this one's instrumental. Also, the drums are simpler. Perhaps we were learning that more is not necessarily better?

Since these drums are much simpler than those of the previous song ("Share, Peace, and Love"), I'm guessing that this was recorded the next day (on the 11th).

We tried to gentle things up by remaking one of our lighter, jazzier numbers: "Medea" (from Leaping Leper Limousine). You still can barely hear the sax, but at least the drums are simple and we stuck with "conventional" sounding keyboard patches. Even so, it still sounds annoyingly synthetic.

Gradually, over the next year or so, we learned how to get Jon's keyboard to sound decent for us, but during these early songs it was really annoying to hear our nice songs get the life synthesized out of them. "Medea" is a sweet little song, and Jon's keyboard killed it!

At least that's how I felt (and feel); Jon might actually have liked the production. I personally think my cheesy Casio CT-310's canned rhythms had more warmth, which encouraged more spontaneity.

This song was mechanic and dumb to begin with, so I don't feel bad about killing it with Jon's keyboard. It starts out pretty awful, but then a surprising thing happens... It crescendoes into an intense keyboard and sax cacaphony which actually rocks! The energy only lasts half a minute or so, but it's inspiring when it happens.

We were finally managing to squeeze decent sounds of Jon's setup.

This was our third and final remake of "My Familiar" (from Fake Reverb). The keyboard drums are annoying and you can barely hear Jon's sax, but the rhythms were simple and the instruments not too synthy.

For some reason, the song sounds empty, particular after the dense chaos of "Lepercity". Overdubs might have helped flesh things out a bit.