A New Path to Music

Trial, error and friendship lead Sodium Lights to a CD 

By Rick Koster - Published on 1/24/2009

In the context of music, this Ledyard basement is not remarkably different from thousands across the country. Drum kit. Guitar stands and instruments. Amps. Mixing and recording equipment and computer consoles. Maybe it's a bit cleaner. That's OK, though.

The musicians here - Mat Tarbox, Rich Freitas and Alex Pellish, all former members of a variety of popular Mystic rock bands over the past several years - are getting older and are not interested in the Old Way of doing things.

Instead, under the moniker Sodium Lights, and with the help of several old pals, they're making a new kind of music that has nothing to do with loading a van and playing in a bar for free beer.

Using loose recordings of free-wheeling jams, a layering of improvised overdubs, and a liberal cut-and-paste principal, they've created a most remarkable album called “Post Signal.”

If the musicians' names are familiar, you probably grew up listening to music from a deliciously fertile indie-rock era in the '80s and '90s loosely called the Mystic Music Mafia. Bands such as 17 Relics, Dayne Duranti, Small Town Hero, Doug, Luke E.E. Hunter, Lotus, Skimbleshanks, Vera from Alice, Petervito, Delta of Venus, Portersville, Incessant Pop Group, Adam's Onis and Highlighter were all popular - and Tarbox, Freitas and Pellish were integrally involved.

Despite the collective pedigree, though, Sodium Lights and “Post Signal” has a very different sound that draws heavily from the aesthetics and compositional processes of electronica and mash-ups - where artists rely on computer editing to manufacture new tunes from prerecorded sounds or clips from existing songs - as opposed to developing material through time-honored band practices.

Yet with a decided melodic ear to their histories, the guys in Sodium Lights have fused the past and present in an interesting and vibrantly refreshing fashion. Comprising 12 songs of battery-strength rhythms and sinewy beats, with scattershot guitar and keyboard hooks and a cornucopian array of vocal melodies contributed from a variety of Mystic Music alumni and pals, “Post Signal” is essentially a supergroup product in which the all-stars are used in novel ways.

”I felt as though I'd done the whole weekly rehearsal enough,” says Pellish, “and what I remembered about the experience was how elusive those magical moments were. Afterwards, I spent more time trying to remember the magical moments and dwelling on the fact that you often can't recreate those moments.”

In that spirit, for all practical purposes, the three had stopped the serious pursuit of Rock Stardom as a career. But Pellish, who plays guitar and keyboards, became fascinated by recording technology and the role computers were playing in the making of modern music. He kept buying more equipment and tinkering with it in an experiment in self-education.

After a chance visit to the basement, drummer Freitas asked Pellish, “You've gathered all this stuff and taught yourself to use it. And what are you doing with it?”

The question struck a chord and, pretty soon, the three friends began to play around with the gear and technology.

”It occurred to us,” Pellish says, “we could aggressively and freely play with no thought whatsoever to a disciplined end. We could just record the whole thing and then go back and not only find the great moment - we could manipulate it. And we just kept mining the moment.”

”We'd play four hours and, a week later, Rich and I would come back and find out Alex had edited it down to three minutes. But it would be a great three minutes,” Tarbox says.

Over time, the trio had 21 basic tracks of music - but with minimal instrumental overdubs and no vocals or melodies.

”They weren't exactly songs,” Freitas says, “but we felt so liberated and excited by what we had, and its potential.”

They brought in some old bass-playing friends to augment the tracks. Frequently, the imported musician would plug in and play along even as he heard the music for the first time. When that worked, additional guitar parts and then keyboard parts were added.

”The only thing that was a little different was the vocals,” Freitas says, “although sometimes it worked with just improvisation. But in writing lyrics, it sometimes helps to know the length and rhythm of the verse or chorus structures.”

Among the old Mystic Music folks who participated are Dave Bentley and Jeff Sterling (bass), Todd Fake (guitar), and Michael Fitzgerald, Julia Farrar and Dawn Salerno (vocals).

”It was pretty cool, because some of these people came from Providence or Manhattan, and we might have one shot at recording them - and there were a lot of magical moments,” Pellish says.

When all 21 songs were finished, they whittled the material down to 12 songs - and pressed the CD, now available at Mystic Disc in Mystic. It's also available from a conjoined Web site the band has developed called the Mystic Music Archive (http://www.mysticmusicarchive.org), which will eventually be a complete history of the town's rock bands, including downloadable music, photos and artwork, and message boards.

”Weird. We really didn't set out to record an album,” Tarbox laughs, “but that's what happened. It's true that if Alex hadn't bought the gear and learned how to use it, it would never have come together. But it did. And now we're going to do it again.”

rick koster / theday.com

Photo by Dana Jensen, The Day.

original article at http://tinyurl.com/SodiumLights