2001 Demos

This is not an album. Maybe at some point like twenty years into their career, the record company arranges for this to be released as a CD, on fan demand, but unlike everything else you see on this Website, this collection of songs was not designed for an optimal full listening experience.

Because 2001 is a disc of Sunsetters demos.

Nonfictionally, these really are old demos, from the several year period in which Lindsay and I wrote Summer Sucks and We Excavate. Almost all of them are mp3 files I found on my google drive sometime after I lost my computer from that time, so I don't even have the original scores anymore; almost all of them were made in MuseScore version 2, resulting in this muffled-reverb sound with a style of keyboard and drums we don't really use anymore. And, understand, we have so many demos. This is only a fraction of them, the ones I would consider to be the most interesting, and most plausible as actual demos the Sunsetters would have recorded in early jam sessions.

Fictionally, that's where we are, these are all from a period in 2001 where the Sunsetters realized they had a lot of material but still didn't have anything complete. They will have spent many months writing material for Summer Sucks, and then they got together as a group and hashed out the written material alongside several jam sessions, and these recordings are from after that, when they'd jammed enough that they had a pretty clear sense of what the material was. They'll have recorded this with a subpar microphone, as I don't think they were in the studio yet. And after doing these recordings and listening back, they'll have realized they still had so much work ahead of them. Some of the material would be put aside for the third album, stuff that didn't fit but that they didn't want to lose. And all the stuff for the second album would.. need a lot more work. They'd still have like a whole half of the album to write, as well as figure out how to tie it all together in a cohesive whole.

I think the demos here offer a lot of Fiction material too. Looking at them, pretending they're actual demos from a specific period in these characters' lives, I am inspired to interpret things about each character. For instance: Fin Jensby obviously does his heaviest work towards the end of a song's production; these demos are all still early enough that Fin's drumming is primarily functional. Elsie Carr also obviously saves most of her vocal work for the end too, spending these early sessions with her keyboard, digging into the compositions like any other band member. I imagine the keyboard she's using here is some personal antique, some cheap thing she grew up with, something she writes music with but does not bring into the studio for the professional product. Stuff like this is really fun to think about. (And I would have liked to have written out some cool Fiction piece, maybe another Interview with some band members reflecting on these demos, but I'm gonna have to come up with that kind of thing later and, for now, instead invite you to just Have Fun and Pretend and Interpret with me.)

So. Here's 2001!

00:00

Select a Track:

The Four Horsemen (demo)