Trey Gunn Untune The Sky CD

This release includes a bonus DVD featuring live versions of "Kuma," "Sozzle," "Hard Winds," "Gate Of Dreams," Rune Song: The Origin Of Water," "Brief Encounter," and "Arrakis," and video montages of "The Cruelest Month," "Indiere," "Aquiring Canopus," and "One Thousand Years (2nd Traverse)."

My path in putting the audio portion of this package together was a two-fold process. I am very, very picky about the running order. I will spend weeks on just this, trying out various things and tweaking it to get the balance and shape just right.The first running order I put together was made up of what I thought most people would take to be the best tracks from my 6 solo/band recordings, with some new material added. But when I listened through the finished arrangement it was good, very good, but ultimately not that satisfying to me, personally. It just wasn't what I really wanted to hear from the material.So, I took a second strategy: "Fuck thinking about what other people might take to be my best material. What do I want to hear on this CD? What are the most meaningful tracks to me? Just me, and me alone."And that's what I ended up with as a governing strategy. I listened through my whole catalogue, released and unreleased, and picked out the pieces that, personally, moved me the most. In some cases the choices aligned with the first running order, but in many they didn't.It was during this second process that I found some alternate mixes of several of the tracks. I am not a huge fan of alternate mixes, but with these there were some pluses -- there were missing parts that weren't included in David Bottrill's (Gabriel, King Crimson, Tool producer) version of the pieces. David is a monster audio artist and he made some brilliant choices in what parts to leave out during the mix. With these alternate mixes, done by myself prior to the album mix, you have another version of what to leave in and what to leave out. I think it is really cool to hear that.On one of the other pluses was the extended tabla solo that Bob Muller did on "Take This Wish." I am not a huge fan of long recordings. I think the length that most CDs are is completely ludicrous. NO ONE can sit down and listen to 70 minutes of music. Not really listen. They can put it on as a backdrop to other activity. And I am fine with that as one use of my recordings. But I, generally, make my records to listen to in detail. And listen to over and over again, because there are many subtle elements that don't reveal themselves until you have heard the tracks 5 or 10 times. So with the original version of "Take This Wish", off of the One Thousand Years CD, I went for a shortened version of the outro of this piece. It fit best in the context of the record as a whole that way. But now I have pulled out the old mix where Bob takes this weirdly, satisfying, and obtuse groove in 9/4 and just blows over it. I've included the full whammy here. And I still hold to the fact that this wouldn't have worked on the original disc. It just wasn't appropriate there. But here... hey, let's have it!The DVD was the really exciting part of the project for me. I've just started up a DVD/multimedia production company in Seattle, (7 Directions) and we were aching to get chops on this. We had so much fun with the motion menus. I wanted to find a whole different vibe for each of the three divisions of the DVD:The live performancesThe interviewsThe video montagesAnd so we built small, mood setting intros appropriate to each.The Trey Gunn Band live performances were shot over the last few years with extremely varied quality of gear. There are a few multi-camera shots from an intimate studio performance we did in NYC to an audience of 20. Other live pieces were shot with hand held cameras at various gigs. I often manipulated the footage to keep it visually interesting when the excitement of the audio greatly outweighed the visuals.The interview section begins with a video collage from some days off we had in Mex