The Only Way Out is Through

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Why an album?

Hi, Emrys here.  First things first.  Should a “band website”tm have SO MUCH WRITING?  So much to read?!?  Well… my simple, honest response is a resounding “YES!”.  Whilst I’m all for the art of being mysterious – the art of not giving anything away… I also see the benefit of opening yourself up to your audience.  For every Jack Nicholson or Morrissey there must be a Lily Allen or a … hmmm… well… hopefully you understand what I mean?  In fact, in this ‘Twitter’-era I guess we’ve got the most ‘openness’ that there has ever been.  It’s not red snappers in hotel rooms anymore… it’s opinions and true thoughts straight in your face.  By no means do you HAVE to read, but I really, really would have loved more of this from my favourite artists in my youth.

Anyway… I thought I’d take this opportunity to talk about an important issue.  Why is the Eleventh Hour Initiative so particular about releasing “AN ALBUM”?  It may seem a trivial question, but in this last decade where the importance of the album has been diminished so greatly, you have to ask why we are even bothering with the concept of an album?  A collection of songs.  In order.  Starting at a starting point – of our choice, not yours.  Ending at a final song.  A final song that we tell you is the final song.  The completion of a journey that we take you on.

I think there have been a few factors that have influenced the decline of ‘the album’ as a feature of modern music, but I personally lay the blame pretty squarely at the rise of the mp3 player and the victory of the download single.  The youth of today (ha ha!  How old do I sound sometimes?!?) are into soundbites.  They are into snatches of music.  Fragments of sound.  Nothing to stretch the attention span.  Music has become the ad breaks.  Music has become the noise in between the rest of the noise.  Shards of audio and shards of visual thrust in everyone’s faces.  Hour after hour, day upon day.  And that is not necessarily a bad thing.  I think it is a different thing.  I just have the nostalgia of turning off the lights, laying in bed (fully clothed, nothing sexual going on here!) and listening to the latest album bought with my pennies from an ACTUAL SHOP!!!  Ha ha!  No, seriously… I can to this day remember lying in my darkened bedroom listening to Grace by Jeff Buckley for the first time.  Hearing Lilac Wine for that moment which you can never claw back.  Shiver down the spine time.  Whole collections of songs that someone has taken the time to put together.  Okay, a lot of my ‘longing’ is because it was an era that made me who I am today.  Those listens of Dummy by Portishead or the excitement of These Animal Men.  The download-single-adoring “youth of today” are living through their own era.  And the iPod is part of the zeitgeist.  I’m not sure I’ve used the correct terminology there… but I’m also not sure I care!

So, why are Bill and I bothering to release an album?  Why don’t we just try to chuck out a number 1 hit download single?  Well, I think that answer can be dealt with by means of a series of questions (politician style!):  Have you listened to Dark Side of the Moon?  Have you listened to Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots or the Soft Bulletin?  Have you listened to OK Computer?  Back in Black? Have you listened to any great rock record?  Have you enjoyed a classic album?  If the answer to any of these questions is “yes”, then I believe you will enjoy our album.  I’m not paying lip service here.  I believe you will fall for our album.  For we have dedicated ourselves to making this “collection of songs” the very best set of songs that we can possibly achieve.  We are aspiring to place Escapism alongside the very best of the albums from history.  I want the album to stand proudly alongside Pet Sounds or Revolver on your ‘shelf’.  It’s not important which of the three is the ‘best’ 😉 , I just want you to know, with a simple listen, that we are as serious about music as those classic artists certainly were.  I just want to assure you that our album will contain no filler.  Our album will be a work of art.  I acknowledge that it is possible to say everything you want to say in a single song.  There are some great one hit wonders out there.  But I am not a one hit wonder.  Bill is not a one hit wonder.  The Eleventh Hour Initiative is not a one-off line cast into a river.  We are the full box of bait.  We have the full works… those little float things and the things with the feathers and everything!

The Eleventh Hour Initiative is an opportunity to present music as art.  I know I can sound monstrously pretentious at times ( 😉 )… but I feel it is vital to describe why we are about to release an album in the age of the single.  Remember… things go full circle.  The Beatles defined the album.  Vinyl defined the length of the album.  CDs redefined the album.  Downloads destroyed the album.  And I believe the album will rise again.  The album will return with a vengeance and obliterate the ‘shuffle’ button on your mp3 player!  I like it when I read that vinyl sales are on the increase.  It makes me wish I hadn’t thrown my record player away all those years ago for the lure of the mighty, indestructible CD.  Ha ha!  Indestructible!!!  Ha ha!  Seriously… I sit here in my studio under a framed Them Crooked Vultures album.  It’s a gatefold, double vinyl album.  I long to actually play it.  I think the time has come for me to buy another record player!  And I think the world is almost ready for an Eleventh Hour Initiative album!!!  What do you think?

Posted by  |  May 29, 2011 | Categories: escapism | Tags: , , , | 3 Comments

Does Something Feel Off To You?

If we’re going to be talking about what ‘Escapism‘ is about, then there are two basic principles that we need to go over.

1. The world seems off.

and

2. No matter where I go, or what I do, something seems like it’s missing!

These are principles that I have operated under for as long as I can remember. Now that doesn’t mean I could always put these feelings into words, but I certainly could feel it from a young age.

Let’s start exploring number one.

1. The world seems off.

I’m a big Philip K Dick fan. He wrote the books ‘A Scanner Darkly‘, ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep‘(i.e. ‘Bladerunner‘), ‘We Can Remember It for You Wholesale‘(i.e. ‘Total Recall‘), and many others. My favorite Philip K. Dick book is called ‘Valis‘. At the heart of ‘Valis‘, and all of Phil’s work, he always seemed to believe that there was something inherently fraudulent about reality. If he were alive right now he might tell you that the world never got past 70 A.D. and all that we see is an illusion. It is still 70 A.D. right now! ‘The empire never ended!!!’

Phil’s not the only one who has theories about why the world seems somehow ‘wrong’.

Maybe we’re all being secretly used as batteries for a malevolent computer program!(wasn’t that a movie?)

Maybe we’re all just dust on a shelf in some other universe.

Maybe the illuminati is brainwashing us all!!!

Maybe you’re the star of a reality tv show that everyone watches and is in on, except you.

The list goes on and on.

It can be fun rummaging through theories, but at the end of the day I like to stick with something a bit more concrete. If I can’t find anything concrete, I try and settle on the fact that I just don’t know why life seems this way.

Now I’ve read enough C.S. Lewis to know if he was attacking this problem he’d say something like, ‘if something seems off then their must be somewhere where it doesn’t feel off.’

Are you following my thinking here?

If there wasn’t a place different from ‘off’, you wouldn’t feel like it was ‘off’ in the first place because you’d have nothing to compare ‘off’ to. Your perception of ‘off’ is only relative to what you perceive as ‘the way it should be.’ If you have an idea of ‘the way it should be’ then that place must exist somewhere, in some form, right?

Am I losing you?

Maybe it would make more sense like this.

1. The world feels off
a. there is a place where the world doesn’t feel off.
b. there is a way to get to the place where the world doesn’t feel off

In other words, I believe that we all have a ‘place’ where we feel like we belong. It isn’t really a ‘place’, but a state of being. It is a state of being where you feel like you’re right where you should be. Take away all of my philosophical ramblings and I’d tell you that I know this because I’ve been there, albeit briefly. For fleeting moments in time, I’ve found footprints that were my size and I’ve stood there.

Imagine being in exactly the right place at exactly the right time.

It was fleeting, but it was amazing! It felt like I had a very strong electrical current running through my body, humming like a refrigerator, except I didn’t die, their was no burning of flesh, and General Electric had nothing to do with it.

‘what I want to be/can you see through me?/I just never know/it just comes and goes'(taken from ‘The Calm and the Storm‘)

The more I try to explain this feeling the more it ceases to make sense because in essence all I’ve got to go on is an instinct. It’s like a small, but persistent voice inside of you, constantly pushing you to ‘head off in that direction!’, even though you have no idea what you’ll find there.

Just for the record, I don’t actually hear voices, metaphors internet people, metaphors!

So we’ve established that I feel like something in life just isn’t quite right, I have a very strong need to find a place where it makes more sense, and I’ve found such a place, albeit briefly.

Have you ever felt this way?

As I said earlier, I like to deal in things that are a bit more concrete. So before I go into my own personal reaction, and my quest to find out why things are off, how about we look at some very real reasons that I would feel this way?

I think we should start with a man named Edward Bernays. You may not have heard of him, but no matter who you are he has had a profound effect on your life. We’ll take a look at him in the next blog, and then we’ll tie him into both of the principles I mentioned at the top of this post, and then we’ll be ready to see where it all fits into the album.

Before I go, I want to say something briefly. Though I will be touching on religion lightly as we go, I don’t subscribe to any particular religion. I was raised Christian, but now consider myself an agnostic. Agnostic is a fancy way of saying ‘I have no idea!’ My line of thinking is what you choose to believe, and even whether you choose to believe in anything at all is a very personal decision and I would have no right to tell you what to do. I’m saying all of this for those of you who are nervous that I’m going to be passing out pamphlets at the end of this blog. I certainly have a life philosophy, as do we all, but my point in going over it is so that maybe you can compare it to your own life philosophy and see where it’s similar and where it’s different, as opposed to me trying to beat you over the head with my own views. Many people say that things like politics and religion shouldn’t be talked about in public. This of-course means that we should certainly talk about it, right?

Until next time internet..

Posted by  |  May 23, 2011 | Categories: escapism | 5 Comments

Art Rock Disguised as Indie Pop

It’s dangerous to call yourself a ‘pop’ band, isn’t it? All those Lady Gaga and Britney Spears implications jump on top of your first impression quicker then I can drink an ice coffee. That being said, since it’s just you and me here, I’ll let you in on a little secret. I consider The Eleventh Hour Initiative to be a pop band at its heart. No, we don’t have any songs that mention or bare any hidden references to a club. No, Emrys and I are not planning on choreographing dance routines to any of the songs on ‘Escapism‘. Yes, we play instruments and write these songs ourselves. Finally, not every song on our album is an ‘I love you’ or ‘I miss you’ or ‘why did you leave me?’ or ‘let me sing about having sex in a metaphorically paper-thin way that is both hot, and yet wholesome fun for the whole family.’

Don’t get wrong, I’m not saying that if a band or artist does any or all of these things that they’re somehow awful. My feeling is there is a place for all things, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have my own guilty pleasure songs that I like. However, I do feel like we’re too saturated by what has become of pop music. I wanted to make an album about escapism, most of these types of songs I’m referring to are just cheap escapism in and of themselves.

So you’re left with a choice, right?

1. Make songs that are catchy and about something everyone you know can relate to. Stay away from any topic that would cause friction unless it’s accepted friction (i.e. a girl singing about kissing another girl for the shock value publicity). In short, it’s like a pretty girl with no depth. You can’t get her out of your head the first week, but after a while what charmed you initially just annoys you.

or

2. All substance over style. Make the music terribly difficult to ‘get’ initially to weed out what my conspiracy theory friends would refer to as ‘sheeple’. Make your references so deep and obscure that no one has any clue what you are talking about and likes it that way in order to feel somehow superior. Once you get to know this girl you may just marry her, but sometimes you wonder if you don’t need something more.

Truth is, I’ve been smitten with both. However, when it came time to write my own songs I guess I wanted to have my cake and eat it too.

My aim with this album was to make the girl of my dreams. What sort of girl am I talking about, you ask? Well, let me give you an example. I once knew a girl who made me say, ‘I want my girl to be just like that!’ Her last name was ‘Revolver’ and she was perfect! Right off the bat, I couldn’t get her out of my head, and, to my surprise, the more time I spent with her the more hidden gems she revealed. In fact, I love her more now than ever!

The Beatles ‘Revolver‘ represents the pinnacle of what an album should be in my eyes. The melodies are there, it’s concise, and it’s full of innovation and hidden meanings all at the same time. I’m not saying I want to make a Beatles record. I’m saying I want to make an album that’s catchy enough to get your attention, and deep enough to mean more than escapism for escapism’s sake.

Though there are always exceptions, for me, a song being catchy makes it good, but the meaning hidden within it can make it great.

You see, while good music can help you escape, great music can not only do that, it can actually help you deal with those stresses in your life as well. It can make you look inward and outward, it can inspire you to grow, and it can be a friend to you in the best and worst times.

Emrys and I are striving to make something more with our music. I’m not saying ‘we’re great and they’re not!’ I’m simply trying to point out our perspective to help you get a greater understanding of what we’re reaching for.

In the coming weeks, I’m going to be spending some time on this blog talking about all kinds of themes and ideas that I incorporated into ‘Escapism‘. I want to make it clear that I still want the songs to sound good and if you like listening to it just because the chorus is catchy then there’s nothing wrong with that. However, if you want something more, it is there.

Who are we to even attempt to enrich someone else’s life, you ask? It’s less about me having some great insight into life and more about me documenting my own struggles as I try and gain some traction, some inspiration, and some direction of my own. You tend to stumble upon these mini-revelations and insights as you write and soul search and you want to share them. Sometimes, it’s just about capturing that ‘feeling’. You want to share it because it means something to you and you hope it’ll mean something to other people, as well. As self-serving as it may seem, writing ‘Escape Plan‘ inspired me and I want it to inspire you.

I’ve heard many artists say that they don’t care if people like their work. I do. Not because I’m looking for fame or money (okay, I wouldn’t be angry if I made more money), but because I want to connect with people. I have no idea what this album will sound like to you. I have no idea if you’ll connect to these songs, but they mean a great deal to me and I’m proud of them all. I struggle with the PR side of making records because I feel like a fraud trying to ‘sell myself’. I guess what I’m trying to say, without arrogance, is that I feel this album is worth your time, more so than anything else I’ve ever made.

‘Escapism‘ is about the imagination and about how we tend to live in every other world but the one we’re living and breathing in. How about we start talking about it in the next blog?

As always, any thoughts, comments, or questions are always appreciated.

…Bill

Posted by  |  May 18, 2011 | Categories: escapism, song discussion | Tags: , , , , , | 2 Comments

‘What’s In a Name?’

Hi internet. For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Bill. I write lyrics, sing, and contribute music from time to time for The Eleventh Hour Initiative. I’m also the American side of the band.

As we get ready to release our debut album I wanted to become more active on the site than I have been in the past. Emrys is great with posting his thoughts on the songs, and to be honest, I’ve kind of enjoyed hiding in the background a bit and reading his slant on things. Him and I are very similar in that we always tend to agree on what we like and what’s ‘good’, but we also seem to get there from completely different directions.

I figured a good place to start would be our band name….

hmmm actually a good place to start would be to point out that despite what Dr. Hughes says on the bio page, I have never, ever worn leather pants!!!

where was I?  haha

oh yeah, ‘The Eleventh Hour Initiative‘.

Initially, when we decided to form a band, I came up with the idea to call ourselves ‘The Eleventh Hour’. My thought was that both of us were at a point in our lives musically where we’d had just enough success to validate the struggle, but not enough to justify the amount of work we both put into our songs, to keep going. Our wells were running dry. Both of us had formed our own bands where we played most, if not all of the instruments, and sang. We did it cause we loved it, but it’s hard work just being the bass player for a band! …let alone the whole band! Then, you release your work and….nothing. You still have to work your day job. You still have to explain why you spend all your free time locked away, hunched over a mixing desk.

When I first met Emrys we were both making our ‘last’ solo albums separately. I put ‘last’ in quotes because song-writing is something you don’t really stop, even if you want to. It’s just in your blood. It’s just what you do. That being said, we were still trying to convince ourselves that the projects we were working on was the end of it. I was going to start collecting stamps while Emrys planned to move onto bird watching…well not really, but you get the idea.

Then came ‘Where We Go Next‘, the first song we collaborated on. We were excited by how that song came out. Their was something there I couldn’t quite put my finger on. It just worked. I didn’t care if anybody else got it or liked it. It expressed what I was feeling. It just clicked. I chose ‘Eleventh Hour’ because that’s where we were with music. We were just about to call it quits and then, as I say in the song, ‘guess so much for giving up.’

We continued to go with ‘The Eleventh Hour’ until fairly recently. You see a funny thing happens when you type ‘Eleventh Hour’ into google. You find that many bands have chosen that name, or a name similar to it. Their was a Christian movie about the rapture with it as the title. It was also a Dr Who Episode(which I kind of liked to be honest )

One day in a joke email I referred to our band as ‘The Eleventh Hour Initiative’ and Emrys liked it.

…and here we are

The ‘initiative’ is to chase after our dreams. It also sounds like an over the top 1970’s spy movie doesn’t it?

‘The Eleventh Hour Initiative‘ starring Sean Connery

I like that the name has an important meaning to us, but at the same time it doesn’t take itself too seriously.

So where do we go next?

As time passes we may bask in the glow of improbable and miraculous success, or we may crash and burn into the empty dark places that only people who don’t cut it live….

either way, it’ll be interesting.

promise.

Please feel free to contact us through this site, soundcloud, or facebook. (we’re looking to get an email address set up soon as well) We want to hear from you!!! Not just to stroke our ego, but to take part in what we’re doing. We’re learning as we go here so anything, good or bad, helps.

and your support is always well appreciated.

Until Next Time Internet….

…bill

Posted by  |  May 14, 2011 | Categories: song discussion | 2 Comments

Our new home!!!

Okay… a pretty momentous occasion people!  This site is the new place to be.  The latest go-to address for the hipsters out there.  The www that will top all wwws.

Seriously, this is the new Eleventh Hour Initiative website.  Those of you who have already clicked this far may well be familiar with us but I would still like to write an introductory post for those of you who have strayed here by accident!

First things first.  The music is and always will be the most important concern of the Eleventh Hour Initiative.  It is therefore my proud honour to direct you straight to the content of our forthcoming debut album which you should see laid out in all its glory below.  I suggest you give it a listen.  These songs are shaping up to form an album that is really hitting the mark.  I have a rough press of the album in the car at the moment and it is shocking me with its vitality and genuine fresh spirit.  🙂

The Eleventh Hour Initiative is a collaboration between two musicians, one on each side of the Atlantic.  Based in England we have Emrys and it is Emrys about whom I shall speak first.  Okay, my name’s Emrys.  I am the producer of the band.  I am also responsible for the visual output and therefore this website.  I will be the primary voice of this website… but I shall make sure I involve Bill every step of the way and I hope to be able to publish a piece from him whenever he feels he has something to say.  This is OUR website.  So far we have been extremely tight when it comes to musical choices and I’m sure our combined opinion and expression will continue via this website.  If anything this site will give us a stronger voice than ever before and will allow us to punch through the sea of mediocrity and smash our debut album into the mire of apathy with full force! 😉

Bill and I came together over the internet a year ago and pretty much formed the band there and then.  We had so much in common that we just had to make our combined voice heard.  The special factor is that despite all we have in common there are also those differences that give our music the edge.  There are things that he does that I would never dream of doing and vice versa.  We are not just two artists in collaboration.  We are a band.  We have a group spirit.  We are not just two people working together.  We have a collective ambition that drives us forward and inspires us to produce the very best music that we possibly can.  I hope your initial listen to the forthcoming album has energised you enough to our cause to make you bookmark this site.  You will have to return.  We have only just begun!!!

Anyway… as I was saying… My name is Emrys and I have written the majority of the music for this album.  Which leads me perfectly into my introduction of Bill.  Bill is based in New Jersey and is responsible for most of the lyrics on the album.  He also sings those lyrics and is therefore the main contender for the role of “lead singer”.  This has been an organic process and, certainly for this debut album, it has been the case that we work best with me laying down the land of the song musically – and Bill then washing over the music with the ocean of his words.  It has been, for me, the perfect process so far.  The very best case scenario.  I think we are accomplishing something very special – a concise, specific, rounded collection of songs.  I acknowledge we live in an age where the digital download single reigns supreme.  However I believe we have created the perfect album for this age.  We have the spirit of ‘the album’ in our veins.  We are producing music for people who appreciate Radiohead, Pink Floyd, The Flaming Lips etc etc ad infinitum.  I’m not saying that you can’t just download a song from us that you like.  I’m simply pointing out that we are all about the whole.  Our debut album has an almost ‘concept’ scope.  The title will be “Escapism” and every song will paint a layer of the bigger picture.  Each tune will put another brick in a wall that eventually tells the story of our lives.  I would like Bill to wax lyrical regarding the themes of escapism that run through the entire album.   See… you gotta keep coming back to this site!!!

In the meantime… well… I just wanted to say a personal hello.  Music can be so impersonal.  There really is no need for it to be that way.  The Eleventh Hour Initiative is here to stay.  Tell your friends!  Tell anyone that you think would be up for a little ‘pushing things forward’.

And remember… our debut album has not yet been released.  By reading this site now you are getting a sneak preview.  I hope you stay on board for the whole journey!

Posted by  |  May 12, 2011 | Categories: escapism, song discussion | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment