More about Mononoke:

Instruments used (by Matt): acoustic guitar, electric guitar (Telecaster, Jazzmaster, Jaguar), bowed guitar, bass guitar (Jazz bass), violin, cello, mandolin, dulcimer, hulusi, melodica, grand piano, keyboard piano, e. piano, synth (MicroKorg), vibraphone, glockenspiel (mallet + bow), kalimba/mbira, suspended/bowed cymbal, taiko/ō-daiko, assorted found percussion (typewriter, pots and pans, glasses, bottles, shakers), feedback+noise, vocals+choir arrangements, fields recordings.

Tyler plays a Dark Horse kit, Jake plays a Nord.

Pedal chain: MXR Dyna Comp, Fulltone Full-Drive 2, EHX POG2, Red Panda Particle, EHX Memory Boy, EQD Ghost Echo (R.I.P.), SolidGoldFX Surf Rider III, EHX Holy Grail Plus, Line6 DL4 (used in stereo), Numark EQ2310. Fender Blues DeVille Tweed 212. MD421, SM57, Zoom H2n. Scarlett 6i6.

No MIDI, digital controllers, virtual instruments, or samples (other than my own), and only minimal digital effects/VST plugins (aside from those for mixing/mastering) were used on this record. All sounds are created organically and analogue.

Fields sounds were recorded in Portland OR, Seattle WA, Boston MA, Los Angeles CA, Washington DC, Manhattan and Brooklyn NY, Thornton NH, and Livingston NJ.



On atonality:
The second half of Remains of Memories is a brief study in classical atonality. Although mostly improvised, certain sections (of the piano) feature twelve-tone rows, a run in which all twelve notes of the chromatic scale are used without using any one note more than once.

On additive and subtractive meter:
The entirety of "A Terrace Garden, An Ancient City" and the middle section of "Ash and Bone, Dust and Soil" are studies in additive and subtractive meter, respectively. In "A Terrace Garden, An Ancient City," the guitar's meter pattern is 5/4, 6/4, 7/4, 8/4, which can be interpreted as an overarching 26/4. Additionally, the ascending piano line is played in an alternating 6/8 and 7/8, which theoretically (though impractically) could be read as 6.5/4; four repeats of this line would be 26/4, aligning with the guitar's meter at each chord change. "Ash and Bone, Dust and Soil" simply features a section where the piano plays a subtractive pattern of 6/4, 5/4, 4/4, 3/4.

On aleatoric composition:
The glass percussion of "Malady and Melody" and the outros of "Samūm," "Autumn, Part 2: The Earth's Swallows Leave," and "A Chorus of Rust" all feature aleatoric, or chance-composed, elements. In "Malady and Melody," the percussion was intended to sound random and arrhythmic; I achieved this by letting a random number generator arrange each hit instead of using human intuition/bias. The glitched melodica ending of "Samūm" was spliced and arranged by RNG as well, determining each grain's pitch, duration, and rhythmic placement within the track. I used a similar process with different parameters for the piano outro of "Autumn, Part 2: The Earth's Swallows Leave." The ending of "A Chorus of Rust" used RNG to determine the root of the chord and whether the chord would last for three or four beats. I then freely chose chord qualities (minor, major) and voicings (7ths, 9ths, 11ths, etc.) to make the progression sound as sonically coherent as possible.

On musique concrète:
Underlying most of the tracks on this album are field recordings and samples of found objects. Some sounds are left unprocessed to provide an evident environment and atmosphere to the music. Other sounds are more divorced from their sources, such as in "Harbor Shrines and Bell Droplets," where the initial atmosphere is created by time-stretching and freezing recordings of a boiler room and the scratching of untrimmed guitar strings, or "Paper Machines," where the recordings of a Seattle harbor are pitched down, creating somewhat unnatural environments. The musique concrète is as much a part of each composition as the pitched/pop music it accompanies.

Other notes: The word "遺骨" (Remains) in the title of the last track specifically translates to corporeal remains, like ashes or bones of the deceased. This is intentional, a play on words, conveying something like the death of memories you once shared with someone important to you, now lost to time.

Thank you for reading,
Matt