Simplicity of the live sound.

Darlinchemicalia (DC) ended in December of 2014, and after a break in the beginning of the following year, Andrew, Justin and I got back together in our rehearsal space after being asked to contribute a track to a cassette compilation entitled "Dead Hell in a Bucket". Not knowing where to start, I brought two songs: "Haunt" (which had been written for, but not recorded with, the final DC album "Off Blonde") and "Fences" (which had been played live by DC on a number of occasions). Keyboards were added to both songs, to replicate the DC sound. "Haunt" was held back as being a good jumping off point for the new band (the first proper Grave Lake song) and "Fences" was released on the compilation under the name "Darlingchemicalia". "Fences" is included here because it is technically the first released recording of what later became known as "Grave Lake".

Moving forward after this initial session, we decided to focus on what could be created live: bass, drums, a single guitar and voices. No keys (for now).

The initial idea of Grave Lake was as a temporary means for us to play some shows and record an EP before Andrew moved away from Sacramento. A kinda final statement of some friends that had been playing music together for a number of years.

We wrote enough songs for a live set, demoed them on a Tascam 8-track, and then just kept writing. "Mantra" was never demoed because it was newer than the rest of the set (the songs "Infinity Window" and "Inhabit" from the EPII era were also written at this time). Either could have easily been recorded at the actual session, as well as the song "The 15th" by Wire, which had been played live frequently during this time.

Our long-time friend Andy Morin caught at least one of our shows and was enlisted to record the EP properly. We decided to record all of the songs we had previously demoed along with "Mantra". The proper session was recorded in a single day in November of 2015. I have a very fond memory of Andrew and I finishing a bottle of wine at 10am before the session started. If memory serves, it was actually the old DC song "Insex" (which was still in our set at the time) that sparked Andy's interest and that song was recorded with, but later left off of, the EP. The vibe he captured of the early live sound of the band is immensely superior to the demos included here. This session also started the (still current) practice of all our recordings having the basic tracks being performed live in studio.

Andrew decided to stay in Sacramento and go back to school and we knew we had to continue...

Points of interest in these demos are the slight lyrical and vocal melody changes that came with playing these songs live so much at the time. I'm also particularly fond of the bass sound, which was being played through a shitty keyboard amp left in the rehearsal space by Ignat from Wreck and Reference. The speaker is clearly blown and the amp didn't last much longer after the demos were recorded. These same demo sessions also produced our cover of The Pixies' "Hang Wire" (which can be heard on the "Ceremonies of the Bort-men" compilation).

The names of the demos continued a long standing DC method of tentatively titling songs as a descriptor of the song itself ("Ender" and "Opener" signifying where they were usually being used in a live set and "Mantra" was referred to as "Wire man" because of our thinking that song had a Wire vibe). The actual title of "Opener" was the beginning of a new practice of having most Grave Lake releases include a "bridge" song. In this case, I was reading the book "Let the Right One In" by John Ajvide Lindqvist. Within the book an important chapter takes place around "Traneberg Bridge", which just so happens to have the date correspond with the EP recording session.

Ian (September 2022)