5 Q&A With A Flame Alighteth
What was the creative process like for this particular album 'A Flame Alighteth?'
‘A Flame Alighteth’ was created almost entirely in the home office of Alex Michelucci (the lead creator of the project) without schedule or disciplined regimentation, intentionally.
Hyper focused sober crunch times / blackout drunk late night goblin recording sessions and everything in between.
This method was chosen intentionally in an attempt to capture more of the genuine human emotional element of the artwork, instead of the "go time, on point, professional, let's not waste time, get it right on the first try" energy that typically colors in the landscape of most professional studio recordings.
In pursuit of counsel from my great friend and longtime musical partner David Edward Lall, parts of A Flame Alighteth were conceived and workshopped at his beach front home in San Francisco.
Were there any memorable or standout moments during the recording sessions for this album?
The song Keep Your Eyes Down was almost entirely conceived and brought forth into third dimensional reality within a single evening. Sometimes you're carefully composing, and other times the sound just flows through you like a conduit. The creation of Keep Your Eyes Down is so far on the extreme of flowing through that to me the song feels more like a gift I've received from the universe than a meticulous design of my creation.
While working on the outro to the Album "Washout" I took a break to go get some coffee at a local cafe. While ordering, a well to do woman interjected into my conversation with the cashier to inform them that she had A. Been waiting with her friend at their table for coffee to arrive for about "ten minutes!" (not long at all for this place) and B. that because of the wait, the staff would have to transfer both her and her friend's coffe into "to go" cups, because the wait had just been too long, and apparently they had only booked out about ten minutes for their entire sit down coffee meet???? (the fuck?) The overarching vibe of this woman was that the coffees needed to be placed into "to go" cups now as a way to punish the staff for their mistake of making her wait a completely reasonable amount of time. The passive aggressiveness of her request to have the coffees put into “to go” cups immediately caught my attention. As soon as I got back into my studio I began to emulate her behavior, mannerisms, and tone of voice, and now her little "to go cup" toxic moment is forever immortalized in the chaos that is "Washout".
Can you talk about any standout tracks on the album and what makes them special to you?
“Keep Your Eyes Down” is a song about feeling ugly to the world. Some songs you design and write meticulously like editing a novel. Others you just kind of puke up and then discover on the floor after you're through wretching. “Keep Your Eyes Down” forced its way out of me, and has always felt like a gift from the universe, more so than a creation of my design.
Ultraviolet just fucking rips face, and I love it. I couldn't even tell you what it's about, and that's the best part about it to me.
What are some of the biggest challenges you have faced as a band, and how did you overcome them?
This may be more specific to old fucks like me, but I can remember a time when people respected and appreciated artists on a societal level here in the West. That's long since been replaced with people respecting and appreciating fame and status. If you really stop to think about it, we live in societal times now where artists are less than admired by society in general. We've got "ick" on us for the most part until proven otherwise. That's a challenge for us all these days. The wizards of the past era now find themselves outcast in subtle ways.
Are there any specific themes or messages that you aim to convey through your music?
‘A Flame Aligtheth’ hopes to capture the emotional spirit of living in post-pandemic America. It's not a message of doom and gloom, nor hope... in fact it's really not a message at all. In success it's just an expression of some of the deeper emotional cuts we're all still bleeding from but too caught up in being fake for one another to pay any attention to. This is done by way of abstraction and expression.
There are no dog whistles blown. Nobodies political or ideological partisanship is pandered to.
Those who "get it" won't have anyway to verify or confirm that they do, for nothing in A Flame Alighteth is directly communicated to the listener.
In that way, whatever they "get" is actually "it".
