The space in which a musician creates often affects and informs the music that results following a writing or recording session.
In the case of electronic musician The Gary Goblins, his longtime studio and his new creative space became the motivators for a double album.
The Archbald artist, whose real name is Marcus Milazzo, released the first volume, titled “The Leaning Room Epilogue,” in his two-part series on March 24. He plans to premiere the second album, “Under The Castle Moat,” in early May.
Both titles are representative of the home studios where the albums were fashioned, and it was a transition in Milazzo’s life that became the driving force behind the double album.
“I moved during the late spring of last year,” Milazzo said. “I no longer have my Leaning Room studio. I took the last tracks I had recorded at the Leaning Room and made ‘The Leaning Room Epilogue’ out of those tracks.”
The songs on the “Epilogue” album are mostly instrumental, with little sampling and no vocal accompaniment, and Milazzo recognizes that they communicate as unfinished ideas.
“I didn’t want to cheapen the idea that these were the last recordings there,” he said of the cherished musical laboratory he left behind.
While he honored the era that yielded the ideas, Milazzo perceives “The Leaning Room Epilogue” as following naturally from his last Gary Goblins record, “$500 Hitman.”
“I started experimenting with analog synthesis and glitchy kind of tracks,” he said. “Somewhere in there, I also added an old-school FM synth (a sound used widely in popular music of the 1980s) to my sound, which added a whole different kind of texture and noise.”
After saying his musical goodbye to the Leaning Room, Milazzo turned his attention to his new abode.
“When I went into the Under The Castle Moat … that was just kind of anything went,” he said. “Songs … ended up going back and relying heavily on sampling and anything I could throw in to build a stranger atmosphere, whether it was recording sounds of a space station from an old documentary or something as simple as a heart beat on a heart monitor.
Those are sounds that played into this album to create an unsettling atmosphere, which is way different not from things I’ve done in the past, but way different than what was going on at the end of the Leaning Room.”
The differences in the spaces themselves fed into the artist’s consciousness.
“The Leaning Room was isolated,” Milazzo said. “It was a closed room. I could lock it. It was a small room; it was music oriented. Under The Castle Moat is a more open environment, and it leaves me more vulnerable.”
The “Epilogue” album, Milazzo said, has evoked nostalgia for fans of his music and fellow musicians who know him as being synonymous with the space.
Some, he noted, have even commented on the unsettled sound of the record.
“They felt like something wasn’t right in my personal life that led to the move and the change, and was lurking there,” he said. “I guess the best part of the feedback is people want CDs. It says a lot that people still have a thing for physical format music.”
A limited amount of hard copies will be available for both “The Leaning Room Epilogue” and “Under The Castle Moat.”
Part one of the double album is now available on The Gary Goblins’ Bandcamp page at thegarygoblins.bandcamp.com, where digital downloads of the artist’s work are also available. For more information, also visit the musician’s Facebook page at facebook.com/thegarygoblins.
