Toronto, Canada’s VAST ROBOT ARMIES released their debut album “Goodnight Myopia” as a one-man project. About 2 weeks after the release, the man behind the project Jay Thomson received a message from Kansas City’s Joe Agee (of SUNDIVER) saying how much he liked the album. Coincidentally he’d also been listening to SUNDIVER’s EP. After hearing the EP, he envisioned himself collaborating with SUNDIVER, calling them his sonic allies. They travelled to Toronto and in October Joe made the trip down to Kansas City. Two days later, both parties went to Chicago to rehearse and record the album. Long story short, VAST ROBOT ARMIES has evolved to include the three members of SUNDIVER who came together to collaborate on the new album called “Little Creatures”, to be released in early March 2015.
I am pleased to present you one of the tracks featured on this outing. It’s called “In The Other Room” and it’s a bit synth, spacy blend of alternative rock and psychodelic hard rock fueling on nostalgic emotions. Very enjoyable. Let’s hope they don’t lose this natural feel any time soon.
The band’s lead singer Jason Thompson commented:
One needs to simply stand within the walls of Electronical studios, to understand the tongue-in-cheek nature of the expression “In The Other Room”. The fact is, Electronical is not a big studio, but big sounds certainly come from it. When I was there recording the first Vast Robot Armies record “Goodnight Myopia” a week long inside joke bloomed quickly. Electronical is only 2 rooms that are maybe 10×10. There was no door separating the 2 rooms. Often while Eric Abert and I would be setting up gear in the recording room, Allen (Epley) would call out, asking a question (4 feet away) from the control room. Eric would answer with the tone that perfectly emulated a perturbed teenager being asked to do chores by a parent; “Whhaaat?! I can’t hear you! I’M IN THE OTHER ROOM…” It never got old, and was something I fondly remembered.
When I was writing would would become ‘In The Other Room” I thought as an homage to that time I’d call it “In The Other Room”. When it came time to write the lyrics however, I didn’t want them to be so literal. So when I thought about the phrase, I began to tie it to the genesis of an idea or creative concept. Often at the beginnings of any sort of inspiration, it starts out small, it almost feels out of focus or far away. As the concept develops and takes form it becomes clearer and louder. The idea behind “In The Other Room” is when writing a song, the spark/seed sounds far away and not quite clear enough to understand, but loud enough to know you won’t be able to get it out of your own head until it come to fruition. It’s almost as though it’s being played out in it’s full form in the room (you own mind) right next door, but it’s all muffed and blurry.
