Photon Life (2003)
Photon Life is my first album, released July 5th, 2003. It’s an atmospheric instrumental album with lots of guitars. The songs were mostly written in 2002, the same summer I spent some time at Berklee College of Music in Boston. In fact, I won a contest to have my program tuition paid for by submitting the songs “Carbonite” and “Work In Progress,” both found on this album. Many of the songs were originally entries at guitarwar.com, a community I was very active in at the time, where I learned a great deal by “competing” with much more experienced musicians than myself.
On July 13th, 2003 I held an album release party at my family’s Internet Cafe, The Digital Cup, in Wasilla, Alaska.
I recorded this album entirely with my Ernie Ball JP6, running through a Boss DS-1 distortion pedal directly into a Sound Blaster Audigy card. My bass was direct-in as well, with all effects added in during mixing. Three tracks feature bass by Guy Dagenais, AKA “Geezer,” a friend from Guitarwar.com. Most of the synths and drums were created in an old version of FruityLoops. The packaging and artwork were all designed by myself, and I rather over-optimistically printed up 1000 copies in a nice 4 panel digipak.
I performed songs from this album live twice as a solo act, and a handful of times with my band Red Penguin, formed in 2005. Some of the progressions I wrote for Photon Life found their way into later material. The title track was reimagined as the song “On the Run,” which can be heard on The Red Penguin EP (2006), and the primary melodic theme from “Carbonite” was re-purposed as a chord progression for the verses in my Sleep Rebellion song, “Machine Guns.” (2014)
I still like this album, and it is an earnest reflection of where I was at musically when I made it. The playing and writing is not at all refined, but it is wild and inventive. I achieved something very unique, and it makes a singular artistic statement, with the album succeeding as a whole, complete work of art.
A snapshot of what my original chrismcgraw.com website looked like at the time of the Photon Life release.