Periphery recently announced they'd be releasing their Clear project on Jan. 28 via Sumerian Records. Clear is a short album where each member of the band wrote and recorded their own song in a Periphery-type style. Now we've got guitarist Jake Bowen telling us exactly how it all went down, and it's pretty crazy! For instance, a certain Deftones member was the reason this whole idea came about.
In an interview with Gear Gods, Bowen talked a bit about the writing process and how it all went down with who played what and wrote what:
"I can only speak for my song because we all worked pretty separately as far as all the compositions went. For my song, I wrote all the riffs and I suggested grooves to Misha [guitar] who helped me program the drums. Spencer wrote all the vocal parts, and I worked with him on some of the parts or at least my vision of what the parts should be over my riffs. I was the general maestro for the song, and people contributed certain things but it was pretty much up to each person’s discretion on how the song would end up sounding in the final product. Even though there is collaboration in some respect, it’s exactly what that one person wanted."
And then on the topic of band members who might not play certain instruments:
"Actually, pretty much everyone in the band plays guitar except for Matt. Matt’s the drummer, and he worked with Spencer on the song. They have another project together called the Mothership. I’m not sure how much of the song he wrote and how much Spencer wrote, but I’m pretty sure that Spencer tracked the guitar on both songs. So everyone in the band plays guitar except for Matt, so it was pretty easy to track guitars for these songs."
Also, Bowen talked pretty extensively about the concept of the "Overture" track, of which borrows a little from each song and showcases the recurring melodies throughout the record:
"That’s actually interesting. I should use this chance to tell you that this idea isn’t our own. This idea was given to us by Steph from the Deftones. He has all these ideas and when we were on tour with him, he was telling us some of these ideas. He said 'I would really like for you guys to use some of these things that I’ve been sitting on because I’m not going to be able to do them with my own band because it’s just not the right band for doing that kind of stuff. Here’s the idea that I had.' Basically the exact idea that he gave us is the one that we went with. We tweaked it so that it would fit our band a little bit better. He said 'you should take one idea, give it to each of the members and have them write a song on that one idea.' Misha had written this whole piano thing. Before it was named anything, it was just called 'Steinway Demo.' When we were discussing what concept or what melodic theme that we were going to use for the record, we all sent out different ideas and stuff. We all agreed that Misha’s Steinway Piano demo should be it. When I went over to record my song, I think it was right after we finished the 1st incarnation of it, I’m like 'dude, we got to tweak the piano thing so it’s an intro track that establishes everything.' So we opened it up and started talking about it and where drums should be. We sent a preliminary version out with some drums and 8 string guitar. Spencer came back with some ideas on how to flush out the instrumentals a bit more. Misha recorded all the instruments for it, and I sat in the chair and pointed fingers at it and stuff. That came together pretty quickly at Misha’s house.
"I forgot to mention the important part about that. There’s one melodic theme. I think it might start to peak out over the end of the Overture track in the Youtube video that we posted, but I’m not sure. We were like 'this is the melodic theme that should be in each song.' When you hear it in each song, it might not be as apparent that that’s what you’re hearing because it’s interpreted in different keys and different rhythms and tempos and stuff like that. We just isolated one part of that track and focused on that as the theme that permeates the whole recording.
Do yourself a favor and read the entire interview over at Gear Gods for more on this album and the band's gear.
