© 2016 Casey F. Sweeney and Philip L. Thompson. All rights reserved.
HuH - Callback (2016)
© 2016 Casey F. Sweeney and Philip L. Thompson. All rights reserved.
Advances in techmology is a wonderful thing, innit?
By 2015 I'd started rebuilding my studio, and a thousand miles away my brother Casey was doing the same. Equipment we'd never have dreamt about owning just a few years prior was becoming increasingly available; having comparably modest prices. And thanks to the ever-reliable Tascam name, we'd both gotten ourselves digital multitrackers. With little more than a stamp we could send one another our ideas on SD Cards.
Sadly, we'd lost our brother, Daniel, in 2014. Obviously devastating for both of us, but as much as I loved my brother I seriously doubt his passing was more painful for me than it was for Casey. He and Dan are a year and a half apart in age; I'm ten years older than Daniel--the older of the two. When I moved away from our home town, D&C were just 10 and 8 years old.
Since Daniel's passing Casey had written a great deal of heartfelt, inspired music, and was anxious to record some of it. By mid-2016 we'd agreed the best venue for Casey's music would be a celebration of Daniel via a second HuH album.
Let the honors begin!
And so, two years to the day since Dan's passing, we began project "HuH, part 2." Casey had put over a dozen songs together--some intricate, layering of numerous tracks upon one another; others powerful and beautiful--and had sent me his music on an SD Card. Within a week we'd put together the first 'single from our still-unnamed album's first, and released it on youtube (see below). Our fans -- all three of them -- were impressed.
An instrumental, FunkaReggDiddy is not only Casey's introduction to the album; it's an up-front portrait of Casey's stance in life: mellow, chill, but commanding and artful! A little funk, a little reggae, and the occasional diddy (ditty).
We toyed with the idea of calling the album simply Hmm, leaving out altogether any reference to HuH. The idea being to leave the listener wondering if we were still called HuH, and our second album is called Hmm . . . or were we formerly called HuH, but now call ourselves Hmm?
Or, could it be we never created a name for ourselves, and just call each album a different grunting sound? Perhaps we change our name each time we record, and therefore every one of our albums are literally self-titled debuts...
By 2015 I'd started rebuilding my studio, and a thousand miles away my brother Casey was doing the same. Equipment we'd never have dreamt about owning just a few years prior was becoming increasingly available; having comparably modest prices. And thanks to the ever-reliable Tascam name, we'd both gotten ourselves digital multitrackers. With little more than a stamp we could send one another our ideas on SD Cards.
Sadly, we'd lost our brother, Daniel, in 2014. Obviously devastating for both of us, but as much as I loved my brother I seriously doubt his passing was more painful for me than it was for Casey. He and Dan are a year and a half apart in age; I'm ten years older than Daniel--the older of the two. When I moved away from our home town, D&C were just 10 and 8 years old.
Since Daniel's passing Casey had written a great deal of heartfelt, inspired music, and was anxious to record some of it. By mid-2016 we'd agreed the best venue for Casey's music would be a celebration of Daniel via a second HuH album.
Let the honors begin!
And so, two years to the day since Dan's passing, we began project "HuH, part 2." Casey had put over a dozen songs together--some intricate, layering of numerous tracks upon one another; others powerful and beautiful--and had sent me his music on an SD Card. Within a week we'd put together the first 'single from our still-unnamed album's first, and released it on youtube (see below). Our fans -- all three of them -- were impressed.
An instrumental, FunkaReggDiddy is not only Casey's introduction to the album; it's an up-front portrait of Casey's stance in life: mellow, chill, but commanding and artful! A little funk, a little reggae, and the occasional diddy (ditty).
We toyed with the idea of calling the album simply Hmm, leaving out altogether any reference to HuH. The idea being to leave the listener wondering if we were still called HuH, and our second album is called Hmm . . . or were we formerly called HuH, but now call ourselves Hmm?
Or, could it be we never created a name for ourselves, and just call each album a different grunting sound? Perhaps we change our name each time we record, and therefore every one of our albums are literally self-titled debuts...
Get serious.
We'd generated a fittingly goofy album cover for the idea, and kicked it around for a short whilte. But fortunately we remembered the whole idea was to document Casey's musical thoughts in a post-Daniel world, and our goofy idea didn't last too long.
Aside from our 'single,' FunkaReggDiddy, the remainder of the album would remain a mystery -- mostly -- until its official release in December 2016.
We'd generated a fittingly goofy album cover for the idea, and kicked it around for a short whilte. But fortunately we remembered the whole idea was to document Casey's musical thoughts in a post-Daniel world, and our goofy idea didn't last too long.
Aside from our 'single,' FunkaReggDiddy, the remainder of the album would remain a mystery -- mostly -- until its official release in December 2016.
And so here we are; HuH - Callback. A little pop, a little funk, some hard edges here and there, and the occasional dip into the pool of progressive. Casey wrote all the songs; I simply added some touches here and there.
BONUS: the lyrics for End to Beginning are from my son, Austin's poem entitled "A Town He Walked Toward."
We sincerely hope you like it, and paying is optional. The only price we require of anyone playing/downloading our album is proper credit.
FunkaReggDiddy, the album's first 'single,' released in May 2016.
