OOC: Sorry to seem needy... would appreciate some feedback.

Cassie: So...it does pain me, a FUCKING LOT. But I gotta say, I don't hate this! In fact, I almost like it....Screw it, it's fucking epic! OK??! You broke me down! Cassie likes someone's music! Fuck you! Oh gawd I totally let down the guard. You may only ever hear this once from Cassie...good job fuzz.

OOC: Epic as always man. No one else does a track-by-track as well as you. Always enjoy reading them!

Cassie: Yeah, I'd say don't get used to it...but I'm so bloody confused by myself that I dunno what to say! FUUUCK! You better buy me a lot of booze tonight to make up for this trauma!

I went through many possible names for the album before deciding on Still Waters. Names like Monsoon and Epicentre. However, none of them represented what I wanted the album to put across, that I’m no longer in turmoil, that I am now calm. I am resting on still waters. Of course, this journey isn’t quite over yet. The album DOES end on a pretty depressing tone, one that I shall further explore on my next album. My very first solo album, Realm, went pretty unnoticed but I feel like more people will explore it now. That represented all that is good and happy with the world. That is the conception, if you will. This album, Still Waters, is about actual life and how things aren’t always what they seem. I refer to part as the life and insanity. The slow descent, if you will of “the character”. The next part in this whole saga is going to be the death. It WILL be dark and it WILL give you nightmares. Chances are it’s going to be a sorta electronic-ambient affair, but I’m not certain yet... the couple of songs I have written already are very eerie indeed. It’s gotten to a point where this is for me now, and no one else. Some people will probably really hate the next one, it’s gonna be depressing as fuck... this story can be interlinked with the Paladin story as well. This is the very end of that story however, the reflection. It’s a very complicated chain of events. Rather than talk about the future though, I will now go through the album.

Heaven Sent was a mixture of lots of sounds and noises, as you would expect. It’s still pretty dark though, it’s a deconstruction of the character, which is now slipping into madness. There isn’t that much to say about it. I am happy with it, but it was pretty much made up on the spot. Two Trees is a surprisingly angry track. It may not appear it at first, beneath all the complex riffs and such, but there is a layer of pure emotion there. It has an interesting back-story, but I don’t really want to go into that at the moment... anyway, Two Trees is one of my favourite songs, musically, because there’s so much to it. It’s a literal musical onion, except it shouldn’t make you cry. I put a lot of work into this song particularly. The next song, You, is abrasive, pretty simple, yet very emotional. You can pretty much taste the anger here. It still tosses and turns a lot, as you would expect, but I didn’t apply many effects to this song, because it was cool the way it was. I wrote this practically the day after Mind split up, so yeah... you can see that in the lyrics. Musically, it’s also a return to my very early stuff with Mind, like quite a few years back now.

Untitled Thoughts is the song that follows, with the lyrics completely written by my good friend Eric Quillington. When he sent me them, I knew I had a brilliant song. For the music, I pulled out all the stops and got orchestras, full ambient layers, the whole shizniz. Eric himself also features on the song, playing the piano and providing some back up vocals. He really made this song unique from the rest of the album. The next tune, In the Tundra, is where the album starts to take an unusual turn. It’s relaxed... suspiciously relaxed compared to everything else. You always expect something loud and sharp to hit you here, but it never does, which makes this song among the most deceptive on the album. It’s still pretty creepy and haunting though, don’t get me wrong. This song is another one about Mind, but instead of viciousness, it’s about trying to piece things together again and be peaceful with each other, something we didn’t manage until quite recently. Escapegoat is probably my favourite track on the album. I don’t know what it is about it... it just hits you harder than a brick at 100mph. It’s a mixture of Shoegaze, industrial and space rock. There are loads of effects coming into play here, and they’re all layered to make this massive wall of noise. This is what the build up was for. This is the song I feel the whole album is centred around. The lyrics are surprisingly upbeat if you look at them, whilst simultaneously being quite dark and brooding. People get too easily paranoid, I think, and that’s what the song is about.

I like Conspicuous Spaces; it’s a cool song I think. Michael Caiff gives it that extra edge it needs though; otherwise it may have been a bit boring. It may even be single material though, seeing as it’s one of the most accessible and least crazy songs on the album. It’s sort of like Deftones. The lyrics aren’t really anything special, just a cool song that I wrote a while ago that I liked and kept. Opprobrium is the most relaxed song on the album, In the Tundra put in a freezer. It’s that chilled, seriously. It may be quite creepy, but it’s not going to shout it out in your face. I guess it’s your last moment to rest. The lyrics are also styled similarly to In the Tundra; they’re both about trying to make peace. Now we come to the big single, Frown Upon. It’s a pretty sharp and edgy affair here, it’s definitely got its moments. This was written at a time where I was very, very down and wanted people to know about it. Drugs were in the mix as well, as you may be able to see quite plainly. It’s a schizophrenic song, switching between moments of ska-like fun to a symphonic, epic, mournful riff. Then we come onto my musical palindrome and one of my favourites, Create a World of Your Own, featuring the lovely Stacey Walton. It’s about getting your rightful respect and I guess it’s a bit of a rant at myself really. The fact that I’m always the centre of attention and maybe I don’t always want to be. It’s an odd one musically. It’s literally a palindrome, staring and ending the same, with the middle the same. You may not notice it at first, but it’s there. It isn’t perfect, of course, but it’s rough shading around the lines. Stacey just pushes it forward.

This next one, An Insiders Perspective, is just an old Mind outtake that I thought fitted the mood quite well. It’s brutal, it’s fast and it’s loud. I re-recorded everything and added a few effects and voila, it’s a cool song. Soaked to the Bone was actually the first song I wrote specifically for this album. It’s heavy and slow, and quite strained. It’s also one of the most difficult on the album because of that solo towards the end. It lasts a while. Then, we come to the big one. The epic. Blood Cold Motion Sequence. It is one of the best songs I’ve ever done, and it should please everyone. Like the preceding track, it’s quite slow to begin with, but it eventually gets faster until it cuts in with that blissful dual guitar attack with Mr. Mike Sneap. It is definitely the most difficult song on the album, especially to work on. Getting all the effects, choirs and electronic shit ready for it was hell, but it paid off in the end. It’s a monster. It’s also quite sad in the lyrics. This was written in the same sort of tone as Frown Upon. I’d given up with everything, and I was pretty much in a dark corner. Also, it’s partially mixed in with a bit of the theme of Create a World of Your Own. I actually wanted peace and quiet, I couldn’t be arsed for this anymore. The outro is quite scary... Heavens Open sounds like a storm and it’s a practical metaphor for my life at that moment. A massive storm, followed by an aftershock and then... nothing. Silence. The demonic voice was inside my brain at the time.

So there you have it. That’s Still Waters in a nutshell. Yes, it is my masterpiece and no, I don’t think I’ll ever match it. Only time can tell though, who knows? I’d like to thank everyone who’s worked with me on this project, my friends, my family and all my supporters out there, you know I love you. This album couldn’t exist without you guys there by my side. The future is a scary place, but I’m no longer afraid.

Currently got a 80% approval rating at Metacritic... pretty much what I wanted and expected, so I'm happy. I thought it might confuse peeps too much. Here's a selection of reviews.


Pitchfork

Jason Smith is a very busy man. Constantly producing music for other artists, playing live shows and doing his part for the show business side of things must take a hell of a toll on his music, right? To all of our surprise, the metal band of which he is most well known, Mind, broke up earlier this year to the dismay of hipsters and metal fans everywhere due to unknown reasons. After an extremely short break from the music scene, he bounced back by announcing a brand new solo album, Still Waters, to go alongside Project; Prometheus’ debut album to come later this year. No one was quite sure of what to expect from this. Would it be like Mind? Would it be like P;P? Would it even see the light of day, knowing Jasons tendency to forget about his projects? We put the disc in the CD player anxiously, preparing for it.

As we said before, we did not know what to expect. It isn’t exactly surprising that the album starts with an ambient intro, since he has done this sort of thing before... however, this time it is taken to the extreme, and the lack of guitars of any sort is interesting. Thus far, it puts us in a pretty relaxed mode, but we expect a shitstorm of metal br00tality and screaming vocals. Instead, we are greeted with a quite nice, yet complex riff. This song is “Two Trees”. It’s a very good song, possibly one of the highlights in Jason’s already extensive back catalogue. It has metal moments hidden within, but it is definitely different. It comes as less of a surprise when the next song is a fast-paced punk anthem, “You”. The drums are pounding, the vocals frenetic and the guitar fast. It is interlaced with interesting Ska parts oddly enough... the song afterwards is an Eric Quillington penned number called “Untitled Thoughts”. It is similar to the anthemic rock of Oasis mixed with a bit of Infinite. It is a nice, almost upbeat song.

When things come to “In the Tundra”, I’m still confused by this album, possibly more so than I was to start with. This song does nothing to help this fact, since everything goes purdy and ambient here. It offers the listener a well needed breather though. “Escapegoat” is the song that follows, a masterpiece in stoner pop, or noise rock, or art metal, whatever you want to call it. It is a manic, busy, beautiful, sad, quizzical song that will send fans of 90s Shoegaze wild. The highlight so far. “Conspicuous Spaces” is a more normal song, a nice slab of rock with enough of that unique Jason Smith twist to keep it great. It has its proggy moments, but seems to be jammed between two of the best songs, which sort of ruins it. The song that follows is “Opprobrium”, an even more relaxed and interesting version of “In the Tundra”, with a slight chamber pop twist. 4 minutes of pure peace, before we come to the big single. This big single in question is “Frown Upon”, which is currently charting in the mainstream airplay charts, an impressive achievement for a song so weird and erratic. It twists and turns into different riffs and morphs into a new song every 30 seconds. It’s like a bad acid trip, except good. If you know what I mean.

Stacey Walton features on “Create a World of Your Own”, which is an unusual song, since it does not follow a normal song scheme at all. Whilst this may not be a shock to most people, it dives even further and turns it palindromic. That’s right. It begins as it ends. You have to listen to it to get it. A short metallic burst then appears in the form of “An Insiders Perspective”, which sounds like a Mind B-Side. It fits the album, but it’s not particularly impressive. “Soaked to the Bone” is a moody, epic 5 minutes of heavy metal. It’s doomy, it’s slow and it’s a good song in general. This one’s a bit more reminiscent of Mind as well. This is before it goes into what we gather to be a 15 minute epic, “Blood Cold Motion Sequence”. Although it is quite arrogant and indulgent, it’s purposefully so. It shows off the instrumentation of both Jason and guest Mike Sneap. It is a fitting song to end the album on, before we go into the closing curtains, the outro. This outro is an ambient piece similar to the start, except darker and with a slightly creepier edge. It represents the whole journey, basically.

So Still Waters is a success. Sure, it will alienate some people. Sure, it is occasionally unnecessarily indulgent. But it is full of good music and an emotional ride which comes across from it. It is definitely a strong addition, maybe not as good as Shattered Fairytale, but definitely somewhere up there.

8.5/10


AMG

Still Waters is an album that is somewhere between the metallic supremacy of Mind and the ambience of his debut album with all the warmth sucked out of it. This leaves for bleak pieces of music which challenge the listener. It’s like a grotesque photo in that, although you don’t want to, you can’t help but look. Alienating, but good musicianship and definitely worth a listen.

3/5

Absolute Punk

There isn’t much that you can say that hasn’t already been said about Jason Smith. For a metal musician, he has done extremely well to get thus far. This album is only going to excel him even further. By mixing just enough of the shiny, spacey metal of Mind to keep his fans listening, but by also experimenting with pop and ambient music, he has created a disasterpiece of sorts. A depressing, beautiful album that can both scare you to death and put you at ease.

Particular highlights include the first proper song, Two Trees and the big finale Blood Cold Motion Sequence. The other songs almost act as a basis for these two songs and the whole thing runs extremely smoothly. It’s a gift that keeps on giving. Even the punk and metal numbers have a different quality about them that makes them more special this time around than they maybe were with Mind. In general, this is a new start for Jason Smith and could prove to be important in the future world of music.

93%

Kerrang!

What happened? This album is the ultimate patience tester, but eventually you just have to take it out before it annoys you annoy further. What was that, ANOTHER FUCKING UNNEEDED TEMPO CHANGE?! GAAAH! I hope Jason realises what he’s putting his fans through and focuses more on the music than becoming yet another pretentious arsehole in this overcrowded musical world of them, because he IS a good musician and this album DOES have the odd moment. Disappointing, to say the least and it will put people off him.

2K/5K