SAYDAM HOTEL / SEASONS MATERIAL
In December 2007, I spent a month eating doner kebap and kokorec on the streets of Istanbul. In the last week of my stay I rented out a cheap hotel room in an alley off Istiklal and set up a recording machine and a couple of SM57's -- the guitar mic was draped off the desk, the vocal mic taped to a half full plastic water bottle.
I laid down the raw tracks of the songs I'd written between Amsterdam and Istanbul, about half the material that would later meet the Blackwater Collective in Portland and become our first record.
It's gritty and it's raw, it's between coughs and played on a baby Martin, and the walls were so thin I could hear the neighbors having a normal conversation -- so I'm sure they heard me. And I absolutely adore it.