Temporal Incursions
I still remember being in awe during the recording session for my first full length album in the summer of 2008, when Fabian Almazan took a chord progression I’d written and improvised two full minutes of a pianistic masterpiece. During the mixing process, when I listened to what became the take we used for the album release, I started to imagine vivid imagery during his piano solo on this tune. I wrote about that in the liner notes for the album (Lost in New York):
When I listen to Temporal Incursions, I feel like I can hear my years in New York, mixed with flashes of the city’s entire history within the 10 minutes of the recording. During the ‘head in’, I recall the feeling I had when I first stepped out of the Port Authority Bus Terminal and on to Eighth Avenue during the morning rush. I remember being bombarded with juxtaposed images of old and new. There were old, yet tall buildings, camouflaged by contemporary billboards and surrounded by more modern architecture and newer buildings that were under construction. If I could set animated images to the musical story, the trumpet solo would be myself being thrown randomly through New York’s history while gradually becoming comfortable with this voyage through time as I realized I could watch the city develop over the years. When I listen to Fabian [Almazan]’s solo, I hear all the hard work that went into the city’s construction and development. Everything beautiful and majestic about New York. The tenor sax/guitar duet is the other side of the story. All the corruption and darkness that developed parallel to the majesty. The way Jesse [Lewis] plays off of Jake [Saslow] almost sounds like the shadow of a ghost trailing someone and we tried to bring that out even more by panning Jesse’s guitar between the left and right channels throughout the duet. With Lee [Pearson]’s solo, I hear authority’s efforts to impose order on the chaos of the city.
I barely had the money to hire an illustrator, manufacture the CDs, and hire a publicist, so an animated music video for a track longer than 10 minutes was completely unrealistic. Hiring an animation studio for that is still completely unrealistic for me today.
But last summer, when the generative A.I. boom went mainstream, I randomly saw a video on Instagram by Michael Carychao with an aesthetic that eerily matched what I was imagining when I heard Fabian’s piano solo on Temporal Incursions. I messaged Michael and he kindly pointed me in the direction of some of the tools he was using to produce his A.I. animations. I’m no animator or illustrator, but these tools were text driven, so I started experimenting with them. I ended up spending a few weeks rendering clips that matched the imagery I was seeing in my mind’s eye when I listened to my colleagues’ amazing improvised solos on that recording from 2008.
I know generative A.I. is a controversial tool because of how large corporations and the wealthy can use it as an excuse to not pay artists for their highly skilled labour. But as someone who struggles to fund every single single or album I release, it was a fascinating side project to spend some time producing (I don’t think “creating” is the right word, that’s disrespectful to actual animators) these 10 minutes of animation as a visual companion for a recording of mine.
Who knows, maybe someday I’ll get the funding to hire some real animators to do this properly. Until then, check out the new music video for the opening track on my first full length album.
Suresh Singaratnam — trumpet, composition
Jake Saslow — tenor saxophone
Jesse Lewis — guitar
Fabian Almazan — piano
Fraser Hollins — bass
Lee Pearson — drums
Louis Brown — lead recording engineer
Travis Stefl — assistant engineer
Recorded at Bennett Studios — Englewood, NJ
Edited & Mixed by Marc Koecher
Mastered by Nathan James (The Vault Mastering)
