As the purpose, remember, was to improvise - we would each arrive at the venue with our equipment, our sources and very little idea of what we were going to do. We'd simply set up the gear and start playing around with all the fragments of sound. One problem I ran into when curating the live disc, therefor, was dealing with the fact that we often were working with some of the same materials, show to show. We were rarely working on the same 'song,' but were constantly working on new ideas which somehow managed to pull some of the same materials into the mix. So how to produce a CD which features more than one song using some of the same sounds?

I was warned about this early on, actually. We usually recorded our shows, and after our fourth or fifth performance, I probably started talking about putting together a 'best-of,' and by the time we'd gotten to our ninth or tenth outing, I imagine Gregg suggested we start using some new material, if for no other reason than to make the resulting document more diverse. I argued that I was never sure the material had developed fully, that I wasn't ready to retire certain sources, or that a specific idea was a crowd pleaser and we should leave it in for the next show. In the end, he turned out to be right, in that we did end up with a record where you can hear some of the same sources on more than one track. However, some of the later sessions were obviously better than the first ones, due in part, I think, to an increased experience with some favorite source material.

In compiling the live album, I first tried to distinguish the difference between a segment where the materials used define the piece, from portions where some of the same materials would have a less significant presence. For instance, a specific sound which I've used on this album, and on the debut Escape Mechanism CD, is the sound of a little girl laughing. There is a short track on the live CD which features this sound as a defining element of the song, but that recording also appears on another track, as an incidental element which adds to the feel of the piece, while not necessarily giving it its identity. In the cases where the song is identified by the sample, I've chosen the best example of its use from the 11 recordings we have of our 12 shows. I've also included tracks incorporating some of the same samples in different ways.

I'm aware that the feeling among sound collage artists currently, is that its important to cite sources used on these sorts of recordings. I've heard arguments for and against this, and would tend to side with the group in favor of including a bibliography, if only I could learn to work that way. The trouble is, I've been working with this material for years and a lot of it now only exists as digital information on my collection of mini-discs. I'm not even sure where all of it came from anymore. We could listen closely to every single track and try to remember, but we'd inevitably end up missing something and be able to include only a partial bibliography - which would bother me more than not mentioning any of the artists whose work we've used bits and pieces of. So, that's why I've not included a lengthy list of all the recordings we've manipulated. In most cases, this is not out of disrespect to the individuals whose work we've sampled; its simply a matter of respecting full disclosure over partial, and an unwillingness to mention some sources over others.

This was free-form improvisation with no rules, other than that the source material had to be available to anyone. It was a fun experiment I'm surprised to find we did so much of. Several very interesting recordings resulted; some of which, I feel, are worth a second listen. I hope you agree.

- Jon Nelson