Album Personnel : 

Will Mitchell - vocals, guitar, bass, piano, synths, engineering, producing, mastering

Jaron Pearlman - drums on "Abyss", "Controlled Dive", "Canyon", "Get Got", "All The Angry Youth", "Sara(h)", and "Rain Down". Additional mixing and engineering.

Lyris Hung - violin on "Get Got", "Sara(h)", and "Rain Down"

Ben Williams - bass on "Canyon"

Shim Gartner - lead guitar on "Canyon"

Will Stewart - lead guitar on "Rain Down"

Shakia Chanel - backing vocals on "Leave"

Jenevia Levister - backing vocals on "Controlled Dive"

Photos by Justin Blake Evans
(Justin Blake Photography)

All tracks recorded at When Will Studio except for "Canyon" recorded at No One Faction Studios.
Beta Info :
 
  1. "Abyss" is a sort of an amalgamation of several relationships..It was recorded when I had a horrible lung infection which is the reason my voice sounds even more strained than usual.  I had a serious lack of air when trying to record the vocal, but since the song is about drowning both literally and figuratively, I thought it worked well. The title probably was half-way inspired by the movie of the same name.
  2. "Honor Roll"  was written in 2009, and the instrumental version was used in tv shows and commercials long before it's official release on Beta.  The song kind of talks about my past as a young troublemaker..It also talks about another trouble maker i knew.  The chorus I imagine a person running around to save a person from a ship that is rigged with explosives finally determining that there is no way he or she could save the other…So they tell them essentially that they have to save themselves.  It's one of them metaphor things.
  3. "Controlled Dive" probably broke the record with the number of mix revisions I did with this one. I think I got to "Version Mix N 0.7" or something crazy like that...going through all of the preceding alphabet.  Here's a picture of the chaos.
  4. "Canyon"  was recorded live at No One Faction Studios with a full band. The piano was added later at my apartment. This is the only track on the record that was recorded with such a "live" approach.
  5. "Please Reply" was written in 2013.  I think the first verse is what it would feel like if a person was explaining to an alien child what religion was and why all of these churches existed everywhere.  But instead of churches its a bunch of staircases built in the middle of nowhere…Cause I guess that felt more alien to me.  The chorus was written to work in tandem with the title…If you didn't know what the title was, you wouldn't know what I was requesting in the chorus.  The title is a nod to a joke from the website reddit.
  6. "Get Got" was written in college probably around 2005 when I lived in Boston. The verses are about different approaches to life or different beliefs in life's purpose.  The chorus submits that if the afterlife were merely a possibility than we should probably make the most of life-life.  I guess I could have just recorded myself saying the phrase "YOLO" and called it a day.
  7. "Leave" sort of hints at a space mission kind of theme. The idea and emotions are very personal to me, but I thought space would be a more interesting setting.  The chorus seems to suggest that the main character had been leaving a daughter behind to go on these dangerous missions.
  8. "All The Angry Youth" was originally titled "The Rebel and the Spy".  I imagine the song taking place during a nighttime riot and then the second verse is really late at night/early in the morning when the only person left supporting the cause was this one last rebel.
  9. "Sara(h)" was written in 2004 and wasn't recorded until 2012 - 2013. It was officially released on April 8th, 2014. It is about two different people...One's name was "Sarah" and one's was "Sara", hence the title of the song.
  10. "Drown The Truck" was written in 2012. The crickets you hear were added in because the amp I recorded made a weird noise that sounded like crickets, so I decided to just go with it rather than fight it. The real crickets were recorded behind my old Atlanta house late one night in the summer.
  11. "Rain Down" was written in Atlanta during a crazy month long run of constant rain.  It's pretty obvious, but it's a song about bad luck.