OUT OF PRINT

GHR 29

GLORIUM
Eclipse

CD

The language of Eclipse speaks of lights, shadows, myth, the power of the mind. It sleeps with the genetically inherited dreams from an astronautical ancestor. It behaves without thought of future nows or circumstantial evidence. Without foresight, it is naive and delicate. That is where its power lies. So relax your muscles and your mind and dream…

Glorium is Jorge J. Lara, Juan Miguel Ramos, Ernest Salaz, L. Max and Paul Streckfus.

Music by Glorium. Words by Paul Streckfus and L. Max.

Recorded in 1995 at Pyramid Studio, Austin, TX.

Engineered by Kurtis D. Machler

Produced by Kurtis D. Machler and Glorium.

Additional singing by Sarah Carlson on “Copilot, Keep Me Awake”.

Special thanks to Craig McCaffrey, Shanna Boatler, and Shelly Wood.

All songs ©1995 Glorium.

Track Listing

1 Deserter

2. Espionage

3. Speaking In Tongues

4. Co-Pilot Keep Me Awake

5 Dragon-Tiger Fight

6. HC Birthday Cake For Psychic Newborn Freaks

7. With it

8. Blemish Party

9. Room On The Floor

Eclipse was released on Golden Hour in May of 1997 at the concert at Cabeza de Piedra in San Antonio.

PAUL: When we went in Pyramid studios we didn’t know what was going to make it onto a record. We didn’t even know how it would be released as everyone was broke. We were just taking the opportunity to record all the songs that hadn’t yet been recorded properly. Kurtis D. invited us in. I think the chance came up for him to work there, and he approached us about recording something so we went in with all guns blazing. We started in the summer of 1995, and finished mixing that fall. At this point Jorge had moved back to San Antonio to finish school. We tracked 22 pieces. Some of it was put on Fantasmas.

The studio was in the basement of someone’s house. Mona from Ten Inch Maria owned it. She told us that she “would like people of the homo family to work at the studio” and then kept her eye on us, trying to figure out if we were homophobic. Her and her lover Fawn kept coming down while we were recording to tell us how badass it sounded. They were making out on the bar stools. They both wore these tight leather pants with cowboy boots and fringed jackets.

We began by recording Psyklops. Mona kept telling Ernest that he was too loud and could he turn it down. This was really annoying Ern. It was hard to relax. Juan was in an isolation booth and it was hard to hear him. Everyone else were in this very large pink room. We recorded Blemish Party next and we had some trouble getting the intro right. Lino couldn’t hear the kick drum. It was sort of frustrating. That same day we did Logan’s Ruin, Brownie Hawkeye, and Future News. Then we did the mellow songs like Speaking In Tongues, Espionage Radio, and HC BDay Cake, which we were calling “Sullen Ernest” at the time. Mona and Fawn kept coming down to check it out, kept complimenting us. She said I looked like Iggy Pop and would I want to date the guitar player in her band. They hadn’t heard of Tim Kerr, but they said they were at Raul’s all the time back in the day. Mona said there’s a ghost of a twelve year old Navajo girl that hangs out there and they like to give her cookies. How she knew the ghost’s age and background is a mystery. But, the cookies always disappear. It was a weird scene.

Anyways so the songs we chose for the record were the mellower songs that had lots of space in them. We wanted to put out a record that was more spacious and less dense than Cinema Peligrosa. Ernest and I had been listening to lots of Can, Neu, Kraftwerk, Gary Numan, Suicide, and old 60s garage-punk stuff that year. Stuff that was more stretched out and groovy as opposed to fast and furious. Mixing took some time as we had to remix everything twice after we discovered that we had the sound compression switched on the first time around. We finished mixing in October. I thought it was the best stuff I’d ever heard. We had a heavy hand on the mixing and Kurtis D. sort of let us do what we wanted for better or worse. For some reason the extra loud room sound really turned us on so we pushed it up and embraced the hiss. Thought it made it sound very caveish and underground radio. Eclipse didn’t get released until 1997.
By then Ryan Richardson at EV was releasing Past Life Recordings as well.