Bachs Basil Brush

May - June 94 Sunyata/Nirta/Salter

01. Bachs Basil Brush 2:34
(Sunyata/Nirta/Salter)

02 Diced Ace Anthem 1:42
(Sunyata/Nirta/Salter/Raidell)

03. 7 over 8 u say 4 2:24
(Sunyata)

04. Vertical horizon 1:32
(Sunyata/Nirta/Salter)

05. Beyond the Daughters of Dawn 4:57
(Sunyata/Nirta/Salter)

06 Last Night Last Stand 2:48
(Sunyata)

07. Mirage Number 21 5:04
(Nirta/Sunyata/Raidell/Salter)

08. Short Stops stop 1:20
(Sunyata/Nirta/Salter)

09 Distant Rain silent storm 3:28
(Sunyata)

10 Soft Shoes 3:40
(Sunyata)

11. Dragonfly 5:49
(Sunyata/Nirta/Salter)

12. Om box 5:09
(Sunyata)

13. Lillies of Honey 4:16
(Sunyata/Leaver)

14. Too Many Farewells 4:14
(Sunyata/Nirta/Salter)

Total 49:04

Guitar - Sunyata
Drums - Simon Salter
Bass - Tony Nirta / Keyboards

Our special thanks and respect got to:-
Peter Raidell - Tenor Sax (Tracks 3,7,10,12)
Lilly Leaver - Piano Tracks (9,13)

Sunday 8th. of May 1994, Simon Salter, Sunyata (known as Geoff Ween-Vermazen at the time) and I had set up our instruments in my kitchen to have a go at a couple of Sunyata's compositions, as well as a good jam. A visiting friend (sound dude) Mike Cichopat went to great lengths to set up a nice live stereo recording for us, which he did beautifully, tweaking the instruments and reverbs on the fly, we had a fun day which lead to a second session a week later, agreeing that we could try something different, a few weeks later we repeated our efforts, joined by Peter Raidell on tenor Sax.

We liked the pieces Sunyata had composed for the sessions and the improvisations were pretty and sometimes dangerous, enjoying the diversion from our normal personal music activities.

I arranged One more recording in late June, of Sunyata and another friend of mine, contemporary composer Lilly Leaver on piano, they hadn't met before the session, so the music was fresh and searching, exciting moments throughout. I wish I could use more tracks from that session but my studio was suffering from industrial drill noise as well as some noisy guitar wiring, a great pity.

The recordings remained on the shelf until one day in late August 2011, I listened to one of the sessions, and I was hooked by what I heard, inspired enough to go through all four sessions, finally selecting 14 tunes, once I began to master the music, I realized there was a lot to do, noise and glitches, light switches, power drill shrieks, bad guitar wiring, panning issues, reverb on one channel only, well the list went on, no-one asked me to do it, I just loved the whole process, and believe it was worth it. Tony Nirta


Track seven and track eleven are 2 improvisations from these recordings named 'Mirage Number 21' and 'Dragonfly' which were first released on our cd "Silk Road".

These recordings made between May - June 1994, originally captured as stereo live using a Sony PCM-501 14Bit digital encoder, engineered and mixed by Michael Cicophat, then Produced and Mastered by Tony Nirta at 'Mud-studio' in Brompton, South Australia.

Cover painting "Aristotle" by Sunyata
Mixed and engineered by Michael Cichopat
Cover design by Kathy Chinnick
Produced and Mastered by Tony Nirta

Thanks to Chris Adams for your ears, time and suggestions during the Mastering process.
Thanks for support, enthusiasm and encouragement from Kathy Chinnick

Copyright 2012