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Mike Walker - acoustic guitar, lyrics, vox, synths, sampler, djembe, auxiliary percussion, bass, baby sitar

Mike Nardone - saxophone, sampler, acoustic guitar, Fender Rhodes, bass

Terrill Mast - auxiliary percussion, sampler

Daniel Lee - vox, lyrics, acoustic guitar

Matt Nauss - sampler

Mike Byrnes - bass

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Recorded and mixed by Seth Engel, Adam Salsberg & Mike Walker

Mastered by Will Killingsworth

Artwork by Mike Walker

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Vivi is a little three song EP made up of tracks that were mostly recorded in the same era as the Lifa sessions. But, seeing as these three songs were much more electronic and sample based than the bulk of the material on Lifa, I decided that they would fit much better on a separate smaller release. Here is a bit of background information on two of the tracks...

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"憂いの水 (Water of Sorrow)" was recorded in 2012 at an old house in Jefferson Park that a few friends of mine were living in at the time. Seth Engel and Adam Salsberg had converted the basement into a makeshift recording studio that also saw use as a practice space / DIY music venue. They called it "Space Jam" in reference to the 1996 Warner Bros. film of the same name. It even had a life size cardboard cut out of Michael Jordan decked out in his Tune Squad uniform.

Adam and Seth had this idea to make a compilation album called Mercury Mayonaise, which would feature their favorite Chicago based DIY artists and they wanted to include a track from me on it. I was honored that they had asked me to be a part of it and wanted to give them something really special that showed that I was a significant artist in the DIY scene. The concept was that they'd have an artist show up at Space Jam, get them all set up with various instruments all mic'd up and ready to go. Then they'd just press record and see what each artist could whip up in a day.

Being a bit too intimidated to show up with absolutely nothing, I brought my laptop over that had a Logic Pro project file with chopped up samples of various water sounds that Terrill Mast and I had recorded a few weeks prior. I asked Terrill if I could use the samples to create my track for the compilation and he said "Sure, just come up with something original." So that's what I set out to do. Before heading over to Space Jam, I arranged the water samples into a few rhythmic patters that I thought would be a good starting point for a track.

On the day I showed up at Space Jam to make the track, I was a little unsure as to whether or not I could make something that would be up to par with some of the other artists featured on the compilation. They played me a track by Nnamdi which totally blew my mind and inspired me to let loose and get weirder. So they set me up in the basement and they went up to the second floor to their makeshift control room. They communicated with me through a pair of headphones and a little talkback mic which really made me feel like I was isolated down there. I was all on my own and it was up to me to make something great or pack it in and go home with my tail between my legs.

So I went to work. I really can't remember much of the process of putting the track together because it was all such a blur, but here are some snapshots I can still recall... I remember banging away on a djembe, stomping as hard as I could on a kick drum pedal, singing Jeff Buckley style backing vocals and then singing lead vocals in Japanese... After about an hour and a half a transmission came down from the control room saying something along the lines of "Sounds good man, I think we got something. Why don't you come up and have a listen?" So I went up to the control room where I added a bass part, some midi synth lines and to top it all off, I asked them to mic this small turtle tank that they had in the control room and I swished my fingers around in it to add more water vibes to the track.

We wrapped up the session and they gave me a rough mix of the track which is what ended up on Vivi. I took the track home and played it for Terrill and asked him what he thought and he said something like "Sounds cool man, I like what you did with it." And in fact I agreed with Terrill, I really ended up liking how it turned out and fell in love with the vibe of that rough mix. Seth and Adam ended up mixing it further and made some edits that I thought took away from the magic of that original bounce, but you can hear their version on the compilation album if your curious...

redbeardrecords.bandcamp.com/album/mercury-mayonnaise

I really felt like recording this song with Adam and Seth in Space Jam helped to give me a lot of confidence. It showed me that I could indeed come up with the goods when put into a recording situation and asked to "make something cool" on the spot. It still remains a milestone in my early recording career and listening to in these days immediately sends me right back to Space Jam with Michael Jordan and the turtle tank...

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"Gonna Kill Me With That Stungun" was recorded all the way back in early 2011 in an all day session that started after a wild house party. The house party, which had taken place the night before, had seen someone break a piece of wood off of a doorframe in a drunken stupor. The next morning, I found the piece of wood lying on the floor, picked it up and started recording the sounds of me striking the wood with my fingers to replicate the feel of Middle Eastern / South Asian hand percussion. Then I added some more percussive layering using other objects found around my room, put an acoustic guitar part on top of it and that's how the track was kicked off.

Soon after putting vocals on the track I showed it to Daniel Lee. He loved it and immediately started writing his own verse as well as a very catchy sitar melody. After all of that was laid down we felt that we really had something great in the works and that is when we brought it to Mike Nardone. Mike had a great feel for jazz chords and quickly added some beautiful chord changes on acoustic guitar and layered bass and his vintage Fender Rhodes on top of them.

By that time, all three of us were really fired up about the track and how it was developing and sat around brainstorming where next to take it.. I always love that part of the recording process where the possibilities seem limitless. At that time, our dear friend Matt Nauss had stopped by for a evening visit and upon playing the track for him, he and Nardone had devised to chop up and sample segments of the track and make new sections from those chopped samples. Mike had a go first, chopped up the acoustic guitar parts and rearranged them in this really cool glitched out way. When he was finished he handed the laptop to Matt, who took it into an empty room with headphones. After about an hour Matt emerged with this incredible section filled up with chopped guitar, vocals and Rhodes that blew everyone's minds. He took Nardone's glitched out vibe and took it 3 steps further.

By then it was way past sundown and we were all laser focused on finishing up the track. Nardone took Matt's section, added these beautiful saxophone layers on top of it and then got out his trusty 5-string to track some more bass. I distinctly remember sitting next to Mike in my room late at night, both of us chain smoking American Spirits and watching him track this incredible bass part. It was probably the best songwriting experience I had with those guys.. Everyone was focused on the singular goal of making this song as brilliant as humanly possible.

But after that day long recording session, the song sat around for about 6 months with none of us having any idea how to finish it. Mike Byrnes added a second layer of bass at one point and I added some additional layers of percussion but that was about it. We had built up to this epic section where Nardone's saxophones were blaring this dissonant chord with droning bass underneath it and no one could figure out where to take it from there. Eventually, I think either I, Terrill or Matt thought of the idea to just loop that dissonant chord over and over while treating it with layers of distortion effects to make this Sonic Youth style discordant drone that eventually would turn into pure white noise. Then, in the style of The Beatles' "I want You (She's so Heavy)," we just decided to make a sudden decisive cut right at the height of the white noise section to abruptly end the song.

In all the years since making this track we have made lots of experimental songs but this one still stands out to me as being one of the wildest adventures in sound that Nature's Neighbor has ever embarked upon. We've never made anything like it since then. It stands alone amongst all the other NN tracks as something truly unique and I'm very proud of that.

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