Cyclorama



Cyclorama is the 56th James Rabbit album. It was released in December, 2010.

Track listing

 * 1) Shape of Love
 * 2) Fire in the Attic
 * 3) The Sea I'm Saved
 * 4) Natural Bridges
 * 5) Between Us Only Air
 * 6) Harmony Garden
 * 7) Breakfast
 * 8) Joking About Death
 * 9) Machetes
 * 10) Drifting Off
 * 11) Talk to Her
 * 12) This House Is Free

Recording
Recorded at the Crystal Palace in Santa Cruz, CA in January 2010.
 * "On December 31st, 2009, Rose and I went to a New Year's party in San Francisco. A highlight of the evening was a set played by one of the people that lived in the house. He began in a kneeling position with an acoustic guitar, circled by the standing audience. He began strumming doo-wop chords, relating a tale of how he was moving to Sweden to be with a girl he just met. As the song picked up into the up-tempo chorus, the entire room began to sway. The morning after, at breakfast, Max reminded me of a conversation we'd had in December that I only vaguely remember where we had agreed to each record a song each day in January. With the man in the circle in mind, I wrote "Shape of Love" on my newly acquired baritone ukelele.  


 * A few days, a few songs later, my friends Zach and William were in town to play a show at my house. Afterwards, as we walked to Saturn, we joked about writing darker songs. There would be blood and gore and the albums would all be released on Halloween. The next morning, Zach and I went to 41st ave. where we watched surfer bodies rise and fall in the waves. We played a frustrating word game. When Zach left, I wrote "The Sea, I'm Saved".  


 * On the night of January 17th, 2010, coming back from a show in Oakland (the night we released our first Allies EP), we got into a pretty bad car accident on Highway 17, totaling Max's car. We came back home and drank delicious Cheerwine cherry soda for the first time (which had been mail-ordered at a touring band's suggestion) as Mike and I watched Max and Drew watch Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance" video for the first time. They were astounded.  


 * There was a big storm in the last half of January. One day, I began driving to Staples, once I passed the Boardwalk, I saw that the entire eastern half of Santa Cruz was without power. At Ferrell's Original Donut Shop on 17th ave, the neon 'open' sign was lit, an island of energy thanks to the generator. I had three dollars, and spent it on coffee. As I sat at a table off to the side, the young cashier dazzled the octet of older patrons with inappropriate and possibly imagined facts and figures; 'you know, when a baby dies, the mom is always the one they check out first, especially if she's a clean freak...'.  


 * On January 28th, I went to go see Myra Melford's Be Bread Sextet with Stef. They were spectacular. I was so impressed that I plotted driving 8 hours the next day to Eureka to see their show. Time and space didn't match up, so I got the record instead, which wasn't as good. Spencer came up that weekend and we recorded three songs in two days.  


 * The first weekend of February, Conner came up from Pasadena and brought a case of Cheerwine with him (from Galco's Soda Pop Stop). We stayed up until 5:30 a.m. mixing the album.  


 * James Rabbit is a cloud"  


 * — John Tyler Martin, Cyclorama liner notes

Personnel
John Tyler Martin – vocals, instruments

Spencer Owen – helped write "Breakfast," "Machetes" and "Natural Bridges," sang and played most of the instruments on those songs

Conner Martin – hi-hats on "Joking About Death," vocals

Rose Holiday – vocals

Max Bennett-Parker – vocals

Drew Stoeckel – vocals

Jaco Connelly assisted with improvised music, utilized in the background of several tracks

Dorota, Megan and Ira helped gather nature sounds

Art by Vanessa Waring

Tyler's Cyclorama-era dream journal

 * "My dream last night (1/4/10)- going into a store where you paid to experience someone else's collection - tapes, movies, arcade games. Watching an awesome movie and recording the soundtrack on cassette.  


 * Driving in New York with Vampire Weekend (in a white van from their video that I invented) and Pangea in a really cool tour bus driving past us. Conner and I breaking into campus, smashing through the glass in the ceiling and falling onto scientists who were dissecting amphibians (not salamanders... but...)  


 * My dream last night (1/5/10) - revolt at the kids psychiatric hospital, kid scratching and biting the doctor and then the vampires getting through to the kids ward with fangs bared. Then viewing an email sent from dudu pukwana re: a james rabbit album sounding like an album he had made with Louis Moholo but more 'middle of the road' Moholo. I was telling max as we were driving in his car and smoke came out of his car and we had to pull over at a gas station, where we witnessed a minor car accident between a car pulling out of having gotten gas and another car. A lot of people began gathering around, and a guy from the gas station told us all to just get in one van and leave. I got in a car with William from Pangea, who drove me to Josh and Rebecca Redman's house, where I was left alone. They had a weird bathroom - lots of shower heads, and no toilet, only a big jacuzzi bathtub.  


 * I left the house and was locked out, I was on a hill on Walnut St. by the beehive, where I was in a group of people looking at fires going on in the west and in the north. The crowd narrated the fires as they got worse and worse, eventually causing explosions and eventually spreading to Walnut st. We began running towards downtown, as we ran, somebody mentioned that the police were turning against the public. They drove up in futuristic cars (triangular) and began zapping citizens. Somebody else mentioned that the firemen were turning against the police and had built battle robots. I ran into a lincoln log maze and was prepared to fight, I kept turning corners and not finding anybody. I found myself in a corner with the sound of battle robot steps approaching, which became the wheezing of my nose as I woke up.  


 * My dream last night (1/6/10) - Switching rooms around at the Crystal Palace. I took drew's room, the weight of the house almost crushed me. Swimming next to the municipal wharf. Mostly vertical waves washing tiny battleships and other things into the planks beneath the wharf. Found a tiny motorcycle, was advised to not take it. Sat on the planks under the wharf, spoke with Vanessa about things (not saying hello to Maryse/Danielle at the Food Bin), drifted off. Woke up walking away from the library towards my house.  


 * My dream last night (1/14/10) - Walking up to Neary Lagoon, there was a jogger ahead of me. There were people at the entrance wearing Klansmen uniforms, but they were from an earlier era where klansmen dressed almost like Mardi Gras, pink, white, feathers, but always with the pointy hats. They shouted ethnic slurs at the man running and called me a fag. I began running through the Lagoon. There were wildly decorated hats hung on the rails. As I walked over the pontoon bridge, there was a klansman every 10 or so steps. Each one would jump at me with either a physical threat  


 * Bicyling with a friend. Punks everywhere. Getting on a futuristic train that was like a rollercoaster. When I turned to look at the train, it was like a double-decker bus/battle machine. Hanging out with Caspian at a supermarket run by punks who were cleavering a wild boar in the middle of a table in the middle of an aisle.  


 * Another dream (1/17/10) - klansmen across the street firing missiles into my backyard. going into a restaraunt with an older friend (unknown), Wilco had practiced at that house/restaraunt/dan's pool house. Their drumset was there.  


 * Dream 1/22/10 - Flooding in the parking lot at the end of Jenne St., silver fish walking with rainboots, later drowning in the bathtub. Garbage eating organization, trolling the river for trash.  


 * <span style="color:rgb(54,54,54);font-family:arial,helvetica,clean,sans-serif;font-size:12px;line-height:14.882790565490723px;">Dream 1/24/2010 - Conversation with Stef at the Bike Church. We sat on the bleachers and she outlined the reasons (both known and suspected) that she did not want to initiate contact with me. (irl I was thinking about self-actuatialization last night around cooking/not eating).  


 * <span style="color:rgb(54,54,54);font-family:arial,helvetica,clean,sans-serif;font-size:12px;line-height:14.882790565490723px;">Had a microphone with fiber optic glowing cord sticking out of my left middle finger beneath the nail. Pulled a little bit out and more jutted out, pulled that out and it was about a foot of cord and then an adaptor at the end, split my entire finger open. Didn't hurt, seemed pretty clean, no blood. Bought an acoustic guitar for a hundred dollars from Yoshi's in Fresno, later found out each string was broken/they broke as I strummed it. Weird traffic manouevres with Mom and Conner. Woke up in my bed in Fresno with a compound girl.  


 * <span style="color:rgb(54,54,54);font-family:arial,helvetica,clean,sans-serif;font-size:12px;line-height:14.882790565490723px;">[1/26/10 - irl - called Stef, did not return call]  


 * <span style="color:rgb(54,54,54);font-family:arial,helvetica,clean,sans-serif;font-size:12px;line-height:14.882790565490723px;">Dream 1/27/2010 - Toyota dealership, asking a confusing question, was directed to CDRs and self-produced albums like the abandoned bin they have at streetlight. Picking out just the packaging. Max got mad because he wanted me to choose different things and we got into an argument that escalated. Maybe I bit his hand. Found espresso soda at a pizza place, it tasted like sauce. The bar was outside the building on the street. I got distracted while driving and walking home, looking at a girl in a blue sweater or dress across the street going into the paint store.  


 * <span style="color:rgb(54,54,54);font-family:arial,helvetica,clean,sans-serif;font-size:12px;line-height:14.882790565490723px;">Dream 1/28/2010"