Sketches for Naomi is the first "full" release of brand new material that I've put together in a long time. Since the duo of Lucid Charade EPs in 2002, actually. Mgamx 1.0 was probably more new music than not, and (reimagined) was, essentially, seven original tracks - it was just made with a sonic palette created by Nick - but they just weren't created from the ground up by myself, so even though both of those turned out really well for what they are, and they're probably two of the circas I'm most proud of, it's not quite the same thing. It was nice to be back to making something from nothing. It was doubly nice to be doing it for a purpose, for somebody.

A little backstory. I have a friend, the eponymous Naomi, who, during term time, attends BYU in North America. When school ended for the year, she came back over to the UK for a while. One of her American housemates also came over here, but was due to fly back ahead of Naomi, so another friend, Dan, decided to make something for her as a going away present. Something to remember him by, most likely. So we made a book, which he designed and we both put together, from scratch. It was a small, little scrap of a book, but it opened the floodgates. It was fun to make, so when the time of Naomi leaving came closer and closer, Dan decided we should make a whole heap of stuff to give to her. The problem was, he decided this around about Friday. She left the following Tuesday.

We had more time than with the book for Ashlie (see above), but it still wasn't a huge amount. He started drawing things, and coming up with ideas, and we made a start. On the Saturday evening, a group of us were at Naomi's house (I believe the appropriate term is "chillin'",) including the two members of Red Rising. At some point, not long after I'd arrived, Phil (from RR) requested an acoustic guitar, and played it while everybody talked. I took out my phone and, using it's crude "microphone" technology I documented a few minutes of music and chatter. I didn't intend to use it for anything.

Later, at about midnight, as I was laying in bed, I had the idea of making a CD for Naomi as part of the collection of things we were due to make, so I got to work on that the following afternoon. I got it all finished, from the music to the packaging, by about 1am Monday morning. Sketches for Naomi was the result of that 8 or so hours of work. Three tracks were excerpts from the recordings on Saturday, with the other eleven being new (to you) pieces by myself. I'm sure better musicians than me could make something much more worthwhile with that time, but as the years go on I'm getting more comfortable with my own limitations. It was the best I could do with the time allotted. It's called Sketches... because most of the tracks are just that, sketches - more ideas than full-fledged tracks.

Most of the time was actually spent on the packaging. It was reeeaally elaborate, for what it was -- like a hardback digipack, but with two pieces of folded paper that folded out to the left and to the right, stuck to the inside cover. To the left was the credits (see fig. 4) and to the right was some of the music (click fig. 3) transcribed to staves. The image on the front of the case was Phil in high heels (fig. 1 -- from the same night as the recorded guitar) and the back (fig. 2) was a collection of a bunch of photos taken by people with my phone (featuring Nicola, Ryan, Phil, Dan, Phil's teeth, Greg, and myself.)

I didn't take a photo of the finished article before presenting it to Naomi, so all I can show here are the digital images that made up the content. Maybe she'll oblige me with a photo sometime. Maaaybe. I was really happy with how well received the whole thing was. Not just my CD, but all of the stuff that Dan and I made -- a poster, a flipbook, a hardback book of sketches, pictures on foamboard, some stickers, lots of stuff. She seemed amazed that we'd put so much work into it all. But, you know, what are friends for?