In the first two weeks of February, 2009, I entered in studio to record the first Umbilichaos’ record. As sound engineer, I chose Bernardo Pacheco, who played and recorded two of my favorite bands, Are You God and Elma.
We spent around 25 hours in studio, in a weekend. In the first day, I would turn knobs in amps, as he would be recording the drum-machine parts. In the second day, it was more than 12 hours recording guitars. There was a second 1 or 2 hour session, to do vocals.
In the next months, Bernardo had some personal turmoil that kept him away from the project, and we decided that another person would finish the recorded material. Work with other people to finish it, made me unsatisfied: the result was anhorrrible amount of ambience effects in the mix, and compression plug ins that killed the dynamics of the record. Facts that I couldn’t stand against due my total lack of experience at the time. Plus, the amateurism to edit the cover art, and to manufacture the CDs. My Ultramega OK.
Those three songs that formed Entrails were spartanly rehearsed, and sharpened in more than a dozen gigs in São Paulo, in the prior semester. I still believe and feel the power of each riff and arrangement as I felt almost 15 years ago. All that I intended to Umbilichaos, were already there in the first work.
Anchor were never played live in its final form. Speculum Phase and Premature Enlightenment, just twice. It coincided with a semi-dormant state to live performances, due the difficulties to attract significant interest to 20 minutes mammoth of songs that crossed many genres borders (what has changed?). Nonetheless, these compositions would continue to have my appreciation and be played in rehearsals, while other records would be released.
In 2019, a specially active year, mainly for playing live almost every night in two tours, my perception about my work changed. The drone aspect wasn’t working for me anymore, I had no interest in 32 repetitions of a riff in front of an atonished audience.
A conscious move, informed by the first works of Earth, Swans, and Meshuggah’s Catch 33, the goal was hypnosis through repetition of parts that would work as independent songs. Jesu’s Heartache and OM’s Variantions on a Theme were structurally defining here too. But, I got tired and were more interested in move forward through the riffs, before we (me and you, half dozen) could get used to what we were listening.
Along with that, the single Vast Horizon, Narrow Paths Pt 01, collaboration with Mike Radice, was released in March 2020. In this work, I had changed my audio gear, and had some meager knowledge accumulated by previous recordings. This gave the work a sound quality superior to anything that had been released before. The guitar sound in this release was an improvement of what I did in the album Belong to Nothing, collaboration with Kovtun. This work had positive feedback from Rennie Resmini, singer of the band Starkweather, an influence, which motivated me to explore more that sound.
With improved structure, Vast Horizon... set ground zero for the sound of all subsequent works. Along with the new emotional direction to the previous compositions, it led to the decision to re-record and update all Umbilichaos' work, with the exception of the collaborative albums. The project takes its name from Redux, a nod to Apocalypse Now and Amebix, will span the first 8 albums and singles, and will run for the next decade. This is intended to nullify the original versions too. And nothing better than starting with this record that went so out of the planned, that is Entrails. I hope the dozen of you reading this enjoy it as much as I do.
Anna C. Chaos