The quintet I'm writing for, Dan Oestreicher, Aurora Nealand, Joe Cabral, Doug Garrison, is doing some recording at Dave Pirner's new home studio. It's a bit of parallel guinea pigging; he's trying to get his new studio up and running while we are trying to troubleshoot arrangements with the slightly new sort of syntax I have been writing in.

The conversation turned to whether we are making a record and, it occurred to me that I don't even know what that means anymore. Dave concurred, "What does that mean anymore." We are, nonetheless, still in there recording amidst the building of a new studio. In this time we definitely are make recordings but not records in the old sense. The purpose is clearly different. We are probably moving towards purposelessness or a much more ephemeral, rapidly evaporating type of purpose. Ironically, both Dave and I were at the tail end of whatever that world was; of course, I believe his recording career was somewhat more successful, but in both cases, in those times, there were contracts for making a product, the record.

Now?...how do you even talk about it? We're sitting there talking about making a record (rabbit ears flying everywhere in the air), producer role (more rabbit ears) etc. Dave came to the good conclusion- that now things really are a labor of love; they have to be, or why would we do it?

I'm enjoying it. the guy is a pleasure to work with. I like the "idea" of Dave as a producer. His hearts in it and there's a lot to be excited about; his studio; talented engineer, George; this talented combo messing around with some unusual sounds in a new format with new ears. Creative possibility and outcome looming.

Looking forward to seeing what happens.

Jonathan Freilich Presents