Skein by Simeon Flick

The Skein EP has been a thorn in Simeon Flick’s side since well before its fall 2017 release.

At the time, it was the “download cluster” Flick needed to make; anachronistic and abrasive in its musical and lyrical mores, it was a direct––if unfocused and passive-aggressive––reaction to Trump’s rise to power, and Flick knew it would have difficulties finding an audience regardless of one’s political affiliation. Strikes one and two, as it is difficult for Flick––or any artist(?)––to slave away on, complete, and then promote what already feels like a critically and commercially doomed endeavor.

What ended up being the last straw for Flick were the technological tribulations with which he was confronted that had nothing to do with him, or the chosen genre and production style. He reconciled the brittle, effects-heavy-vocal mixes with the respective rationales that the former suited the music, and the latter was a self-conscious smokescreen to mitigate ongoing issues with his voice. But he couldn’t stomach the travesty the title track had become.

The song “Skein” was a departure in the sense that the crucial instrument was not the guitar as it predominantly had been, but piano. Flick had composed the keyboard intro and main body at least 17 years prior to Skein’s release, and it had spent the interim floating around with no structural counterweight to bring it back down and anchor it to the earth of a concrete form. The song didn’t even have a proper name until Flick made it the title track on an expedient whim.

Earlier in 2017, Flick had attained a mix with which he was more than satisfied. Then, he foolhardily tried to fix what wasn’t broken. He had seen a video that recommended a pre-mastering level (i.e. the highest you could have it without any limiting before it clipped) of -6 decibels, and his mix of the song was at or around -7, which is louder than that imposed limit, so he turned every instrument on “Skein” down one dB as a countermeasure. The other songs that underwent this change survived with no subsequent hitches or glitches.

Already burgeoning with effects plug-ins and myriad automations, “Skein”s piano track didn’t survive the adjustment. From then on, it wouldn’t play back in its proper rhythm, but occasionally sounded jerky, as if an epileptic had performed it just as a seizure was coming on. No matter what Flick tried thereafter, he couldn’t get the VST piano to play back correctly, couldn’t restore the track to its smoothly flowing former “glory”. To get the recording up to a commercially releaseable standard, he even had to mute the piano in one section and bring the doubling guitar track up in its place because the piano was so janky there as to be untenable.

Was it noticeable to anyone else? Difficult to say, since it is quite probable that few others besides Flick have actually listened to the song, let alone as intently as he has. His dissatisfaction has lingered like a Civil war battlefield ghost nonetheless.

Flick choked back the bile of despairing frustration and eventually released Skein via CD Baby against his better judgment, but he hadn’t yet been able to make sufficient peace with the idea of reissuing it––which, despite the aforementioned quandaries, is nothing to be ashamed of––here on Bandcamp.

Until now.

During one of many 2022 visits to see his mother in Santa Barbara, Flick discovered an older, pre-catastrophe version of “Skein” on her computer; A/B-ing it with the final product belied that some other changes had been made in the interim, but everything important was already in its proper place. More importantly, and to his surprise and elation, the older iteration’s piano track played back perfectly. Flick couldn’t have been happier that he had been less diligent than usual about deleting older mixes from his mother’s iTunes in that moment of rediscovery.

Will this make a difference either way to potential listeners now? Hard to tell; hindsight finds “Demian” perhaps a little too pretentious and niche-y to be universal (it’s basically a Cliff’s Notes summation of Hermann Hesse’s philosophical touchstone of the same name, the original of which one kind of has to have read anyway in order to give all of the references sufficient context), “La Fin Du Monde”, “Skein”, and “Folly” a bit Armageddon-y, and “Worse Before Better” too pragmatic.

But Flick finds himself frequently returning to Skein (yes, he listens to his own music, as he seems to be the only one writing and recording exactly what he wants to hear anymore) for its accessibly innovative directness, its earnestness, and its adrenaline-releasing aggressiveness. And, now that the title track’s “sin” has been redeemed, Flick now feels comfortable enough with Skein as a whole to justify its rerelease here with a rejuvenated sense of pride that he hopes will attract old and new listeners in a way that its initial release didn’t.

Simeon Flick is an independent San Diego-based heritage artist who specializes in Alternative R&B pop-rock music but dabbles in classical guitar on the side. His albums exhibit his prodigious, multi-instrumental musicality and poetic, confrontational, erudite, often humorous lyrics sung through his soulful vintage tenor. He owns and operates Blue Chair Studio in La Mesa, CA.

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