When it comes to music, as is the case with most forms of art, some of the most rewarding creations occur at the least expected times. If there are no restrictions, pressures, or expectations, a musician can sometimes produce their most artistic work. Dave and I were friends for many years because of our interest in music. Between the years 1991 and 1996, there were several occasions when we got together and jammed just to have fun. Typically, as I recall, it would be a mid-week evening starting around 9 PM. We would turn on the drum machine and jam over a drum sequence previously programmed for some older and totally unrelated piece of music. Therefore, we essentially spent no time concerning ourselves with programming drums and ultimately the drum machine's tempo and rhythm would set the mood. Fortunately, Dave always wanted to record the jams, so we usually turned on the Tascam 4-track cassette machine, or sometimes we would use a Tascam 2-track DAT if we didn't have spare cassettes available. We'd spend a few minutes to get a decent mix between guitar, bass, and drums. Then, without any preparation at all, we would find ourselves once again in a zone of focused creativity.

As it is in any free form jam, it would take a few minutes to lock into some ideas. Dave was very intuitive at setting up cool grooves on the bass and maintaining a lot of harmonic ambiguity. He instinctively knew when and when not to modulate which made it easy for me to explore and create musical ideas. We would feed off of each other's ideas in a carefree way. Sometimes an apparent mistake would trigger us to lead into a completely different musical direction, but somehow we usually managed to tie it all together. My favorite cuts that expose this angular creativeness are "Desert Night Ride" and "Moon Breeze".

We'd jam until the recording tape ran out, then play back and listen to ourselves. At that point, we could usually isolate the "sweet spot", those few minutes where we really seemed to be musically connected. Now it would get even more fun. The remaining two tracks were used to record either synthesized keyboards or additional guitars. True to the "Sponge" method, very little time was used to select sounds or come up with melodies used to fill in the "sweet spot". We would essentially have a nearly complete piece of music by the end of the night, when three hours earlier we had no idea what our "Sponge" creation would be.

By the way, for those that are wondering, Dave nicknamed our very first jams "Sponge", and the name has been with us ever since. And.... by the way, that was before the other Sponge band came out and made a name for themselves. I want to point out that we never intended to make a CD, but after reviewing all the music that we accumulated over the years it made sense to document our efforts. The chosen pieces represent the best of "Sponge". The great thing that I've noticed more and more about this collection of musicalpieces is... that what would be considered mistakes or marginal recording quality to some, is proving to be a beautiful element that enhances the entire "Sponge" musical journey. All things considered, the "Sponge" CD reveals a unigue balance of raw musical creativity, communication, and intuition that I'm excited to share with you... the listener.

Thanks for checking out "Sponge"!

Audric Jankauskas

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[The entire SPONGE collection of tunes is available for free from SoundClick.com]