← more from
Observant Records

Restraint

by Eponymous 4

/

  • Digital Album
    Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    Purchasable with gift card

      $7 USD  or more

    You own this

     

  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    Includes unlimited streaming of Restraint via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 3 days
    9 remaining

      $10 USD or more 

    You own this  

     

  • Full Digital Discography Full Digital Discography

    20
    releases

    Get all 20 Eponymous 4 releases available on Bandcamp and save 35%.

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of 世界の終わり (Sekai no Owari), Timekeeper, August, Travis, Retrograde Songs, 今 (Ima), No Exit, Epiphany, and 12 more. , and , .

    Excludes subscriber-only releases.

    Purchasable with gift card

      $52.65 USD or more (35% OFF)

    You own this

     

1.
03:21
buy track
2.
03:51
buy track
3.
01:41
buy track
4.
03:06
buy track
5.
03:55
buy track
6.
03:19
buy track
7.
03:48
buy track
8.
02:57
buy track
9.
04:46
buy track
10.
04:46
buy track
11.
01:38
buy track
12.
03:31
buy track
13.
05:28
buy track

about

Eponymous 4's Greg Bueno gave himself a challenge: Could an entire album be written avoiding common chord progressions?

He started working on that challenge in 1999, jotting down ideas for songs that tried to stay away from the usual I-IV-V chords of most pop music. That means bass lines moving in half steps and thirds, songs using nothing but major chords, melodies vacillating between sharps, flats and naturals. The style of the song didn't matter.

The resulting music took some pretty drastic turns. One track called to mind '80s new wave ("Melt"), another college rock ("Emancipation"). One song suits a jazz trio ("Strange Arrangment"), another an orchestra ("Reticence"). There's a piano ballad with quiet explosions in the distance ("Speechless"), and two sides of a correspondence never gets sent ("Letter I", "Letter II").

These songs came together as "Restraint", the second full-length album by Eponymous 4, written and initially recorded in 2005 immediately after "Imprint". It's an ambitious album spanning numerous and sometimes conflicting styles, held together by the idea that pop music could afford to be just a little strange.

Greg isn't much of a guitar player, but "Restraint" marked a pivot in his writing that moved away from the keyboard. His first demos for the album faked the guitar parts with sample libraries. Those demos were released as the third volume in the Work Release Program. Amplification modeling software, however, allowed Greg to hear the songs closer to what he imagined.

So he endeavored to replace those fake guitar parts with real ones — as much as he was capable — and rechristened the Work Release Program as the Ex Machina Series.

This reissue of "Restraint" are the songs how Greg intended them to sound.

credits

released October 8, 2013

All music and lyrics by Greg Bueno
Published by Shinkyoku Advocacy (ASCAP)

Eponymous 4:
Greg Bueno » keyboards, guitars, bass, vocals

Produced and engineered by Greg Bueno

Recorded in the Closet, 2005-2011, Austin, TX and the Closet West 2013, Seattle, WA

Photography by Lauren Tarbel
Cover design by Greg Bueno

Thanks to Lauren Tarbel and James R. McGirr

license

all rights reserved

tags

about

Eponymous 4 image

Eponymous 4 Seattle, Washington

Eponymous 4 is the home studio project of Greg Bueno, a lapsed musician and web developer or a lapsed developer and web musician. It depends.

contact / help

Contact Eponymous 4

Streaming and
Download help

Report this album or account