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Observant Records

Restraint

by Eponymous 4

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Courtney Rosenthal
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1.
The One to Make You Whole 03:21
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2.
Without Nothing 03:51
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3.
Letter I 01:41
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4.
Release 03:06
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5.
All the Times I Remember 03:55
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6.
On Paper 03:19
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7.
Speechless 03:48
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8.
Melt 02:57
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9.
Emancipation 04:46
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10.
Reticence 04:46
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11.
Letter II 01:38
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12.
Strange Arrangement 03:31
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13.
Restraint 05:28
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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

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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.

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