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Security State

by J. Matthew Ward

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1.
Locked In 06:19
2.
Oldfield 05:45
3.
She Has All My Dreams 03:41
4.
Main Street Superheroes 04:52
5.
Ghost 04:33
6.
Key 05:44
7.
Fully Automatic 05:34
8.
Midnight in Babylon 07:03
9.
Machine 04:53
10.
There Are So Many Hands to Hold Me Down 06:37

about

In the spring of 2020, COVID-19 disrupted everything in America. The market nosedived, hospitals ached with in-patient volume, stores shuttered. Fear seethed into eerie empty streets. I found my own personal life disrupted as well. My university closed, I moved several hundred miles to a new city and hunkered down. The music projects I was working on with a friend slowed to a standstill. I sat around in my new apartment with an acoustic guitar, writing down stray melodies and impressions of my shaking nation. And then there was more. Re-open America riots demonstrated the riven heart of America even in the midst of a deadly viral outbreak. A Minnesota cop killed George Floyd in the street and a human outpouring of rage and reform unmatched in global history flooded the world. Meanwhile, government officials persisted in habits of bureaucratic incompetence, neglect, and contempt. Protests in Portland spilled over into weeks of shocking police brutality. Unmarked vans swept citizens up from the streets. In a census year, an election year, and a pandemic year, America blazed in a way that it had not since 1968.
American pathos and plague energized this record. Security State was born in tandem with the waves of outbreak, anguish, and violence that swept the nation throughout the year. With every new video that surfaced and every fresh headline that cluttered my phone screen, I created more music. The record presents a broad canvas of America’s condition in 2020 as it reckons with a deadly virus, a national system strained to the breaking, and its own deeply divided culture. I started out with bare acoustic tracks on Ableton Live and slowly soaked them with my own anxiety and snippets of the outside world. Slowly, the record bloomed into something I had never imagined in the beginning. As a collection of acoustic tracks mingled with post-industrial noise, the record is a mosaic of instrumentation, vocals, and recorded sounds of a nation in turmoil. Perhaps like American dreams themselves, the record has a shimmering, multi-layered beginning but a dark ambient finale. It is quiet and quarrelsome testimony rock.

credits

released October 23, 2020

Security State
(1) “Locked In”
Music and lyrics—J. Matthew Ward
Guitars, vocals + synth—J. Matthew Ward
Live drums—Alec Martin
Programmed drums + choir—Reid Knighten

(2) “Oldfield”
Music and lyrics—J. Matthew Ward
Guitars + vocals—J. Matthew Ward
Very good live drums—Alec Martin

(3) “She Has All My Dreams”
Music and lyrics—Noelle Avenmarg Theis and J. Matthew Ward
Guitars + vocals—J. Matthew Ward
Trumpet—Noelle Avenmarg Theis

(4) “Main Street Superheroes”
Music and lyrics—J. Matthew Ward
Guitars, vocals + organ—J. Matthew Ward

(5) “Ghost”
Music and lyrics—J. Matthew Ward
Guitars + vocals—J. Matthew Ward
Programmed drums, synth + ambience—Reid Knighten

(6) “Key”
Music and lyrics—J. Matthew Ward
Guitar + vocals—J. Matthew Ward

(7) “Fully Automatic”
Music and lyrics—J. Matthew Ward
Guitars, vocals + organ—J. Matthew Ward
Programmed drums—Reid Knighten

(8) “Midnight in Babylon”
Music and lyrics—J. Matthew Ward
Guitars + vocals—J. Matthew Ward
Incredibly good live drums—Alec Martin

(9) “Machine”
Music and lyrics—J. Matthew Ward
Guitars + vocals—J. Matthew Ward
Programmed drums, synth + ambience—Reid Knighten

(10) “There Are So Many Hands to Hold Me Down”
Composed by J. Matthew Ward
Arranged by Reid Knighten
Strings, synth, ambience + augmented in every way—Reid Knighten

Produced by Reid Knighten and J. Matthew Ward
Engineered, mixed, and mastered by Reid Knighten
Recorded and mixed from May-October 2020
Cover photo: J. Matthew Ward

This record would never reach the world without Reid Knighten. His vision, his skills, and his labor are invaluable. Special thanks also to James Wilkey for repeated listens and sage advice. Special thanks as well to Noelle for allowing me to turn one of her acoustic song snippets into a song for this record and for contributing great lyric lines and trumpet parts. Many thanks to Alec for taking time out of his busy schedule to both excellently drum and figure out how to send in .wav files for the record from several hundred miles away. Thank you to my partner in life Sarah Orler for contributing great lyric ideas and letting me record isolated vocals in her walk-in closet. I did not scuff your shoes or wrinkle your shirts.

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J. Matthew Ward St. Louis, Missouri

Guitarist/songwriter living in St. Louis. Live that alternative sound.

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