Demo Download: The Nurse EP Demos

An early look at the early version of some new songs

First things fist, I want to thank everyone that signed up to the paid subscriber tier after my letter last Friday. That was real big of you and I’ll never forget it. Once I’m in a more stable situation I’ll be sure to make it up to you. In the meantime, I’d like to make good on my promise of sharing more music with my paying subscribers. Luckily, today I have a timely reason to do so.

This Saturday my friend Sam Fallas-LoManto and I are heading into the studio to record bass & drums for seven new Lamniformes songs. Six of those songs will be on an upcoming EP called Nurse. The seventh track is a secret that I’ll tell you more about at a later date. Once drums and bass are locked in, I’m going to take the songs to some of my guitarist, keyboardist, and percussionist friends to round out the arrangements. Finally, I’ll add my vocals before sending the songs off for mixing and mastering.

Nurse is a sequel, sort of, to an EP I put out back in 2016 called Thresher. Like Thresher, Nurse is named after a type of shark. I want to keep up the convention of naming my EPs after sharks as a way of tying my shorter releases together thematically. I work best when I have a big, top-level concept to build off of. Plus I think it gives the EPs a little more juice than they’d have if they were standalone projects. Think Fucked Up’s Chinese Zodiac cycle, Nine Inch Nail’s on-going “halo” numbering system, etc. In this case the songs aren’t literally about nurse sharks. The songs on Thresher weren’t about thresher sharks either, but they took on the concept of “separating the wheat from the chaff” implied by the shark’s scythe-like tail. Thresher has it’s own story for a different newsletter, but the point is that Nurse uses nurse sharks as a jumping off point in a similar way. These are songs that identify and attempt to heal lingering wounds. In some cases that involves a little blood-letting. In others, simply pointing out the injury is enough.

Today I want to share my original instrumental demos for the Nurse EP. After next weekend the project files will never be the same. Maybe there’s some value in preserving and presenting the earliest versions of these songs. Only time will tell.