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I don’t really remember the exact date i started to make this album. I guess it was around mid 2011 when i started to come out with song ideas on the acoustic guitar then recorded them on to my phone. They were just short intros and parts for songs without any words, i work on the words together as each songs progressed.

Again i recorded the album mainly on my bedroom on my apartement in South Jakarta like the two previous albums. Some other process like mixing, basic mastering and string track-ings i did at the office or out of town while doing gigs. I still did everything on Garageband, and now with the help of Native Instruments Komplete 7 for all the instruments beside the acoustic guitars.

There are no interesting nor exciting stories on the recording process. In fact i got pretty bored and tired with the whole process. I had to wait until everyone asleep to record anything. I had to stop recording every time loud motorcycles passed by, even though i was at the 14th floor, my condenser mic will still catch them. I had to shut the door and windows, then to make things worst, i had to turn off the air con because i’ll capture the noise, it was like recording an album in the sauna. Some of my old crappy recording gears started giving me problems. And then there were times when i was too tired to work on it and went to bed instead. It was like lets record this frikkin’ album then i can get all the sleep i want, haha. Then why do i still record things on the bedroom? because its convenient, right beside my wife and daughter were, i can do it anytime, i can be there as long (or as short) as i want, and, its free.

So i hope i can do it differently somehow on the next albums, at least new recording gears…expensive ones…yeah.

Right, so i guess the whole process took a little over a year and it went by fast, so boring that i don’t remember any of it 😀

So why do i call the album “How To Stop Time”? – I wrote this album at times in my life where i think there’s just too many things going on, at night i often wish i knew how to stop time just to have a little rest from the world. But there were also times of joy that were going to fast that i also wish knew how to stop time from running all the time.

Now, moving on to ‘behind the songs’ shall we? :

1. Tokyo Lights Fade Away.
I played the guitar part of this song over and over again while doing 10-day tour in Japan, September 2011, not knowing what’s the song going to turn out about. This song portrays my feelings toward the Japan trip.

2. Mother
When i first got the guitar part, words were just flowing from i don’t know where, as if i was told to write this song. The song is about a child who misses his/her mother who already passed away. My mom is still here, i tried to hold tears when i first tried to sing the song, couldn’t help thinking when one day my mom will left us.

3. Place I’ll Never Be
Nothing very special about this one, one of the songs that came out late. Just found this interesting guitar part on the guitar and turned it into a song, words for this song didn’t take too long to make.

4. Sudden Wonderland
It was the same (guitar) alternate-tuning as ‘Place I’ll Never Be’, so it was just another song waiting to happen under this particular tuning.

5. Rainbows & Starlight
The last song to be on the record, as it wasn’t there to begin with. Just came out with the idea, it’s a simple song and a simple guitar works, no fuss, it sounded fun, so it was in.

6. World Without A Sky
Now with Twitter, if loved one dies (even though we don’t know them) we will hear the news. Checking the family’s timeline, sometimes we even get to see the person’s last days, being sick, on hospitals etc. And then we will read the feeling of sadness being tweeted by close families, we can’t help not to also feel the sadness. We also lost one of our co-worker not a long time ago, we were there when she was first hospitalized, a week in coma, received the bad news, and we were there at her funeral too. Not long after that i just had a song idea, a sad one, about a world without a sky.

7. Secrets of the World.
I borrowed 2 verse from the Qur’an for this song, one is about an explosion of a ‘red rose’ that the Hubble telescope found, the other is when God about to set mankind to rule the world, where the angels objected at first. Just for the sake of the song, not preaching about anything what so ever.

8. September
Another simple song i wrote about my tour to Japan, it happened on September 2011, it just came out and asked to be made 🙂

9. Promises
I have no particular feelings toward this song, sometimes you just have to create a song to fill the numbers so that you can make up the whole album, this is one of those songs.

10. You’re in Town
Same as number 9.

11. Words & Stories.
A very simple guitar works that i had. Didn’t know what the song is going to be about, i had my worries, but it turned out okay. I made it as simple as possible to close the journey of ‘How To Stop Time’.

There are other song ideas that didn’t make it to the album, i just couldn’t fine a clear or interesting ideas to put into them even though i’ve recorded the guitar tracks, maybe it’s not their time yet.