Mike adds:
This Bandcamp release is the digital equivalent to the original 1999 Nonkertompf special edition. That very limited issue (500 copies, as I recall) came packaged with a second CD, called Nonkertalk.
Nonkertompf is a 73-minute album, containing 35 instrumental pieces featuring me playing all the instruments. It was the first album released by Exowax Recordings, soon after Scott Chatfield and I formed the label in 1999, and was the result of Scott asking me if I harbored any long-held dreams about albums I’d always wanted to make. I instantly thought back to an album I’d first envisioned at age 12 – all instrumental, me on all instruments, and very eccentric. I was already into weird progressive music at that age, and I knew the album would reflect that love.
I also knew that I wanted to call it Nonkertompf, which was just a made-up word, signifying nothing, but somehow it captured the feeling of the music I wanted on this album. I even had the basic cover design (black & white close-up portrait, only part of the head showing) figured out when I was 12. So I’d carried the whole vibe of this album, musically and visually, around with me for about a quarter-century by the time Scott asked me about my “dream album.”
Nonkertalk is primarily occupied by an interview between me and Scott Chatfield about the album. Scott takes me on a deep dive into each of the 35 pieces, and given that we’d just finished making the album when we did the interview, all the details were very fresh in our minds, so this is as thorough a dissection of Nonkertompf as you could get. Dividing up the interview segments are pieces of music from the sessions that didn’t make the album proper, and appearing underneath the dialogue are numerous stripped-down mixes from the multitracks.
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