Sir Tad - Generation Joint

Released: August 4

Spanning twenty-two tracks, Generation Joint is a sprawling exploration of sound and the way in which they connect to our own individual memories as well as ones that we share with others close to us. The whole album is built from the various pieces of media that Tynan (under his moniker of Sir Tad) had collected from the early 2000s up to the present day. The pieces were arranged together into the form we hear them and recorded to a Tascam four-track recorder. The result feels much like the audio equivalent of a scrapbook or a quilt. Seemingly random pieces are connected together in a pastiche on a canvas of light static. It’s an assortment of fuzzy memories that are decontextualized from their original occurrences and put together in a treat of consciousness manner, much like the random recall our brains seem to engage in when otherwise idle. It’s quite a beautiful approach. 

Now, these aren’t just pieces of voice or other noise. There is a tonal element to all of it that changes from track to track, but this musical piece feels like a backdrop for all the other stuff that’s going on. The music ranges from simply chord loops to more involved and complex multi-instrument stuff. A lot of it feels kind of playful though, like on “Don’t Get the Wires Wet.” There’s a lot of vocal stuff pulled from what sounds like a home video recorded with an old camcorder. But the music behind it feels whimsical and playful, as if it was pulled from an obscure and low budget children’s cartoon. Other tracks feel like things might have been pulled from classical music or maybe just background music from an old advertisement. It makes for a rather confusing listen, but one that is dynamic and difficult to predict, giving a very free association kind of vibe. I particularly enjoyed this variety in tones as we are taken on a rather instructed trip down someone else’s memory lane.