Conducted by:	Undercraft (e-mail)
Published:	01.09.2008
Band profile:	Mar De Grises
Album info:	Draining The Waterheart

Disc I
01. Sleep Just One Dawn
02. Kilómetros De Nada
03. Deep-Seeded Hope Avant-Garde
04. Fantasía
05. Wooden Woodpecker Conversion
06. One Possessed
07. Summon Me
08. Liturgia; Convite Y Prefiguración / Purgatorio / Diálogo Infierno

Disc II [Unconscious Passenger]
01. Unconscious Passenger

01 Sleep Just One Dawn

I remember that our main composer (R. Morris) did not want to include this song on the album? Shit! It is maybe one of my favourite songs.
This song presents a lot of elements that characterize our sound and musical purpose. From the noise I can find myself, concentrate energy, develop a conflict, an aggressive moment? It flows and now I can find myself again? Surely you can discover the album story from this song. It suggests an intense moment; it begins with some kind of flashback and ends like some kind of sonorous film, with rare elements... A continuous pulse, a little melody or illusion vanishes or gets swallowed by the noise? You can feel confused and miserable, but surely you can rest here, have calm.
It is the fastest song of the album and clearly does not sound like the typical doom composition. Normally each instrument has its own line, and sometimes the musical arrangements are subtly complex. That is the idea; those touches are at the service of the composition, and not vice versa; we just want to let things happen in order to give more importance to the story than to what each instrument is playing.


02 Kilómetros de Nada

I love the name of this song. "Kilómetros de nada" means "Kilometers of nothing". In our country (Chile) we have a very varied climate and geography, including the most arid desert of the world. This song refers to that, to the experience of living and travelling through this desert. You are constantly watching and feeling the same, and its immense and overwhelming silence sometimes suggests that the wind is its only friend. You can either choose to be part of it, or you can easily end up disturbed. Our new singer (Juan), and the past singer too (Marcelo) lived in cities in or near the desert, so they became strongly influenced by its sceneries. The main idea of this song in terms of composition is Juan's, even before entering the band. Then we just added our personal elements and touches to it. Nevertheless, I think there are many elements that make this song more similar to our old material in comparison to other songs on the album


03 Deep-Seeded Hope Avant-Garde

This is my favourite song of the album, and maybe one of my favourite songs of the band. It was composed mainly by Rodrigo M. and we added our own musical arrangements then. We started to mix many new ideas in the beginning, but I think what makes this song special is that the structures and the emotional propositions have a good balance, perceiving the song as some kind of story. Each song section suggests the next step easily and naturally, but at the same time trying to escape from clichés. The song begins with clean harmonics of the guitars along with a subtle poli-rhythm with the drums, (there are many arrangements like that one, but sometimes that complexity is not perceived easily, and that is the idea). Later, some kind of main melody is developed by the guitars and keys, supported by a classic metal accompanying. The structure is broken first with an ambient section and then again with a crescendo.
We worked on the singing with the purpose of contributing to the dynamic of the song, something not too monotonous or standardized, with the expressiveness that every phrase deserves.
When we started rehearsing this song, we began to feel more secure about the new material and the directions that it would take.


04 Fantasía

Composed by Rodrigo M. One day we began playing randomly in the rehearsal room, and he was recording with his pendrive mic. The result was a track with some piano noises and our voices that sounded interesting playing it over and over. Finally he added some more elements to make it sound better. I think that this track suggests a transition within the album story, a strange moment, maybe intriguing, preparing the next chapter.
Rodrigo M. has a lot of stuff like this. Some months before recording the album, we were thinking on including more stuff like this, we love it? trying to discover new soundscapes, experiencing with our instruments, effects, and computers, searching for new textures and colours for our music. If you remember the a song form our past album called "self portrait", you will see that this one is maybe some kind of new version, but composed according to the noise and chaos of the story of the new album itself.


05 Wooden Woodpecker Conversion

It is the song that demanded most experimentation in its composition. Even the name can sound a bit bizarre; it is a prophetic metaphor about self destruction, unconscious self destruction. An entity that becomes what he feeds with. His natural needs grow, and he looses control of them, so he can't make difference on what he really needs or you just want. Finally he becomes what he destroyed unconsciously, when he had the natural need of feeding with it. I think the use of sequences and drum machine give a special aura to the song. In many sections, we tried different ways in our usual way of playing, that are not usual, I think, also in the genre.
In general, this song presents a rare mix of elements, however, many people have told us this is their favourite track on the album.


06 One Possessed

This is another of Juan's compositions. He also had the main structure of it before entering the band. And we ruined it! haha. We changed and added some details, and in general we gave it a Mar de Grises touch, although I think it is maybe the most direct song in the album. It has a very intimate groove. There is a story that refers to a concrete illusion, to a sincere love. It is the only song that has just clean voices; we even used choirs (something new for us.) The musical story tries to be as emotive as possible on its structure, giving space to more simple and direct piano and melodies arrangements. I think this one reinforces the second part of the album, and it is one of the most emotive and gentle moments of it.


07 Summon Me

This is the oldest song on this new album. It was our first complete composition after the first album, so somehow, it portraits the transition of our music between the two albums. Normally we have some similar arrangements as the ones on this song, splitting the harmony role between the strings and keys, but now this worked a little more like a multi-melodic action. We were dealing with a new kind of song structure, breaking what we used to considerate as the natural atmosphere of the song. First, some keys/guitars textures take place, before one second of calm, or one second to depart and contemplate the core from far away, to then re-appear between several riffs, maybe in the most intense moment of the song, when just guitars scream with bizarre chords; it is a tense moment that flows gradually in form of redemption back to the main melody again, plus some new things. Finally, guitar tapings mixing within a chaotic metric are swallowed by a noise, suggesting some kind of signal about the chaos present in the main concept of the album, and connecting this song to the most eclectic moment of the album.


08 Liturgia; Convite y Prefiguración/Purgatorio/Diálogo Infierno

It was the last song composed for the album. It has a strong story, inspired in the poetry of Eduardo Anguita, making emphasis on the memory of Vicente Huidobro, to whom this liturgia is dedicated (liturgia, means "mass".) Vicente Huidobro is one of the most important and innovative poets of the history of Chile and the world. He created a worldwide poetry movement called "Creationism", around 1914, on the "isms" era. Eduardo Anguita is another important, more contemporary Chilean poet, who gave tribute to Huidobro in some ways.
In a sombre and sometimes decadent way, we try to touch the memory of these two inspiring Chilean artists.
In my opinion, easy is the most oppressive song, with a lot of classic element of the funeral doom and doom death metal, looow tempo, aggressive grunts, always mixed with our personal touch, splitting the string harmony roles, some things for the metric and rhythms, colours and textures.


Bonus CD: Unconcious Passenger

The idea of this extra material was born in our record label. The truth is that we have tons of material that we have never edited. But the idea was to give something really special and different to our fans, more than a couple of second-hand songs.
This is how Unconscious Passenger was born. It is a conceptual and complementary element to Draining the Waterheart that invites to a sonorous trip that has elements related to Ambient and Noise, plus many other totally new elements, but never loosing the horizon and essence of our music in terms of musical story-telling.
This track portraits our need of seeking deeper tonic arrangements, as well as tearing down certain stylistic and formal barriers, in order to have a balanced complement to the main disc. We didn't want to propose songs in the same vein; we wanted to invite the listener to a different experience and enlarge the borders of our music.