Hello, my sweet summer children!
And WELCOME!
This album is, frankly, my baby. 3 years in the making, Take 23 is a collection of my original songs and spoken-word poetry with one set goal: to achieve an album's worth of recordings (in this case, 11 tracks + an intro) without splicing the best of multiple takes together (my usual practice, and industry standard).
While every song and poem you will hear has taken multiple (sometimes up to 30) takes to get right, each track is its own single-take masterpiece.
This album is UNPOLISHED. I am poor and gay, so this entire album (minus the final song, whose audio was extracted from a camera recording) was recorded in an empty church hall on an $80 microphone, with basically no audio editing/enhancing at all.
The echoes you will hear were recorded on-site, live, because of my location.
Sounds from nature (thunder, rain, cars passing by, etc.) were also all recorded on-site.
Do NOT listen with the expectation of perfection.
DO listen with the expectation of sincerity, vulnerability, and some bangin' original storytelling.
And thank you, everyone - for being a part of my story.
~ Salem <3
Take 23: The Gay, Unpolished DIGITAL ALBUM can now be purchased on iTunes!
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