Album Notes

The Sprinkle Genies had fallen on hard times. Almost a decade into their career they had conquered all of NYC’s major clubs, which included some sell-out shows at such venues as the famed Mercury Lounge and frequent appearances at the seminal Sidewalk Café. They received numerous invitations to play downtown art space/loft parties from NYC's activist underground, attended by a healthy cross-section of avant-garde street artists and musicians, bike-messenger politicos, crusty punk squatters, and neo-hippies straight from the sidewalks of “Camp Avenue A.” There were even invitations to chic gatherings of the genteel Williamsburgh Trust-Fund elite. They'd tracked in all the studios most favored in the music scene: Baby Monster, Waterworks, Bat Cave and Tu Casa, to name a few. They received regular airplay on such uber-hip stations as KFJC in Los Altos, CA, and WFMU in East Orange, NJ. But now their label, I Know This Guy Records, who had just signed a large distribution deal with Olive Juice Music, had upped the ante, pressuring the Genies to produce a “masterpiece” that would funnel money into the new partnership. The journey the band would take in order to achieve their label’s weighty aspirations would ultimately result in a collection of songs that exploded onto the scene against the backdrop of the nation’s military crisis and economic unrest, capturing a moment in time in razor-sharp detail. The durability of the “Sprinklemyth” in the whisperings, dreams, and schemes of generations to come was assured. This is the story of how this curious, insightful, and incendiary collection of aural snapshots came into being. Through spring to early summer of 2006 the group traveled the East Coast of the “United” States (in name only, as political tensions with the war in Iraq were tearing the nation apart) in search of a recording space with the correct vibe--from back rooms of dusty country dives in New Hampshire, to posh living rooms in Matawan, NJ, and rustic barns in Ithaca, NY--but to no avail. One day, outside their rehearsal space in NYC’s old-school Lower East Side, the band ran into Jason Stutts (guitarist for The Cutouts), who casually mentioned some tracks he'd been laying down in his own basement apartment in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. Soon Jason convinced the band to come by his place to record a rehearsal "just for kicks". Upon arriving at the studio in late July of 2006, the group discovered that the dank, subterranean space had no windows or AC. (In the treeless Urban jungle that is the NYC Metropolitan Area, temperatures can climb to 120 degrees in the summer.) But the band was determined to try it out and agreed to go on with the rehearsal. The heat inside the room was so intense that after the first track was recorded, everyone raced outside to breathe some fresh air and suck down some ice cold emergency doses of the band’s most beloved beer, Natural (“Natty”) Lite. Once their heat-stroke had abated, they returned to the studio to check the playback. The magic was undeniable. Now, with a place to set up camp, work on the new Sprinkle Genies album could begin. Word of the project spread like wild fire in NYC’s underground scene. In September, although later the band’s management was unable to confirm the source of the leak, a rough mix of a song (working title “Pepe”) suddenly turned up in an animated piece posted to YouTube. This “video” received 10,000 hits a day by word of mouth alone. Soon after, the band passed several rough mixes to Steve Espinola, long-time Genie compatriot and an influential NYC singer/songwriter/piano player well known for his Nicky Hopkin’s-flavored songs of love and death-defying personal confessions. (He is also known for his close association with the legendary pianist/songster Biff Rose and recent work with the once popular Moldy Peaches.) Steve joined the Genies for a casual jam in the studio at the end of November and ended up overdubbing a keyboard track to “Pepe.” Aft