In the time since
Our Blood was released and after a few long tours,
Richard Buckner
attempted to work on writing short stories but found himself drawn back
into the music room. The evidence of his time in the writer’s chair is
clear in the dense, lovely prose of
Surrounded. The album’s liner notes include text-embedded lyrics, a technique Buckner employed on his earlier albums
Since and
Impasse, but this marks the first time he used the songs’ extended story to construct the album’s overall view and track sequence.Throwing out the “tricks and trades” of his previous efforts, Buckner
hunkered down at home and chose a few unfamiliar pieces of gear—a Suzuki
QChord electronic autoharp and an Electro-Harmonix POG2 pedal—to create
basic tracks and open up more sonic possibilities. “The best outcomes
happen sometimes when I’m unfamiliar with the tool that I’m using
(imagine MacGyver wearing a dog cone).”
The now-infamous process of recording and re-recording
Our Blood
left him a bit gun-shy, so this time, Buckner decided to get each song
out of his house as soon as it was finished to avoid the contamination
of over-thinking. After hearing an interview with famed producer Tucker
Martine, Buckner found a destination for his songs: “Tucker understood
the urgency in me to tie the whole thing up before I fell into the same
trap that I’d had finishing
Our Blood and was generous enough to move other commitments around to fit
Surrounded in. When I had finally finished
Our Blood, I felt like I’d just survived a stroll through a mine field. With
Surrounded, it was more of a sensation that I’d successfully organized a messy desk.”
