Free Beat by PEA slam dunk appreciation society (no-net)

"We just kicked music's ass" - Bryan Fultz (after playing percussion here, in his first PEA session). Bryan would go on to become an amazing abstract drummer in the Vista PEA years and play at all of our most important shows.

This one is entirely unique in our discography. While a few sessions incorporated drum machines, and most outside of Vista had decent synthesizers, this is the only one that places them and electronic "normal music" elements at the forefront. That said, it really only resembles normal music to someone PEA-pilled such as myself, but it clearly stands apart from our usual form of aggression. The horns take a more background role, and never pile up into the layered reed / brass cacophony we eventually we so intentionally drowned in.

This album is also the only PEA use of Brian E's recently purchased 80s MIDI axe (synth guitar with weird rubber strings). I remember him playing around using it to play smooth jazz sax samples before we started recording; unfortunately they didn't make it to the actual session.

One of my favorite notes of this album is the realization a year later, when Brian E explained to me that the slap-bass style riff that comes out of nowhere at one point was inspired by the VERY early PEA (lost 2006 sessions) when I was primarily a (ugh) vocalist and sound effects guy (using the crappiest handheld digitial voice recorder ever), and one of the dozen sounds I'd constantly play was a sample of the music from NBA jam. The sample would constantly intrude on our then psych-rock-guitar-heavy sound. FREE BEAT was a couple of years later, and while we had evolved considerably, that bit lived on.

- Jerry (remembering perhaps innacurately from 2022)

Predictable music from a predictable universe