Entirely self-produced by artist Ian Marquis, The Solomon Project features highly-textured and atmospheric hard rock songs with vocals that range from whisper-quiet to top-of-your-lungs-loud, all while never losing track of the melody.

11 MP3 Songs in this album (41:57) !
Related styles: ROCK: Modern Rock, ROCK: Adult Alternative Pop/Rock

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Details:
There's only me. I suppose I've always liked to be in control. But there's more to it than that.

I'm walking down the street. It's late. It's cold.

A bit of a lyric comes to me. Clashing consonants - I like that. And the riff. I can hear the chords, but I can't tell you what they are. Mouth out the sounds for me. Will you still remember them when you pick up the guitar in an hour or two?

Will I remember them in ten minutes?

When I sit down to make music, I never know what will happen. Sometimes, the greatest ideas become unfinished songs on my hard drive, while the mediocre ones - the ideas I almost pass by entirely - become something great.

But I never know when an idea will stick. So I try to record everything.

I'm bad at naming files. I'll save my song ideas with unique titles that have absolutely no meaning. Things like "red fingers", "butt sex", and "cheese crackers." Sometimes, my demos have one name, my working files have another, and the final song has yet another name. I have folders of folders, and several copies of each idea - each different in some small way.

I like to pillage. I'll take a bit of feedback I recorded back in 2005, cut it up, reverse it, layer it, and use it in something completely unrelated to what it was originally for. My audio files are my vocabulary. Whenever possible, I reuse them. This makes things even more confusing.

I don't have any training.

I picked up the guitar when I was 18, and I taught myself how to play. Big deal. Everyone does that, right? But everything I do is intuitive to me. No one taught me how to hold a pick, or where to strum, or how to mute. I play by ear - if I like the sound, I stick with it.

I embrace the accidentals. When I'm recording takes for a guitar track, I play a riff until I get it right. But sometimes, I get it wrong. And it works. I've had entire songs come together on account of a track that I dropped into the wrong position in a mix. If something works, it works.

For me, the album version of a song is definitive. It doesn't bother me if I can't play something live the way it sounds on the album. I'll use eight guitar tracks if it sounds good. I'll loop a clip to get the right feel. I use whatever effects I can get my hands on, and whatever gear I have nearby. I'm not a purist.

Why do I make music?

Because music moves me. There are artists whose songs have changed my outlook on life. Recordings that can push and pull me in directions I can't go on my own. Sometimes, I'll play a particular song, a certain moment in a song, over and over again, just to stay a little longer in the place where it takes me. I make music because I want to have that effect on another person.

For more information on the album, you can visit my MySpace page at http://www.myspace.com/jespinmusic. I have a blog there that I update regularly.