Andy Fortier: Electric Bass        Derek Oringer: Drums

Strappheit started in the Fall of 2002.

Recorded in February/March of 2004, mixed in the Spring/Summer of 2004.

To hear more of Derek's drumming (& guitar playing), check out Bozart and El Cid .

Two more songs to come... (soon).

After El Cid had disbanded and after I was tired of playing my solo bass stuff in my bedroom, I decided it was time to try the bass and drums duo thing again.  Fortunately, after some coaxing, I was able to recruit Derek to help me flush these ideas out.  However, I knew that I didn't want to repeat what Mr. Roboto did.  Instead, I wanted to take things much further – faster, harder, and broader, etc.  We played together for about a year or so, but it never made it out of the basement.  However, we were able to experiment with things quite a bit and this is when I really got into altered tunings.  I had experimented with them before, but in fact all of the songs that we did were written with my bass tuned in either alternating 5th's and 4th's, or straight 5th's.  This allowed me to extend the range of the music and fill up more sonic space - plus it just sounded different, which is always good.  For the first time in a long while the fret board looked bank to me, which is an important thing to force your self to do every now and then, I believe.  I was quite pleased with what we accomplished and really this music is the closest I have come to being happy with a duo arrangement.

This music is much heavier than Mr. Roboto and certainly more up-tempo and more angular, but of course there are no vocals.  In a lot of ways, I was trying to take what I had learned from playing in El Cid and apply it as best I could into a bass and drums duo format.  Thanks to Derek's great drumming and the altered tunings, I think a lot of this music rocks just enough while adding just enough melodic content and emotion to keep it human.