Super Paradise by Dicktations

SUPER PARADISE
Written and performed by Dicktations

Brian Thorn – guitars, vocals
Miguel Gallego – guitars, vocals, keyboards
Torsten “Torvalt” Odland – guitars, vocals
Hex Drivanos – drums, percussion

With special guests:
Cat Lopez - vocals on track 3
Madeline Steinberg - monologue on track 7
Anna Corbet - vocals and keyboards on tracks 3,10,13.
Sahin Naqvi - sax on track 2

Produced by Jib “Freak Hands” Ryder and Dan Thorn

Recorded April 2015 – May 2016
At the Indie Lounge, NYC, Chateau Gallego, Waldwick, Gallego Riviera, Edgewater, the Thorn Household, Teaneck, the Drivanos household, Mahwah, the Romero household, Ramsey and BOCA Studios, Somerville MA.

Mixed and mastered at BOCA Studios by Dan Thorn and Dicktations.

Album artwork by Torsten Odland
Album design by Miguel Gallego
Liner note design by Miguel Gallego
Annotated Map by Miguel Gallego

Aesthetic Consultation by Connor Hanwick

❧

We spent just about a year working on Super Paradise, beginning in earnest just before Brian, Torsten, and myself graduated from college last May. The making of this record followed us around through a series of major life changes. I moved about four times throughout the gestation of the record and spent a good six months living in a town called Edgewater, which sits at the base of the George Washington Bridge, just across from Manhattan.

There's something unreal about that place. It's outrageously vertical—a town that tumbles down the Palisades. Its shape is peculiar; narrow and long. It's as wide as two or three blocks and its southern most point runs parallel to the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir in Central Park. The whole waterfront is swallowed by a procession of strip malls and shopping centers. It has a weird jumble of architecture, evincing its successive waves of development the way the growth rings on a tree reveal the bounty of any given year. Traditional houses sit in the shadows of high rise apartments and condo developments. In 1975, a New York Times article described the town as a place where dusk falls an hour before it should, creating a "collective psychic depression" caused by the solar deprivation.

The street I lived on was colonized by wild parrots; they’re still there, and they scream constantly from massive nests which line the trees and electrical poles. Each bird has its own individual compartment, and they huddle together to stay warm in the wintertime. When I told my friends about them, they would never believe me until they saw it for themselves.

I was unemployed that whole summer and spent days at a time without seeing or speaking to anyone. I would drive through Fort Lee on my way to Englewood every week to see a therapist. On my way, I would pass a place called Hiram’s, which was this roadside shack that sold fried hot dogs. Brian and I had made it a project that summer to chart a constellation of our favorite godawful places to eat in the county. Hiram’s assumed a hallowed place alongside Rutt's Hut and White Mana as our favorites.

I spent a lot of time ruminating, that summer, about history. I couldn’t shake the feeling that my future was preordained by my past. I worried about whether or not there was more to a person than what happens to them, what has happened to them, what is happening to them, what will happen to them. If every tense collapsed, would what remains just be a passive accumulation of happenings?

This record is an index of a weird time in our lives. It's a record about coming to terms with the past's inevitable presence in the present, and trying to seek agency in every day life. It’s about trying to answer the question above—feeling the shape of “no” form on the tip of your tongue.

The band started by accident, and I'm happy it did.

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