Deftones’ Stephen Carpenter Came Up with the Concept for Periphery’s New Clear Album
Periphery’s forthcoming “experimental recording” Clear features six songs, each of which were penned solely by one of the band’s six members. Pretty neat idea, eh? Turns out that the inspiration came from Deftones guitarist Stephen Carpenter when the two bands toured together earlier this year. Periphery’s Jake Bowen shared the story behind Clear in a recent interview with Gear Gods:
So what about [Clear’s intro track] “Overture?” Did one person mastermind all that or did you collaborate on that?
That’s actually interesting. I should use this chance to tell you that this idea isn’t our own. This idea was given to us by Steph from the Deftones. He has all these ideas and when we were on tour with him, he was telling us some of these ideas. He said “I would really like for you guys to use some of these things that I’ve been sitting on because I’m not going to be able to do them with my own band because it’s just not the right band for doing that kind of stuff. Here’s the idea that I had.” Basically the exact idea that he gave us is the one that we went with. We tweaked it so that it would fit our band a little bit better. He said “you should take one idea, give it to each of the members and have them write a song on that one idea”. Misha had written this whole piano thing. Before it was named anything, it was just called “Steinway Demo”. When we were discussing what concept or what melodic theme that we were going to use for the record, we all sent out different ideas and stuff. We all agreed that Misha’s Steinway Piano demo should be it. When I went over to record my song, I think it was right after we finished the 1st incarnation of it, I’m like “dude, we got to tweak the piano thing so it’s an intro track that establishes everything”. So we opened it up and started talking about it and where drums should be. We sent a preliminary version out with some drums and 8 string guitar. Spencer came back with some ideas on how to flush out the instrumentals a bit more. Misha recorded all the instruments for it, and I sat in the chair and pointed fingers at it and stuff. That came together pretty quickly at Misha’s house.
Bowen also reveals that “Overture” was written before the other songs, not after; fascinating! He also talks more about the recording of Clear, his own recording gear, the Axe FX, guitar pickups, the band’s live mix and more: music dorkery galore! Check out the full interview at Gear Gods.
Unrelated, here’s an absolutely bonkers cover of Periphery’s “Make Total Destroy” on piano and drums:
