Sigmund Washington - All My Mistakes Recorded
Each tape has been pro-dubbed and comes with liner note booklet, digital download card, and Pax sticker. Limited to 50 copies.
All My Mistakes Recorded is the debut release by Sigmund Washington, a multi instrumentalist and saxophone player. It's a blend of genre bending lo-fi arrangements unlike anything you've ever heard. The album was recorded some 10 years ago on a 4 track cassette recorder. AMMR is a voyage not unlike one you might experience with a modern day Sun Ra at the helm.
NOTE All cassette purchases will allow you free entry to the release party with a live performance by Sigmund Washington and The Lanky Lad Crew**
1Dennis Lynch 2Josh Hey 3Chris Hund
Often I’ll hear a sliver of a track or an album once, sometimes in a haze and through a close friend, and then lose track of it for a while. Sometimes it’ll stick in my head for a few days or weeks, but I’ll be too busy to even realize it. Eventually I remember where I heard it and I’ll go searching again. This is what happened to me with All My Mistakes Recorded.
A good friend some of you probably know personally or at very least by name, Josh Hey, played AMMR a while back when he was visiting the Paxico house. I liked it, but my experience with it was so short that it didn’t have a chance to grow on me like it eventually would. A week later, with Josh back in Philadelphia and Washinton’s unmistakable sax progressions running through my head, I did a quick Google search for something along the lines of “My Mistakes All Recorded” and ended up actually finding AMMR again on a now-defunct .fm website. Since then it’s remained one of my favorite pieces of music I’ve heard in recent years. And it IS a piece of music. For lack of a lesser cliché, it’s a portrait, a landscape and a still life all in one.
Even though it’s over 10 years old, it’ remains startlingly relevant. Each of you will have your own experience with AMMR, so I won’t bore you anymore with how it hits me, but I promise if you give yourself some time to sit back and really listen to AMMR, it will hit you too. Here’s what Washinton had to say about how AMMR came about:
I was 4 years out of college and after being in a string of bands I was bored with simply playing saxophone in bands. The music I was playing didn’t move me like the music I was listening to and I had a narrow-minded view of my own instrument. All My Mistakes Recorded was originally just a fuck you to all things academic, because I felt weighed down by rules (I am a product of art schools from middle school through college). However, once I started recording I didn’t realize that all that misguided anger I had would melt away and I’d really find my sound.
All the songs on AMMR were recorded between 2002-2005 on a 4 track cassette recorder I bought for $70, a Korg Electribe R drum machine, a borrowed triton keyboard, saxophone, a borrowed flute, an old guitar and guitar effects pedal. I managed to turn one of the back offices of my job into a makeshift studio, because they had the triton and it was easier to record saxophones there late at night. (It may be important to note that there are no samples, and the only loops were created on a drum machine, but some only to anchor drum parts I played over with triton drums all other parts were played.) The album title came from me wanting the listener to know they were getting the most honest music that I could make with all the fucked up parts showing, like life.
If these are all mistakes, then we’re glad Washinton -or any one of us for that matter- isn’t perfect.
Sigmund was very hesitant to share this project with me. I could see just how personal this recording was before even listening. “It’s still a work in progress” he’d often say. But when I listened to the project, I heard no place for improvement. Yes, it’s raw, lofi and scattered at times, but that’s what makes the music so powerful. A unique look into the creative process and the raw nerve endings we expose to the world when we share our work. I’m forever grateful that Sigmund agreed to share this music with me back in 2008. And I equally excited to share it with the rest of the world 7 years later.
All My Mistakes Recorded is one of the first albums I can remember wanting to release at the advent of Paxico. As soon as Josh [Hey] introduced me to the music I knew Sigmund was special.
The sounds are raw, sincere, and unadulterated. A culmination of years of dedication and exploration. Enjoy.
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