7/7/11 4:52pm

There is a saying in music that you have your whole life to write your debut album. However, there was never a saying against improving it. As Key mentioned to me during one of our late night sessions at DNA Studios last month, this album has been like a college thesis paper: multiple drafts had to be written, reviewed, dismantled, and re-build from the ground up before it could land in the hands of the professor (in this case, the professor is you, the listener).

Our V.I.S.I.O.N.S. have evolved and extended beyond that one January afternoon in the parking lot of St. Agnes Church, where Key and I as seniors @ Loyola High, sketched out the initial concept of this album in the back of my black and white composition notebook.

It has taken five years of late night recording and practice sessions (in bedrooms, living rooms, dorm rooms, study rooms, radio stations, garages, and back houses), five years of gigs (ranging from the zany free-for-alls of Marymount College’s infamous Coffee Houses, winning LMU’s Battle of The Bands at The Living Room, to gracing the historic stages of Sunset Boulevard), five years of line up additions and subtractions, five years of experimentation and evolution in our sound (which resulted in 4 original projects, 1 live album and our biggest growth, transitioning from a “traditional” Hip-Hop set-up to a band), and five years of daydreams, epiphanies, and life itself to present to you what it is your possession now.

It was crafted and recorded in a raw method that marries analog imperfections with digital technology. Music has always been about creating human emotion to me; a feeling that is absent from a lot of popular music today. That is why we took this approach in recording because we wanted you to feel our experiences while listening.

This album is a coming of age story. It is a music documentation of 8 young men trying to make sense of this crazy world, and maybe even try to better as well. Some people have scrapbooks, some have home videos, we have this album, and God willing many more to come. There is another saying in music that you cannot save the world in 4 minutes. But they never said you could not talk about it in 4 minutes.

So here is our story of the world as we see it. But the rest I will leave up to your Various Inspired Stories Insightful On Night and Sunlight (V.I.S.I.O.N.S). To our family and friends (fans, you are considered friends to us), thank you for believing. This is dedicated to you. “Live loud... dream fearless.”

Soul Claps & Salutes and Thank You For Listening,

DJ Chuck “thE oLd SouL”