Octave Records latest release, Sleep Paralysis by guitarist JJ Murphy, is a deft musical odyssey through a variety of genres ranging from jazz to fusion, blues, Americana and more, ultimately blending into JJ’s uniquely melodic style. Complemented by Wyatt Walker Wear on bass and Octave Records’ own Braxton Kahn on drums and Tom Amend on piano, organ and flute, Sleep Paralysis is anything but somnolent, enlivening listeners with lively, expressive musicianship and captivating tunes. It’s all captured with extraordinary clarity and presence, thanks to Octave Records’ state-of-the-art Pure DSD high-resolution recording process.
JJ Murphy is a Denver-based guitarist and composer whose sound bridges everything from modern jazz to folk traditions and unfettered improvisation. A versatile performer and recording artist, he has collaborated with notable musicians including Natalie Cressman (Trey Anastasio), Todd Smallie (Derek Trucks), Shawn Eckels (Andy Frasco and the UN), and Ryan Connors (Hozier). His electric guitar tone is warm and pure. On “Coco Diaz” he switches to acoustic guitar.
Why is the album called Sleep Paralysis? As JJ tells it, “You wake up and you can't move because when you're sleeping, your brain produces some chemical to paralyze you so you won't act out your dreams. But sometimes you'll wake up and you're stuck in that state. It’s like you're tripping on your own brain chemicals. And a lot of times it feels like you're about to be revealed some very important information.” Together, Murphy and the band walk the boundary between structure and improvisation, playing the melody of the tune and then taking off into spontaneous musical interplay, embracing the sensibilities of jazz instrumentalists and jam bands while retaining a sense of lyricism and purpose.
JJ Murphy. Courtesy of the artist.
Together, JJ and the band walk the boundary between structure and improvisation, playing the melody of the tune and then taking off into spontaneous musical interplay, embracing the sensibilities of jazz instrumentalists and jam bands while retaining a sense of lyricism and purpose.
Sleep Paralysis was recorded, produced and mixed at Octave Studios by Paul McGowan. Gus Skinas did the mastering. The album was recorded using Octave’s Pyramix Pure DSD system to capture every detail and all the dynamic impact of the band’s deeply communicative musicianship. Listeners will feel like they’re enjoying the band with intimate realism.
Sleep Paralysis was recorded, produced and mixed by Paul McGowan at Octave Studios. Gus Skinas did the mastering. The album was recorded using Octave’s Pyramix Pure DSD system to capture every detail and all the dynamic impact of the band’s deeply communicative musicianship. Listeners will feel like they’re enjoying the band with intimate realism. The album was mastered using a PS Audio PMG Signature DAC and preamp and mixed on PS Audio’s flagship Aspen FR30 loudspeaker, to ensure the ultimate in recording fidelity.
The album leads off with “Valentine’s Day,” a song that showcases JJ’s relaxed, confident playing and burnished guitar tone. The rhythm section is in the pocket, as it is on every cut on Sleep Paralysis, with Wyatt Walker Wear providing a solid electric bass foundation. “Millenium” picks up the pace with sympathetic interplay between JJ and the rich Hammond organ of Tom Amend. “As Time Slips Away” offers delightful ensemble playing with Tom Amend playing flute as an added tonal color. “Coco Diaz” features an acoustic guitar, spicing up the blues-flavored song with some slinky slide playing. Amend shines on acoustic piano, which is captured with extraordinary presence.
“Sleep Paralysis,” the title track, takes its time unfolding, stating the opening melody and then expanding upon it with subtle variations in feel and texture. “Free Improv” gives the musicians the chance to stretch and play off each other with the excitement of not knowing where the music may go next, and the cohesion of a band that can sense how to interact and even go a little “out there” with each other. The closing track, “Al Pacino,” is a medium-tempo 3/4-time song that has JJ stretching out with chord-melody playing and meditative lead lines, the perfect ending to an album that reveals more with each listening.
Sleep Paralysis features Octave’s premium gold disc formulation, and the disc is playable on any SACD, CD, DVD, or Blu-ray player. It also has a high-resolution DSD layer that is accessible by using any SACD player or a PS Audio SACD transport. In addition, the master DSD and PCM files are available for purchase and download, including DSD 512, DSD 256, DSD 128, DSD 64, and DSDDirect Mastered 352.8 kHz/24-bit, 176.2 kHz/24-bit, 88.2 kHz/24-bit, and 44.1 kHz/24-bit PCM.
I spoke with JJ, one guitarist, musician and human being to another.
Frank Doris: You know what the obvious first question is going to be: how'd you come up with the title Sleep Paralysis?
JJ Murphy: So it's kind of silly, but so what? When I was in probably my teens to 20s, I used to get sleep paralysis all the time, multiple times a week. Do you know what sleep paralysis is?
FD: I mean, I'm an old guy, so I can't sleep due to other reasons!
JJM: When you wake up and you can't move because when you're sleeping, your brain produces some chemical to essentially paralyze you so you won't act out your dreams, as I understand it. But sometimes you'll wake up and you're stuck in that state. It's like you're tripping on your own brain chemicals. It feels like time and sound is distorted. And a lot of times it feels like you're about to be revealed some very important information. Just kind of a spooky, strange experience that I've had several times. And then we named one of the songs [after it].
FD: Now that you've explained that, it explains the feel of the song.
JJM: I don’t know. It's hard to talk about music, especially if there's no lyrics.
FD: How'd you get started playing?
JJM: When I was in sixth grade I discovered Pink Floyd. By seventh grade, I started taking guitar lessons here and there. I played brass instruments in the high school band all through school. So I think I was kind of in that zone already. And then Pink Floyd's greatest hits [album] came out and I listened to “Another Brick in the Wall Part 2” for about an hour and a half, just over and over. So I just got obsessed with the guitar. Then I got into the blues, and the Grateful Dead. Shortly after that, I got into jazz because I played in the jazz band in high school.
FD: So you learned how to read music.
JJM: Yeah. I ended up going to college for music.
FD: You get a warm, sweet tone. What kind of guitar and amp do you use?
JJM: I have a hand-wired Vox AC15 [tube amp] I really like. But when I got to [Octave Studios] I ended up using the studio’s [Fender] Princeton Reverb. Then I brought a line out from the amp into a load box [a power attenuator that lets a musician turn an amp up high to hit the amp’s “sweet spot” but cuts the volume – Ed.] into a [Line 6] Helix multi-effects unit for delay. Then Paul added some of [the studio’s] reverb.
I used my 1978 Ibanez [hollow body electric guitar], I forget the name of it even. I never once hit a distortion pedal. It just organically happened.
FD: So many of the early jazz players didn’t have a 100 percent clean tone. They played through these small amps and their sound had a little bit of hair.
JJM: Personality, for sure.
FD: How did the sessions come together? And did you read off charts?
JJM: Just lead sheets essentially. Melody and chords and bars and that kind of thing. There wasn’t much reading on the session. Before we did this record, I did [one] with Wyatt and Braxton, plus Tom Amend [and some other people]. So I kind of put together a similar cast. We met up I think one time before the session to just talk through everything we were going to do and workshop the tunes a little bit. “Sleep Paralysis” was the first take. I think nothing [else we] did was more than three takes. “Free Improv” was one take. We had it memorized enough that we knew the form and could get from Point A to Point B.
FD: Are there any overdubs?
JJM: Tom came in [after the three of us recorded] and just layered all that stuff in there. We just let him go to town. Except “Coco Diaz” where we all did it live.
What we did was just make sure that the chord changes were sound and made sense, and exploring the harmony that we wanted to explore just to make sure everybody was on the same page. Because what I noticed – it's going to make me sound like an old person – but when you're improvising…I know there's ultimately no right or wrong, but sometimes harmonically [the musicians are] steering the harmony away from what the harmony really is or should be.
FD: I was having a discussion with someone and we were listening to Neil Young and “Cortez the Killer” and I said, “Oh my God, he left so many wrong notes in this. I guess he was just going for it.” And the other person said, “If that’s the final recording, then they’re not wrong notes! It’s the way he wanted it so how could they be ‘wrong notes’?” We, shall we say…discussed it for a bit, and I ultimately replied, “Try doing something like that on a jazz gig.” If I tried to play “Round Midnight” and hit a bunch of wrong notes, I’d be thrown out of the building!
JJM: I know what you mean. I'm a huge Neil Young fan, but I almost would guarantee, and I could be wrong here, but say you go back and you're in the studio [with] them listening back to his solos or whatever. I think there would've been a discussion like, "Ooh, I didn't like this note." I don't think they'd be saying things like, “Oh, I used [a] Dorian [scale] when I should have been using natural minor, or something like that! But I don't think [wrong] notes go unnoticed. I think in [a certain kind of aesthetic, it's kind of like the Grateful Dead. It's like, “Well, we were shooting for this. I landed short, but you heard me attempt the best I could do.”
FD: I like the way your music has that jam band sensibility where you just play off of each other and go off and maybe you know where it's going, maybe you don't.
JJM: Yeah, exactly. Let's try it, see what's the worst that can happen. The worst that could happen is we don't put it out.
FD: Or you do put it out! (laughter)
It's so hard to get a perfect take, especially when you're in the studio and the “Recording” light is on, and it's nerve-wracking and you lose all the feel, because you're so intent on not making any mistakes that there's no feeling.
JJM: 100 percent.
FD: So, I really admire the musical greats where, when, you listen to Coltrane’s Giant Steps or Kind of Blue and these guys were just playing a session, making a record, here it is more than 60 years later and you're listening to this magic that they made under those conditions.
JJM: Lightning in a bottle. [But] I think, too, if you were to listen, have Cannonball [Adderley] critique his own solos on [Kind of Blue], I guarantee he's going to not give himself an A+. He's going to be like, “I hated that note, hated that phrase. That was dumb and fell flat there.” You know what I mean?
FD: On the other hand, when you do hear yourself play something and you think, “Wow, that was really good,” it's such a great feeling. Or, “How am I going to play that again? I'll never be able to do that again. I don't even know what I did!”
On another note, how did you come up with the title “Al Pacino” for that track?
JJM: I don't know. I've been an Al Pacino fan for, I don't know, I think at least since high school when I saw The Godfather. This year for some reason I've just been going down an Al Pacino rabbit hole of all his movies. I think the one I saw right before I wrote that song was Heat. So I kind of had that one going through my head.
FD: How'd you wind up meeting Paul McGowan and the people at Octave?
JJM: [Octave Records artist] Emmanuel Alexander was the one that connected me I just kept hearing about [Paul] in Boulder from different people. I would see different performers I know in the community, and they'd have records out on Octave. I was like, “all right, I’ve got to check these people out.” And then Emmanuel was the one who got me the contact and made it happen.
The three guys I made the record with are some of my favorite musicians and people to play with. Getting the opportunity to record something this high-fidelity with them was just really exciting. The way Wyatt, the bass player, and me were playing together just sounded like one big instrument that connected.
I’ve [also] joined a band, The Sweet Lillies, so I should give them a shout out. They're an Americana rock group, [and] they tour nationally.
I'm fortunate now that I just play full-time, but it took a while to get there!
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