Fine Dining With An Octopus is my first album release of 2018. Following the same style as the previous album Memes and Dreams (2017), FDWAO explores many new theory concepts I had been reading about and felt compelled to write with.

On the title of the album
It’s funny, I guess the origins of the title come from a sushi date with my girlfriend. I decided I’d be ‘worldly’ and get the octopus sashimi. It was really tough, and honestly not that good. The day after I wrote a “really tough, and honestly not that good” piece of music called “Fine Dining With An Octopus.” It’s all in the E Whole Tone Scale, which is kind of boring, so I decided to put a bunch of sound effects of being dragged underwater by an octopus and proceed to smash dishes and all that nonsense.
It wasn’t until I was putting the album together that the title stuck. The series of songs are kind of like little courses in a fancy dinner, but it’s hectic as it would be having an eight tentacle sea creature sitting across the table from you. I’d imagine some of the dishes would taste good, and other would be absolutely terrible. I guess I’ll let you be the judge!

On the orchestral elements
I had been doing some scoring at work, and arranging with orchestral instruments is a lot of fun. It’s an effective way of getting certain colours in the chords without screaming “hey this is dorian now!” or “This is a flat 9, so you better feel tense!” I really like the orchestration in ‘My Negativity.’ If I hadn’t added it, I don’t think the song would be on the album. I think it really made the piece work. Likewise for the horns in the title track, even though they are buried in the mix a bit.

On Fine Dining’s similarities to Memes and Dreams
This is certainly a style I will pursue further. I like fitting a lot of information in a short period of time. I don’t even really know how to describe the style, as there’s so much different stuff going on.
The first song, ‘Rested,’ kind of picks up where Memes and Dreams’ last song ‘Get Some Rest’ left off. They both utilize E Dorian and G Lydian arpeggios, and it’s like ‘Get Some Sleep’ so you can be ‘Rested’ for this album (that’s a stretch haha). If I even print these to vinyl, perhaps it’ll make more sense while flipping the album over.