Rainbows in the Gasoline
Album - 2023
All songs written and performed by Karl S. Williams
Recorded and mixed by Jamie Trevaskis at Tape Land, Mount Nebo, Queensland, Australia
Mastered by Andy Stewart at The Mill Studio, Bass Coast, Victoria, Australia
In Memoriam Claes Johnny Magnus Loberg
Rainbows in the Gasoline was recorded live-to-tape in a fibro cottage up on Mount Nebo in South-East Queensland, Australia, with light streaming in the windows and dogs sleeping on the floor.
It was recorded by Jamie Trevaskis and this place is his home and studio, called Tape Land, shared with his partner Mia and a couple of requisite studio hounds. I don’t know what magic Jamie worked to make it sound and feel so right in there (and he seemed to do this effortlessly) but that’s how it was, and as a result the songs just flowed out.
In the first session over two days we got through about fourteen songs. So many that I had to go away and work on another batch. This was a great relief to me as I had been obsessively working on the first batch for the best part of a year already. Prior to that I had carried many of them around with me for a long time.
I wanted to make a really raw solo record, to just play the songs and capture them as performances - unadorned and unquestioned. Simply songs, allowed to be. It’s so easy for songs to get crushed before they can ever be heard and many of the songs on Rainbows I believed particularly fragile. It’s typical in a loud world to want to add more to a song, make it bigger, bolder. I decided I wanted to try quietness, space, less.
There was a rough period in 2014-2016 wherein I was signed to a record label and many of these songs were presented to them as demos, which they subsequently rejected. Later (after I was dropped from that label) I still couldn’t find much enthusiasm for these songs aside from my own. I carried a lot of sadness that these strange, quiet songs might be forever lost and I took it personally because they all feel like parts of me and therefore their imperfection is implicit.
The thing about songs is they haunt you, like lost souls hoping to be born. Some of them are relentless in their quest to be heard and it’s a burden to carry them around. So when I carried them up Mount Nebo to Jamie’s place I was relieved to find no hesitation to roll tape and this album represents the outpouring that ensued.
