As far as I can tell, our first cassette, originally released in 2013, was assembled from live recordings from the Manhattan Inn, the Greenpoint restaurant bar (part owned by my childhood friend Rolyn Hu) where we had our first show, and practice recordings from Rick and Sue’s old studio in the Pencil Factory Building. Listening to this album 10 years later, it’s apparent how important our first year as a band was in laying the ground work for what has come since (we repeat ourselves!). Our basic concept of playing variations within a pretty limited set of rhythmic and modal materials is already in place on the early, duo versions of “Every Last Coffee or Tea” (later to appear with expanded ensemble on _I Was Real_) and “Beni Said, Pt.2”. “Part 1” got an overhaul before the whole tune was given a similar ensemble arrangement on _W/M/P/P/R/R_ (as it happens, Rolyn turns up on a track on that record too). The other two tunes are ones that have never been “properly” recorded. “Water in the Lock”, at under four minutes, may have been our first attempt at a concise tune, and represents another tendency that’s stuck with us, which is tunes that have almost no variation or improvisation at all. My guitar riff repeats without variation pretty much the entire tune while Rick alternates between a driving 5/4 beat and its halftime foundation. When my guitar part finally breaks form it’s just to signal the end. As for the long track that takes up the whole first side of this tape, it was named in homage to Najeeb, a young Tunisian man with Down Syndrome I’d met a few years earlier while traveling in Kairouan, Islam’s 4th holiest city. Najeeb would hang out at the cafe all day and the other guys would buy him sodas while he’d crack them up with fantastical and occasionally lewd bits about physical love, flying airplanes and tourists. Never missing an opportunity for a send up of the local religious piety, he’d attempt to order a drink you couldn’t get at this cafe, or anywhere as far as I know, وسكي بالحبرورش or “Whiskey with Hail”. - CC August 2023