Though Murdoch doesn’t feel that Time Without Consequence has the authenticity of Towards the Sun, he remains happy with the way his good judgment - or kismet - preserved the integrity of his debut: On the first record I hear the beginnings of things. Though he says he only ever listens to it if is happens to come up on his girlfriend’s iPod, he cites recording the album as an “excruciating” learning experience that gifted him with much insight about the writing and recording processes, “the physics of capturing sound, and learning what works and what wasn’t.” “I feel finally, fully myself,” Murdoch says of the new album, though he holds a special place for Time Without Consequence. It was just a discovery of a great document and it feels true to me in some way. It wasn’t a process of deciding what songs I wanted to make a record with. I found myself in a basement studio in Brooklyn, and I thought, ‘let’s see what’s on here,’ and I was really surprised to discover that the songs felt like a good document. ![]() According to Murdoch, the songs “just sort of sat on tape for about six months or so. The unearthing of these songs, however, turned out to be the biggest hold-up in distributing Towards the Sun. I didn’t really know why I just knew I wanted to document them while they were new and fresh in my mind.” I had a couple of down days and I went to this really old studio in Vancouver while I was there for a couple of days and we spent the first day calibrating the tape machine and then recording these songs the second day. I had these songs that felt like they belonged together, and I just really wanted to record them. Murdoch is quick to add that this album was, in some ways, an accident borne of his urge to commit his newly penned songs to tape: “I didn’t really approach this as recording a record. It also got recorded in a night, and I think that came through,” Murdoch says. I’ve managed to get quite concise with what I’m trying to say. I would hope that there’s nothing really extra involved. If there’s any concept, it’s the concept of silence it’s really about an economy of music. ![]() “I don’t sit and write the way a lot of people think of writing or crafting songs. Yet, the creation of Towards the Sun was quite organic. The record is so natural and comforting that one might think it was a laborious affair for Murdoch. The songs are easy folk meanderings, guitars whispered beneath Murdoch’s vulnerable, Scottish-accented vocals. Comprised of only seven songs, Towards the Sun maintains the stylings that won him over to critics to fans alike. Now Murdoch’s second album, Towards the Sun, has found completion and an official release (after an early version was sold at Murdoch’s concerts). “I really don’t want people involved in the creative process while I’m recording, who really don’t have anything to do with music, whose interest, by necessity, is just pure economics,” Murdoch told CNN’s Simon Umlauf in 2003. ![]() ![]() He turned down a major record label contract for his first full-length, Time Without Consequence, in order to maintain control over his music and his career. Murdoch’s early fame came from his Four Songs EP, sold through independent online merchant CDBaby. Perhaps most famous for his song “Orange Sky”‘s appearance in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and forming most of the soundtrack to the hit indie film Away We Go, Murdoch has retained a grounded individuality that informs the warm acoustics that comprise his music. Yet, Alexi Murdoch has done just that while retaining his street cred. It seems anomalous that an independent, acoustic musician could emerge from nowhere only to find success with song placement in such pop culture staples as The O.C., The Vampire Diaries, and One Tree Hill, not to mention a Honda commercial.
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