In general, there are three things that are at the very front of my conscience as I work to prepare WAITIKI for performances, and also in the production of our album Charred Mammal Flesh.First, the re-creation of the mystique and feeling of the “unknown” that I think is what really makes the early Denny and Lyman albums shine. From the standpoint of the composer, I think the sense of “unknown” is the result of very well-crafted music that truly incorporates elements from various traditions and forms, but takes these elements out of context; it’s the out-of-contextness that makes listeners feel that they have stumbled across something entirely different, mysterious, and unknown. In other words, that even though the music is a conglomeration of different sounds, there is enough cohesion that things don’t sound random, but also enough improvisation that the connections between these elements doesn’t sound contrived or academic.Secondly, the notion that, when we listen to early exotica, it is as if we are viewing long-lost worlds through what I call “windows of sound.” By nature, the music of exotica is programmatic. Beginning with Les Baxter’s use of song titles like “Quiet Village,” Denny’s “Voodoo Love,” and Kit Ebersbach’s “All Quiet Flows The Don,” listeners may find themselves listening along a suggested agenda. (By contrast, jazz tunes -those without lyrics- often have titles that mean little to the musical nature of the composition, for example Lenny Tristano’s “317 E. 32nd St” or Charlie Parker’s “Anthropology”). In fact, as is the case with Charlie Parker, he would change titles for his songs frequently, and it is known that many of his compositions had multiple titles. That is not the case with the music that I write for WAITIKI — each and every song is tied to a specific story, dream, memory, or other reference that I have in my head. For this very reason, I chose to include blurbs about the tunes in the album liner notes. These blurbs are meant to help suggest scenes for those “windows of sound” that the music is filling - but NOT dictate specific/concrete visual imagery, which I leave to the imaginations of those sipping maitais and listening to the album.

And thirdly: that with all the thought that goes into my conceptualization of WAITIKI, the issue of main importance is that the AUDIENCE HAS FUN, and that listeners find themselves transported to a distant, imaginary, land — far from whatever tiki bar, concrete city, living room, etc. they are in. Which is one reason why the album has many flavors of the exotic on it: From the classic Denny (”Manila” and “Primativa”) to the twisted (”Satyritar” and “Insomniac Food”), the programmatic (”March of Chief MauMau” and “Fuzzy Mammoth Breath”), to songs that I hope one day may also be considered to be standards of modern exotica (”Cave of Uldo,” “Sweet Pikake Serenade,” and “Dew Drop Inn . . .”), and the others (not to mention everyone’s favorite song about pandas and punctuation, “Pan-XOTIK-Da,” ala the Lynne Truss book); I really hope that folks who have little or no experience with exotica can find something enjoyable. Which is also a reinforcement of my opinion that the exotica genre really does have a multiplicity of entry points, references, and subgenres.