Tim Perry, 33.3 Music Collective label, who releases Beauty In Chaos records:
“I can’t believe it has been five years since the first Beauty in Chaos album was released! This album means so much to me on so many different levels. I hear something new every time I put this record on my turntable. I gave it another spin before writing these words, and I am always surprised by how different songs resonate with me each time I listen. Michael Ciravolo’s amazing guitar work really binds these songs together and provides the common thread that is woven in so many different ways by the talented artists that contributed to each track. Every track is unique – and special – in its own way.
I love the music on this album, but the journey it has taken me on and the friends I’ve made along the way are just as important to me. This project and meeting Michael were the catalyst for me to create a record label, and this album was its first release. I’ve met and become friends with so many amazing people along the way. I’d like to say hello and thank you to Michael Ciravolo, Michael Rozon, Tish, Betsy, Kevin, Wayne, Ashton, Johnny, Dirk and Michael Aston. Over the past five years, the Beauty in Chaos family has become part of mine.”
Michael Rozon, BIC producer & Michael Ciravolo’s right hand man:
“I am very proud of the first Beauty In Chaos album, and all the BIC stuff we’ve done so far. Against all odds we made a cohesive record with a bunch of different singers on it. I still listen to it and feel very good about it. We were very fortunate to have had some amazing singers who gave us 100% in their efforts to finish the songs and make them great. I am also very proud of Michael Ciravolo for running with the idea of doing his own thing. Among other things it gave us a chance and a reason just to hang out together, drink wine and work on music.”
Side 1
‘Road To Rosario’
Michael Aston, vocals: “My relationship with Michael Ciravolo has been beyond all, in terms of creativity and friendship. He has been magnificent in my life. A truly wonderful human being, solid, stoic, honest, caring, supportive and above all, a lovely family man. We’ve done really great work together, performed so many times over the decades and recording ‘Road To Rosario’ for BIC was such a joy. And Michael Rozon is an absolute genius. Continued success – Michael, your beautiful family, and Tish of course – love you, my first friend in the new world.”
Michael Ciravolo: “Up to this point I had toured and done two records with Michael from Gene Loves Jezebel, and I always thought he had a great voice. Even before ‘…Rosario’ had a title or a singer, it just felt like that should be the opening song. So I sent it to Michael and he came over, and he had these piles of lyrics. I think Michael’s one of these guys who just writes phrases and then keeps them, on napkins and stuff like that. So he had this big, zippered art bag that had all these lyrics. And I think he had this idea of the ‘Road To Rosario’ in his head – he had all the lyrics laid out in the little control room on the ground, and had pieces circled. I have a picture of him and Michael Rozon working, and right after that our studio cat that lives in the building, Cosmo, came running in and dove onto the scrolls and they kind of went everywhere – there was a piece of paper that had little claw prints in them!
But it came together. And Michael’s got that voice – my ear growing up, I was listening to Bowie and Mark Bolan and Noddy Holder, it’s just like British guys can almost read the phone book and it sounds like rock and roll to me!
And I thought that song came out really good. It was the bass that laid down the song and I just kind of played guitar parts to the bass. So picked up one guitar, did one part, then used a completely different guitar and amp and everything, to add the other part, the counter to it. I really enjoy the interplay, the way the guitars came out – like something in one speaker and then the other, it has a very two-guitar-player sound, like two different guys playing in the left and right.”
- Michael Aston: voices
- Michael Ciravolo: guitars, electric bass
- Michael Rozon: live drums
- Dirk Doucette: percussion
- Recorded, Mixed and Produced by Michael Rozon
‘Storm’
Ashton Nyte, vocals: “I remember receiving the instrumental track for what would become ‘Storm’ and being struck by not only how melodic and emotive it was but how it felt like it inhabited a space between what I had created as The Awakening and my solo work at the time. It simply felt like it was made for me, which is probably why I had the lyrics written and the demo vocals recorded and back to Michael 48 hours later!
Since then, ‘Storm’ and our subsequent collaborations have popped up in my solo acoustic concerts and have similarly become fan favorites, which I think is a testament to the strength of the work and that magical space it still inhabits. I remain grateful to Michael for inviting me to be a part of this very special project, and I look forward to all that lies ahead.”
Michael Ciravolo: “I love this song. It’s such an important song in the foundation of what Beauty In Chaos is. Ashton’s lyrics – “there is always a light” – if I had to pick one phrase that encompasses what we try to do here, I think it’s that. I remember, I was in my yard, we had put together this music and it was Mark Gemini Thwaite who introduced me to Ashton. We messaged a lot and talked a bit on the phone. We had the music going and it felt like something special. I guess in my head, I felt this song had a weird kind of Love and Rockets feel to it, with the big guitars and everything. I know we toiled over the music of the chorus.
We’d already done ‘20th Century Boy’ and ‘Drifting Away’ – so that was a cover and a song that stemmed back basically from what I was writing with Human Drama. So ‘Storm’ was the first fully new song that we did.
I remember Ashton saying, “I’m sending you a rough idea of what I did,” and I just remember being in my yard here, holding my phone and listening to it. And it was just like, “fuck, this is fantastic!” His voice, the hook, everything was so great. And I think that was what really gave me the inspiration that this album could actually happen. It wasn’t gonna die on the vine – this can actually happen.
It has the clean jangle, it has the weird little textures, chorus is big and brashy – it could be Johnny Thunders, you know, blaring those guitars out. And then it has a really esoteric bridge section and then kind of a chaotic solo. So there’s a lot of that mishmash. A New Orleans phrase is jambalaya, which is a food, but jambalaya in the French or Cajun actually means everything. Like they would put everything in the pot and that’s a jambalaya. And I think that song really encompasses everything, every element. We basically threw the kitchen sink into what musically that could be.
But all credit to Ashton for taking that and just making it a beautiful song that I think will probably be the song that will endure whenever this ends.
So I give a lot of credit to Ashton, and we’ve become really good friends. And I think he gets how important this song is. And even though he does The Awakening and his solo stuff, I still think we both look very fondly on it, like we created something really special here.”
- Ashton Nyte: voices
- Michael Ciravolo: guitars, electric bass
- Dirk Doucette: live drums
- Recorded, Mixed and Produced by Michael Rozon
- Additional recording by Ashton Nyte
‘Man of Faith’
Wayne Hussey, vocalist: “Five years already! Wow! The BIC songs, including the later ‘The Delicate Balance Of All Things’, are the only song lyrics I’ve written in that time. Such is the power of persuasion of one Michael Ciravolo. Mind you, I have written and published two books during this period so it’s not as if I’ve not been busy.
Listening to the two tracks today – ‘Man Of Faith’ and ‘The Long Goodbye’ – I’m struck by how complete they are in composition performance, and sound. It’s a skill of Michael’s that he is able to put together pieces of music and then perfectly match a voice to the music, as he did with these two. I was flattered to be asked to be part of the initial project and have watched on with great curiosity the journey BIC has since taken into other more unexpected areas of music with other guest lyricists/vocalists.
Every BIC release comes with a surprise. It’s a rare art to be able to keep your audience guessing. Who would’ve guessed where this would go when the first BIC album was released five years ago?”
Michael Ciravolo: “The Mission were right outside of Austin where (producer) Tim Palmer has his studio, so Wayne invited me out. I said, “hey man, I got a couple of songs, I want to know if you would consider singing?” And he said well, play them for me when you come up here. So Wayne had a guitar in his hotel room and I played them – I strummed it around a little bit. And he was like, yeah, that’s kind of nice.
So I sent the music to Wayne. And I don’t think he uses a Mac – he uses an IBM, and uses Cubase or a different recorder, not ProTools. So in sending it to him, something happened in the sample rate conversion, and was a little bit faster and which brought the pitch up a little bit.
So he sent me back what he was working on, with some “lala” sort of vocals where he just kind of hums a melody, and he had “man of faith” which was the one coherent line that was in it.
But – he sent it back and it was faster! And I picked up the guitar, I was like, I’m not sure what the fuck happened… maybe he purposely raised the key or something? But it turned out was in the transfer rate.
I had a rough bass line that was just simple. And I took the shot at reaching out to Simon Gallup, and immediately he wrote back. He gave me the little backstory about him and Wayne; Wayne was one of his favorite singers and they had talked before about doing something. So it’s like I sent the music to Simon just going “…if you have the time…” I knew at that point he didn’t have a studio, so it would take a little doing – he had to go to his son Eden’s house and do it there. But he wrote me back the next day going, “Hey, what’s the chords?” And then like 10 minutes later: “I figured them out. No problem.” And then I think he wrote, “I’m thinking of a moving bassline, sort of like ‘Lovesong’. What do you think about that?”
Well – I thought would be fucking amazing! A couple of days later, he went to Eden’s house and recorded it. And I still remember Michael and I sitting in the studio with the bass track going – “that’s fucking Simon Gallup!” Besides my fan boy thing – and I was reordering my CDs the other day and The Mission and The Cure make up a LOT of my music collection! – the bass sounds like Simon. He’s got you know that heavy right hand pick attack. It was just great. The bass is so driving, and Wayne’s lyrics are great.”
- Wayne Hussey: lead and harmony voices
- Simon Gallup: bass guitar
- Michael Ciravolo: electric and acoustic guitars
- Michael Rozon: live drums
- Ashton Nyte and Johnny Indovina: additional voices
- Recorded, Mixed and Produced by Michael Rozon
‘20th Century Boy’
Michael Ciravolo: “I always thought this song had one of the – if not THE – best glam rock, or just rock and roll guitar riffs. So, when Michael Rozon uttered those words, “you should do your own record”, to kickstart it I was like, well, fuck, I always wanted to do ‘20th Century Boy’. So we did the music and it was one of those songs that we really kind of cut our teeth on how to get these sounds: there’s a lot of chopped up guitars and stuttery weird shit mixed in there.
To go back a little – I definitely had my industrial period. I mean, I loved Ministry, I loved Nine Inch Nails, at that point in my life I was an angry boy, y’know. And Tish and I had just started dating and she bought tickets to Lollapalooza, which Perry Farrell from Jane’s Addiction put on. It was a great line-up: Lush, Jesus and Mary Chain, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, Ministry, and then Chili Peppers (I wasn’t a fan of Chili Peppers). But Ministry came on and it was like standing in front of a fucking jet engine. They had just put out ‘Psalm 69’ and it was just fucking brutal.
So when we had done music for ‘20th Century Boy’, I was like, well, I’m just gonna ask Al Jourgensen. And Michael’s like: “Fuck – Jourgensen?!” I went, “Yeah, I know him a bit.” And Al said, yeah. A couple of days later he came down to the studio.
He didn’t want to sing in the control room, he sat down on an amplifier next to Michael and just sat there and he had the lyrics, belted it out. And him and Michael hit it off great. I’m listening to the stuff in the studio and they’re outside talking Timothy Leary and LSD and all this like weird shit. And now Michael’s done two Ministry records since then. That formed a great friendship.
But Al – there are a lot of things about Beauty In Chaos that I say are surreal – but that WAS surreal, like fucking 20 something years after Tish and I were watching them on stage, Al sitting in the studio and we’re doing one of the first songs I ever saw as a kid on TV – and he’s doing it! He killed it.
It’s certainly a far cry from the original! He messaged a couple of days later saying, “I want to come back and play some harp”. So he came back in and he used a microphone, it was kind of distorted, and that injected it with a bit of even cooler rock and roll – the harp I think brought it into like this late 70s, you know, I could see David Johansson doing that or something. But for the guy to care enough to go, “Hey, I’m gonna come back, drive there another day and sit there and do this”, that was very, very cool.
And Al also came and did a great video, that was such a fun shoot, he had such a great time, screaming out “I’m your fucking toy!” It doesn’t get any better than that!”
- Al Jourgensen: lead vocals and harp
- Michael Ciravolo: electric guitars
- Michael Rozon: Bass guitar, live drums and percussion
- Angela Carole Brown: additional vocals
- Gang vocals by: Liz Walton, Michael Rozon and Michael Ciravolo
- Hand Claps: Tish Ciravolo, Nicole Ciravolo and Sophia Ciravolo
- Recorded, Mixed and Produced by Michael Rozon
Side 2
‘Drifting Away’
Robin Zander, vocalist: “It was an honor to work with Michael on this track. After reading the lyric I imagined a Ziggy Stardust vibe with a simple four-word summary for a chorus. It all works very well with the instrumentation. Good on ya to everyone involved.”
Michael Ciravolo: “After Al Jourgensen, Robin Zander [Cheap Trick] was the next guy to come in to the studio. I remember Michael going “Holy shit, I think we might just be able to pull this off…the first two singers are Al Jourgensen and Robin Zander…” That definitely started the snowball rolling down the hill. I had grown up with Cheap Trick, I loved them as a kid, and the first show that I played in a band with Johnny [Indovina, of Human Drama] we did ‘He’s A Whore’ off Cheap Trick’s first record as the one cover in our show. Robin to me has one of the great American rock and roll voices. And I had become friends with him over the years, so I asked if he wanted to do the song, sent him it and he’s like “Do you have words?”
‘Drifting Away’ actually started as a song I did in the 90s, it was just called ‘Drifting’ at that point, and I loved the song. So I sent him the lyrics and I thought he would just go yeah, I’ll sing it, but he really took the time and changed it up; he used about 50% of the original lyrics and took the part that was the bridge and turned it into the chorus, and turned it into something very cool.
It’s a bit of a different song on the record. But I mean, fuck – he had played a huge show in LA the night before, and he came in at 2 in the afternoon, we set him up, had his lyric sheet, and he belted this in two fucking takes. I’m sitting there remembering buying ‘At Budokan’ and stuff like that, and Robin Zander is turning to me, “What do you think about that line?” It was fucking wonderful!
We thought about doing some more harmonies through it, and through Schecter I’d known Van Halen’s Michael Anthony and I thought, these guys have to know each other – Cheap Trick and Van Halen had to have toured together. But they’d never done anything together.
So Michael Anthony came in one night, sat there and he just did his thing. And it brought the chorus to life. Van Halen and Cheap Trick on the same song – like Wayne and Simon on ‘Man Of Faith’, they had never done anything together before. And it worked out so good.
- Robin Zander: lead vocals
- Michael Ciravolo: guitars
- Rudy Matchinga: electric bass
- Dirk Doucette: live drums
- Michael Anthony, Marc Danzeisen, and Ashton Nyte: additional vocals
- Recorded, Mixed and Produced by Michael Rozon
- Additional Recording by Marc Danzeisen and Ashton Nyte
‘Memory of Love’
Johnny Indovina, vocalist: “I feel very fortunate to be asked to be a part of Beauty in Chaos. When my longtime friend and bandmate Michael Ciravolo told me about this project it really made sense to me, and I was very excited to see him moving forward with it. Five years later we can all see that his vision has beautifully developed and cemented Beauty in Chaos as a fixture in the dark music world, hopefully for years to come.
The project provided something different for me, a new challenge as a songwriter, whereas I was to write words and vocal melody to an existing music track that was given to me pretty much completed. I found what really helped me get started writing was the pointed focus that the project title, and the album title ‘Finding Beauty In Chaos’ gave me. It is very clear, yet a broad enough concept to feel safe that I could find an idea, or a situation, that none of the other writers would touch on. This process allowed me to write in a little bit of a different voice than I normally would. I was fortunate to have two tracks, ‘Beauty Lies Within’ and ‘Memory of Love’ on this first album. I’m very proud of the lyrics, and really enjoyed expanding my songwriting to fit the project. Most gratifying was that Michael was very happy with the finished songs!”
Michael Ciravolo: “‘Memory of Love’ was one of the last songs we did, and when I wrote it, that to me was what I wanted the Human Drama record to be. It’s got that echo-drenched kind of Mission / Lords of The New Church thing to it.
I met Johnny when I was 17. I was in a punk band called Stray Bullets – we were doing New York Dolls and Johnny Thunders and Dead Boys, and a couple of originals. He was in a band called Nova that did stuff like Bowie and Queen, kind of glammy. He’s my best friend in the world, he’s always been there. But, when we were working on the Human Drama record, ‘Broken Songs for Broken People’ we were going in different directions. Now when I listen to it, I think I played differently on it – I grew while working on that record.
And it was that process that made me do Beauty In Chaos. Our relationship had got a bit strained – maybe we’re not perfect musically together, but he’s my best friend. And I’m really proud of ‘Broken Songs for Broken People’. Earlier this year I went to Mexico and joined Human Drama on stage, and played half the set with them, it was a blast.”
- Johnny Indovina: voices and words
- Michael Ciravolo: guitars
- Pando: bass guitar
- Marc Danzeisen: live drums
- Recorded and Produced by Michael Rozon
- Additional recording by Johnny Indovina and Marc Danzeisen
‘Look Up’
Tish Ciravolo, vocalist: “Five years?! What the??? Ok, so time flies by sooo fast and you wonder, what life have I been living that might be passing me by? That was the thesis of my song contribution ‘Look Up’ to BIC… time is going to pass you by if you don’t put down your phone and live in this moment. And in these moments, I watched my brilliant husband and his partner, Michael Rozon, create and curate some of the most enjoyable and exciting music ever to be written while marrying each opus with an equally talented and diverse artist. It’s been a fun rollercoaster to hear these last five years and to be invited on the ride has been exhilarating!!! Another five? Let’s go!”
Michael Ciravolo: “When I wrote the music for this song I was listening to ‘Loveless’ a lot, and that whole era of My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, Ride. I thought that was a very creative time in music, that whole Creation and 4AD stuff. I did a little studying on Kevin Shields’ technique. And I wanted my wife, of course, to be part of Beauty In Chaos and I knew the kind of voice she had, and the song came together really well.
You would think I would hear her singing in the house or something, but somehow she created her words and went in there, and while and Michael Rozon sat and recorded it I just kind of went in the other room and dicked around with pedals and stuff while they worked. And I thought she did an amazing job, and she got the story of our family in it.
Then I wanted a video to have that kind of a hazy 90s era look to it, it was really fucking fun to do. I had to go buy something white to wear on it, I didn’t own anything white! We brought in an old school projector and got this like liquid light stuff to project on us. And we just had a blast doing that. And it had the infamous drum dive at the end – which we had to shoot twice! I went, “are you fucking kidding me?!” It was just kind of spur of the moment. The second time I took a bigger leap. And when I went into Michael on drums, I think that second dive was when I took a cymbal stand jab in the kidney. I still got a scar across my back from that! And that video was the first time the Beauty In Chaos ‘Horse Head Man’ appeared. I think by the end, we had a little bit of wine in us and it just seemed like it would be funny to do and maybe with no intention of it making the cut. But when Vicente [Cordero, of Industrialism Films, BIC video producer] did the first edit ‘Horse Head Man’ was there and it’s like, fuck, that’s funny!
I thought Tish did a great job, not only in the record, but also carrying the video. And it is one of my favorite videos, if not my favorite, ‘cause it just happened easy. It’s almost exactly like what I pictured in my head, the switching between wearing all black and then all white and in the way the lights were.”
- Tish Ciravolo: voices
- Michael Ciravolo: guitars
- Michael Rozon: live drums, bass guitar
- Recorded, Mixed and Produced by Michael Rozon
‘Un-Natural Disaster’
Dug Pinnick, vocalist: “I can’t believe that it’s been five years since the release of ‘Un-Natural Disaster’! And to play bass, sing and write lyrics for this song was an honor. This song is about the flood in Texas, but I didn’t know at the time that Michael‘s aunt passed away in the hurricane in New Orleans previously. May she rest in peace. So lyrically, this song meant a lot to both of us.
And also playing on a song with Zakk Wylde and Ice-T was exciting to say the least. Doing the video was an experience for sure, because I have never done a video while water is pouring down on top of me. And it’s of the favorite videos that I have ever done! Thank you Michael for asking me to be a part of such an incredible song!!”
Michael Ciravolo: “‘Un-Natural Disaster’ was done a little bit later in the writing process. I remember talking to Dug, I think it was at one of the NAMM shows, we were drinking Jägermeister, and he’s a very sweet, sweet guy. I always thought Dug had a great look and he’s an even nicer person. I just took a shot and asked him, “I’m doing this record, would you be interested?” I didn’t know him that well at that point, but we got along well and he said, “Man, I’d love to, I’m gonna write you a great song”. And through us talking he found out I was from New Orleans. He was born in Texas. He had relatives that Hurricane Harvey fucked up their houses, like I had with Katrina.
He actually sang this at home, but played bass at our studio. I think it was Dug who said it’d be really cool if we had somebody that did like a rap or a spoken word. It just struck me, maybe Ice-T would do it because Vince, his bass player, was a friend of mine. I texted Vince going, “You think Ice would do this?” And he said send me the track. And I sent it to him and he wrote me back like two days later said, “Yeah, Ice said he’d do it”.
It took a while to get it, but the guy sent it – I remember thinking, “It’s getting a bit late in the process with this record now…” Then Vince sent me a picture of Ice-T in the in the vocal booth. And it came back and it was just like – he just spit his venom. It really makes that song have this cool twist.
It’s probably the heaviest song that we did. It’s the only one that’s a little drop-tuned. I play kind of a crazy guitar solo in it, and when we did the remix I was happy to have Zakk Wylde do it.
It’s one of those songs that when you listen to it without vocals on, it had a lot of those elements of the guitar doing very non-guitar things. I was still working out how do we stand up this “no synthesizers” rule I had set, without making it just raw guitar. And this song definitely has a lot of those chopped up elements and cool things. It’s got so many layers in it.
We have these things in the office, like a plastic basket that you put mail in for the mail guy to carry it out, and I came in with one of those, went into our kitchen and raided all our silverware – I think Tish thought I was nuts, like what the fuck are you doing?! So I brought it to the studio, dropped the knives, forks and spoons in this basket that had two handles on it, we mic’d it up and shook it up and down – and it has almost this weird kind of marching sound, because the silverware goes to one side… When you double, triple-track it enough it reminded me of a military parade or something. That was just another of those elements we really had a blast with, and there were a lot of those moments in there. It was nice to be able to do things like that, and I think ‘Un-Natural Disaster’ is a really good ending to that side of the album.”
- dUG Pinnick: voices and bass guitar
- Ice-T: voice
- Michael Ciravolo: guitars and percussion
- Pete Parada: live drums
- Recorded, Mixed and Produced by Michael Rozon
- Additional recording by dUG Pinnick, Pete Parada and John Aquilino
Read Michael Ciravolo’s track-by-track breakdown of Sides 3 & 4 of ‘Finding Beauty In Chaos’ HERE – and his introductory interview HERE