Today marks the anniversary of another memorable project completed just for kicks.

SST was a one-man band invented out of leftover instrumental music from a soundtrack I created for a short film I made. All we needed was instrumental sounds, so it was a fun exercise to come up with meditations.

These were recorded on a typical Southeast-Alaskan-coastal-town-rainy-afternoon at my pal, Bert’s, studio in the Starr Hill neighborhood of Juneau.

Out of the ones we didn’t use, a couple of them stood out as kinda cool, so I’m keeping them here for posterity (please give them a second to load as they are high-bit-rate audio files):

Lavala (4-string acoustic guitar)

Stroll (Upright bass, 4-string acoustic guitar, keyboard, piano, vintage drums)

The name Shrine of Saint Tourista was inspired by a real place in Juneau, Alaska, where I lived before moving to Chicago. It’s a sacred place to many, properly called Shrine of St. Thérèse, but the serenity of the place was often disrupted by crowds of tourists, which made it a challenge to enjoy.

In any case, I likely just wanted to claim I was once in a band (even a make-believe one) called “Shrine of Saint Tourista” because it sounds cool. So I used a shot I took of a real shrine in Greece, GIMPed it up, and made this silly thing by the flickering light of the candle while everyone else was asleep. Lalalalalalalala.