released July 28, 2022

A (Not so?) Short Story of the Crimson Sunset LP…

I have been a musician of sorts for as long as I can remember. At eight years old in 1992, I picked out my first CD. It was Elvis Presley’s Golden Records. My dad had just got me this sweet new Sony Discman (remember how cool those were?) for some kind of insane, end-of-the-year, 50%-off discount at Kohl’s. It was still OVER $100, and it was probably the first gift I appreciated on an adult level. I listened to that CD over and over. I loved it because my dad always played the oldies station in the car when I came with him to deliver newspapers at 4am. I would wake up early and come with him, and he would get us McD’s when they opened at 5:30. But those tunes… I thought they were great. After he and my mom separated in 1989, oldies reminded me of a happier time. I guess that's one reason I love the 80’s so much; it's my happy place. In the meantime, we learned the recorder in school, and I played something for the first time. I wasn’t good. But I was intrigued.

Fast forward to Winter 1993-Summer 1994. I was around 10, and I was friends with my dad’s friend's son who was the same age as me. He was way cooler, though. I thought he knew everything, and he was obsessed with MTV and Grunge. When he put on Nirvana, it was like I was hit with a bullet and my brain was never the same. This was crazy and I loved it. Not because my dad loved it , but because it connected with me. My life was messy, and so was this, but it was beautiful. My friend had his own band, affectionately called “GROUNDED” , which honestly was hilarious for some 10-year-olds, but he could play guitar and sing, and they did covers (of Nirvana, mostly) but I was jealous. I wanted to be a musician. I wanted to write music and sing, but most of all, I wanted to be able to play the guitar. I never stopped wanting any of those things since, and it has defined a strange, sometimes rocky, path my life has taken thus far. I wouldn’t dare change any of it.

My first experiences with instruments were not with the guitar I hoped to learn and be able to jam out to Nirvana or what-have-you. I didn’t even procure a proper electric guitar for a couple years. In the meantime, I started to learn how to play drums in 5th and 6th grade. They had me carrying a not-so-portable xylophone back and forth to class, and although I was getting the hang of playing it, I walked to middle school and I really wasn’t digging carrying it. Me being me, I decided to get the smallest instrument I could, and joined the flute section of the band. It was almost entirely composed of girls, who didn’t appreciate this grunge rocker jumping in next to them. They tried to make it unpleasant so I would kick rocks, but I was not one to back down from a challenge. I started practicing, getting decent, and fast. I would challenge their chairs when I got to 9th grade (high school here) and moved up the ranks by playing pieces they couldn’t master with their level of casual practice. I didn’t make friends this way, and by the following year, someone had stolen my flute. I guess I wasn’t welcome in their world, but I left with a knowledge of scales and how to read music, as well as learning that I could become competent with an instrument (with lots of practice.)

So I did get a few electric guitars, and started to learn how to play some simple power cords and riffs. I was never that good, but I did almost play Nirvana’s “Polly” in the middle school talent show. My drumming friend had a minor mental breakdown and freaked out right before we went on to audition. So I went out and played by myself, but it was a no-go. Disappointment would become a theme of trying to be a musician, before realizing many years later that I didn’t need to prove anything to anyone. I was a musician whenever I was bold enough to try. My home life got very complicated though, and I stopped actively playing for a few years while I transitioned from a teenager to a young adult.

During that time, however, I started finding underage nightclubs that played Rave music, and Industrial. These were mostly gay-oriented, as that was the only way you didn’t have parents in outrage at 14-15-year-olds dancing late in downtown Portland. That quickly transitioned into some raves and outdoor underground parties. I loved electronic music, dancing, and crazy lights and lasers. They made me feel something - I didn't even know that the people were on drugs until after I was 18. It made sense to me that people acted crazy and danced all night, because I felt that way sober, but I was hyper and ridiculous. It wasn’t ‘til a girl who liked me the night before, and then wanted nothing to with me the next day, that I realized that drugs were definitely influencing these people. I wouldn’t try any until much later and really on a limited scale. After all, I loved music, and didn’t need drugs for that.

I kept trying to write songs. I was going to figure it out; be the next Kurt Cobain. I didn’t even have a band for years. So I learned how to record. I knew quite a bit because my mom and stepfather had a recording studio in the bedroom growing up. She had some really good songs, and was going to be a pop star; her stage name was “SHERRY COLA” . I wish we had those recordings. I remember them being good, and we had the latest Cakewalk and 8-in/8-out isolated digital inputs, Roland electronic drums, as well as a Roland 505 Groovebox, all of which were handed down to me. I learned how to record and program each part using Acid Pro, and was able to edit together my sloppy takes on guitar and vocals to make some recordings that were … listenable? I still needed a band, but no one really believed in me, except for my friend Nathan Whited,who would take pity on me and come and play bass at open mic nights. He had his band and ,imo, they were good. I was pretty sure I would never be good enough and this would be a casual hobby my whole life, but I wasn’t ready to accept that.

One day I was visiting a friend, and he introduced me to his much older brother, who lived at home for reasons I wouldn’t understand until later. His name was Josh and he had pictures of himself in all these bands, and had a standalone studio console that burned directly to CD. He was a musician, and he asked me about what I did and what I played. I told him, and over time we became close friends. I confessed my dream of having a band of my own, and being on stage… and he suggested that he could be in my band. He wanted to get better at drums anyway, and had the time, he said. We did some practices together, and he helped me with song structure. He believed in me. For the first time, someone believed in my dream, and thought I was good enough. He brought in another friend to play bass, and his brother (My original friend) to play keyboards. We practiced every week, and eventually played a year or two of local shows. It was one of the best times of my life. We called ourselves “The Degenerate Era” in reference to the time of the universe where all the stars run out of fuel, and it gets dark everywhere. I still have some recordings from what would have been our first album. Weirdly, that album would’ve been called “Burntout Sunrise”. It wasn’t to be, though. Josh had a brain tumor, and it was terminal. We all knew that, but after they gave him a year to live and he had made it five, it didn’t seem real, other than he didn’t have to have a 9-5 because of SSD payments. But it was, and eventually he started forgetting the beats to the songs. He was slipping, and there was nothing we could do about it. I didn’t handle it well; I didn’t want to see him like that. We stopped practicing, and within the year he was gone. I put down my guitars and didn’t play. I couldn’t look at them without wanting to cry. I needed something- I needed to escape. It would be 10 years before I picked up the guitar again. RIP Joshua Dalton.

I remembered liking electronic music, and I had been to a few raves over the years. I started going again to escape, but I was quickly welcomed into the scene. I was older by a few years, but not too old at 27, and my love of neon and eighties and sci-fi attire didn’t hurt my chances. I went to Burning Man for the second time, and wanted to make noise, so I bought some cheap DJ equipment and some old PA speakers. I spent that week in 2010 torturing the ears of anyone camped nearby. When they told me to shut up or turn it down, I would get on a mic and yell, “ Go home, it's BURNING MAN!” I got the basics down, and when I came back, I would DJ at my house where I would host small afterparties. Eventually our after-party crew got the bright idea to throw shows for ourselves. I wanted to connect with my former girlfriend and best friend at the time, Lexi. She used to throw shows in Eugene, but missed it after moving up to the Portland area. We started a rave crew, and called ourselves “Pulsar Productions” . This is a whole story of its own, but I will make it impossibly short. We threw 50+ shows over 10 years, some with over 1000 people. I met producers of electronic music from all over that we flew in, and I was inspired. I wanted to do more than DJ. I wanted to make music again. This time Electronic.

Enter Todd Daggett, an aspiring music producer in the Portland scene. Our relationship started off as more of a mutually beneficial one than a friendship. He wanted to be booked at shows, and I wanted to learn how to produce electronic music. So we produced tracks together. It was thrilling, because then I could play them out in front of hundreds of people the following week. What a rush! I learned everything I could like a sponge, and pretty soon, I had ideas that started helping us both with workflow. We were rising together. He always remains more grounded and analytic in his approach, while I generally am more eccentric, focusing on a larger idea and concept. That relationship continues to this day, as we produced this entire album’s skeleton and named every song together. Why is it Alex Lightspeed then? I guess because it is my concept. I am the creative director. Later, I added other artists, wrote lyrics, and massively edited and tweaked the original mixes, but this album is as much his as mine, really. He is that friend that always has your back, and I don’t know what I would do without him.

When the parties stopped in late 2019(Covid times), I was a little lost, but also relieved. I had been doing them for almost a decade, and I had two beautiful children (Infinity and Titan Lightspeed) and a wife (Rose) indirectly through the process. What to do with all this creative energy?!! Rose and I started a YouTube channel. Some of you may have heard of it: “Lightspeed Fieros.” We would learn to make videos and build cars together. Mostly this 1988 Fiero that we called Project LSJ Fiero. I wanted a Fiero with a modern, boosted, hi-revving four-cylinder; and no one was doing it. After many nights of telling Rose how cool it would be, she looked at me and said, “Well, are you just going to talk about it, or are you going to do it already?” Well, over the next year we did, and recorded every bit of it for the channel. But, we needed music. By this time I had been personally obsessed with Synthwave for a few years. Artists like Mitch Murder, Lost Years, Lazerhawk, and MN84 were common names on my Pandora playlist. I was an 80’s movie fanatic and a lover of original 80’s music as well. It went with the theme of the most 80’s car ever, the Pontiac Fiero. Over the years I have owned more than 20 Fieros, so you could say we needed some driving music. Again I turned to my friend Todd Daggett (Super Sapien/ Deformaty) for background music for the channel. The first song was produced entirely by him as a gift for me, and he called it “Neon Triangles.” It became the theme for the LSJ Fiero project, and because of this, our latest version is included on this album, even though I am not the original composer. We started getting together to write more and more Synthwave; it was fun, and it fit for the channel. The channel had its own minor success; to date, we have 150k views. So, eventually someone asked, “ Where can I get this music you guys use?” I didn’t have an answer for that. I hadn't even planned on releasing it. It was good, but I didn't know if we could release the music and not have the channel demonetized . It sounds baffling, but I couldn’t use any of my music that had been published through other labels without getting a copyright infringement at the time. YouTube's help was non-existent. I had to get the distributor to “white list” the whole channel. After weeks of emails, I was able to do that, at the expense of tearing my hair out and a few tears. That's when this dream started. I could now make an album, release it, and still use these songs for our channel music. A weight had been lifted, and we started writing more. I did something different, though. I stopped trying to prove myself to anyone. I threw out the “rule book”. The audience doesn’t care that you played every instrument yourself! They don’t care if you used all analog gear (we didn’t, BTW.) They care if it’s good, and if they enjoy it. So I started calling everyone I knew who had a talent that could help, and some people I didn’t know that I just reached out to. “Want to do a solo?” “Want to help me mix this?” “Can you do a photoshoot?” All those friends I had made the last 20 years came in handy and made this album what it is. So while the title may say "Alex Lightspeed," it should read: "The Artists That Love Alex Lightspeed and Made This Album Possible." I never thought I would get here, but here we are, and I love you all for believing in me and my work.

- Alex Lightspeed


Thank you:
Joshua Dalton, Todd Daggett, Nathan Whited, Ian Kawabata, Gabriele Tam, Alden Rodgers, Jen Ziebold, N‡MM, Bob Holly, Jordan Dalton, Rahb Vein, Amber Dawn, Mike Adams,Tim Mulder, Lexi Star, and my mother, Sherry Hooke, for believing in me.
My dad, Paul Santos, for buying that Discman, introducing me to music, and those garage sale guitars.
Michael (MN84), Garrett (Lazerhawk) and the Rosso Corsa team.
And to my ever-supportive wife, Rose Lightspeed: Thank you for always encouraging me to achieve my dreams.
This album is dedicated to my children, Infinity and Titan Lightspeed. You are the reason I strive to be the best I can be.