Isolated Incidence

Stuck at home during the COVID-19 pandemic, like many people Greg found himself scared and frustrated, so he wrote the song "Sundown" to express these feelings. Then, an act of kindness led to an explosion of material: Greg's long-time friend and former soundman from Somah, Charlie Campbell, sent Greg a guitar. This beautiful Martin D-28 was the acoustic guitar owned by Charlie's late father, and Charlie wanted it to be used to make music again. New guitar in hand, Greg wrote the basic outlines for seven new songs in about two hours' time. He assembled "Unimpeached" and "Precarious" from this material within the next few weeks, then rapidly developed the rest. Greg had some leftover seeds for a planned Dipod album that never never took off, so he used these to develop "Sheer Drop," "Status Quo," "Reservoir," "Stalemate," and "Undeniable." Thus, this became Greg's first album in over a decade wherein the entirety of the material is brand new.

The title has several layers of meaning. First, each song represents a situation that on the surface would seem to be an isolated incident, but when one assembles them all together, it becomes clear that certain commonalities exist. Foremost of these commonalities is a feeling of isolation. Also, the incidence of feelings of isolation during this time in history is quite high.

The beautiful and entrancing photograph was taken by Jenny Sarrat, who also took the photo used on the cover of Greg's album Cathexis.

As on Hindsight and Cathexis, Greg played every instrument on Isolated Incidence. These included his new Martin D-28 courtesy of the Campbell family, his usual Gretsch electric 6-string guitar, his Tobias Growler 5-string bass, an M-Audio MIDI keyboard, and a new Akai MPD218 MIDI Pad Controller for drums. As with Hindsight, Greg used Reaper as his digital audio workstation, coupled with Alesis MK2 near-field studio monitors.