recorded and mixed by Dan Knobler
recorded at Casa Ramos in NJ
mastered by Jacob Blumberg
written by Miles Arntzen, performed by EMEFE

in late 2013, we shacked up at javier's parents' house in new jersey to record what would become our self-titled album. there were 10 of us in the band: myself, javier, jas walton, jake pinto, doug berns, michael harlen, ray mason, zach mayer, deen anbar, and michael fatum. plus, we had dan knobler there recording the whole thing, melody rabe there managing the craziness, and of course javier's family too. one night, we decided to tackle "sayulita", the finale song at all of our shows. we couldn't decide whether to cut the song down to a shorter album version or leave it exactly how we did it live. in the end, cutting it down didn't feel right, so we recorded the whole thing as if we were playing it onstage... except it went way deeper than it ever had gone onstage. the energy in the room was palpable, we were all exorcising something through playing that song that night. the mics were all set up in the basement, but the horns began upstairs in the kitchen - so you can hear Dan turning on the mics, and turning up the gain to hear them. "sayulita introduction" happened completely organically - the horns improvised a sort of dirge together, then percussion came in, and eventually it somehow cosmically led into the song perfectly. no editing there. we then all paraded downstairs, got to our instruments and mics, and went directly into the song. we played it all the way through in one take, and then had a chanting party afterwards. it now stands as one of the most celebratory moment in EMEFE's history, and it was captured for us to listen to forever.

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sayulita

recorded and mixed by Dan Knobler
recorded at Casa Ramos in NJ
mastered by Jacob Blumberg
written by Miles Arntzen, performed by EMEFE