Against The Clock (album)

This is a 2-CD compilation released on Alternity Records. The first disc features guitar oriented material from “Metal Fatigue” up to “Tain”. The second features SynthAxe oriented material from “Atavachron” up to “Flat Tire”, in addition to the unreleased bonus tracks “Let’s Throw Shrimp”, which is studio jam with Allan, Chad and Jimmy, and a solo version of “Shenandoah” for SynthAxe and guitar.

A Conversation With Allan Holdsworth (Abstract Logix 2005)

Bill: I’ve lost track of all the labels that you’ve been with in the past 20 years.

Allan: Gnarly Geezer put out The Sixteen Men of Tain album. That was the last studio album that I did. I just put out a compilation (Against The Clock) on another small label, which is Alternity. I think I’m just going to do it myself from now on and put it out through my website.

No Rearview Mirrors (20th Century Guitar 2007)

TCG: Okay, that’s cool. Tell me, is it a 2-CD set called Then, that’s all Synth Axe, or Just for the Curious?

AH: No, it’s called Against the Clock (Alternity Records).

TCG: That’s the compilation.

AH: Yeah, it’s a double CD. One of the discs has the majority of the guitar stuff on it and then the second disc is mostly Synth Axe but there are some guitar tracks on that side as well. We didn’t have room for it on the other CD so we kind of put a couple of guitar tracks at the end of the Synth Axe side. I did an album of my own called Flat Tire. Flat Tire is just a single, it’s not a double-album. It’s a single album and I did it right after my divorce. I didn’t really have a full-on studio set up then so it was...I lost my studio in the process. I was just doing some stuff in this house that I rented in San Juan Capistrano. So a friend of mine had kind of commissioned me to do an album for him but unfortunately, I couldn’t do it as a guitar album, so it ended up being a Synth Axe album,

Harnessing momentum (Innerviews 2008)

You’ve recently been more active in terms of touring and working on new material than you’ve been in years. Why did you pause your career and what’s behind the resurgence of activity?

Things were going well until 1999 when I went through a divorce and that changed everything. I lost my studio and had no way of working, so I was temporarily displaced for the first year or so. I was living with friends, floating around, and things ground to a halt. I went into a big downward slide and didn’t do anything. I wasn’t interested in playing. Meeting Leonardo Pavkovic, who runs the MoonJune label, was the biggest thing in getting my career going again. He’s been amazing in helping me manage a lot of things. I started touring again during the last two years and I’m going to have to tell Leonardo to stop, otherwise he’ll keep me on the road forever. [laughs] I also started working again on two album projects that were never finished. They should both come out in 2008. I also have a few tracks that I’ll be finishing for Chad Wackerman’s new solo album. That one has been going on for awhile too. I did quite a few tracks for it in Australia around the time of the All Night Wrong project. So, I’m now playing catch up. I put out the Against the Clock compilation just to do something. I figured there were enough albums out that we could put out a reasonably good “best of” from them. I thought it was also a good release for people who weren’t familiar with my work.