"No one heard anyone else's parts," Johnson explains. "Paul said it was like the blind men and the elephant. Because my lines are hidden in chord clusters, they're not always obvious. It was exciting to hear each musician find internal melodies and reinforce them. Once we finished the overdubs, we dumped everything into Pro Tools and sculpted Language from this clay."
On six songs, Johnson played a custom doubleneck 6/12 flat-top built by Lance McCullom. "I tune each neck differently," says Johnson, "which makes it possible to modulate from minor to major, and still use harmonics and open strings to build up sympathetic vibrations within the instrument. And on the 12-string, I'll tune some string pairs to intervals other than octaves or unisons. Like on '1-5-90,' the tuning is C-F, G-G, C-C, D-F, F-G, and El,-Bl,, low to high. That tuning is so whacked out that everybody cringes when I strum the open strings. It's fun to draw melodies out of such chaos."