Nita Strauss released Controlled Chaos on November 16, 2018, through Sumerian Records. Her debut solo album was entirely instrumental, with Strauss playing every guitar and bass part, producing the record and handling most of the engineering. After years of performing other artists’ music, including her work with Alice Cooper, she was taking responsibility for the songs as well as the solos.
That responsibility came with a specific aim: make an instrumental guitar record that listeners could follow even if they didn’t play. In a December 2018 interview with Guitar World, Strauss explained that she built the pieces around familiar song structures. Lead single “Our Most Desperate Hour” carried a story about someone facing disaster and making a final attempt to turn things around. “The technique serves the greater idea,” she said.
To finance the record, Strauss turned to fans. She launched a Kickstarter campaign in April 2018, setting a $20,000 goal that also allowed for promotion and touring. In a 2018 interview with PureGrainAudio, preserved by V13, she explained how having a home studio kept the recording budget manageable. Equipment, recording drums away from home, mixing and mastering were among the expenses she needed to cover. The budget was designed to get the music recorded and help her take it on the road.
She recorded much of the album in Los Angeles during a summer break from touring. Once she was traveling again, the work continued wherever she could set up her rig. In a release-week interview with AXS, Strauss described recording in hotel rooms, venues and the back of tour buses, sometimes using an hour between soundcheck and a show. That schedule could be exhausting, she said, but being so closely involved let her make the record she had envisioned.
She kept the recording team small. Josh Villalta played drums and Katt Scarlett played keyboards, while Strauss handled guitars and bass. She told Rockbladet that she wanted her first album to communicate her own musical ideas without a celebrity producer or a long list of guests shaping them. She wrote the original material herself, with a Queen cover providing the exception.
One guest served that particularly personal song. Cellist Tina Guo joined Strauss for “The Show Must Go On.” Strauss connected the song to the emotional cost of touring: missing important moments at home, then having to compose herself before walking onstage. Guo understood that experience, Strauss explained in the same interview. An acoustic cello gave the instrumental arrangement another voice alongside her guitar.
“Hope Grows” required a different kind of adjustment. Strauss told Guitar World that she borrowed an acoustic guitar because she didn’t own one, then resisted adding the reverb or delay she initially wanted to use. Leaving the part exposed was a deliberate recording choice. It also gave an album built around electric guitar a quieter way to express the feelings behind a song.
That control extended to the business side. In a message on her website announcing her partnership with Sumerian, Strauss said earlier label discussions had raised concerns about creative control and demands for a stake in her other work. She wanted a deal that supported her solo music without interfering with work in other bands. Sumerian came aboard after the recording, mixing and cover art were complete.
