My taste in music is pretty set in aspic at this point in my life. Anything past about 1998 is just a bunch of idiot noise for the most part, and I remain unwavering in my belief that, really, rock music was probably exhausted as a truly creative medium by the end of the 70s. Yes, people continue to make great records, but once you’d had Extreme Noise Terror, whereas could rock as a genre go? That being said, my taste in music that I create is getting more open-ended. So here’s a track that is, really, a bit… odd. See you afterwards for a bit of a chat, eh?
Thoughts
Normally I copy the lyrics in here but frankly I can’t be arsed – mainly because they aren’t lyrics in the normal sense, but a kind of meandering spoken word train-of-thought. Very much the kind of nonsense I might have spouted while stoned off my tits in a Mini Metro in the late 90s.
Musically too, there’s not much happening is there? It’s a repeating four-chord pattern – all of which are really just variants of D. So I can’t really bore you with a discussion of the underlying harmonic structure. There’s a nice diminished chord in there which gives it a certain flavour but aside from that all you’re getting is the thick end of four minutes of D. And me speaking.
Which leaves… production. This is very much a Piece of Production. It’s visualised as less of a song, and more of a purpose-built coda that I’ll (probably) use on the end of my next (and FIFTH!) album. Despite the lack of a melody, and despite the lack of even a structure, what you have is an exercise in what you’d call psychedelia or trance – with effects coming and going, and a near-constant build up of layers of sound: keyboards, synthesizers, backwards guitars, sound effects, vocals treated with effects and so on, and a steady accumulation of drums.
I’m not even sure where it came from – except that I think the chord sequence was just the result of messing around on a keyboard. I liked the effect, and got drawn intro constructing this… oddity.
One thing of note is that this is the first appearance on one of my records of a bass player. My best and oldest friend is a phenomenal bassist, and his drone note playing really surprised me – as I was expecting something very ornate. But it’s this drone that makes the whole thing work. And now he’s fully involved – and will be appearing on possible every track of my next album.
So, despite it’s lack of conventional elements, and despite the emptiness of its lyrics I really like it as a piece of mood music. It reminds me a bit of the sort of thing you’d get in the 70s (or maybe even something you might have found on a B-side at the tail end of the baggy era). It’s good to experiment.
Anyway – get stoned, and stayed stone. Maaaaaan.