The Plot Thickens
I’m sharing some preview clips and descriptions of music from my forthcoming album ‘We Are Not Where You Are’ because I’m a music nerd and love that kind of thing and also in the hope of encouraging curiosity about it.
This was built around a repetitive bassline and beat programmed on about the cheapest synth known to mankind (a Pocket Operator.) The chord progression was overlaid on another synth once this established the groove and some sort of base / bass note and everything kind of grew out organically around that. I think that’s the way I’ve been working on lots of projects more recently because I’m basically playing with synthesizers and drum machines first and allowing them to define a direction rather than writing a song structure and using the electronic instruments to play it. Once I’d worked out what the chord progression actually was on the guitar that was when I married lyrics to it, using words I already had and adapting them to how the music had developed. I wasn’t much interested in trying to impose a standard structure on the song but there did seem to be an obvious space to sing the words – there’s three verses but no chorus, although there is a refrain and a kind of bridge - followed by a second half that was more of a jam out so I decided slide guitar might be one of the most unexpectedly inappropriate textures to bring in for an outro and experimented with looping and reversing that to make it sound as far from Ry Cooder as possible. As for the lyrics themselves, feel free to interpret to your heart’s content but I think they can work on a personal, intimate level as well as on a larger, more abstract structural level which might make them topical for different reasons, potentially at the same time.