Too Warm To Be So Cold
This began with ambient, droney loops that came from elsewhere. Safetynett and I had put together a live set of experimental ambient music that we performed a couple of times and in the process I ended up with some loops saved on my looper made from a mixture of synth and instrument textures. I recorded some of these out of that context because they seemed like they might make an interesting bed for other elements. In this case, I think I copied the looping drone and put it through a step filter that gave it a rhythm and laid that over the original. The beats and percussion were programmed along with this rhythm, since none of this was done to a click or grid. At this point I was still thinking that this might be quite a minimal composition but once I introduced the beat it very clearly needed a bass element. The bassline is based on an arpeggio of the same series of notes beginning on a different note of the series every fourth repetition which means it’s less settled and solid as an anchor and once it was there it seemed natural to have synths also arpeggiating to create even more movement with different harmonies emerging from the different cycles of notes. Safetynett was enlisted at this point to contribute an undulating, swooping synth part and more electronic beats which fattened things up. Then, to throw the cat among the pigeons a bit I decided to try some bombastic electric guitar, by which time the track was getting longer and more monumental and all thoughts of minimalism were resolutely forgotten. All these layers needed a vocal to turn the later part from an instrumental into a song so I used lyrics to do with unease about complacency and ‘keeping the dream alive’ whatever that phrase might mean in the particular context where you find yourself.
Reading this back it becomes really apparent to me that I started off with one thing to do or aim towards in mind and what actually happened was something different. It’s as if the music took on a life of its own and just needed me to allow it and assist it to grow into something beyond what I had intended. Maybe I’m dignifying my ‘intention’ too much by even calling it that and in fact what I’ve really done is assembled something out of a couple of pieces of something else because I didn’t really know what I intended. Ever ready with a relevant quote, Brian Eno said something to the effect that:
“Some sound comes so heavily laden with intention that you can’t hear it for the intentions. This is the great problem of lyrics... they always impose something that is so unmysterious.”
Maybe something like that was in my mind when I thought I’d make an ambient piece with my loops but I think when I added rhythmic, then percussive elements my brain became determined that events should happen against the backdrop that had been created. Eno also had something to say about preferring to make ‘frames: context, rather than content’ but I don’t know that I can always let things lie enough to do that. I have a habit of feeling the need to fill up the space in ambient compostions I’ve tried. And I ended up with lyrics too! Although I did keep them pretty minimal, strictly two rhyming couplets and no more structure than that.
I suppose it’s not easy to just completely abandon what have been your ways of working, writing and producing without vestiges of older approaches fighting their way back in. I haven’t been sitting down with a guitar as a primary way in to writing songs for quite some time now and these clips I’ve been sharing from the soon to be released album ‘We Are Not Where You Are’ are examples of music that’s come into being in a dfiierent way. This might be partly why I’m trying to explain myself in blog posts, since a lot of my previous output has been quite lyrical or ‘song’ based (even if, as I’ve said in my own bio I’ve always tried to resist only doing that.) Also, after I’ve said that, were you to listen to the new album the first thing you might notice is that it’s still an album of songs!
I guess what I’m clumsily driving at is that where previously I may have focussed on lyrics and song structures based on lyrics, often with acoustic instrumentation along with my guitar defining the structure, these newer tracks haven’t been made that way. So although i’m still singing lyrics, more often than not they didn’t come first and in some cases - perhaps like in this track - they aren’t really the main event. That doesn’t mean they’re meaningless or just there for the sake of it but sometimes they’re more of a musical element that doesn’t need to be foregrounded so much. I’ve been able to be less precious and more ruthless about what needs to stay in and what can really be taken out and I think I’ve tried to do more with less, instead of overloading songs with imagery and signifiers. Or, indeed, intention.