When I’m writing music, I usually have an image or scene in my mind while the riffs and pieces are coming together. Usually these images and scenes have nothing to do with anything–the music I’m working on just inspires them without logic or reason. Because of this, and because I mostly only write instrumental music, I generally don’t talk about song titles or what songs “mean”. But the title of this song came from a poem I wrote in grad school probably around 2012 or so. I revised and cut the poem and put it on the cover because those were the images I had in mind when I wrote this song.
Musically, however, this song has a lot in common with my song Crunkjam ’18. Instead of running away from it as soon as I realized the bassline was incredibly similar, I decided to just lean into it. I wanted a heavy section at the end, I wanted horns and synths–just like that song had. In the end, it feels (to me) to be a very different song, despite all the characteristics they share.
I started writing this song around mid-May, and originally it was all bass guitar. I read that when making These Promises Are Being Videotaped, El Ten Eleven used only drums and bass. All of the synth sounds were just bass guitar through effects pedals. So the synth parts were bass with some effects laid on and the heavy parts were bass with tons of fuzz.
I don’t think I intended to keep it like that–it was just a way to get the music out. So I re-recorded the main bass part and one of the synth parts with my Sterling Stingray short scale bass. The guitars were all recorded on my Gibson Les Paul through a Line 6 POD Go, emulating an Orange and a Mesa amplifier. I wrote the horns and strings and the rest of the synths using Kontakt.
This was one of those instances where the first 90% of the recording was super easy and fast. The last 10%–figuring out transitions between parts, getting the horns and strings and synths just right, coming up with interesting drum parts–that’s the part that took the longest. I would export a mixdown and listen to the demo at work, make mental notes, then adjust the recording later that day. Then I would do it all again. Over and over. Dozens of mixdowns getting polished into smooth stone.
I could keep going, but at a certain point I just have to stop. So I did. And this is what I stopped on.
Everything was written and recorded at the South Side studio in Des Moines. I wrote and programmed all of the music, and the cover photograph is adapted from a photo by Jakub Kriz on Unsplash.