Download mp3: Uneasy

During an atmospheric rainy evening a few months ago Alex Strain messaged me saying he was in the mood for jamming melody. He sent me a little snippet of reflective notes, moving freely through quiet and dark introspection. It got suggested immediately that we should stay up late swapping the tune, each taking a turn to write more of it in collaboration. So for the following five hours we did exactly that.

After about 8 swaps we had formed a little structure that worked on it's own. Throughout I added some bass and background synths to swirl around Alex's Wurlitzer jam. No drums were needed, we just kept it as free flowing as possible. Alex added the first spoken sample, a noisey gltiched transmission of a dark dream, so I decided to mirror a similar contribution at the end of the bridge which is equally dreamy. Introspections of a character in a film that doesn't exist, this is the uneasy moment.

I'm particularly fond of the end build, which was derived out of repeating Alex's last phrase over and over, ramping the dynamics. It came time to retire the swapping, and in the following days a few edits were done to tidy up (including some rendering-down tricks with the reversal sound in the bridge). And then for a long time it sat on our hard drives, forgotten as we got on with other projects. Until now.

This masted version is one of a series of songs in collaboration with Alex. This began with Phoebe, and will continue with other tracks like 'The 4th'. We're aiming for a body of work, much like an album, that documents these sonic meeting places which neither of us can achieve just on our own. Many of the synths and techniques are similar across all this work. Uneasy serves as a possible transition piece.

I've mastered this track as a dark cinematic piece, so it requires slightly different listening to regular pop or beat-driven music. Again you may need to bring the volume up to dive into the ripples and eddies of the listening experience.