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Download: Meteor Shower mp3
Image credit: Sue Dollin
The final ’single’ from the forthcoming new album – going live the web in two weeks time! ‘Meteor Shower’ an uplifting and atmospheric piece of progressive instrumental pop. Things weave around in melodically murky places only to rise out in a bittersweet epic chorus. Sonically it’s a mix between a warm vintage acoustic sound and cold celestial alien depth.
The chorus melody has an interesting story behind it. My Mum and I are into amateur startgazing, and over the years she’s kept me in the loop as to when and where to look for cool things going on ‘out there’. Some years back, when I can’t remember exactly, she told me to get up and check out a certain meteor shower that was set to peak at 4am. Being the keen astronomer I though it might be worth getting up at this time in the Armidale cold, near zero degrees or lower, to see a potentially great show of meteors burning colourful trails across the blackness and stars. Well there I was, freezing my arse off standing in the middle of the street looking up and not seeing meteors shooting at all! I stuck at it for a while, but only saw two or three faint trails, which on a good night you can see anyway. Feeling the bite of the cold I gave up and went back to bed.
It was good, however, to enjoy the starts with a cold sky, along with Armidale’s altitude making things clearer. ‘Dazzling beauty’ comes to mind when thinking of those blue and red jewels sweeping across the infinitely deep blackness – moments like those you get a sense of how we’re just floating here, protected, in this ridiculously huge ocean of space. Once back inside and in bed I fell straight to sleep. I started to dream. I was dreaming of stars and blackness. I was floating somewhere, but the details are fuzzy. Then I started to hear music. At first I could hear this honey like flow of chords, F G Am G F G F G – and then this anthemic chorus melody started to emerge. I could feel myself composing while I was dreaming. This music keep looping around in my head and I held onto the sense of what it was and kept shaping it, kept it clear.
As the sun was coming up I became aware that I was starting to wake up. I was still dreaming the music. So I tried to hang onto that music, think about it and remember it as I was gradually waking up. Still the music went on in my head. I got up out of bed, went straight out to the studio with getting dressed or even thinking about food, picked up my guitar and started to work out what the notes were. It was easy, the chords and melody took a memorable shape: the dream music would go unforgotten! As quick as a meteor streams across the sky I punched the basic idea into Renoise.
For a long time, a few years at least, this ‘idea’ just sat there as a revolving chorus on my computer, not being worked on. I kept showing it to people saying ‘this is the dream melody!’ – and everyone kept saying ‘that’s great, you should do something with that’. Every time I dragged it out to listen to I kept telling myself ‘yeah I’ve got to do something with this’. So one day in 2006 I show my then jamming buddy Jarrad Cousin the idea so he could play it on the piano while I played the drums. Jarrad and I had a habit of putting a swing into everything, so all of a sudden my ’straight’ idea had found a really groove ’swing’ sub rhythm. I also liked how the acoustic drums sat well with the warmth of the melody. These were my starting points into turning the fragment into a song.
So during 2008 after working on “Long”, I crafted what you hear now. I started to get really technical with Renoise, doing some tricky edits where the song’s rhythm moves between straight and swung. I also put a lot of time and effort into making this a lush and ‘constantly interesting’ pop structure – every drum hit is completely considered, every synth balanced into place, given the ‘right’ character and expressed with ever-changing human melodic expression. As things were drawing to an end I wondered if it needed vocals or not. I had a vague time battling that typically pop anxiety of needing to have vocals for anyone to appreciate the music, which of course is a myth. I let go of the idea. The song now sits with ‘verses’ that feel slightly empty, and ‘choruses’ that are lead instrumentally.
I was nearly done, but I really wanted to get this song right. So I gave it to a few people to listen to, just to see how they reacted. One of these listeners was Mick Rippon. Mick really gave good attention to this track, and gave very constructive feedback and advice. One area in particular he helped shape was the outro. After reaching a peak with the final chorus the song hits an ‘unresolved drone’ and eventually drifts off – Mick suggested to lengthen that drone to help settle the energy of the song (his metaphor for this was excellent: right after good sex you need to spend a moment lying there enjoying the feeling!). He also suggested I put something in there to thematically address what the song was about: so he asked what was it about: I answered telling him about the dream and that the song is called “Meteor Shower”. So he said, roughly ’so put THAT sound in there!’. It was a little bit of a puzzle: just how do meteors sound? Nevertheless, I got into the spirit of the challenge and made up some ’shooting’ sounds by using my pick scraping across the string of my guitar… These sounds are the meteors showering at the end, while the drone drifts onward and outward.
Read what you will into this. My story is just that; whatever’s happening here is clearly beyond my current perception of it, and I find evidence in that this music seems to have a little more potency in it than what’s considered ‘usual’ for me. Whatever has gone on, I’m happy with the result – and I’m happy to say it fits just right as the closing track for the new album.
Stay tuned! Album in two weeks!
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