mmd

Download the new song by myself and Mick Rippon – Our Blood Is Black

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

This was composed in seven swaps between Mick and myself over the last few weeks. The style of music is a strange mix of chiptune, breakcore, and a weird dark angry Arabic scale meshed into a pop drama with sung vocals and lead guitar. While on the surface it may appear as another one of my epic dark pop songs, it has got its lion share of Mick’s classic composing styles, with ‘tracker’ style strings, structure and lead synth melodies. The mix work was also 50/50, and Mick played a big part in bringing out the dynamics of the piece.

The song had a bit of an unusual birth: I was mind numbingly bored at work and decided to open up Renoise and have a play with making hand drawn waveform instruments. After tracking a simple drone I added a little Arabic chiptune melody. Feeling it was pretty one dimensional I posted the file on the #renoise IRC channel and see if anyone wanted to co-op on it. Mick went for it and before long we had some seriously accelerated song development happening. And it was turning out surprisingly dark and angular, especially in contrast to some of Mick’s upbeat music.

The Arabic feel inspired me to think about Dubai and some of the horror stories I’ve heard about that place. I remember once seeing that they had so much money they could afford to build this massive indoor ski field, right in the middle of this desert country. It’s the kind of decadence that seems to have little to do with reality. It made me think of this bizarre love hate relationship the west has Arabic oil power – both a reverence of decadence, but a grudging dependence on this economic and cultural lubricant that is oil. So the lyrics came from that tension, a kind of corrupt fatalism that could really apply to any sort of trade based drama.

The song was mastered in Reaper digitally, and then recorded to my tape setup (the Tascam BR20T calibrated with Ampex 456 tape). We both chose to have a very clear and dynamic sounding mix and master, which during the loud sections are at around K-12 leveling. If it seems a touch quiet to begin with, please turn it up nice and loud and enjoy the dynamics!

Download the new song: Vegemite

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

A little while back I saw that Mick Rippon was doing a ‘rainy day’ song, mostly out of fun because it happened to be rainy at the time. The song had a little bit of a throw-away quality to it with its standard sad pop chords and middle-of-the-road plod, but it really caught my ear for some reason. It struck me as a nice container for something emotionally rich and with a bit of work it could be turned into a bitter-sweet experience. I suggested to Mick that I quickly lay down a guitar solo for it and see what happens. He said go for it.

I wanted to work as quickly as possible to take a break from my usual approach of agonizing over songs for months and months – just work hard and get something good happening. It wasn’t long into working on this that a vocal melody popped into my head and within a few takes I had that down as well as a sustained guitar solo. Mick added some extra interesting chord changes and fx,  afterwhich I set to polishing the mix and master – the result it what you hear now. A little rainy day piece to enjoy with your comfort food of choice!

There’s no doubt Mick and I have a good musical communication going on when we need to have it, probably due to some shared computer software herritage and perspectives on song construction. There is a desire to work on more collaborations with him but there’s much to finish first before we dive into that. Some big projects to be released first, some due very soon!