Whaaaaaaaaaaaat!? Face Tat's got a new single out! It's off our upcoming Spring 2016 full length. The track is called "Open Up Your Arms."
Check it:
We wrote this pretty quick, in early 2015, with the first batch of songs ideas for this album. I bought a new keyboard off a main damie of mine, Roger Thomasson, a Roland Gaia SH-01, and started futzing around with it, trying to figure that beast out and quickly came across this massive crackly bass sound. It just booms. Especially live. After that, we put that drone on it, which came off my microKORG, which is probably the best most capable little synth I've ever had the pleasure to work with. It comes with so many good stock sounds that you can easily manipulate into your own. The knobs at the top are pretty intuitive and if you really want to get deep in it, you can actually build sounds from the ground up with the function selectors that change what the knobbies affect. I mean, you really can do that with any modern synth: Akai, Nord, even the Gaia, it's just that I learned on the mK first and their approach is so easy to interact with, it's my go-to. And I hear it everywhere. Everyone's got one but they're so customizable that its sound doesn't get played out. I saw Flying Lotus last year and heard him drop this bass line that I immediately knew came from a mK. And sure enough, later on I saw an interview with him talking about his gear and bam, right there is a mK and he even goes on to talk about it. Anyhow, enough of the Korg plug here. (Korg, sponsor our next tour, dammit!)
That weird chime sound is actually from my Roland Octapad SPD-30, which is a cool little midi drum pad. Got some stock effects. Ran some chimes on the Octapad with some reverse delay and then futzed with the tuning of each cluster of notes. Meaning, lots of microtones. Like I'm playing A-C-A in the first part, but the C is tuned a few cents up, while the second A is actually a different pad and it's tuned a few cents down from the other A. With the delay it creates this shimmery, pretty, slightly discordant effect that lends itself to the dark feel of the song. Like our engineer who mixed this for us said: "This song is all about the feels." And they're pretty dark feels.
I rounded it out with that key solo also off the Gaia, which is a great sound that just dominates. Which is why it's only played twice in the song.
Mike started channeling more metal with his guitar around the time we started this album, which I'm sure you noticed. He put a ton of layers, different guitars, a bass guitar, and different room and close mic position, tried a few different amps, all to get that deep, deep chug. I'm sure he could say more about the guitars, a lot more, but he's not here right now. We through on vox and even some vocoder and used Ableton Live to write up some drums, and boom, there you have it. It didn't take us long to separate out the backing vocals into that more round-like give and take at the end, which he and I were both pumped about.
We mixed it over at Different Fur and then threw it up onto Bandcamp and into your ears. You are welcome.
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