Many Things

So, I mentioned earlier this year that I'd launched a new project, screams. Since my other projects (Face Tat, Girl-Face) were mostly in the reformation stage as people moved and adjusted to life changes, this is was mostly going to be a solo side project, with the goal of finishing up a bunch of songs I'd started over the years but didn't get finished as other projects got in the way. But as these things go, ended up writing up a bunch of new material.

Since it was just going to me with my friends helping me to flesh out the ideas and appearing as guests on the tracks, I really wanted to go for a lo-fi electronic sounds, a la Black Moth Super Rainbow, Suicide, early Grimes, with just a tinge of industrial, a real stripped down lo-fi sound. So I released the first screams song: Many Things.

I wrote the principle music for Many Things in one go (as I'm sure you can tell) and messed with it here and there. The bassline is a MicroKORG, the lead is a Roland Gaia, and the drums I built off a  Roland Octapad SPD-30. The Gaia is killer, but not as easy to interface with as the MicroKORG or the Octapad (though the Octapad has a bit of a learning curve and there's plenty of things that it can do [looper, sequencer] that I don't use cause I have other machines that can do the same and a lot easier to use). I initially recorded it just to save an idea, but really like the grittiness so I decided to round it out. Found a killer movie quote from Dune, when the Guild Navigator tells Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV that little Paul Atreides need to get whacked, and threw it on there. It took me a while to clean up the sample, there's all sorts of machine and hissing noises cause those Navigators are weird mutants and that white noise was part of the scene so I just decided to include in the song cause to take much more of it out would have taken some from the voice quality of the Navigator.

I looped the "plans with in plans" part at the end and got it to extend out so far by automating the volume on that track so that it kept increasing as the loop faded out, thus making it last nearly five minutes. Which is longer than the music. Studio magic, my friends.