Three floors deeper
Surprisingly acoustic tracks for an allegedly electronic album
Hello everyone!
I’ve got three more tracks on the forthcoming Inferno album finished. Back story and links follow.
Dis Track: What if we made fun of the lies the demons tell us?
In Dante’s hell is a walled city named Dis, the idea of which he borrowed from Greek mythology. In hip hop circles, it’s popular to record a “diss track” to ridicule one’s enemies (usually rival rappers). So I thought, what would the demons in hell say if they recorded a diss track for me (or anyone trying to produce art, more generally) personally?
Back in college, the church I was part of encouraged members to take a semester-long pop psychology class they offered based largely on the work of Larry Crabb. It was actually pretty good! I remember a lot of talk about “playing the right tape” in one’s mind, remembering the promises of God and not the hopeless words of the enemy. The following dis(s) track is very much the WRONG tape, but on closer inspection, it reveals how false and even ridiculous the spells of despair really are.
The style for this one is an heavy trap track, modeled after something like Travis Scott’s Sicko Mode (feat. Drake) or a dozen other tunes on the radio a few years back. It was also very much inspired by Austin Kleon’s Keep Going. Not the first time. Some of his cartoons poke fun at the very same thing. I had fun recording all the voices!
Suicide: What if hell was listening to yet another cover of Gloomy Sunday?
To represent the wood of suicides, I had originally thought of doing a piece inspired by the forest of Aokigahara, but I decided that might just be straight-up too creepy. What to do instead? Well, I love it when a song has a mysterious mythology attached to it. Fairy tales are full of magic songs that put people to sleep, or wake them up. (See Ted Gioia’s Music to Raise the Dead). More recently, we have the Pink Floyd album that is (maybe?) synchronized to The Wizard of Oz.
One of the best modern examples is, Gloomy Sunday. Originally written in Hungarian in 1933, it became mildly famous when Billy Holiday sang an English version of it 1941. The problem is, listening to it might be hazardous to your health. It’s (maybe?) a cursed song!
It’s since become somewhat of a jazz standard and has been recorded by absolutely everyone under the sun. Some versions, like Björk’s are so intensely emotional, they are hard to listen to. Others have turned it into an extended instrumental, like the excellent 11-minute Branford Marsalis tenor sax version. I was first introduced to the song in the early 2000s via the lovely Sarah Brightman version.
My cover sees the return of the trumpet and harmon mute I last played on Saturn for the Paradiso album. Instead of a string orchestra or a jazz combo, this one is backed up by a wash of analog synth pads and a rolling bass.
The Burning Sand: Mario’s Fake Egyptian Sitar Music
Well that title is quite the string of words! I’ve written about it before though. After Dante passes through the city of Dis and the wood of suicides, he has to cross the burning sand. Here I am compelled to take a far less serious turn. Burning sand is too closely associated in my head with nostalgia for the desert stages of Nintendo’s Super Mario games! I always loved how they were set in or near pyramids (Egyptian?) but the soundtracks featured sitars and tablas, from east Indian classical music.
This is my attempt to essentially score a desert level for a new imaginary Mario video game. For the form, I largely ripped off 2007’s Dusty Dune Galaxy theme, though I also had firmly in mind the 1989 Game Boy level where the enemies looked like the Egyptian Sphinx, but the boss turned out to be… one of those Easter Island statue dudes!? Anyway, instead of using a synth or sampled instruments, I recorded the guitar, low whistle, and even the electric bass parts all live! I think they turned out sounding a lot more interesting that way.
I even had some extra fun for the music video on this one. I fired up an emulator of Super Mario Bros. 3 (my all-time favorite) and recorded myself trying to play the level where the angry sun chases you. I died a lot.
Until next time! There are lots of other things going on in December so I doubt I’ll have another batch of music finished for this project until late January 2025.
If you are local, I encourage you to see All is Calm: The Christmas Truce of 1914, a musical, Dec. 13-15. I’m not singing in this one, but a lot of my friends are and I’m running sound.
Peace,
Matt