I was interviewed by Clover Blue about myself, my new album and just general things Clover has heard about me through gossip and talking behind my back. Excerpt of the interview below. I have a bit of a weird first question. Oh god. Orange Orange – why? And have you always been Orange Orange? Uhhh no… kind of… no. It’s a good question actually. The name came from when I was in high school and I’d just be changing my Instagram name every two months. I had friends who did it; it was the cool thing to do, and I went through quite a few names. I can’t really remember them, I’d have to go through my Instagram and find them, so if you wanna do that… go for it. I had a lot about skunks, I had a lot about Kylo Ren from Star Wars because I thought he was really good, and yeah I did Orange Orange once. And then I went off to another name, but after a year I thought that Orange Orange was the coolest name that I had, so then I changed it to that as my Instagram handle. I already had some music out beforehand under a different name, I think it was like 'Litwick Music' or something like that. It wasn’t really like songs, it was more like instrumental electronic pieces because I didn’t know how to record my voice or instruments so I would just make it all in the computer. But yeah I changed the name to Orange Orange when I put out that first EP, and yeah it stuck, everyone really liked it. I think it’s a good name. Oh, thank you. I trust my intuition. So when did the first EP come out? It was my last year of high school in 2017. I put it out just before my first exam, like two or three days before or something insane like that. I think if my parents were more attentive to the making of the EP they would’ve cut in and said “what are you doing?”. But like yeah I spent most of Year 12 working on the EP in my free periods and at home. I didn’t really know how to release music back then so I just put it up on SoundCloud and yeah, people in school liked it. One of the singers on the EP, Ruby-Sofia, shared a song with someone who then somehow linked it with a YouTube influencer, and they’d put it up as background music on one of their videos. Oh man… I got so many streams basically immediately. That blew my mind at the time, I remember thinking “Woah, his is the best thing that’s ever happened to me! Let’s make more music” and yeah I haven’t hit a high like that since then sooooo… hopefully we’ll get back there soon. Had you intended to be a musician? From the get-go? Oh yeah, I really wanted to make music. It’s like the one thing I feel really great at and I feel at peace doing. Then I put that first EP out and I really enjoyed that and thought to keep doing that, and yeah it’s pretty great. So when you were making the EP in High School, was that just you? Were you working with the band yet? Because I was told you debuted your band at the Dancing Dog in 2018? Hahaha no, it was just me working out of my computer. From general curiosity and just tinkering around I’d kinda began to understand Ableton, so I was getting more of a grasp on it, playing with the sounds and making these neat tracks. I didn’t even think to put lyrics on the EP until the end of the year. ‘Cus I had another band in high school, Plaza-TRG, with Harry, Sunny and Elena at the time, and we had already released two EP's prior to the first Orange Orange EP in 2017. But then Year 12 came around and everyone was really focused on finishing school and getting good grades, which I was too… I swear… but at that point I thought I’d put all my song effort into this EP.I hadn’t even thought about performing the Orange Orange stuff live, but then I was semi-positively peer-pressured into it by some friends from high school to launch this thing called ‘Medium’. They really were big supporters which was great, I’m really grateful for that. One of them messaged me asking if Orange Orange could play and I said “I dunno I don’t have a band”, but they pestered me into it, so I made a band. I chose Johnsen for keyboard and guitar, and Dylan on bass. Johnsen and Dylan were both in Hollow December, which was Plaza-TRG’s rival band in high school (a friendly rivalry). It was the first time playing music with them, which was great. Alex and I studied in Uni together, and Alex was actually really hesitant because he didn’t want to join another high school band vibe but then I told him what it was and he was like “Oh! Yeah sure I wanna do that!”, which was good. And Sunny was my longtime collaborator. I know that sounds hilarious as an 18-year-old but like, we were best friends, we hung out all the time, we made music together a lot, like ideas and silly things, so I thought it was an easy fit to get him in on his keyboard. So that was that band initially, I hadn’t asked Keely to formally join the band because she only featured on that one song ‘Passive and Meek’, so I guess it was just… five guys in jumpsuits back then. Actually we didn’t have jumpsuits back then either, we were just– Plain clothes? Yeah just plain clothed teenagers playing music. Wow. Yeah wow. Well I was gonna also say that you Johnsen and Dylan did your entire schooling together. Yeah, we did. Dylan and I still live near each other, and Johnsen used to live near us too. We all went to kindergarten together, we all went to primary school together and we also all went to high school together, becoming much closer towards the end of high school. But yeah, that whole formative education arc was us. Kinda crazy that we all didn’t play in a band together until after high school. Anyway! I’ve heard a bit that your high school was a bit of a music hub… …yeah… And that the Dancing Dog was so formative for underage people to perform and party in the West. Do you think that each of you growing up together influenced each other into becoming musicians? I think so, I think definitely. We were all already interested in learning instruments and being performers at a young age. I reckon we were all on a path to be doing music, to be honest, but we definitely pushed each other to explore more… probably. Yeah I was quite amazed that you all grew up together just because I feel that you’re all advanced musicians now, like you’re not hobby musicians at this point, so maybe there’s something in the water there… Eloise and Elena too. When did you start wearing the jumpsuits? That was Dylan’s idea, maybe like 4 months after we started playing gigs. We were gigging so much in 2018, that Medium launch really connected us with some great Melbourne musicians and we had many shows lined up after that. Yeah well I would’ve thought you had started earlier than 2018 because the first time I saw you was in 2018. Really? Yeah, April I think. April? I think? You might be thinking of 2019. Our first gig was in mid-2018 in June. Yeah I guess I must be thinking of 2019. I can’t be sure if the first time I saw you was when you were supporting Bailey Judd at his residency at Gaso Upstairs, or at your own single launch where you were supported by Earnest Jackson at the Toff. The Toff would’ve been at the end of 2018. I think that was the first one. Really?! Wow, that was a fun gig. I think Harry was drumming for that one, right? I found video from one of the ones you were at, and Harry’s on the drums. Yeah! That would’ve been the earlier one. And Johnsen would’ve had a bob, or something. Ahhh yeah… Johnson’s youth. Yeah we started wearing those jumpsuits at the Gaso Upstairs opening for Annaliese Rose in October 2018. It was Dylan’s idea– we’ve got those jumpsuits and it’s lasted us… five years now, holy shit! Same jumpsuits? Yeah, but I am getting a new one made. I feel like it made an impression, and it has stuck. I dunno, in lockdown I was in the mindset that the jumpsuits were in the past, and that we’ve gotta get rid of them, but maybe they’re good. Maybe they’re worth keeping around. I mean you have such a clear image with the band which is cool. The band that you’ve just expanded which is cool… how many people? Six. Six now. Keely was informally a part as we were gigging before lockdown. We had so many gigs we couldn’t expect all our guests to show up, even Keely back then. It did get to a point where we had a chat and said “we’ve gotta make sure it’s concrete, we gotta put you in and not just have you featuring on some songs and then walking off stage”. I think we’ve found a really good balance with that, in fact I think the band is better than ever right now. PLEASE COME TO OUR SHOWS. Yes, I think the band is better than ever as well. It’s amazing to have seen your band back in 2018. Your single launch was probably the first gig I’ve ever gone to because the gig scene wasn’t that big in Brisbane, and I remember going with Ella Ferris and seeing you guys and I was just like “Wow! ...wait, they’re a band!” and I just followed you guys from that point onwards. But I think you’ve just continued to improve as a band and now you’re all just so tight and it feels like everyone’s coming to their full potential. Aww thank you! Even Soren the other day was like “something’s happened to Johnsen, he does all this crazy shit and sings all his BV’s and jumps on the ground, and Keely has so much fun and Alex is… insane!” Frankly, my favourite thing about the band is the morale. We could play the worst music but we all genuinely enjoy each other’s company, which I mean like… you must know Clover, as you’re in a band! If you don’t enjoy being with the people you’re playing with then what’s the point? My friend has this beautiful saying… It's actually Jess from Arbes who said it to me years before I joined Arbes. When you’re in a musical project there’s three key things you have to consider. You have to be keen, be respectful, or be there, and you have to choose two of the three. That kind of blew my mind when I first heard it. Which two do you think you are? I mean, I think I’m all three. I have to be there lmao, it’s me. I’m very keen, I really enjoy it, and I would assume I’m respectful… I would assume so as well, if you’re able to keep them on lock. They are the best, I couldn’t ask for better bandmates. Yeah. And so, in terms of credits for the album, you seem to be the biggest influence of your album, like, you do everything! Yeah… it’s my vice. I hate asking for help. Maybe it’s the masculinity in me pushing it but I hate asking for help. I feel I’m getting better at that now… I think I have trouble trusting people’s artistic ideas when my name’s on it because I think that I know best, which I mean… other people have great ideas too. I mean, fuck when did I start making this album? It would’ve been around the first lockdown in 2020… around then. I feel like I’ve completely changed since I started the album, and at that point in 2020 I felt like a completely different person to how I was in 2018 when I started the band. That’s two whole lives that have changed in me… I guess I’m still that stubborn though! But also the lockdown doesn’t help with collaborating with people. Yeah totally. It’s actually a bit annoying because I couldn’t have Soren on We Are Not Friends or Alex on Red Sinking Sun until much later because we couldn’t go into other people’s houses. I went to Soren’s at the start of 2022 and I remember the whole ordeal back then too– of taking a RAT before we left and wearing a mask for the whole journey there and back and wearing a mask in Soren’s room and it was bloody like 40 degrees when we were there just outside of Eltham in that tiny room. It's crazy that that was around this time last year. But, I’m happy with it! Came out great! I mean, to answer your question. Lockdown. Yeah. Stubbornness. Yeah. But then when I needed to do it, it happened. So it all worked out. Yeah, and Soren was saying when I saw him that the riff for We Are Not Friends, you had that for years before releasing the song. Yeeaaaahh. That’s funny. I’ve kinda realised every idea I’ve had is ripped off from stuff I’ve heard without telling me that it’s from that thing I’ve heard. So that 5 bar phrase idea, I swear I got it from an Unknown Mortal Orchestra song that I didn’t like until last year, but that I heard back when it came out in 2018. So I knew the concept was there, but I didn’t know what the song was. Then I made this… big penis guitar riff– that’s what my friends and I colloquially call “cringe rock guitar”, along with these chords… It’s funny. I thought of all that in my head and then it took me a while to make it because I didn’t have an interface until like 2021 and my computer was ridiculously outdated so I had to get a new one. But yeah… I’m really happy I have this skill where I can think of concepts and parts of a song and then just apply it in Ableton or something. If it doesn’t work out I can just tweak some things and now… I’ve got a song. It needs drums. It’s not like it came to me in a dream or anything, I just thought about it and pondered “wouldn’t that be nice?” And so with that, do you usually compose all the music and then the lyrics or are you doing track and lyrics and melody together? My short answer would be that I’m not sure. My long answer would be… definitely do melody last. I guess it was how I grew up. I was shown Garageband as a young kid by my dad on this 2003 iMac he put in my bedroom. I didn’t really know any music theory back then so I would get those sample loops and then just put them back to back on a beat… and bam there were three albums I made when I was eight years old. I probably have those somewhere… I DEFINITELY have those somewhere. So because of that I love arranging, it’s what I’m good at. With making music on a computer, I just get little ideas and chords and pieces, and then mix it with a drum beat or something and then make the skeleton of a song. And then I would ponder about lyrics for a week or a month or sometimes a year even, and then write them. But yeah, usually it would be the chords or the structure, then the topic of the song, then the lyrics and then the melody. With the album, it was lockdown, I think everyone was very anxious and scared, so I just had these long diatribes of words and feelings that I could look to and collate to create contentions for songs. And then I would write the song around the words, which is new and interesting for me, but even then I would put the melody on top last. And with writing the lyrics, because there’s some really key images you speak about on the album. Yeah definitely. Like the S– The Sun, yeah. Bugs. Bugs? You’ve got a lotta bugs in there. You got the centipede, you got the crickets, you got the worms. Oh wow, I never even realised! Yeah lots of bugs! I think it’s really interesting because I think you have a lot of contention with nature and man. I think that was the initial proposal with the album, to write something that explores nature clashing with humanity and the result of that. Sorry, you were saying! I was gonna say while you were writing it, did you view it as a concept album to some extent, just by writing it with these carry-through themes? It’s funny you say that. I felt that my last album, ‘Shame’, was a concept album. It felt like going through grief and shame in a cyclical fashion. With this album I thought “fuck, I really don’t want to do a concept album”. I just want to put music out that doesn’t need to be overthunk or overanalysed in a linear fashion. I mean, I suppose the concepts were all there from the beginning and I didn’t notice until about 6 or 7 songs in and I thought “well I GOTTA keep going with this now I guess” so I started writing with the Sun in mind. Yeah I didn’t really notice the Sun being so prevalent until I was talking with Sydney about the album, where I said “I just realised I mention the Sun in-” In almost every song, right? Yeah, almost every song! I think just not in Breath or Granny Lands. It’s kinda a theme that’s been in all my music as well, like in a lot of songs I wrote when I was younger I talked about the Sun. I mean, I kinda got this idea from Everything Everything as well, like the Sun predates everything except like Space itself. The least pretentious way I think I can say it is that it predates all life within our Solar System. Like we can all be really angry at each other, we can all be really mean, we can all be wrapped up in our lives, but without a Sun we wouldn't have an option to exist. So it’s interesting. I kind of attribute it to representing the truth, or like the purity or what is definitive whilst everything else is airy-fairy. [lyrics from 2:41 to 2:57 the truth is, the birth of a child the sunlight, it's all i ever had] The album was originally gonna focus on becoming radicalised. When we were in lockdown there was so much discourse like “Fuck these lockdowns. This is the worst thing that’s ever happened to us since they invented soy milk. My rights are being impinged because I can’t go out” and I was like, I don’t think it needs to be said but there’s obviously worse things happening in the world while this is happening. Even in that 2020 period there were so many casualties in Europe due to the lockdowns, and so much that happened with BLM and so much happening with the war in Ukraine right now really signifies that for me as well. It just really made me realise that everyone that subscribes to these ideas… they’re not all nutjobs, they’re not all terrible people. I think it’s so easy to say “they don’t support changing the date” or “they don’t support getting the vaccine” and conclude that they must be an awful person and completely dismiss them. But the thing that blew my mind the most was when I was looking at some anti-vaccine protests in the city and all these families had taken their kids to these rallies. I kinda realised that these people might just not know any better, maybe their community leader had rallied them to join and take part for their own perceived freedoms without all the information. It was very fascinating to me to see all these people being manipulated by forces out of their control. We might have a very negative response to what they are fighting for, but I don’t think they’re bad people. I don’t think anyone’s implicitly a bad person because of that, they’re just led to believe that what they’re doing is right. I mean I feel like that’s everyone too. So yeah uh… that “The Sun Isn’t Gone” title came from mass hysteria about the sun setting. I did stray away from that radicalism vibe as it was depressing to think about all the time in lockdown. Do you feel like the album is relatively political? Or do you think the things you are speaking about just entered the zeitgeist at that point. I think the zeitgeist. Does speaking politically mean speaking from one point of view or is just talking about how people are thinking? When I thought of that question I was gonna ask if you felt it was aligning with like, activism through music, but after listening and reading into it, it doesn’t feel like you’re going really hard on anyone. Yeah… no, I don’t think… I… uh yeah, it’s a hard question to answer. I think with some songs… I think overall, no. I’m not trying to send a message like “fight for what’s right”. I more wanted to preach kindness overall, how everyone has different views and even if some seem and are blatantly wrong and have awful implications… we’re all just life under the sun. So we’ve all gotta survive and we’re all just humans, it’s not like we’re anything more or less than that. I think… I think Modern Life is the big one for that topic. I wrote that specifically when I was in quarantine because my workplace at the time was a Tier 1 Exposure Site, and I was just hearing about my friends and people I know were not respecting the isolation requirements, y’know like just going for bike rides even though they might have Covid. Looking back on it it’s kind of laughable how worried I was but at the time I was freaking out, I was thinking they would be ruining the community, essentially. And that started this whole line of thinking that people aren’t as bad as their beliefs make them out to be. I’m sure with the other side, like the ‘QAnon people’ that we don’t know about or whatever, they probably think the same way as us like “oh, they’re not thinking like us, they’re enemies” but I’m sure they also will learn to understand that we’re all people, we all have the same ideas, and ultimately we all want to do good. It’s just we all want to do different kinds of good, ultimately. Sorry I’ve just been talking for like 15 minutes and forgotten what you asked in the first place. That is the point of the interview! Ah, yes. Do you have any, are there any songs on the album that you’re like… it’s just a song. Hah! Or do you write with intention? I think I’m at that point where if I’m not writing with intention, I’m asking myself “what am I doing?” Ahahah yeah. Actually, I think Red Sinking Sun, the first song of the album, is kinda just a song. I was doing a live stream when we went into lockdown; Medium were hosting it actually. Charles, who is a great artist and designer in his own right, was troubleshooting the livestream to me, telling me what to do and what to download and stuff like that. While I was waiting for him to fix something, I made the loops for Red Sinking Sun. The project was called ‘Waiting For Medium’; I did all the vocal stuff there as well, I was just riffing off of vibes. Then I saved it… maybe like a year later I went back to it and thought “I should show someone this at least”. So I showed Sydney and she said “Ryan, this is the best thing you’ve ever made” which is kinda sad because I put far less effort into it than my other songs. She was like “you gotta do this”, and everyone else in the band really liked it as well so at that point I thought “well I guess we GOTTA play it together!” so I rerecorded the vocals and guitars and worked with Alex for the drums and… yeah! That song doesn’t really have a clear cut intention. I mean it has an intention but it wasn’t a clear one or a planned out one. It kinda just emerged. Yeah. Exactly. I think it makes a great entrance for the album. Thank you, I think so as well. How did you go about ordering? What? Ordering the album? Oh, well… like all albums (I assume), it started off as an EP. It started off as two different EPs in my head, actually. A lot of the songs… Ordering is an interesting question because all I can say is that it just feels right to me. I guess the chronology of the songs influences where things fit, and even how songs are made. A lot of the songs are former Uni projects, like DC2, Get Quiet, CYA on MARZ, Future Role, Granny Lands, Saviour of the World. I had Granny Lands, CYA on MARZ and Future Role as its own EP, and I had Get Quiet and Saviour of the World with a bunch of other uni songs as well. I love Saviour of the World. Yeah I love that one as well. And then after curating all those EPs I thought, “Fuck… let’s just do another album” because I just put out MUNKEE and I thought it was cool but it’s just 4 songs and I’m able to do a bigger release that will be more fulfilling for myself. So yeah I had all those songs and I put them in an order I liked, and then I thought “alright, now I need an intro track (Red Sinking Sun), now I want that thing that’s been in my head (We Are Not Friends), I wanna make that, now I need a few more songs between Get Quiet and CYA on MARZ. Then after all that I thought “I need one more song, and it needs to be upbeat but calm”, so I made Modern Life after that. So that’s interesting because I had an order, and because of that order that made me make songs in a certain way. Wow, that’s awesome. I recommend you do that. That’s… what I’m doing. That actually is what I’m doing. That’s interesting… Yeah, I like that a lot. Some of the lyrics that you use… I find you create quite epic images a lot of the time, like quite poetic but very visual language. Like the centipede severing his arm, or putting yourself before your God and becoming a plant… awesome phrase. Um or there’s one – “I won’t be a cinderblock on the floor of your swimming pool”. I really like these and I like the super visual language and I get the impression from talking to you that you really like film? Are you like a film guy? It’s really funny that you say that because… I don’t really seek film to watch. I kinda just happen upon film and enjoy it. I get really easily frightened, so when there’s tension in a film I feel really uncomfortable, I feel really bad. I watched Joker when it came out in the cinema and I just felt awful the whole time, but I think it was a good film. I was enjoying it in the moment, but I couldn’t look at the screen and loud noises made the jolt, so maybe… that’s my way of trauma dumping on the album. Like– the cinderblock line… you say it and I remember now that I was inspired by the video for Breezeblocks by Alt-J. I am familiar with that video, yes. Yeah I think that imagery comes from that video. Which is quite a traumatic music video. Yeah! Quite traumatic. Really left an impression on me. Maybe this visual language thing is another thing I stole from Everything Everything. A band commonly associated with Orange Orange. Yeah. I’ve been a big fan for many years. But they had that one album ‘Get To Heaven’ which is– So good. So good. Not my favourite, but still so good, What’s your favourite album? A Fever Dream, by a long mile. Wow. But, shocking imagery on Get to Heaven. It’s all about the rise of ISIS and the attacks and all that growing into mass media in 2014/2015. There is a song on there about becoming a radicalist and also some songs about the disparity of ‘happy Western life’ with ‘war torn Middle-East vibes’. And they do a lot of juxtaposition in their lyrics with like “Crushed under feet, how about we find a nice place to eat tonight?” in the song Get To Heaven, I really like that lyric. Very interesting, ultra-violent juxtaposition. I dunno, maybe I gravitate towards that kind of mediae. Do you feel that influences the way you write to some extent? Oh yeah, 100%. I feel like everyone writes about what intrigues or interests them. That’s me! Do you have… going beyond the visual medium of film do you have film score influences? No… I’m gonna say I’m not really a huge film score guy, which might be frightening for some people to hear. But yeah, I don’t really pay too much attention to film scores– I’m usually so engrossed in the film I don’t notice the film score. Which I guess is the goal of the film score. Yeah. But um, yeah I really love music for music sake, so yeah, not huge on film score really. Totally wasn’t the answer I was expecting to get. And that is awesome. Doesn’t mean I’m not interested in it! Pearl was showing us the soundtrack for The Social Network by Trent Reznor when we were on tour, it’s so good! Trent Reznor and Addicus Ross? Yeah, I dunno who that Addicus guy is. They’re the duo I think. Yeah. Yep. But you directed your own music video, correct. Haha, yep. I do like making films. Would you like to do that again? Yeah I would. But I hope I have a better idea next time. Because everything feels so epic when you think of it and then when it all comes together you just think it’s all a bit cute. Nah I mean, I do like the music video I made, I liked working with Jagger. Jagger’s out of my league, he’s so good, he’s a hard worker. He does all these YouTube videos that are like video essays on Australian Sport, it’s actually really good. I love the videos but I guess I am the target audience after all. Would you ever endeavour to do something that’s like the concept album film? Like Anima, or a Lemonade? I don’t know… the big issue I have with film is that I like film, but I don’t think I’ve seen enough film to have enough original ideas to make stuff? I feel like very recently I’ve understood what the purpose of a good shot or good writing is, but I feel like I’d have to watch a few more… anything really. Have you seen Anima? No I haven’t. *shocked* It’s Paul Thomas Anderson and Thom Yorke’s Anima EP. Ohhh yeah Anima, I know that. Elena mentions it in one of the Lili Pili songs actually. Beyond Everything Everything, do you have any notable influences that you connect with a lot or find yourself accidentally mimicking. Specifically for this album or in general? Um… maybe particularly for the album. Okay, I guess what I was listening to a lot at the time 1000% influenced. But I guess there’s always that overarching “Everything Everything” sound palette. I do take a lot from Animal Collective, especially the earlier stuff. I love their lyrics– they do a lot of strong visions and very large juxtapositions, even in the way they perform the lyrics. That uh that… SO GOOD, I could give examples but just listen, it’s great. I kinda grew up on that, so that’s my foundation. For specific songs I take a lot from Radiohead, I take a lot from contemporary stuff… Future Role’s synth was inspired by the George Alice song ‘Stuck in a Bubble’, which came out while I was making. I kinda mixed that with one of Sydney’s songs – ‘Out From the Inside’, that kinda 6/8 groove. I was listening to the Flaming Lips at the time, for surprisingly the first time as well at the start of lockdown. Really? Yeah, I was turned onto it by my Uni mentor and… I was hooked. Shoutout to Cayn Borthwick. He also turned me onto Ween, and the concept of recording guitar straight into the desk, like skipping recording with the amp. God if we had another lockdown I would just record it like that, so much easier to deal with. Yeah, I feel a lot of people think it’s sacrilegious to do that honestly. I like it. Yeah! I do think for my next release I’d wanna do it through an amp, or ‘properly’. But yeah a lot of Ween songs are a guitar into the desk with like a chorus pedal, and that’s it. I feel like ‘Saviour of the World’ is basically that for the recording; I think it works well. I was listening to a lot of St Vincent as well, I love the boldness to explore the indie-pop genre to the extent Anne has. CYA on MARZ might’ve accidentally ripped a St Vincent song… I don’t notice these things until it’s too late. I think that’s all the influences, is that enough? There’s probably more, but I can’t think right now. And there’s like Gorillaz and all that but I feel like that was more my last few releases and I’m over it and looking for new things. Nice, and I've also heard that as a young person you were a big Beatlehead? Ohh yeah. Humongous Beatlehead. I blame my dad for that. Dad wasn’t very keen on most popular music that was coming out in the 80s, I think he probably tuned out to the big hits in that time. But I mean he’s an older man, even for parents in my generation, so he kinda grew up at the tail end of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, around the time Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd were doing well, so a lot of the growing up… fuckin’, I remember being 3 or 4 and being into Elvis, like we’d be listening to that 30 greatist hits album or whatever together and I’d be enamoured. I was SO into Elvis! With the Gold Cover, that CD. I loved it. I was hugely into the Beatles in Primary School, kind of to the point where I was mocked for not knowing the latest hits of the latest 2000’s. But I see it as an absolute win because now I’m listening to all the pop music I’ve missed out on in the last decade and thinking “this is definitely… what it is!” Are there any particular Beatles songs or aspects that have been really influential in your music making? Uhhhh? I like John’s lyric approach. I love how he’s so introspective and loves exploring his own issues and shortcomings. When I’m listening to the Beatles I’m most drawn to John and George’s songs because they align with the way I write songs. I am on the record saying I hate Paul, that I don’t like Paul at all. To set the record straight, I don’t hate Paul, I just dislike some of his song ideas and the way he writes music. He’s probably the greatest bassist I’ve heard and he writes some crazy basslines, and I’ve started listening to a bit of Wings and it’s good, but he has some real silly songs in the Beatles if you ask me. He does have some where we’re like “we get it, you sound so happy, shut up”. "I will still feed you when you’re sixty-four, get over it." I mean like, the Paul songs might be a bit of a joke but I can still like them, and that’s something that’s interesting with the Beatles – I can like everything they do. They have like over 200 songs and I can still enjoy a lot of them. I am drawn to… fuck I dunno. I’m drawn to all of it. I can listen to Please Please Me and their early stuff and like that as much as their later stuff, though I do enjoy it in a different way. Revolver and Rubber Soul onwards, that’s where I start thinking it gets interesting, all the way to Let It Be and Abbey Road. I think I actually love Magical Mystery Tour the most. That’s MY favourite one as well. Even the silly Paul songs are good. In fact, a lot of the Paul songs aren’t silly on that album. I loved I Am The Walrus growing up but now I feel how silly it is. But yeah, big Beatles fan. And your dad was a big Beatles fan? I mean, he’s a big music fan. He likes things that are good and doesn’t like things that aren’t good. And did you grow up with a lot of music in the house? Yeah. And were you like a kid that always really wanted to play music? Or was it handed to you? It started off handed to me, and then… yeah, I always hate saying this but my dad taught me guitar for a year and a half and then I stubbornly told him I wanted to learn by myself. So from 11 onwards I started learning things I wanted to learn, like solos from Bloc Party songs. I think beyond 11 I was exploring and really wanted to play, but Dad gave me the basics. Which is good, because occasionally he would check in and see my technique and subtly guide me. It’s nice, I do appreciate it looking back on it. When I was younger I definitely had the mindset of wanting to be the best guitarist I can be, but when I got to 15 it changed to wanting to write music, and wanting to be the best songwriter and composer I could be. So I stopped playing guitar as much and moved to the trusty computer. Ahh yeah, makes sense. So… DC2… Hahaha yeah… Christopher… is your dad? That’s right, he taught me the guitar. And so, he does woodwind on it? What woodwind? He was playing a suling. It’s a bamboo ring flute, I believe it was a Balinese variety of suling. DC2 was actually the first song I made for the album. It was a Uni project concerning making a compositional piece for contemporary dancers, linked with an NGV exhibition about the Terracotta Warriors I think. I found some art based on peonies, especially concerning the life and death of a peony. Our pieces had to link with one of the artworks so I made a song rise and fall like the lifespan of a peony, with arpeggiation that grew and shrunk in 7/4. And it was a hit, everyone really liked it in my class which was really nice to feel at the time. And then I started just fucking with it, I added a section in the beginning that was in 4/4 and it was sounding like a Gorillaz song, but it was kinda bad so I scrapped it, I didn’t really know what to do with it. When I decided I was making my collection of songs into an album, I just took the 7/4 section of the song, extended that part a little bit, and added some things to it tastefully. I was gonna have lyrics on it initially – I had Ruby-Sofia come over in 2019 and put some words on it but I didn’t think it worked right in the end. So I decided to get Dad to play on it instead, he was pretty keen. Working with Dad is always fun, I remember taking a couple of takes of Dad playing the suling and he requested I put all the takes back to back and make a 12 minute version of the song for him. It’s pretty silly. Love you Dad. So you had worked with your Dad before? Yeah yeah! I worked with him on all the Plaza recordings. He would get a ZOOM recorder and record the band playing in a little room, and then delicately mix that with some vocal takes I, Sunny and Elena would record later. We did that for a few years but I was really keen to do everything myself. That’s kinda the origin of Orange Orange as well, working on music without my dad, by myself. Maybe that’s why I’m so stubborn about working with other people. Thanks for coming to my podcast therapy session. So it was the first time I’d worked with him in a while. But it was nice! I think it’s a really special part of the album. It’s an interesting break from everything else. The only other person who has a production credit on the album is Johnsen, how did that come about even? I would show him songs and he would lovingly say “Do you want to redo the vocals?” to me. And I’d say, yeah probably! I mean, in that first lockdown in 2020 I only had my 2010 Macbook Pro which really struggled to do stuff sometimes, but I would record at home with my dynamic Audio-Technica mic that I bought from Swop Shop. But then Johnsen said that he had some nice mics itching to be used so then I went to his place to record the vocals. I thought it was very important to do that for Get Quiet as it’s such a vocal-heavy track, but it’s funny because I think we only used like half of it because I like my vocals better in one verse. I don’t think anyone could tell except maybe Johnsen. He also helped a huge amount working with Johnsen to record drums, we got some really stellar sounds recording with Alex and Soren in their own homes actually. Thank you a whole bunch Johnsen. But yeah… production credit. And then… you also have songs with Sydney and Stella, both of whom you also went to Uni with? Is that how you met them? Yeah that’s exactly how I met them. But you wrote all of it right? Yeah, that’s my stubborn streak again. I love… I just gave them parts to sing and they sang them. I think Stella and Sydney did a really good job taking what I had and enhancing it even more. I worked remotely with Stella as it was during a lockdown; she was apologetic because she said they were just a rough few takes but I thought it was PERFECT. But I was able to go to Sydney’s place to work with Syd and give some live direction about how to sing and stuff. Is there anything that draws you to the vocalists you like to use as feature vocalists? I think it’s good to work with people who are really good friends, and it’s wonderful to mark that friendship with a piece of music that might outlast myself. It’s nice to show that off. I was doing quite a few collaborations on Shame and that was good and all but I wanted to stray away from being a bit like the Gorillaz or the Avalanches in that aspect, as the kind-of facilitator. Having said that, I’d be open to collaborating more in the future, possibly more as a collaborative effort and less me just directing everything. I felt like we covered the development of the live band already but I still wanna ask, do you think you’ve developed your live performance as an individual? Yeah, well I’ve been playing live for a long time now, and in many bands as well. Like with Plaza-TRG I’ve been playing since 2013, 2014, throughout school and stuff, so I suppose I’m not a stranger to playing to a live audience. I still get some stagefright which is fun, but everyone does I guess. I felt pretty confident playing live with the Orange band and stuff. Those early years performing while in high school were pretty formative, like learning to sing into the mic and not singing too far away from the mic. It’s those little things that when you’re told to do it, you’ll never forget to do it ever again. I mean it’s all just practice as well, and playing in the Orange band has given me the opportunity to just build on that. You seem particularly… I don’t know if embodied is the right word, but I guess ‘present’ is the right word, you seemed very present on stage the last few times you’ve performed. Not to say you weren’t present before but you’re like getting into the actions of the words you’re singing, it seems like you’re really connecting with the content you’re presenting, which is awesome. How did you find that went with the crowds you were playing with on the rural tour? Aw, it’s interesting. I think with those actions firstly, that was something I’ve done and then my friend said “that was cool” so I decided to keep doing it, and I do it a lot in Hive Mind, Say What You Feel, songs like that. Um, yeah rural was very fun, feeling embodied with those songs. It’s tougher when there’s less people there, but they enjoy it, I enjoy it, it’s a performance in the end so you have to enjoy it. I’ve only recently come to terms with just how theatrical I am in recent years, and performing on stage is probably the safest space for me to just let all of that out and enjoy being that kind of person. Are there any songs off the album that particularly allow you to do that? Oh, like be super theatrical? Uhhhhhhhh probably We Are Not Friends because it’s so bombastic. I think anything that shifts tone quickly gets me very physically excited about playing it and feeling it in the room. Say What You Feel as well… I wanted to write more songs where I just had the mic and didn’t play guitar to really let out that pop star inside of me. Uhhh, I dunno, I think everything else I take pretty seriously. You leave the guitar on for the songs that you just sing? No. I’ve been taking them off recently. How have you found that? Do you have a preference? I don’t have much practice without it, honestly. I don’t know if you were there but the last show we played at the Gaso as part of Sydney’s tour, we did Say What You Feel and I was just like walking onto the foldbacks singing and staring into the crowd. Everyone was looking at only my and I was thinking “Is this it? Am I supposed to be doing anything else? I guess I gotta go back to the stage now…” It felt a bit awkward. Have you had similar experiences? Yeah well, I’ve really just been playing with the guitar. HATED playing without the guitar for a long time and then realised that I’m just alright at the guitar, not great at guitar, and it felt like it was hindering my ability to vocally perform, which is what people come to see me more for most of the time. And it took me a while to settle into what to do without the guitar because you don’t just wanna stand there– And then moving sometimes just doesn’t feel right either, does it? When you’re performing you really feed energy off the audience– something else I had to be taught was that you have to create energy for others to feed off of, because ultimately they’re there to be watching you. I felt like at the Dancing Dog when we played I felt like everyone was just standing and watching. You mean the recent show? Yeah the recent one, at the Summer Party. Yep, at THE Mamma Chens? Yeah, and I mean, this is fine. I like it when everyone is silent and listening, what more could I ask for really? But like, if we’re doing some dance songs and people are just standing still and watching, like what do I do? I can’t take energy from that. Yeah I mean, I was with Hot Glue for part of that one, and Henry would do his weird dance, but apparently Henry hates dancing. But we were still moving, but I was like “why are none of you guys dancing?” And then… I’ve said this to you already but I loved what happened to you and the band at that gig, I just LOVED it! Ahhhhhahah, thank you! I just thought it was so earnest, and awesome to see you all have something go wrong. I’ve never seen you and the band have something notably go wrong before. So to see two things go wrong in one song was awesome. I’m really glad you enjoyed that, it was really funny. I mean, you take what you get honestly. And now, the Retreat is the final ride of the tour? YES! The Retreat Hotel is the be all, end all album LAUNCH! We got some big things for that show, I feel. I really want to make it a full blown, exciting thing. We’re gonna be extra good, we gotta make up for that blunder at Chens. Are you gonna play everything on the album? Yeah, at the Shame Album Launch we played all the songs in order, so I kinda wanna do that again. That was very entertaining for me, and if it was entertaining for me it must be entertaining for at least someone else! And then maybe we’ll do some fun stuff at the end. I have one or two songs that I wanna do definitely. Mr Brightside? For $100? For $100, maybe. But I’m looking forward to the launch so much. Please come. And that’s the 17th? 17th of February. And the album’s out now? Yes, it came out on the 10th. So people have a week. Yes, you have a week. Probably less than a week by the time this interview goes live. Click here for more information about the Album Launch Show at The Retreat Hotel. And then are you going into hibernation post-Retreat? Good question. Well I’m going on holiday not long after but I really don’t want to go into hibernation, I just want to make more stuff because I feel like I’ve got a good thing going and I don’t want to stop. The only thing that may stop me is what other bands I’m in are doing… Arbes is also releasing an album very soon, it’s getting mixed as we speak and it sounds fucking amAZING. Lili Pili is also recording an EP right now but it’s moving at a snail’s pace because the other members also have other band commitments that are growing and gaining notoriety. And we’re actually making one final Plaza-TRG EP before Harry relocates to Canada, so we’re against the clock. I really want to start writing more stuff, and I have been over the Summer as well. I actually have an extended version of the album that I wanna put out. I saw the extra songs in the lyric document you sent me. Yes. Yes. Yes. And I love those new songs but they’re good for an EP but not an album, and they’re stuck in this time already so I think it’ll be a good fit. Probs will put it out later this year. Soren has convinced me to do some recordings out of my house just to see how it feels, especially after being forced to record from home the last few years, so I may just be doing that in the end. I have a title for a new album as well… not gonna tell you now in case you steal it but I’m pretty set on it, and I have snapshots of song ideas in my head that I want to use. Once I can get all of The Sun Isn’t Gone out of my head I can start focusing on new things to make. Nice, very nice. So like, what’s the dream? Do you wanna be, like, famous? Haha, I think deep down yes. But like, I dunno, I think when I was younger I wanted to be known and respected for my music and I think I’m slowly getting there, even in smaller communities in Melbourne. I think ultimately I would love to be playing shows around the world and be respected as my own artist and musician and loved for what I provide to people, sonically or otherwise. And then from there I can seek out some new wants or interests, I suppose. That’s the dream, but I dunno, being famous is interesting. I had this realisation when I was thinking about the Sun, that like, these people who are famous now, will they be famous in 70 years? I thought about who was most famous from 70 years ago, and it’s just like one or two people I can think of immediately and it’s like… people who did bad things. I mean, you can be named after an invention or credited for ideas like Galileo but like, I dunno who Galileo’s parents were, I don’t know his love interest, I don’t know his backstory. You know what I mean? No one really… fame is such a redactive pratfall in the end. I think if I can just be happy, work less, make music all the time, have friends that I love being around… that’s the dream I guess. I mean, the Sun WILL be gone one day, so does it all matter? Just gotta be happy and make others happy. Perfect answer. Don’t wanna be that guy, but I think I nailed that answer. Final sentence of interview. “I just want to be happy.” Orange Orange's second album The Sun Isn't Gone is out now, available to listen where you would be able to stream or listen to music.
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Oh, Foals. I do commend them for circling back to their funk inspirations that pursued them in their Total Life Forever phase from 2009 - 2011. But this is too much.
Get ready for my quick comprehensive review of Foals's latest single - Wake Me Up.
A quick disclaimer before I get into talking about Wake Me Up:
With that out of the way - let's get into it.
Yannis said this about the song in Foals's latest Instagram post: "With 'Wake Me Up', I just wanted to write a song about transporting yourself to a better, idyllic situation. I think we all had that feeling of the last eighteen months being like a weird fever dream that felt surreal but very affecting. I think we all wished we could have woken up somewhere else at various points."
With this context, we can see it is another damn lockdown song.
Having engaged with this theme for my upcoming music through university, it does pain me to see artists react to the same themes I've been writing about at the mere surface level, backed with the money of a deal with a literal multinational conglomerate - Warner Music. To me, it creates this very lifeless response to the theme that just feels like an appropriation to suit a need to turn over revenue, therefore creating a piece tailor-made to appeal to the most people and not necessarily break the boundaries or evoke the wonder of the past ventures by Foals. I guess I expect too much artistic venture from a group bound to a contract. Sorry, that thought probably doesn't make that much sense and feels like I'm talking out of my ass in retrospect, but I reckon I'll develop that thought in the coming weeks. I want to quickly mention that the way the song is mixed makes it sound so fake. It feels like every instrument has been purified to its more potential part, and everything has been stripped of any other colour. Now, I do like this effect in kinds of pop and certain songs - a quick mindless example is the vocals on the Pink Pantheress mixtape that Alex has got me onto, but even then that collection of songs still feels so lively. However, that kind of sound just doesn't work for me with this song. Foals songs were all about raw energy and life to me, and that kind of charisma really carried them through their evolving sound and their live sets. But that's just not present here. I've seriously just listened to some earlier tracks of Foals for comparisons and I swear the higher frequencies have purposely been elevated for Wake Me Up - it's so shrill. Even in their previous album I'm listening to In Degrees - the song that's most like Wake Me Up - and it's mixed so cleanly and with much more character.
Quickly compare:
A quick listen to the song shows this new sound direction for Foals. The drums, usually the liveliest part of Foals's arrangements - exudes no life to me. I just remember hearing about how parts of the drums on Antidotes were recorded in the alleyways and how the general recording process was so unorthodox. It meant that the album exuded some life and character. Immediately upon hearing the first drum fill (of like, two) I can immediately tell that the drum was cleanly recorded and sounds as bland as can be, and safely distilled to evoke the strongest âdrumâ sounding parts.
Also, Jack Bevan is really taking it easy in this song. Where I can see boundless potential for semiquaver hits, some snareplay or even a single hihat slurp during the main beat, fills are reserved for the end of phrases. So boring. The overall structure of the song is very standard for a single. Intro, verse, chorus, verse (with subtle arrangement changes), chorus, bridge, extended chorus. The sections are not overly thrilling to me, and I find myself enjoying specific parts of the section rather than the section as a whole, The one section of this song I do really enjoy is the instrumental chorus, where Yannis plays this tinny guitar lick before everyone screams âWake Me Up!â. It's cute, and it reminds me of past Foals songs that I do enjoy. I just regret that it's not in more parts of the song, and instead were treated to Yannis's lyrical flow.
Yannis is singing for the majority of the song, which I find weird. Back in previous albums you had parts of songs where the arrangement and instrumentation took centre stage and helped build this grandiose feeling, even if there were a lot of lyrics in the piece. I wanna bring focus to Foals's fourth album - What Went Down, which has a runtime of forty-eight and a half minutes, split between TEN songs. On average each song has to be about four minutes and forty-nine seconds.
What Went Down may not be my favourite album but it was really good at building this great spectacle of each song, like each was an epic journey to listen to, and I feel that's because of the space that each song provided. You didn't get rushed arrangements that wanted to be finished as quickly as possible. You got songs that took their time to develop and really allowed you to live in the sonic space they created before finishing each song satisfyingly. The biggest culprit of this is A Knife in the Ocean, with a duration of six minutes fifty-one seconds, with the first chorus finishing at two minutes and nineteen seconds. Most early Beatles songs finish after about two and a half minutes, and the majority of their songs are two-thirds of the way done by that point. Why am I dwelling on this? Well it feels like there's no time to appreciate the mix or the arrangement because the lyrics are so incessant. There's only really peace at the beginning of the song and that section I spoke about earlier. That wouldn't be a problem if I felt a connection to the lyrics and the lyrics themselves transported me out of my body. But they don't. The lyrics are just so⦠nothing. They mean nothing to me. I have no emotional connection with what Yannis is saying, and he's not really singing it in an engaging way either. Maybe I'm just tired of hearing Yannis sing about how he's a man. Maybe we all are. I don't know if these are the correct lyrics, and frankly I don't really care, but see for yourself.
Iâm walking through a dream
Iâm walking through the finest place Iâve ever seen. Hey man wonât you wake me up? Hey man wonât you wake me up? Iâm walking through the fire defiant on the wire, burning up my desire Hey man wonât you come, come give me a gun? help me blow the lights right out of the sun so wonât you tell me if Iâm dreaming? I need to know just where I stand. it turns out my hands are useless but maybe Iâm a better man. Wake Me Up! I said Wake Me Up! Iâm dancing on the screens Iâm dancing in the mountains where Iâve always been. Hey man wonât you wake me up? Hey man wonât you wake me up? Iâm kicking down the doors Iâm climbing up the walls of the house thatâs yours Hey man wonât you come, come give me a gun? help me blow the lights right out of the sun so wonât you tell me if Iâm dreaming? I need to know just where I stand. it turns out my hands are useless but maybe Iâm a better man? Wake Me Up! Wake Me Up! I said Wake Me Up! Iâm dancing on the serpents, Iâm dancing on the coals, you deny your own expression, you deny the things you know. Iâm living through the ages, Iâm dancing on the tiles, wonât commit to any handshake, or believe a Duchenne smile. Iâm burning all my bridges, Iâm pulling up the ropes, deleting all the codes, no! Iâm not that man you know. you walk into a trap then you walk into your youth, yr living all that life in a pair of dusty boots. so wonât you tell me if Iâm dreaming? I need to know just where i stand. it turns out my hands are useless but maybe Iâm a better man? Wake Me Up!
It's interesting to see in a live performance that Yannis ditches singing one of the last choruses and just improvises a counterpoint melody to Jimmy's part. I wouldâve loved to hear that in this song! But no, we got another chorus. Cool.
I am not a fan of the gang vocals for the lyric âWake Me Up!â because it is indicative to me of the direction Foals is going, but for the song? It stylistically works. It makes me wince because it doesn't work with the mix too well in some parts but hey, dissonance is cool am I right!!
The bass just before the first verse at 0:33 is freaking weird. It's REALLY in your face. It's playing higher up on the fretboard. I don't really know any other Foals song that's ever done this. I don't know what you think, but I think it just sounds plain bad. Why is it still in the song? I wonder who played it?
Overall the bassline in Wake Me Up is at its best when it's not sustaining, as that doesn't suit the style of the song very well. The bassline is pretty good in the verse though, when it's doing this walking thing, before Jimmy doubles the part on his guitar. This part is quite captivating for me, far more than the Total Life Forever/Uptown Funk-style guitar chords. And that brings me to the one person I do still love a lot in Foals, and that's Jimmy Smith. Even in the songs that I loathe the existence of, and in the face of this shift in genre, production and songwriting style, his parts and arrangement is a standout. The guitar parts that he's playing in the video is pretty great (when it's not that annoying Uptown Funk thing) because they're focused on fast melodies and evokes that great tone Foals is known for. What I don't understand is Foals's new obsession with auxiliary percussion. They must really be into world music right now. I'll also briefly skim over this but the keyboard arpeggiation part that plays throughout the whole song feels very uninspired. When it was in Exits, it was pretty cool. When it was In Degrees, it was a characteristic of that song and worked well. But here it's just sparkly and gimmicky and clashing with the mix a lot. I miss Edwin already, he would have added so much to this to fix it up. The saddest part of me is I can immediately hear how this song would fit in the next FIFA game. Exactly the same way I could tell The Runner was going to feature in FIFA just from the first listen, or how Black Bull would fit in an ad for Jeep. But also - no shade to Foals for this, they have a comprehensive crew working with them for their live show, for their recording process and for their music videos. They all gotta get paid too.
I guess I should speak about the music video that launched with this song. It's alright. I guess the setup is they're playing in an empty venue because of the pandemic and they're briskly covering lyrics and themes from the song in scene settings. The least boring element to me is that red room of cellophane and balloons, and Yannis just kinda walks in and immediately out of the room like âwtf is thisâ. That was kinda interesting. Everything else is just so normal and clean cut and lame to me. Besides the band, everyone's in jumpsuits. Okay.
I'm getting tired of talking about this song but to sum up, not really a fan. I don't feel any need to listen to this regularly because I'm not getting anything new out of this. I do kinda like Jimmy's parts in certain bits, but that doesn't save the song for me. This feels like an uninspired funk single from a band that should focus more on rock and indie elements, in my opinion. Sadly, Wake Me Up has made its way into my head as an earworm and I'll probably hum it until I get stuck into learning parts for Arbes or working on new Orange material. I am a complete cuck for Foals and I probably will listen to this song again and probably enjoy it more, but I look down upon my future self for doing so. 4/10.
Remember two weeks ago when I said that I was a little busy during this current lockdown period but that I'd try to have something written up for this time next week. Well... turns out things got really busy. Things got really busy and really crazy in my life and I had to miss last week's post. Slight apologies for that one. We're back on track for this week however so here's something exciting: a new song. I wrote this song called Future Role. I have my dear friend Stella Farnan singing on it. I wrote the song back in lockdown #2 in August last year. It's all about wanting to shake off your passive role in society and wanting to actively create a difference that will make a better future. I wrote this song when I was anxious and existential about my own future and pondering what I was going to be like in 5 years. Hopefully I'll be a force of good! Anyway, I thought it would be a wonderful idea to film Stella and I performing the song in a car. Soren's car. While Soren was driving. And Sydney recording and filming. So... what do you think? Do you like it? Do you not? I think Stella sang incredibly well that day - this performance in particular. I found myself struggling to get the chords consistent and correct in this performance and I HATE what I was wearing. But let's let bygones be bygones, shall we?
I'm incredibly excited to formally announce that Future Role is coming out on Thursday July 8th. I can give you a presave link here so that it appears in your playlists or something here: https://ditto.fm/future-role However I do think you should follow me on Spotify or Apple Music or whatever you consume music on and it should pop up on July 8th. Maybe mark it in your calendars. That'll help. Anyway, love you all! Look out for each other please. - R
Hi!
You've heard the top 10, but now you'll have to prepare for the B-Sides! The Foals B-Sides are hidden gems awaiting those who want to find them, in my opinion. Such instantaneous classics. So wonderful. So different to their album tracks. So unique. I could almost classify all of them into their own compilation. Heck, Warner Music will probably do that and I'll definitely fork over $200 or whatever exorbarent amount they charge me to grab it on vinyl, or cassette. Anyway, I'll just briefly state my thoughts on each track and move on. I left of Hummer and Mathletics because they're more singles than B-Sides, and I also left off Try This On Your Piano and Look at my Furrows of Worry because they're a whole can of worms that I don't even want to touch today. Without further ado - here we go!
Gold Gold Gold
I feel a great sadness with this song and it's most likely through association with sad moments in my life. Despite this, I still love this song to death. Jack's unpredictable four-on-the-floor dance beat is a standout, and I do believe I've asked Harry to rip it off for some Plaza-Trg songs back in the day. The flams and fills Jack does have this strange, modular unpredictability that seem to be a pattern that I can never play along to. I like that. It's hard for me to say what melodic parts are synthesizers and what parts are samples, but I can hear the guitar line and it's quite calm for a Foals song. It's possibly the earliest use of Foals playing chords, which I find quite interesting. That being said I can't really find a bassline in the mix until around 2 minutes, which is ALSO VERY INTERESTING. I love how nerdy and cringe the lyrics can be on these B-Sides. In this song, it's the stuff like "I am the voice inside your heart" and "I know your mouth". Iyick. That being said, I do love how potent and powerful the lyrics can be as well, and I enjoy the use of repetition quite a lot. "I am a rocket, I am a rocket, you are an anchor, you are an anchor down" is a clear standout of both a lyric and a motif. The greatest part of Gold Gold Gold has to be at that 2:46 mark when the bridge section with the riff enters, before the drum beat changes and all other melodic parts copy it in unison & octave unison. My god, it is so good. It's so incredibly suave. It's a shame that it doesn't go for longer, but maybe it's good for my health that it's short. All good things in moderation. I will say the outro is okay but unnecessarily long. Maybe they were imagining quite a large live buildup for this song. Who knows. I guess it could be unfinished seeing as it's a B-Side. All in all, one of the better B-Sides!
Titan Arum
This is also one of the better B-Sides, though it might be my own personal preference. The beat for this one is so good. I dunno, Jack Bevan has a way of making these strange beats sounding so full, and bursting at the seams with life and energy. This one is full of weird flams and fills but it suits the style of the song a lot. The first section of this song is the weaker part of the song, lead mostly by the dynamic beat and synth bleeps and boops here and there. I start to space out when Foals lean into ambient guitar noise for the melody and avoid using their tasty guitar tones but there is something to be said in the eclectic array of sounds in this section. The lyrics are not particularly amazing, sounding just like passing thoughts in a diary, but I do enjoy the final line "The terror we must avoid and behold." The next section is a wonderful buildup with vocal "Ooohs" and a subtle change in drumming EQ that makes a lot of difference. There's a Foals B-side listener mix that forgoes the intro and just starts here, and I think that's a perfectly acceptable creative choice. It starts to pick up when the guitar plays the main riff in the second half of this section. The main part of this song is the faster paced section, with some wonderful syncopated keys matched with this wicked riff initially played on a guitar or a bass, and then eventually doubled with this filthy dark-sounding synth line. I really, really enjoy this section, it seems to devolve into dark-house music guitars and bass. What a strange thing to eventually change to from the opening section. It would be so incredibly cool to see this performed live, or see something like it performed live. Know anything like this? Shoot me a dm and we can discuss :^) The ending here is just so good. It sounds like it's looping but it isn't matched 100% perfectly, and I am just so keen on that. I also may have totally ripped off the ending of this song for Monket.
The Chronic
This song is just the most energetic song. Polyphony gone MAD. Again, Jack Bevan doesn't disappoint, and I think he's chosen quite an appropriate and interesting beat considering the backing arrangement. I really enjoy how incessant the beat is, it's quite maximal and wonderful. "I spark up all day" as the only lyrics is also great. It somehow reduces its identity to me but it's okay it's still pretty iconic. Harry and I were quite disappointed that he wasn't saying "I smoke pot all day" but this is just as fine of an alternative. While it may feel like an overenergetic mess sometimes, it does ebb and flow quite well. I really enjoy when this song opens up quite wildly around 2:25. There's the essence of the opening beat in The French Open in the later part in some drum parts and the arrangement, but the beat is bloody wild, doing that 3/4 thing for a bit. I'd like to think Edwin was quite in love with that beat looping pedal because it makes quite a feature in this piece. Or his hands are quite fast.
Unthink This
Unthink This is a much calmer song compared to the other songs I've reviewed so far, because it avoids excessive syncopation, and is overall quite simple, just repeating this 10 bar phrase over and over for the length of song. Jack Bevan keeps killing it with the beats. They're all so different from each other in their pattern or use or context. This one is notably restrained however I appreciate how he hallmarks sections with the style of drumming he chooses. I also especially enjoy the splashiness of the ride or crash. In terms of the lyrics I do think that the abstract imagery spoken in the lyrics does make the lyrics work. However the delivery is quite basic and there isn't that much exceptional about it, bar the yelling at the end of the song. This song isn't as weird as the other B-sides and it doesn't feel as remarkable because of that, unfortunately. It is still pretty catchy. I dunno, I'm split on this song.
Brazil is Here!
This song is quite unique. The beat that Jack Bevan plays is so unique, and I haven't heard any other song try it before. The fact that I haven't heard the main beat of this song used before is weird to me because it's not too abnormal of a beat, as it has a slight syncopation with the hihat. The backing arrangement is calm for a B-side, and has some very catchy interplay between Yannis and Jimmy that's complimented very well with Edwin's looping synth bit. I do think Walter is being a bit safe with the bass here and just staying on the one note for the majority of the song with a quaver rhythm. It may just be a placeholder, however some interesting basslines do pop up here and there towards the end of the song. This is a much better vocal performance that a lot of the B-sides but the lyrics are a bit goofy if you ask me. OOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHH VOLCANO. I dunno I just think it doesn't create the right atmosphere with the backing arrangement. I do love the way that this song ends though. A huge section that's so texturally thick, and a nice call back to the beginning of the song. It's SICK.
Dearth
Actually, undisputably, an amazing song. Probably the best B-Side. This is where the vocal melody is at its best, full of leaps and dynamic movement that allows some variation here and there. I don't know what Yannis is sing about besides breaking our legs and cutting the phone lines on Saturday, but that doesn't matter because the melody and rhythm of the vocal carries it, letting me buy into this imagery and metaphor that Yannis offers. I also love the way the lyrics are sung, especially the first line in the song: "I could cut my hands off now", I'm not sure why. I think it's the way Yannis says "now". Dearth has the best arrangement for a B-Side, it's so catchy. Walter's bassline is at its best in this song. It's so dynamic and willing to play all over the fretboard, playing many octaves up in that first verse. I love it a lot, it makes the chorus so much more impactful when Walter jumps back in low. The interplay between the other 3 melodic instruments are quite impactful as well and further energise the song through the polyrhythmic rhythmic style compared to the 4/4 beat. I especially enjoy this towards the end of the second chorus around 1:53, where the guitar or keyboard adds this slow arpeggiation on top of the section. I don't know how they recorded Jack Bevan's drums for this song but I want to learn how because it sounds so full of life. The snare drum is a particular standout for me, especially in that section just before the second verse around 1:21 where the snare works in tandem with the kick and really drives the piece among the monotony of the beep boops and the math-rock guitars. All in all, not much bad to say about this song. It's tight, punchy and all you'd want in a Foals release.
Astronauts and All
I love this nerdy-ass song... sometimes. This very much defines the 'math-pop' genre and that's probably why it ended up as a B-side and nothing more. This song is quite good but I do find I have to be in the mood for it. Jack Bevan, what more do I have to say. He's delivered before, and here he nails it. I don't know how many more times can I say that the drumming is just so eclectic. It's always doing something with energy that's creative for the situation. Maybe I'm just a sucker for energetic beats over syncopation. Dance music things. My favourite beat is the one just before the final verse (the last "MAKE IT HAPPEN BOYS AND GIRLS) I do think this arrangement is a bit... forgettable, like I don't enjoy what the guitars are playing in the verse as much. I can't really explain it beyond the melodic choices aren't my favourite. The lyrics don't really enhance it and just make it a bit goofier than I would like, I guess. This is probably why I have to be in the mood for the song. I don't really have that much to say about this one... it's not my fave. It stil ain't bad though.
Big Big Love (Fig. 1)
The original Big Big Love. I actually strongly dislike this song. I always have. It's all fine until around 0:37, when that awful snare comes in. The chorus then employs this dance beat and I just cannot stand it. It takes away everything I like about the B-sides, like their creativity and their weirdness, and tries super hard to ham-fist this pop-song styling into the arrangement. I personally cannot stand it, it only works between 3:30 and 4:22. I'm so glad they remade this song and absolutely fixed the beat, and approached the production completely differently. I bet you this was their turning point in finding out what style the band wanted to be.
A Song For You
This is a big departure in tone from the previous B-sides. It opens with backing vocals. That's kind of crazy considering old-school Foals. I really enjoy this song as an album track. It's a slow pace math rock song with choral vocals and strings in it. I dunno that seems pretty cool for me. The guitar does this cool looping sound and it works. The vocals are used sparingly and only when necessary, and it's so great. This does feel like a precursor for Total Life Forever, and I really enjoy it as such. Jack uses quite a refined slow drumbeat for this song and it works amazingly well. There's not much more to say for me overall other than the sounds they make are quite calming and pretty, and I do enjoy it a lot.
A Sketch for ESG
This song is quite basic and is one of the purely instrumental full-length Foals songs. I think it pulls it off quite well, and would be a great song to play for a road trip or a trip in general. However, the song does end kind of strangely, and it is a bit drawn out. However, that may be for its favour when it is played live. Jack Bevan I swear is just having fun with it now. The beat keeps changing between iconic beats, I can't even choose where to begin. One of the beats did heavily inspire the chorus for the first section of MONKET. I do really enjoy that The French Open harkens back to the beat switch in this song for a phrase. It's that exciting and, dare I say it again, ICONIC. Edwin has a standout role in this piece and I wonder how much he wrote. My favourite thing about A Sketch for ESG is that the only footage that they have of Foals playing a show in someone's bedroom was playing A Sketch for ESG, and it's astounding that everyone fits in the room.
Glaciers
Glaciers is pretty epic. I'm struggling to describe it really is just an epic journey. As an epic journey, it mostly nails it however does fall short from being as epic as it can be, and is only epic in the noun sense, and not the adjective. Because it is a ballad-style song with that Foals B-side drone sound pallette it does strike me as unremarkable at some parts. There's not much to say about the opening section really, Jack is playing a slower beat quite energetically and I don't know if it works with the song. It does sound really great, and it is a really cool beat, I just don't know if it suits the section. The second section is very unique and the superior section in my opinion. I love the use of space and echo for the opening section, and I love the incredibly unconvention drumming programmed by Jack, mixed with the bass. The low end and low-mids do sound incredibly muffled at points in this song but I don't know, the vibe feels right for most of the section. Yannis's vocals and its delivery is strangely very good and evocative of powerful imagery, most likely about his father. I dunno it's quite simple but it's very effective. The repeating ending is also quite cool. Glaciers is pretty epic. I'm struggling to describe it really is just an epic journey. As an epic journey, it mostly nails it however does fall short from being as epic as it can be, and is only epic in the noun sense, and not the adjective. Because it is a ballad-style song with that Foals B-side drone sound pallette it does strike me as unremarkable at some parts. There's not much to say about the opening section really, Jack is playing a slower beat quite energetically and I don't know if it works with the song. It does sound really great, and it is a really cool beat, I just don't know if it suits the section. The second section is very unique and the superior section in my opinion. I love the use of space and echo for the opening section, and I love the incredibly unconvention drumming programmed by Jack, mixed with the bass. The low end and low-mids do sound incredibly muffled at points in this song but I don't know, the vibe feels right for most of the section. Yannis's vocals and its delivery is strangely very good and evocative of powerful imagery, most likely about his father. I dunno it's quite simple but it's very effective. The repeating ending is also quite cool.
The Forked Road
Now we're in TLF territory.... The Forked Road is one of the best Foals songs ever. This song nails that AB section that many Foals B-sides have attempted before it. The vocals in this song match the opening section, and the lyrics are there too. This song opens with just a guitar line and it seamlessly evaporates as more instrument fall into place. This song is so good with parts fading in and out seamlessly, you wouldn't even notice them disappearing. That allows it to do some very interesting stuff, like change pulse. I can't really explain how but it gradually changes from the introduced 6/8 to 4/4 as the drums come in, and it's so convincing. The second half of this song is incredible. It merges the old math-rock edge of Foals with the new funkier, calmer style of TLF. The guitar and bass lines working together just make this section for me. It's irresistible when the bassline changes note from E to C and all the energy is on the off beat. I dunno it feels so great. Jack is incredibly restrained in this song, barely even playing the kick drum for the second section, only showing shades of insanity with the fills that he does. Those fills are incredible. Yannis also plays this wonderful melody on his guitar in this section. It's quite slow for a Foals melody but it's just epic, and in the adjective sense. Overall, this song is just Glaciers done incredibly well. 10/10 a masterpiece.
Wear and Tear
I have an incredible soft spot for this song. This was in my busking repertoire throughout the later stages in high school. I do think this is up there with the best Foals songs. I think the vocals and lyrics are just so powerful and show maturity from Antidotes. I also love the persistence of backing vocals in this song, it's just such a potent throughline. It certainly was one of my favourite Foals songs for quite some time, however I do think it has fallen from grace a little bit now. The verse is incredibly refined and nothing is an accident, or out of place, or unfinished. It's so cool. Jack Bevan is so good here. That's incredibly hard to dispute. The beat at the chorus sounds simple but is incredibly nuanced, I'm not sure if it would've carried over in a live context. It does remind me so much of Soren's "The Glare" and I do think this may have influenced this song for Soren. My soft spot for any song in Bb major probably came from this song. The riff for this song is incredibly catchy and a wonderful use of syncopation in a song. The section after the second chorus before the ending is also pretty cool on the first or second listen, however you do get bored after hearing the song so many times like I have. There's not a lot to uncover here, and it's probably why I don't love this song as much as I used to. Oh well. It's still great.
Bluebird
Foals stopped mass-producing B-Sides at this point and likely saved potential B-Sides to work on for future albums, which is fair enough. All we have for Holy Fires are some CCTV sessions and this song. Bluebird. The B-Side for Holy Fire. This takes a leaf out of Moon and tries making it more like Alabaster. I'll be honest, I can probably count how many times I've listened to this song, it's never really grabbed me. It's quite forgettable. This is a newer era of Foals, and therefore a new era of Foals B-sides, where it's not about the rhythm or arrangement as much as it is about the songwriting. This is probably why I don't care as much for this song. The looping guitar part is pretty nice to listen to. This song just feels like if Foals attempted to be more like Radiohead. Don't do that. I think there's a bassoon or a flute in this song, it might just be the keys. Neat. I don't know, it's just really hard for me to connect with this song because it's just two verses, over a looping guitar part and a snare sound that makes me SNORE.
Rain
THE CITY CAN WAIT. This song is very incredibly different to many of the songs on What Went Down, and I am so glad it isn't anything like the many forgettable songs on that LP. I do think it would be a cool ending to WWD if it was after A Knife in the Ocean, but hey, it's okay that everything happened the way it did. I won't die a sadder man. The arrangement is very simple and wonderful, just a synth pad, synth keys, what I want to assume is an orchestral bass drum, some bass, and some big vocals. This is obviously Yannis's best vocal performance. The lyrics are mostly very good as well. What a combo. It should be noted that Sunday does use a similar opening synth sound, I don't know if it is the same. Apparently Sunday was a song cut off of What Went Down, so I wouldn't be surprised if this song was a result of Sunday or vice versa.
That's my list! You can probably tell I'm a bit of a shill for the earlier B-Sides, because I do appreciate an energetic arrangement over anything else from Foals. But hey, everyone has their different tastes! Some people unironically enjoy The Runner! That's okay!
That'll be it from me for now. I'm a little busy during this current lockdown period (thank goodness) but I'll try and have something written up for this time next week. I also want to say that it's exactly a month until my next Orange Orange song is out - you can presave it here! https://ditto.fm/future-role Exciting times! - R Hey! Just before I get into this week's blog post I wanted to showcase this performance of Oh How You Bend, live from Sandro's Alley. Bend is one of the subtler songs and has an awesome arrangement live (HUGE thanks to Johnsen, Alex, Dylan, Sydney and Sunny for that) so I really recommend you watch the video before reading the rest of the post. I do think it is one of the stronger lyrics I have written. Also, huge props to both Dylan Jepsen and Johnsen Cummings for working so tirelessly on these videos, Dylan with editing and Johnsen with the audio. Remember to click that bell! Anyway, in this blog post I will be continuing to shed further light on the zine I spent way too many hours writing in 2018. I am a little bit (very) embarrassed at the length I go at talking about One Piece here, but what can I say I was very passionate about One Piece at the time. It has such a good narrative! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Gigant: The project name for this track was “Arbes Samples” as it uses two samples from a talented three-piece band that went to my high school, called Arbes. The two tracks sampled are “Fortunes” and “Flutaar”. Flutaar’s sample is a subtle repitching, but I directly sampled the opening guitar melody from their song ‘Fortunes’ for the A-sections of Gigant. If you are not familiar with any of Arbes’s material do yourself a favour and wash some dishes whilst listening to either one of their EP’s. You will instantly feel better. My favourite track is ‘Beach Side’, from their first EP, Swimmer. Gigant is a German word meaning “giant”. Like “shame”, it was a word that got stuck in my head for many months. Of course, its relevance in my life was because the word is a part of attack names within the manga/anime One Piece. The lead protagonist’s (Luffy’s) special power is that his body is composed entirely of rubber, so he utilises this ability to inflate bones in specific parts of his body (usually his hands or feet) to incredible sizes before attacking the opponent. As Luffy attacks he yells out a standard attack name but slots in the word “Gigant” before the name of the attack. For instance, “Pistol” is when Luffy throws a punch and his arm hyper-extends forward and stretches out, vastly increasing its range. “Gigant Pistol” is this same style of attack but with an enlarged fist due to the bone in his hand having been inflated like a balloon, increasing its power but reducing Luffy’s mobility. For a fantasy pirate manga, One Piece uses a lot of real-life physics in its battle sequences. I’m not sure why but the word “Gigant” and the concept of “Gigant” always stuck with me, and because it’s stuck with me so long I take it as part of my personality and felt that I must express it through my art. I chose the word “Gigant” to be with this song because my obsession with the word was quite personal to me as One Piece isn't really trending or normalised as much as other pop culture in Melbourne. I’ve always really, really enjoy this song so naming it Gigant always felt right to me. The meaning of the word is also vaguely relevant to the lyrics of the song, fortunately. Hilariously enough, One Piece has had a surprising amount of influence on my songwriting all my life. One song that takes a lot of inspiration is a song from my other band Plaza-Trg, called ‘Harpy’. To avoid talking any more about One Piece for this zine (I hope): this was the second song I composed for the album but the fifth or sixth that I finished writing lyrics for. I wrote the composition for Gigant on a Friday morning in the Summer and it stuck itself in my head while I was making pizzas for the whole weekend. Writing lyrics for it was much trickier, however. This song is about being a part of something new and great that's entered your life. You're initially so glad that this new thing is here before you start doubting yourself because of your own fixation on this thing and feeling out of place with this new thing. It's a small-scale anxiety that I think subtly hints at what the rest of the album is going to be about. This song is also about a desire to belong somewhere. I personified this desire as a congenial partner that l yearned for. You want to be at this place so badly. You’re glad you’re away from where you were, but you’re always doubting yourself. You believe that you’re being judged at your new place, and that you’re not good enough for the place so you convince yourself that it’s not worth it. But in the end you see the absurdity of it all, and laugh it off. You're truly happy to be wherever you are, no matter where it is, while still longing for the place where you feel safe. I wrote the lyrics when my life felt to be in a period of transition. I was still adjusting to my first year of university, and being in intimate classes with very talented people who were recognised for their talents was really scary for me to adjust to. I was also at the age where people begin to think about life beyond their families and move out to live on their own, which is a lot to ponder for someone who takes their sheltered cosy life for granted. I wrote the lyrics for the sparser sounding section in one go, but the “drum and bass” section took many months before I was content with it. It was only really when I thought of the line “I can’t wait to walk through the final gate” that everything made sense to me. In the later sections of the song I talk about this “siren” that pops up in my life. A siren is a creature in Greek mythology who lure sailors with their beautiful singing voices and enchanting music to shipwreck on the rocky coast of their island. I was inspired to research sirens from a songwriting tutoring session with Harry James Angus from The Cat Empire, which I was very lucky to be a part of. A piece of advice he gave that really stuck with me was to take heavy influence from old mythology, because myths and stories hold their relevance because the core ideas and beliefs of such stories are taken from the core of human nature, which has not changed throughout history. I used the tale of the siren and compared it to entities in my own life that would woo me and lead me to my demise. In the song even though the siren is leading me away from my course I am completely aware that they will be the one to lead me to my demise in the end (“I know you’ll be the one to cast me onto the rocks”), and thus the line “I can’t wait to walk through the final gate” shows total acceptance and even eagerness towards my own death in this manner, as if it would free me from the burdens that I were carrying. I find that super interesting and, somewhat, empowering. I think I have the closest connection with this song. It’s written in Bb Ionian, which is a mode that a lot of my favourite music is written in, and was just a general joy to work on. I was refining this song and adding electric bass and guitar to it in my own time long before I had even conceptualised the album, so I feel as if this song is the one I care for most. I also recently realised that this song, while very much a song about wanting to belong somewhere, is also a love song, and probably one of the few optimistic love songs I’ve written (more on optimistic love songs with Dermo-Creme). This is especially apparent when viewed holistically, with the first few stanza setting the scene, then the complication comes in, then I dwell on everything that could go wrong, then I accept that what will happen will happen, concluding with the butteriest ending I’ve ever written. I’ll let you see why. Originally, I wanted Ruby-Sofia to sing this song, but after a recording rehearsal at my house I realised that her voice did not suit the style of lyric writing, as the way the melody leapt around for her voice reminded me of a country dance song. My final resolve was to use my own voice for the song, as I strangely put a lot of effort into the demo vocal for Ruby and Isaac, and as with each day that passed I enjoyed my voice on it more and more. I think I made the right choice in the end. I asked Alex to make the artwork of a young boy with some stereotypical child traits, like a bowl cut and a big grin with missing baby teeth, because a lot of this song evokes younger childhood memories and purer feelings for me. I chose orange as the background colour for the artwork as this song always reminded me of the colour orange, a colour which I always associated with nostalgia, and this feeling is especially apparent in the verses that convey a sense of relief. I really enjoyed using the word ‘lion’ as an adjective, and I hope to do it more often. Influences: Courtship Dating - Crystal Castles: I listened to a lot of Crystal Castles when I was younger, and I really enjoy their first album. Their first album has some very intense, high octane songs that I enjoy very much, and some moderately-paced songs that I didn't enjoy as much when I was younger and more of a punk. ‘Courtship Dating’ is the only moderately-paced song on that album that I always enjoyed. I remember when I made the opening section of ‘Gigant’ and instantly felt the need for a drum and bass section to follow it, starting on the submediant. I’ve only realised this now, but this is because the beat in the opening section of ‘Gigant’ is very similar to the beat in the opening section of ‘Courtship Dating’, through the hi-hat timbre and the infrequent kick drum rhythm. Following this section the song brings in a sine bass (I’m pretty sure it’s a sine bass (it is not a sine bass)) and uses a more dance-y beat as vocals come in. I guess the similarity between ‘Courtship Dating’ and ‘Gigant’ is what inspired me to subconsciously make my song so similar. I’ve also never really noticed this but the way the dancey section of ‘Gigant’ plays out is similar to some EDM where the beat feels like it is at half speed (usually through placement of the snare). I listened to a fair amount of EDM growing up (mainly Daft Punk, with Deadmau5 and Knife Party phases as well) so I’m glad that some of the tropes in those genres are finally showing in the songs I write. Night of the Long Knives - Everything Everything: I’m not sure why but it seems my favourite music seems to in Bb major or any of its correlating modes. Night Of The Long Knives is one of my favourite songs, period. There are so many interesting musical details present in this song alone that I borrow in my music. The polyrhythmic guitar towards the latter half of the song strongly influenced the final crescendo of Outside from my first EP. You’re going to notice that Night Of The Long Knives is the leading inspirational drive of this album, partly because of the strength of the word “Shame” in that song. This song takes inspiration from the IV - I chord movement in the chorus for the A section, and the B section’s syncopated melody on the guitar and bass accompanying a consistent drum beat. A Different Feeling - The Avalanches: My favourite Avalanches song, the way this song can leap between upbeat and lulling but still maintain that dancing energy definitely influenced this song. The beat also was a large influence. Late Night - Foals: A haunting song. The drum beat that Jack Bevan plays from about 0:53 to 2:20 always sounded so crisp to me, even through its simplicity. I really enjoy how the hihat is so repetitive but sounds so great and carries the beat so effectively. I listened to Two Steps Twice, arguably their greatest song, for the first time in a while and the hi-hat has the same effect there. Maybe that’s the “Foals sound” my friends always say I convey. Lyrics: So you stirred up the quiet ocean. Turned the tides in a lion way. And it’s clear when it comes from nothing at all. All my life, where have you been? But with this autonomy, am I glad? You could be the one to guide me under the knife. I can’t wait to walk through the final gate. And I love that they’re coming closer. But do they come with a loaded question? For I’m stuck in the fissure of stigma. I’m a slave to the me before me. And I hope that it’s almost over. And my heart knows it feels bereft. But it’s so damn hard to keep you away. And there’s hardly room to breathe. Don't. Can’t deny the need to feel ahead of the pack. It’s not like I let the world hold me back. I’m out where the giants roam. Footsteps and all. I can’t wait to give up, alright? These burdens are doubling. But what’s that coming up? A siren for me to chase out to sea? And where you aimlessly wander, I’ll shamelessly follow. And I know you’ll be the one to cast me onto the rocks. I can’t wait to walk through the final gate. And I know that you’re coming closer. And I don’t care that there are bigger fish. So please, just pick me up and take me away. For I’m warm in your gooey heat. Artist Influence - Everything Everything: Everything Everything is definitely the largest influence on me and this album. While their newer material boasts tight songwriting and incredible lyrics, the arrangements of some of their earlier songs are so wild and should not be discredited. There are so many of their songs that inspired individual tracks of this album that it wouldn't be a stretch to say that every song off this album is heavily influenced by an Everything Everything song. As I have already discussed, their track ‘Night Of The Long Knives’ influenced the name and artistic direction of the album as well as the style of many songs on the album. I got turned onto listening to Everything Everything at the beginning of 2016 by close friend Harry, the drummer of my other band, Plaza-Trg, and they have been a large part of my life ever since. I strongly connect with the views and beliefs that Jonathan Higgs conveys through his lyric writing, and it is a chief influence on my own songwriting. I was listening to their latest album ‘A Fever Dream’ almost compulsively when I was creating Shame, and both the lyric writing and song arrangements rub off onto this record. You Threw Me Away: To put it simply, ‘You Threw Me Away’ is about a relationship that declined. It’s written in this kind of acquiesced anger that rationally accepts what has happened over time but is very annoyed that it happened. I think a large section of my shame is taken up with misguided blame and the moral consequences that would follow. There is power in validation of your perceived truth, and whether that truth is right or wrong is irrelevant if knowledge you gathered is valid, even if misguided. The lyrics of this song are very much influenced by this philosophy, with You Threw Me Away containing the most viscerally written lyrics on the album. I wanted this song to be as empowering as possible for myself and listeners. I tried writing as succinctly and simply by overusing personal pronouns to create an overt sense of self (“I was ____, You ____, I thought ____…”), to allow listeners an easier avenue to empathise. The result of this is that I’m accusing throughout a large portion of the song, which is something I don’t usually enjoy doing, but as its purpose is to set myself at ease I’m fine with it in the short term. I feel that this is a very irrational pleasure to have. In retrospect, there were a lot of things that I could have done to amend the situation so that I could at least feel better about myself, but I can also justify why I was wired to act in such a passive and meek manner. The chorus concisely summarises my initial emotive reaction to the whole situation. Part of the reason I felt so worried during this partnership was that I felt like I couldn’t offer anything to my partner. I was a young, poor, skilless teenager who couldn’t drive or afford to go out, and didn't have much going on compared to friends my age. From a very superficial standpoint it was clear that I had very little to give at the time, so there was always a fear in me that I would be discarded for such reasons. Of course, I wouldn’t think anyone would be that shallow as to judge me for my things over my personality. However it is apparent to me now that this fear was really enveloping who I was to this partner, and that shifted my personality to not be at my full potential, and thus, ultimately lead to being discarded for these reasons. The chorus details how dumbfounded I was as I’d convinced myself that someone would actually dislike me for what I could not provide, and how I assure myself that people who act that way simply are not good enough for me (“Look at you / You mucked up / You threw me away”). One of my favourite lines is “Still I’ll go / I’ll grow up / I’ll drive a car / I’ll move out”. It describes my fixation to attain some kind of independence during the Summer after high school. The situation that I was in definitely drove a desire to be more independent but even after the situation ended those feelings were still there, if dormant. I also love the line “Look at me look at you!” because it’s demanding acknowledgement for my emotive response, and that conveys so much insecurity. I had so much trouble naming this track. The impulsive project name for this track was “June July & August”, quite possibly because the timbre of the arpeggiated chords remind me of something frigid and cold, like winter. The day I decided on the final title was when my friend was telling me about the importance of a chorus, many months after I had started writing this song, and how it should summarise what the contention of the song is in a few words or sentences. The example he gave was the song ‘Crazy’ by Gnarls Barkley. I told him that while the chorus of the song should summarise the contention of the song, the title should convey the meaning in just a word or a few words, and we all agreed. From that moment (whenever that moment was) that idea lingered in my mind, and when I realised I needed a title for this song I stressed out because I didn't really have an idea. I looked into the lyrics and tried to find something that summarised the song in just a word, or a phrase, and “You Threw Me Away” did just that. The only scrapped title worth noting was “Bending”, but with the existence of ‘Crashing’ I decided against another “-ing” suffix in a title. I'll probably use that title for another Orange Orange track. This was the third song I composed for the album, but the second last that I finished lyrics for. I wrote the lyrics for the chorus around the same time I initially created the song, but because I was trying to relate to feelings that I had long dispatched, I had much trouble writing the verses. I asked Alex to draw a bird's nest for me because you could liken the subject that I am singing about to a bird that has left their nest, while I sit in the nest and wait. Influences: Kemosabe - Everything Everything: ‘You Threw Me Away’ borrows heavily from ‘Kemosabe’, which is one of my favourite Everything Everything songs for its potent lyricism and progressions. While they both the second full song on their respective albums and both have four choruses, the arpeggiated chords used in the verses of ‘Kemosabe’ influenced this song the most. The line “My neurons, they slow me” was directly influenced by “Do you feel like your brain’s stopped delivering?” in the first verse of Kemo. Olympic Airways - Foals: The section beginning around 2:17 in Olympic Airways directly influenced the verses of this song. The chord arpeggiation on the piano directly imitates two guitars tremolo picking harmonies, and the dance beat influences the similar, wonkier dance beat used for this song. Night of the Long Knives - Everything Everything: The beat of this song is super similar to the beat of Night of The Long Knives. I was mainly inspired by the dancey hi-hats and the kick drum rhythm, and how the beat is present throughout the whole song. My Number - Foals: One of Foals’s bigger tracks, this song just sounds good. The way the vocal is constructed in this song (with a lower octave harmony) always pleased me so I tried emulating that for my verses. Also, I mimicked the iconic hi-hat fill present throughout ‘My Number’ with a similar but cheesier crash cymbal. I love it. Spring / Sun / Winter / Dread - Everything Everything: This is an instant Everything Everything classic. The ending section is the lyrics “You are a thief and a murderer too / Stole the face that you wear from a craven baboon / ‘Cos you did it to her and you did it to him / And you did it before and you’ll do it again” sung at a rapid pace over an outro crescendo likened to the main chorus. When I saw Everything Everything live this ending section was the one part of the set that really had people dancing and crashing into each other, and it made me think that the mindless blaming in the lyrics were instilling belief and strength into the audience. This really inspired me to write lyrics that avoid rationality and just try to express everything I had built up within me, especially for a dance-y song like this one. Lyrics: I was floating and restless. Swiping down the stream. You charmed me out when I sensed no vitriol bursting at the seams. In the succession of moments we lived through, I thought it was a dream. But, my neurons, they slow me, I’m running out of steam. Now, you tell me to wait for the moment. Throw my sword into the sea. So I succumb to play with my thumbs. It’s what I wanna be. In the past, I told me, “It’s all in my head, don’t worry.” But now I’m so… so dumbfounded. Not worth my time. Still I go, “I’ll grow up. I’ll drive a car, I’ll move out.” But look at you. You mucked up. You threw me away. And there you go, shaped by the world. Life is but a race. And here I am, fanging for you, clinging to my faith. “Why won’t you stay home and soothe my bare bones?” Is what I’d rather say. But you work so hard, and straight-forward. Push me out the way. In the past, I told me, “It’s all in my head, don’t worry.” But now I’m so… so dumbfounded. Not worth my time. Still I go, “I’ll grow up. I’ll drive a car, I’ll move out.” But look at you. You mucked up. You threw me away. I always thought that you went so much deeper, you petty little skunk. And I thought our ribs could coexist. I’m grieving like a monk. But, I get it, you human. So young and hungry. You want to reap from the world for your being. It’s what you wanna be. In the past, I told me, “It’s all in my head, don’t worry.” But now I’m so… so dumbfounded. Not worth my time. Still I go, “I’ll grow up. I’ll drive a car, I’ll move out.” But look at me look at you! You mucked up. You threw me away. In the past, I told me, “It’s all in my head, don’t worry.” But now I’m so… so dumbfounded. Not worth my time. Still I go, “I’ll grow up. I’ll drive a car, I’ll move out.” But look at you. You mucked up. You threw me away. Artist - April Whitmore: The first stanza of lyrics I wrote for You Threw Me Away was the chorus, as melody for the chorus came to me very quickly. The only issue was that I could not comfortably sing this melody. This is where the lovely April Whitmore comes into the mix. I first saw April as she was performing in the now-defunct Eat Pant, and I instantly loved her voice and how she projected herself, so she seemed like a perfect fit. She was very professional about everything and I am very happy with the way the chorus came out in the end. Her current band 'Janada' is superb, I thoroughly suggest you check them out. CYA next week.
- R I just wanted to go over where I'm at with my music and how it's all going, because it's been over 6 months since my last release and I'm itching to put something more out soon. I have some tracks that are pretty close to being released into the world, but I also have some that are waiting in the hangars to be deployed. I'm not sure what format it will all come out as eventually, but these ones I will talk about will eventually come out soon. 2020 was strangely one of my most productive years as an artist, and I’ve created a whole bunch of songs across a whole array of styles (and artists!). I think being able to block out the business of the society I am in helps a LOT. I could just focus on recording and being productive in that manner. My most productive period was from the middle of March 2020 to the end of May 2020, I wrote about 5 projects for uni (most of which I’m repurposing for Orange Orange), two or three Orange songs and a whole EP of Plaza-Trg songs with Harry. It was so wonderful! I need a productive time like that again soon. Anway, here are the tracks, in order of when I made them! Singapore a Distance I wrote this at the end of 2019. This track is quite a departure from the style I’ve developed, as it’s quite bubblegum-pop-esque. It’s quite a standard song structure but I think it works well. I’ve recreated a sound that sounds a lot like a sound from the Warioware DIY sound palette, which is cool! I don’t have lyrics for it yet. I do have quite a soft spot for this song and I hope I end up using it in the future. The World Gets Quiet I had this idea for a song about enjoying the quiet moments in life at the start of 2020 but I couldn't really progress any further than that. Once lockdown hit... I got quite a lot of inspiration as the whole world actually went quiet. I spoke about this song in one of my past blog posts but I’ll say it again. It started life as this upbeat indie song – planned to have this weirdly intricate beat that would be played on a drum kit. The energy that the drum beat brough was so strange and did not match what I was envisioning, so I thoroughly tweaked it to be more unique, more electronic and more open texturally. I felt that a lot of music I had been working on had been texturally thick and could be too much to handle, so I thought to arrange something simpler. I really like this song a lot. I recently re-tracked the vocals with my good friend so hopefully it can come out sooner than later. Friends in 2D I focused my university folio in the first lockdown about living in lockdown and the different interpretations and emotions people had. For Friends in 2D, I was responding to my friend’s artwork that she’d made about a series of pubs by writing about longing to be in a social setting like a pub. I was going through a little guitar phase, and this song was something I made on a guitar tuned down a half-step. I’m writing about interacting with all my friends on ZOOM and Discord and not being able to see them physically directly, only being able to see them in 2D, hence the title. It’s pretty calm but I haven’t really worked on production too much. This song needs a bit of work. You Only Do So Much I wrote this during “the great era of Orange Orange songwriting” during that first lockdown. It was totally unattached to any uni work I was doing though and was just this fun jingle I created. I was really getting back into my indie guitar roots with Born Ruffians and wanted to do this very upbeat, guitar focused song in 6/8. I used to write so much guitar music in 6/8. I miss those days. So far the production is quite lo-fi but I’m secretly quite attached to how unique it sounds. I probably won’t “upgrade” it too much. I’m still trying to figure out lyrics for this song but I think I might talk about lust and how it affects people, both greed and the sexual kind. I really enjoy this song. Waiting For Medium This was originally a doodle I did when I was waiting preparing for the livestream with Medium in April. Charles from Medium was intermittently in contact with me regarding if the streaming software was working so whilst I was waiting, I recorded this Foals-style guitar interplay along with some vocal chanting and stuff. I left it for quite a long time but I’ve come back to it recently, added a funky beat and I’m trying to make it work for a release. The arrangement is pretty different to everything I’ve done before so I’d be curious to see if it works! Saviour of the World I wrote this at the start of May 2020 taking the perspective of someone who couldn’t stand being in lockdown (you and I both knew quite a few people), talking about how bad things were not and the things to be grateful to still be there. It is very much an arrangement based on Foals-style guitar interplay but I think it is pretty cool on its own. I still think the production needs to be tweaked thoroughly, and possibly the beat production as well. I do think this is the best vocals I’ve ever written for myself which is good because on the whole I think I’ve been improving. I’ve played this song with my band at the last EP launch. CYA on MARZ This was the first song I wrote in the second lockdown and it’s quite Kid A of me. I had this really sparse drum machine phrase that was 5-bars long, and I based the whole song around that. I actually wrote the majority of the song on a piano, which is weird for me because everything either starts with production or guitar. Lyrically it’s about human bigotry and how it will probably be something that never goes away and it’s a little fantasy about the world ending because of this bigotry. I’ve had this music video in my head that’s this made-up fanfic of WALL-E, where one of the humans goes through the archive to see how they ended up on the ship, and becomes so disgusted that they get on an escape pod and leave the rest of humanity. After they leave, a comet hits the ship or aliens destroy the ship, whatever, what matters is that the last person alive is this person who has escaped. Maybe I should make a video for this song. This is currently my favourite song I’ve made and I can't wait to put it out. I also wonder how I will do this song live. Future Role I wrote this song with my inspiration being Sydney Miller’s ‘Out From the Inside’ so I tried doing something in 6/8. I made this cool synth patch in Ableton and played around with this simple chord change and eventually I made this song. It’s HUGE. I wrote it wondering what my future would turn out to be, especially what impact I’d want to make as a person, and what other people’s impacts would be. I realised this song would be great with Stella Farnan singing on it, so I asked her to sing on it and she did. I’m going to release this song pretty soon so I’ll go into more detail about it then. Granny Lands I wrote the beat of this song after listening to Everything Everything’s ‘Lord of the Trapdoor’ a lot, because Mike (the drummer) uses the 5/4 time signature to make his drum beat so interesting but simple. I put it in 6/4 and tried playing with space a bit more, and I also played around with this synth patch I made based on the bendy monophonic sound that’s used in Donkey Kong Country and the arrangement is my fave because of it. I got Sydney Miller to sing on it because my low voice just didn’t work for the whole song and it’s sometimes my favourite song too. Again, I’ll put this out soon too so I’ll go into more detail about it when it does. Diamante 2 This song has conceptually been in my head for quite some time – but it just doesn’t exist yet. I have a demo of sections that exists on my computer but I haven’t recorded anything substantial just yet. The lyrics are still coming together too but I think I will be writing about friendships. I do have high hopes for this song though! Breath This song is more akin to my past guitar-focused songs like Bigger Picture and Sickness Illness, which I haven’t done in a while. I made some pretty cool sounds through granularising a guitar part I made, and I elaborated on that. I then wanted to make the song slowly transition to this Huntly-esque doof music with demonic vocals. I’m excited to go a bit further with this one. I originally want to write a song about news anchors but over time I’ve decided not to do that, so who knows what I’ll write about. Longdeath Milk I was playing around with some synth-pad sounds and I combined that with this incredibly energetic drum beat and I made this song. I recently got fascinated with FM-synthesis patches and I successfully implemented this FM patch for the chorus and it sounds pretty darn good. The lyrics are about honesty but I’m retrying writing vocals because the first draft was a bit uninspired but I think it might become good. I really hope it does. The ending section of this song SLAPS so hard. Until next week,
- R
My dear friend Stella Farnan released her third single on last Thursday - Boxes. I'm so glad this joyous tune is out in the world finally.
If you've never heard of Stella Farnan before, quickly rectify that. She is one of the leading talents in my life, having written many beautiful songs that probably will live in my head forever. I really mean that too, because her songs are so memorable, so iconic, so tightly packed, so nuanced. It's so respectable, I really aspire to songwrite like her more. Her strong talents have not gone unnoticed, being shortlist as an artist to watch in 2020 by the AU review, and winning the Darebin Songwriters Award for my personal favourite song of hers 'Act Like a Party'. Stella and I are at a cafe eating a brownie and some chips - talking about Stella's (then) upcoming release "Boxes". Here's how it went.
Have some Chips!
I will have some chips, but then again, I'm having a little chocolate in between having some chips. Is this wrong? No no no... not at all. So this is the all-encompassing Stella Farnan experience... review... hang out... chat. Great! *Stella takes a sip of her large latte* Oh this tastes like... Carrot? ...more than just a coffee. Old shoe? Ooh. That's a good one. Alright, interview starts now. What do you think would be a better flavour - Old Shoe, or New Shoe? I mean... Old Shoe has the branding. New Shoe has no recognition. If you're eating something you wanna eat something that you could like boast to your friends about. What?! No no no, I'd wanna eat something that tastes really delicious! ...Sorry, I'm asking you the questions. I understand where you're coming from but that perception influences your taste as well, right? If you eating a $50 pasta and a $10 pasta and they taste the same, you're obliged to like the $50 pasta more because you made a bigger endeavour for it. ...Wait, that doesn't make sense. It doesn't prove my point at all! That's actually right because... I would enjoy the $10 pasta more because I'm only coughing $10 for a pasta that's as good as a $50 pasta. Bye bye $50 pasta... is there pasta that even costs that much?! I don't know, probably. Next question - did you stock up on lots of pasta when we went into lockdown? No... but I think accidentally there was one time where two people in the house both bought the same pasta. I think that's it. We had a toilet paper subscription though. Ohhh good! Although I think it was running out in the peak of the first lockdown. We were getting a lot of emails about stocks of toilet paper running out. It didn't affect our subscription though. Was that Who Gives a Crap? Yes. Oh I've heard they're great. Do you want some of my brownie? Oh man. I feel like you should eat it if you're enjoying it. Are you not enjoying it? But like, what if I was? Would you not eat it? Well, I have like a vague interest, but not a burning desire. But I feel that if you're enjoying it, I'm enjoying these chips. I feel that you'd enjoy it TOO. I could get myself one later! Eat it! Maybe I will then. It's just that the chocolate's a little dark, and the walnuts... I assume they're walnuts they might be macadamias, they taste like they've been in a plastic bag for a long time. Ah. Anyway, I just wanted to (finally) start this by complimenting you a lot. I wanted to talk about this performance you did in our first year of uni. You did a performance of Act Like a Party with Gab and Soren, and it had this free-form intro where Gab was vocoding your voice, and Soren was playing this drone-y synth noise. Yeah! Soren was playing bass. Was he? Yeah, like some kind of synth bass. I don't know, I didn't know what it was. Yeah, well that performance changed my life. That was the first performance where my jaw dropped. It might've been because I'd never seen you perform before but I knew you'd had written songs. I just remember at the end of that I was just like "guh!". Someone in our class filmed the whole thing and I just watch it a lot. That's so nice!!! I haven't seen it in a while though. I remember the mic kept falling down. Do you remember that? Very vaguely. That was so much fun. Yeah that's when I realised "Stella's good. Stella's gonna be big." When would that have been? Like mid-year 2018? I think end of year, like October I think. 2018 though! That was almost 3 years ago. Yeah wow, I played my first ever gig in September that year. No way! Was it a solo show? Yeah, I was opening for Rya Park at the Gasometer Upstairs. How was that? It was so fun, I had no idea what I was doing. I actually wrote half of my set for that gig. Oh man, I feel that. Do you play a lot of those songs now, still? Yeah I've had the same set for the past 3 years. Half of them were like songs I wrote as a teenager. I guess I was a teenager then too so all of them are teenager songs, and Act Like a Party was one of the ones I wrote. I had the verses for that song for such a long time though. Like when you were young? Yeah, the guitar part was something I made when I was "fyuckin ayround on a lyopp pyedal" - said with a weird voice to make fun of myself. Is that gonna be written out on the blog? Don't worry I'll find a way to put that in. I like, looped the guitar part, did a little vocal thing and then wrote the verses. Then I came back years later and just did it all, in one go. The lyrics all happened in one go too. Anyway, I digress. Thank you so much for remembering that performance. It was just so powerful! It was just like, Gab and Soren are the best and we went to Gab's studio that afternoon and he got it set up and got Soren on the synth bass. It's great, I really had to do was sing and play guitar. We got the performance good and then went and performed it. Well you did perform it good. I just wanted to get that out of the way because I really really enjoyed it. And frankly, it did make me think about want I wanted to do with live performance, and the different ways you could approach performing songs, even if it is the same song. That was the task. The ideas was that we were doing two imaginings of the same song, with the vocoder free-time thing and then we played with the band arrangement for the second half of the song... I think? I'm pretty sure that's what we did? Do it again! It's so good! Maybe we should! When we first started recording it we made this weird version that sounds pretty bad with vocoder-y stuff... We were just trying to do two things at once. I would love to release that version one day. Really! I would love to hear it.
Stella performing at the launch of her first single 'Love Spill'
Here's where I awkwardly segway to the next question. How long have you been writing music for? Like I know you've been writing songs for a long time, and I know Boxes has been around for a bit (we'll get to that later) and I assume you had a lot of other songs you've played and knocked around in high school. You've also showed me footage of you playing music in a band when you were in high school and younger. Does it go even further than that?
Yeah it does. I've always been writing song because I grew up in this house where there were instruments everywhere, and my parents were working in arts. I remember that I would always bash on the piano and always be making stuff up. You know when you were a kid and you can't really hold a guitar so it's just laying in your lap and you're just knocking it around? Yeah, I do. There was a lot of that. But it was like, I was writing stuff, I have a few old tapes and cassettes of songs we were writing together in the car. I had like a "band" with my dad and my sister when I was a child, like four to seven. We would just... apparently, I don't really remember the logistics of how it started but we would be eating some dinner and I would just be like "I NEED TO RECORD" so we'd go to my dad's little studio space out the back of the house, and we would just improvise on some old drums and guitars with my sister with the help of my dad, making everything stick together, setting up microphones and telling us not to scream too close into the microphone. We would just improvise, and it was just hilarious. Then he'd print them onto CD's and we'd get to decorate them. It was the best. That's amazing. Do you listen to those songs now at all? They're not really songs. It wasn't really me writing lyrics when I was five, like there's one song where I'm giggling amd doing fake burps. There's another one called 'Ants in my Pants' where I'm just saying "I've got ants in my pants." It's some infant shit. I feel like after a couple of years I had been listening to my sister's Kasey Chambers and Missy Higgins CD's and there's this one printed CD that I have that has two tracks. One of them is called 'Help' and one of them is called 'Need Some Help', and it's just me singing with this weird, twangey... thing that I must've taken from Kasey Chambers, and yeah, they're not real songs... what was the question you asked me again. I don't even remember. But I did have a similar thing when I was younger. There's a recording of me when I was four singing Poison Ivy with my dad. But because I'm four I'm not singing it, I'm tonedeaf and yelling and laughing along. I feel like that'd be the same experience as you had. Oh, 100%. There's nothing better than a four year-old kid just like, singing, and making sound, and learning about how their bodies make noises and exploring that. Yeah!!! So from there, where was the transition from baby wailing to where you were when I met you, the music literate, loveable- I decided when I was five or six that I was like "It's time I start learning an instrument" because that was what my big sister had done. But I feel very lucky because my parents never made me learn an instrument, like I felt it was time to begin. That's when I started doing piano, I considered saxophone. I guess around the same time I was slowly starting to muck around on the guitar. My dad plays the guitar and taught me a couple of chords. I don't really remember learning or practising guitar though, I never really had lessons. It was like a chord a year, really. And then... I was writing songs through high school... kind of all doing the singer/songwriter thing. I learnt percussion in high school too. But to be honest, I was a little unsure if I should study music after school, but I realised that I couldn't imagine myself not doing music. Once I started studying music I was relieved, because all my friends were doing Science and Arts... They were just really exhausted all the time. Yeah! And I was just having heaps of fun, learning so much. And like, I'd messed around in Garageband but I'd only downloaded Logic when I started uni, and it was really my first time properly thinking about production. I did the songwriting thing for ages and my brain kind of exploded when I found it. I think I went down the same path as you. But you were doing recordings in high school, right? Yeah, yeah I did. I talked to Soren about this actually. When we made those recordings I had a basic understanding of how it worked but I couldn't make it sound the way I wanted it to. When I entered that same course I was in the mindset of a singer/songwriter, like you. I feel like that stage of music making, like what you were doing in high school is the most exciting thing, where you have no idea what you're doing, you're just making some sounds. You not weighed down with what's right or what's wrong. Yeah you're not thinking about the EQ and what would sound good, you're just thinking about energy and what feels good. How sweet. And that's what it's like when you're four! And you're screaming into the microphone! That's like before you know what it sounds like, it just feeeeeeels good. Damn, that is fundamentally how we make songs. It's like "this feels good". Yeah, like I'm saying that as if something has changed. But nothing has. It's all just screaming notes. Yeah. Yeah... what was the point of this question? I don't know. I don't know either, let's take stock. Wailing baby... making sounds... making curated sound... songwriting. What was the first ever song you wrote? Oh damn... I don't really know. My house would a place where you'd be wondering around singing or humming something and people would join in with harmonies without you asking. The first shot at a kind of serious song was when I was eight, and I was playing a black Fender Stratt, which wasn't mine obviously. I had been listening to Avril Lavigne and I thought she was the coolest person ever, and I knew E minor and then I was just making up chords. What I was playing was like a minor 7 shape but just with my four fingers and I let the other open strings ring out. It's funny because I'm just playing the same chords now as I was back then. But I wrote this song name Blue Lorikeets, and I was talking about a bunch of cliches I heard from pop music but writing about opposites instead. But still to this day that song has one of the best hooks that I've ever written, and it's kind of sad. Did I already hit my peak? ...When you were eight? I still don't know how to spell Lorikeet now. I don't know how to spell that either... What does the hook go like? Uhhhhh! Something like *Ooohohohoo OOOOhoh. Ooohohoahaoho, oooOOOooh* Are you gonna use that in the future? I should! I like it. I wish I'd improved past then, when I was eight. I think you've improved with the stuff you've put out at least! Thank you Ryan! Thank you! I feel like I'm giving you long answers. Yeah, but that's okay! I'm really enjoying this. I was gonna ask you next about how do you go about making songs. I feel like for the two songs that I have out and the one that's going to come out... they were strokes of luck. They kind of just happened. I don't know if it was the perfect recipe in my brain and the weather, and if the light was right, and if I was wearing comfy clothes, but it all came out pretty quickly. Usually I would start writing on guitar, or... no most of the time I would start on guitar. Which is interesting to me because you started learning music on the piano first. Yeah! I dunno. Sometimes I'm playing on piano but my default is guitar, and messing around. Usually when I start writing, melody and harmony comes at once when I strum a chord and sing something. It just kind of happens. Every now then I have a melodic idea when I'm out and about and I try and voice memo melody and chords at once. I'm sure you've got many memos of like terrible, really windy recordings where you're trying to sing 5 notes at a time. I do that with drum beats sometimes. I'd go back to them and it'd just be like "DUHDUDUDUHDUDU" and I think "this is awful, but this must've sounded good at the time, why else would I have recorded it?" Absolutely. But yeah, I would usually write two sections of a song and then leave it for a couple of weeks, not out of trying to create space for the song but mostly out of necessity, like "I've run out time right now, gotta run". But then I'd come back to the song with a fresh mind and continue on. But in the last few years I've had much more fun producing stuff and finding a new song to mess around with and editing audio, finding whatever textures I can. Sectionally! That's interesting! I usually would come up with a section and ask like "Is this a verse? Is this a chorus?", just like a section with lyric with a vague idea or a theme as a part of that section. I don't think I've ever written a song where all the lyrics came last, but I definitely have a vague idea and then sit down with some pen and paper and work it out. Yeah that definitely makes sense. I like to come up with the lyrics or a partucular theme, or maybe a word or a particular sound, and I'd let that dictate where I should go, like what chord should be next? What vowel sound should come next? Damn... that's so thoughtful. ...So much for short and non-specific answers. I was actually gonna ask you next about playing with George Alice, and playing at the Yours and Owls Festival because I don't really know anyone who's been able to do that recently. It was so much fun! There was a rotating stage because of the restrictions, they had to spend an extra million dollars to implement it and they'd split the audience into four different zones. But yeah, the spage stun... the stage spun, the sound went in two ways. That's crazy. It was so much fun though! George is amazing, she's one of those freaks who sounds the exact same live as she when she sings on the record, it's so wild. And Dan, who plays drums, they're amazing, they're the best. Yeah that's...0 I was gonna ask if you thought that Wollongong was cool? Um... yeah, we were in a place called Thirroul, I think that's how you say it. We didn't really see Wollongong but we were in this wild BnB, and we were right by the beach but I didn't have time to go and check it out. But there was this hectic mountain-like rock face that was just right there and it was just totally beautiful. Yeah, it was... it was beautiful. We went to one cafe and it was great. Oh good! Regarding the festival... I know there's this one performance of the Beatles where they're playing inside like a boxing ring or something, in this collosseum-like setup, and after a song or two these roadies would rotate all the gear they were playing with to face another direction. I kinda imagine it was like that? It was like that but with a motor. It would do one rotation in one direction for a song and then it went the other way for the next song. Right, right. It was wobbly though, and it's already on this riser on wheels so it's already pretty wobbly as it was. There was this one song where I had start with my foot on a volume pedal, so I was balancing on one leg and then it STARTED. It jolted and that was scary, I definitely nearly lost my balance but I did not, which is good. That's crazy Stella. I'm glad you did not fall. Thanks. I've never met George and I don't really know anything about George... She's the best. She's so good, such a good writer, such a nice person. Very FUNNY. I like Stuck in a Bubble a lot. Yeah me too.
Stella and me :)
Okay, it's time to talk about BOXES.
Yes it is! I feel like I'm one of the few people in the world who've heard the original ukulele version of Boxes that was up on JJJ unearthed. From like, 2017, I was in high school. I had a version of Love Spill on there too. Yeah, I think your dad was playing on it. Uhh, I don't think he played on it. He did help record it, and he programmed the MIDI drums. Oh that's MIDI drums on the record? No way! Yeah, there are. This is not the actual version by the way, the actual version has REAL DRUMS. That was just a demo. It does show that those songs have been around for quite some time. I was listening to Boxes today for the first time in a while, I've told you this a thousand times already but it's really good and it sounds really good. Yes, thanks. I think this released version is a little different to the version you may have heard. I think the first verse is a bit different. Yes, yes. Well I'm excited to hear this final version when it comes out! Is this one of your more whimsical songs? Would you agree with that? Yeah! Yeah! I get a lot of optimism and positive vibes from this song, do you feel that? Yeah, yeah totally! I wrote this when I was 16, and I wasn't really a very moody 16 year old. I was really quite an optimistic kid, and I wanted everyone to have a good time. I was writing with the energy of being a little kid but wanting to take that outlook into the future. I was thinking of the song as like... your old teddy bear, it's like a comfort thing having that perspective. So it's working out as you're growing up, what level of optimism is useful and what level of optimism is diluded. I guess it was a reflection of where I was at during that time, or at least of me wanting to that holding onto that wide-eyed youthful excitement, even though it always was like that. That makes sense. The lyrics do reflect that. I would think that one of my favourite lyrics: "you showed me imagination / now i can't keep safe at night" reflects that. It's a great lyric, it's really thoughtful. Thanks! Yeah, it is just being a child, I guess, but in a warm-hearted way. And I was thinking of imagination in a positive way, I guess. Yeah I think of it as giddiness keeping you up at night. You keep getting ideas and you wanna build on those ideas and keep making things and it keeps you up. Optimism! It's good to be optimistic! Sometimes! Realistically optimistic! Yeah, some optimism is inappropriate but at that time it was the vibe. I get that. So then you wrote it. I guess you dwelled on it for a bit. Well, the story is that I woke up, and I hadn't got out of bed yet but there was an instrument within reach so I decided to play laying down, and I wrote the verse and the chorus and the anti-chorus and the lyrics all at once. I sat on that for a week and then I wrote the second half of the song which was the same structure, but I guess the first section of the song was about the past, and I was just feeling a bit nostalgic and wanting everything to be okay. I was kind of singing to my child self. Yeah, and the second verse does sing about those coming of age scenarios, like "what do we do with these boxes"? I dunno, I think it does! It's a little cringe... I felt like I was writing to my parents and my friends in the first part of the song, I had this friend who was going through this really shit time, and I was just sending out this plea to the people I care about, "promise me you won't forget to call". And in the second verse I was thinking about the people I hadn't met yet and I wanted them to know that I would care for them as well. Aw that's amazing! You were thinking about me before you mET ME! Yes! Please call me anytime! Anyway, yes. There we go. That's really funny, because you didn't really answer my question at all. Oh wow. Damn. So what did you ask? So you wrote the song. It's only coming out now, were you waiting for the right time to put it all together? Well, I was 16 and I didn't really know how to release music. Then when I was at uni I met our wonderful friend Soren, and he was like "Hey, let's record some songs!" Quick aside, do you want some brownie? Heck yeah. *Has brownie* See what I mean about the dryness? Mmmm... not the textures I was expecting, not bad though. Anyway, you met Soren? Yeah so, he was doing some work with the Teskey Brothers, and we went to their studio in Warrandyte. We recorded some drums over a couple of days, Boxes was one of the songs we recorded. And then we were just generally producing a bunch of songs, recorded them over what ended up being a couple of years, like on and off. It was just like, in little bursts, like a few days in a row of working all day until really late, and then we wouldn't touch them for ages. We just had heaps of fun, and I was learning what I was doing, and Soren was doing the same but he's just like a pro and totally incredible and really great at knowing what's next and motivating us to create. We just had the best time, and we've had so many cups of tea. There wasn't really a specific reason that we were waiting to put it out, it just happened that way. And then obviously last year we couldn't put the songs out because everything went on hold for us. But now it just happens to be when I'm putting it out. I'm finally putting out this song that's so old to me, but I guess because it was about a nostalgic feeling, that's kind of appropriate isn't it? That's a character arc I wasn't expecting. Amazing. Do you have anything else coming in the future? In that time I describe when I was recording with Soren that started in the middle of 2018, and that went on to each of our home studios and a bunch of other places... well we recorded an EP. It's produced by Soren, I have a few friends visiting to feature on some instruments, like Elena and Gab. It's mixed by Callum Barter who has worked on some of my favourite records ever, and mastered by Joe Carra who's just such a pro, so that's good! And then after that EP there's more music! Which I have heard some, just from the virtue of being at uni with you. It's so great and I really look forward to it! I'd say ditto! You showed a lot of amazing stuff too! *stella proceeds to continue to compliment me but i am too embarassed to type it out so i will pretend it never happened* Anyway... do you have any... other... side... things... coming? ...Can I say it? ...pshhhaw... I was lucky enough to sing on one of my favourite songs made by a lovely friend of mine recently, and I'm not sure if I'm allowed to say anything about it. It's this guy. Ehehehehe yes. I am excited for that. You sent through like the first or second take of what you sang and it was perfect! Did I? I just remember you saying "I'm more than happy to redo this later!" and then we never redid it. It was really good. And mix by Mike made you straight up POP. It's amazing. I'll send you the master when I can. I think I have it! Soren must've give it to me. It's coming out soon! I'm so excited! ME TOO! ~~~~~~~~~~~ Okay, now it's time for Quick Fire Song Time. You'll have to tell me what song you'd listen to for various kinds of scenarios. Oh fuck, this sucks, can I get my phone ready? Of course, of course. So first up, if you're in a car with your best friend and you're best friend's driving, what would be the first song you put on? First song? Yeah, and now you have to choose your best friend. I have many incredible friends. I am thinking immediately of Soren because we were just talking about him, and he drives me a lot of places and we always listen to music really loudly in the car. That's fair enough. Ohh... how many of these will I answer Charli XCX too... Maybe... I have so many songs, I'm queuing a heap of music in my head. I want the first one. I guess it does depend on mood... I think it's probably gonna be a Charli song... and it's probably gonna be off the new album, although Soren and I used to drive around to 'White Mercedes' a lot. I think it will be... nah, maybe it's 'Vroom Vroom', an older one. Maybe it's 'claws'... Nah. It's visions. Can I give you 5 songs as an answer? No. Then it's detonate. 'detonate' by Charli XCX. Alright great.
If you're getting an Uber home, and you're at the leisure to put your earphones in while the driver is driving. What do you listen to?
Tooootally depends. Am I coming home from a party? If you're coming home from a party I assume you're coming home with friends, and you're not coming home alone. Maybe you're coming home from Fitzroy or something, I dunno. Oh my god, I was on Brunswick Street last Saturday and I saw G Flip and Troye Sivan. Oh were they together? Yeah we walked past them. Oh that's so funny because we saw Troye Sivan riding an electric scooter the other day. It was one of those awkward moments where Gab was like "turn around!" and I repeated "turn around" and I turned around and he said "it's Troye Sivan on an electric scooter!" And just, someone was filming something and then Gab said that and the camera went up to Troye Sivan on the scooter and... yeah... anyway. I would just put on what I've been listening to recently, which would be the new Genesis Owusu album. I can't stop listening to the song 'The Other Black Dog'. I just love that album so much, the production is so cool. I will listen to that immediately.
Just quickly before we move on I just wanted to mention how much G Flip didn't want public attention from us so I just did a quick little salute and moved on, I thought that was something of note.
Yeah I had something similar once before too, I was in a kebab shop at 3am on Smith Street, and Nai Palm from Hiatus Kaiyote was there, and y'know, the situation was that it was 3am at a kebab shop. It was kinda pumping though, and I felt the need to express my love for her music but I didn't want to start a conversation and be annoying, so I just saluted her across the room. And at first she was like "Are you looking at me?" and then she got what was happening and she saluted me back! I was ecstactic. Oh that's so good!! That must've been so good. Anyway, what's next... When you're angry! When you're feeling mad. What do you listen to to let it out. I want to listen to something really loud in my headphones, or dance around to 'Hurry on Home' by Sleater-Kinney. Maybe something with some big drums though.
Okay! I like this one a lot. You're babysitting, and the three-year-old wants to listen to a song. What do you put on?
Okay so this is funny and I was recently thinking about this. I think Boxes sounds like a children's song, it's like made for kids isn't it? No swearing, it has a bouncy tempo. One time when I was babysitting I did put on some Japanese Wallpaper and the kid was totally jumping around and into it. I think we were listening to Fooling Around? I was gonna say, Fooling Around would've been so good. So would you say Fooling Around or Boxes? Hmm, something else a bit more heartwarming. Ooh! Maybe some Merk. He makes Casio Pop and it's just fun. Okay. Okay.
What about your pre-date meditation song?
*scoffs* pRe-dAtE mEdItAtIoN?* Well y'know, some people need music to get them in the zone for their date or whatever. Are we thinking something meditative? Well, something to get you in the right mindset. Maybe I'd listen to some Angel Olsen. But like, something off All Mirrors. What's the one that's like "doomdoomdoomdoom". Oh wait, that's something else, not that. I'll just play from the start of All Mirrors. I'll put the whole album in.
Soren said the Aldous Harding album.
Oh that's so good! I'd put on Aldous Harding too. I'll put that up too.
But maybe... okay... pre-date meditation... meditation.
See, I would've said something like The Strokes. ...But that's not meditative! Yeah well it's like, it's not like meditation like "ohm" it's more like being in the right mindset for the date and trying to feel good about myself. It's not strictly meditation! Oh okay, trying to feel good about myself... Maybe 'A Palé' by ROSALÍA.
Yeah I meant it more like how sports people listen to music that pumps them up.
Oh then I'd definitely listen to something loud. Maybe I'd listen to 'XS' by Rina Sawayama. Or Jessie Ware. I always put on 'Pretty Please' by Dua Lipa. Off her recent album? Yeah.
Oh yeah, that's a lot of listening homework I gotta do now. What would you play at the start of an exercise routine?
Um, I don't know. Depends what I'm doing. I've got like a dancing playlist that I'd probably put on. Maybe a lot of pop music, there's a lot of Charli on there. Well I'll link your playlist. That's so stressful, I don't want everyone stalking me on Spotify! I thought you wanted followers! AH. I'd put on 'claws' by Charli XCX. Sorry for doing so much Charli XCX.
Alright alright it's fine. This one is actually my favourite one, it's the song that you'd play at the end of the party so that everyone leaves and goes home.
I would put on Aldous Harding but I would hope that people would get into. I would put on 'The Weight of the Planets' or something like that? Oh... actually I'd put on 'What If Birds Aren't Singing They're Screaming', isn't that such a good title? It's so good!
And now we come to the final question. What was the last song you were listening to?
Yeah, it'd be Sarah Come Home by Allie X.
Well, that completes the interview! Thank you Stella!
I'm so sorry it was so long!
You can listen to Stella Farnan's 'Boxes' on Spotify, Apple Music, JJJ Unearthed, Bandcamp, and probably more places too.
Stella is supporting Tulliah at the Workers Club in Melbourne this Friday - you can grab your tickets HERE. What's good! In this week's blog post I'll be responding to the Q&A question requests I posted on my Instagram last Tuesday. There ain't many! There isn't much more to say other than that new Orange Orange music is swiftly on its way and you'll be seeing it pretty soon. Be excited! Other than that, here we go! how do you start writing a song/album? Big question. Generally, I do prefer beginning by writing arrangements and compositions for pieces first. After I have the structure and sounds in the places I want them to be, I would add the vocals and any other lyrics afterwards, reflecting off the arrangements I'd written. I usually boot up my DAW and start writing compositions that way, sometimes starting with chords, a melody, a beat, a random sample, ANYTHING. I really enjoy making cool arrangements and I do prefer exploring where these compositions take me. This isn't saying that I am opposed to creating a story or feeling through lyrics and letting that inform my composition. I just love creating compositions. Sometimes, I do start with something I've written on guitar and translate that over to the DAW, which I did with Oh How You Bend, and some new songs. However, I'd much rather write songs on guitar for my other bands, which aren't production-focused but band-oriented. It's just more natural that way. In rare cases, I like to start with an overarching idea, or concept, that I want to explore, and then later match that to a composition I've previously created, molding each of them afterwards appropriately. For example, in Hive Mind I wanted to write about this collective hysteria on this newer platform of mass media, and especially the way it made me feel. I used that math-rock styled electronic damce composition and gradually turning it into a song strongly influenced by rock, which I felt suited the tone of Hive Mind more appropriately. I have a new song I've been working on since 2019, where I wanted to talk about how I like the moments in life that are quite quiet. I couldn't find a composition to match until we went into lockdown in early 2020 and I moulded this very upbeat, syncopated arrangement into this calmer, restrained song with a different sound palette and different dynamics. It was quite a successful transformation and I do think it is one of my stronger songs that is yet to be released. However, for much of the time I don't latch these overarching ideas to a piece of music, but sometimes they do influence the kinds of compositions I make, eventually. Does that make sense? In terms of making an album, I don't really have a set process to start writing an album. Usually I just have a bunch of songs that I've created and I want to put them out as a collection. What I do typically do with this collection of songs is search for a through-line between all of them. For the previous album, it was Shame. Once I have that through-line in place I use that to inform some pieces and I try editing pieces to further link them more closely. Everything informs everything that way. What are the best Star Cards for my Vader tank build I'll have to check when I get home. Probably something to buff Vader, something for long range (like the cannon on a tank) and something to deflect more easily. With that in mind: - FURIOUS RESILIENCE - THERE IS NO ESCAPE - DEFLECTION STAMINA What is your favourite frog? Now, THIS is a good question. I do enjoy a vast majority of frogs, so I'll have to list a few and figure out my favourite from there. - The Frog from Frogger? - I was watching a nature documentary on YouTube or Netflix once and I found that there is a frog that carries its partner's eggs in its mouth for 5 months before vomiting them up when it safe to do so. That's pretty cool. I can't seem to remember or find the species of frog that it was. I think it lives in South America? - Michigan J. Frog. He's the Looney Tunes frog that can sing and dance with a cane and top hat. But only at special times! He totally pranked that guy in "One Froggy Evening". - Kermit the Frog. Kermit is great. I actually do not watch the Muppets nor do I actually know a lot about Kermit but his voice is so malleable and frankly hilarious. - That frog from One Piece that does the sumo wrestling is pretty neat too. Its name is Yokozuna. It has a topknot. - Crazy Frog. I loved their work with their rendition of "We are the Champions by Queen. - Slippy Toad, though he is a toad. - Nicky Flippers, from Hoodwinked. I actually think he isn't that cool. - Pepe and Dat Boi, too, I guess - Rugor Nass from the Phantom Menace too, is he a frog? I think Michigan J. Frog is a clear winner. Are chickens birds? I believe chickens are birds. They have a lot of similarities to birds, at least. I mean, why wouldn't they be? They have talons, they have beaks. They have everything birds do! They lay eggs! Next Question >:( Does the cat go meow? The cat does go meow, thanks. If you could choose one piece of furniture to use for the rest of your life what would it be Probably a fold-out sofa. You can sleep on it, and you can sit on it to watch things. Also, guests can casually use it when they visit and it's not weird, not like a bed. Actually, now that I think about it, a table would be pretty useful too. If it's big enough you could sleep on it, and you could sit on it to watch things as well. You can't use a fold-out sofa as a table however. That's wild. I change my answer to a large, long table thanks. Thanks for reading! Thanks for many question about animals, and thank you to the one question relevant to music, was nice to think about!
I'll be taking a break next week because I need a break. I'll see you in two weeks! - R Hey there! Today I'm gonna start something a bit out of nowhere and unexpected. I'm gonna start reviewing train stations. I really like trains. Call it the "Thomas the Tank Engine Effect" but I think that trains are pretty neat. Apparently, when I was a toddler my dad went well out of his way to drive across railway crossing in the event that a train would be crossing, because I would start cackling with joy like a maniac. I have been taking trains since I can remember. I've always like trains. Some notable train rides have been - Coming home from Wangaratta with my family. It was dark outside but I remember having a good time. I had to take a toilet break at Seymour and I thought you had to leave the train to use the toilet and I was scared that the train would leave without me. I don't really remember if I ever made it to the toilet but I didn't miss the train. - Riding the whole Frankston line for the first time. I was going somewhere on the Mornington Peninsuila but I could only get picked up in Mornington. Anyway, I rode the gauntlet that was "Stopping all stations to Frankston", including those between South Yarra and Caufield, all 27 of them. It was a lot. For some reason, I remember riding home far more clearly, probably because I was dreading the trip the entire time because I knew how frustrating it was. Anyway, I'm gonna review some random train stations I've recently been to. Coburg: The recently updated Coburg station? It's so nice. From the train, you might just see Coburg station as two platforms up in the sky, but it's so much more. I was at the station last Thursday when it was 15 degrees and bucketing rain, and I was so happy to see a waiting room that was heated and had seats for me to warm up in. They also had bathroom access from this waiting room, which I couldn't access when I visited. I imagine they were equally nice though. Each platform has two lifts to provide Wheelchair and other stair-resistant patrons access to the station, and I gotta say, two lifts per platform is very generous of them. The stairs are equally spacious. There's a perpendicular bunch of steps before splitting parallel in both directions to create space for peak time travelers, which is neat. My favourite part, though, is the water basins available on the platforms. There's a small basin, about 15 - 20 cm diameter available on both platforms with a drinking fountain. This is so nice. Any means of water hydration is welcome, and it's super welcome when the water is this refreshing. My favourite part is that the basin is only a metre off the ground, meaning that young kids also have access to the basin. I love this. I know the back entrance is still currently under construction, but if they finish it up and make it similar to the elevated stations after Caufield on the Dandenong line, I think we'll be in for a treat. Cheltenham: To my surprise, Cheltenham station is incredibly similar to Coburg station. This does make sense as both stations were massively overhauled by the Level Crossing Removal Project but it is a bit strange and a little sobering to see a "standardised" station across all of Melbourne. But hey, at least the standard treats the passenger pretty well. The rail line for Cheltenham is underground, and it harbours 3 platforms, two for direct travel and one for limited express. Like Coburg, there are four lifts, two for platforms 1 and 2 and two for platform 3. Logically I thought this made little sense as the distribution for the direct travel was less than the limited express but then I realised that during peak hour everyone would be scrambling for that limited express to get to the City. I still think it is cool that they have four lifts and not just two. I did not take the stairs but from what I saw it was a bit of a walkabout to get to the end of them, with the top of the stairs at the very back of the station. It might split into two stairs when heading to the platform just like in Coburg, but I was in a rush and I couldn't see. Someone tell me if it does. Sorry. I will say that the elevators are incredibly sound-proof. When I was in there the blaring train horn was a good 20db lower. That was nice if not interesting. Once you travel above ground things are very similar to Coburg. They have a waiting room as well, and while I didn't have time to sit in and feel its vibe it did look cosy, and a little larger than Coburg's, probably with toilet access there too. They did have designated Myki gates, which I thought was strange for a station so far away from the CBD, but I guess Cheltenham is a limited express stop. Outside the station you have some beautiful sites. You've got some outdoor seating next to bike racks to lock up your bike. Any bike racks at a station are welcome so I do wholeheartedly appreciate it. It does look like security is well monitored for these bike racks but if you're still cautious about losing your bike they do have devoted secure bike parking close nearby. Like Coburg they're still finishing the works above ground but it's cool to imaging the outdoor space that will be available once it is finished. So all in all, a pretty good station. Very accessible and caters for its large volumes of commuters quite well. If you were still worried about the vibes not being quite right, do not worry because the cemetery is still nearby. South Kensington: South Kensington is probably one of the worst stations I've ever been a part of. There's incredibly limited access to the platforms. On the Platform 1 side you have to exit right next to the BLARING train horn. There's a tonne of ways that this station ticks me off. You feel incredibly unsafe. The platform is so thin you could feel the wind blow you straight onto the tracks. The express Werribee trains passing through don't help either. Neither do the V-Lines or Sunbury trains expressing through at swift speeds. That's right, this station is so trash even the SUNBURY line gives you a miss. How embarassing. Westside Melbournians are so used to "Stopping all stations except South Kensington." I honestly don't know if this station has a future with the construction of the Metro Tunnel, as the tunnel has further limited access to the station. I know this station has been around for 130 years, but no one likes this station. While housing has popped up near this station pretty recently, this station still acts as if it was for labourers and worker, similar to General Motors and Paisley stations. Both General Motors and Paisley are now closed, even if Paisley has suburban areas around it now. If South Kensington is still open, why hasn't it been upgraded? It SORELY needs it. This image I stole from Wikipedia is from 2005 and the station actually looks pretty nice here. There's a little brick building on Platform 2 and the trees do make the view more bearable. Alas, they are no longer there. As other stations around Melbourne have been upgraded, South Kensington has not. Will it stand the test of time? Will it stay mediocre? Until then, I will never mind skipping it. These are some train stations. If you want me to review any particular station in the future please let me know.
Until next week! - R |
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