I’ll start with a bit of what I’ve been writing and recording in the last couple of years.
For some context, the original music side of my life had hit a bit of a speed-bump in the last 18 months or so. I had quite a bad cycling accident (see gory photo) which put a real hold on things. Shattered teeth, broken arm, bruised brain etc. So I figure I might start this blog thing with a drip feeding of the work and projects I have managed to get involved in, in the recent past.
DEAN FOREVER is an original music project where I’ve been songwriting and doing the multi-instrumentalist thing. Just prior to my accident we did a lot of recording and turned out the tune below, ‘Greatest Once‘.
From my perspective, I was trying to evoke a little of the indulgent and maximalist parts of mid to late-1990s pop/rock/art-pop. There’s clear references to the Shoegaze sound in there, but also the way a band like Curve would blend electronic and proto-Trip Hop aspects into that world. Production-wise it was a very ‘yes, and… ‘ approach, always looking to add more. A reference here is Oasis and their oft criticised third album Be Here Now, which is rightly identified as the product of a band with unlimited resources but little discipline. Another reference, although I can’t hear it now, was Spaceman by Babylon Zoo, a wonderfully absurd and somewhat awkward epic that nonetheless probably anticipated some of the guitar and production sounds of the early 2000s and has a chorus that runs through my head on many occasions.
There are a few albums of that period which capture a similar mood… ‘Machina’ by The Smashing Pumpkins comes to mind, or even some moments from The Sebadoh… the sort of awkward collision of the always-in-the-red loudness war and the idea that one escape route from the hedonism and counterculture-made-mainstream of the mid-’90s was to double down. Push the mix so hard the music became a cloud. Find an even bigger chorus. Replace Loud-Quiet-Loud with Loud-Loud-Loud. The end result at times was a return to the impressionism of the Shoegaze sound these bands made nods to but ultimately attempted to leave behind.
Well, as someone too young to have really understood that music at the time, I actually really enjoy this sound despite the protests of my Elder Millennial and Gen X friends. We know in retrospect that these bands lost momentum, evolved into other projects or made way for copycat acts who dialled up the sentimentality in anticipation for the coming personal-as-profound and/or nostalgia-drenched music that dominated the early part of the next century. Nonetheless, I think there was something interesting that they were trying to do, so that became a bit of a reference point in my mind for this session.
How’s that for a way of excusing an overcrowded arrangement on my part?
We recorded a lot more in this session, so hopefully more music will be coming soon on the DF front.
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