New song of the week: When You Leave

[solarbird]

When You Leave, this week’s addition to Dick Tracy Must Die, is the second track originally recorded on Sketchy Characters to be released completed in finished form. I say “finished,” but really, honestly, it’s re-recorded almost from scratch. I kept only the tempo and the original bamboo slap recordings – they’re mixed differently now, and fucked with a bit, but the originals, so there’s still a connection between the two.

This song’s about the difficulty of getting out of a bad situation; about the ability of that bad situation to reach further than you think; and it’s about the help and sympathy you don’t get when you make your break for it. It’s about the retribution you might inspire, the resentment of those who choose to stay behind, the nightmares that may follow you – and a warning not to get too comfortable too soon, because you might not be as far out of range as you hope you are. Think of it as an ode to PTSD and hypervigilance.

Musically, it’s not quite as spare or as brutal as Hide from Me; the bodhran like a heartbeat has some warmth to it in its panic, and the bamboo slaps aren’t as bloody. All that’s mostly because for all its warning and threat and stalkery badness, it’s fundamentally cautionary. It’s not “don’t run, or we’ll do this,” it’s “when you do run, be prepared. Be ready.”

Are you ready?

Mirrored from Crime and the Blog of Evil.

Comments

[marzipan-pig.livejournal.com]

Not up for music right now, but, I like the description a lot.

Good to hear you playing the other night!

[solarbird]

No worries, it's not going anywhere. (Well, er, I hope it does go somewhere, but it's not going offline. You know what I mean. ^_^ )

Thanks, on all fronts. I'm glad you liked my playing on Friday - I wish my voice had been in better form. (I can't sing well sitting.) It was nice ranting to XD talking with you, also.

[mojave-wolf.livejournal.com]

One of the more awesome descriptions ever. Look forward to.

[solarbird]

Why, thank you!

[batyatoon]

I still love this song a whole big lot. *hugs it* And this recording is an excellent one.

*wanders off humming*

[solarbird]

Thank you! I was hoping you'd like having a really proper recording of it out there. Did you ever find someone to play it with?

[westrider.livejournal.com]

Doesn't quite top "Hide from Me" for me, but it's another excellent track.

I need to go back and dig through all of what you've put up on BandCamp, figure out how much of my increased liking for your music is my adjustment to it (as I've said, it's totally different to anything else I listen to), and how much is your improvement. I know it's some of both, but I'm curious as to where the balance is.

[solarbird]

Thanks! Any rating of "excellent" is super awesome as far as I'm concerned. ^_^

The difference between January and now, for me, is a huge deal. They're totally different worlds as far as I'm concerned, but I'm hugely sensitive to all the problems.

January was where I got to the point where I figured out some recording problems (in particular, moving the studio) and finally got vocals good enough that I wasn't embarrassed about them - I was willing to let other people hear the results. Sketchy Characters was a huge step forward from previous work, in no small part because I figured out finally that I was recording in the wrong room entirely. But I really figured some things out in my vocals after that, and again later at the start of this current run, which is part of why I'm so much in CHARGE mode. And about as importantly, since January, I learned some really important things about mixing (ryuuaja gave me an important clue in April that made a lot of other things click suddenly in my head), and, then later in the summer, I learned a lot on those two fan projects about placement and precision timing.

I think you can hear a lot of those differences even within Dick Tracy, which is why I'm seriously considering remixing (and possibly re-recording) a couple of the early tracks - Thought You Knew, in particular, but maybe also Let Me Help. "Shout at the Desert" is the watershed point, really; I hadn't quite got everything entirely down yet, but enough of it fell together that that release marks the real shift into what I think of as the modern level. (And I consider poking at that one, even, but the changes there would be small and not involve any re-recording. Mostly it'd just be stuff I hear. But I worry that I'd lose some of the chaos that I really, really like in that track. So it's difficult to say.)

So I'm really curious myself. To me, the Sketchy Characters and Dick Tracy recordings are as far from each other as Sketchy Characters was from the test recordings that came before. But I'm too close to it. If you do go though and do that, I'd be really curious about what you think.

[westrider.livejournal.com]

If I do get around to it (subject to depression, energy levels, etc. I'm sure you know how that goes), I'll totally let you know how that curve of improvement sounds to me.