I had another one last night. And the same feeling as the others- like I had slipped into another world, another person even. The dreams aren’t all the same, exactly, like last week there was one where I was inside, in a barn I think, or a room in a barn, and the wind was howling outside like it was a dust storm or something you read about, and there were halters and saddles and all this stuff for horses. Like I would know what to do with those! But last night I was outside, looking up into this dim, orange-ish hazy sky. And it was the same world as the dream last week where I was in the barn, I know that. Maybe I was even close to that barn. It’s almost like the dreams are filling in pieces of some map, there’s a dusty field and a fence, and beyond that some hills I think, and behind that there’s this barn, and another time I was in a car, except it wasn’t like a real car, this one didn’t even fly, it just went along the ground, like one of those really old ones you read about.
The other thing that’s the same is I always wake up in my tiny little dark room, knowing my dumb roommates are outside, probably talking about their dumb yoga class and drinking their kombucha or whatever it is. And I lie here in the almost dark, the only light just the florescent glow bleeding under the door, and even though these dreams, this world I keep seeing, even though it’s strange and kind of terrifying somehow, I just want to go back there and get away from here.
Last night at the bar it was the same, filling drink orders for people who mostly sit there and stare at their phones, and then fending off the few who aren’t, the guys who figure since you’re a girl working some shithole bar only halfway up in the city on Level 57 you must just be here waiting for them to put their dick into you. I mean, don’t any of them realize they all sound the same? This one guy last night kept telling me he matched my eyes, and it would be so much easier if I just went along with him, “1, 2, 3” he kept saying. Like, seriously dude? Who says that? I had to tell him he doesn’t have what I want, like, hello, I’m into girls, not you, but I couldn’t just tell him actually I’m not into anyone or anything, and I certainly couldn’t tell him to just fuck off, because Bilal gets mad when I do that and he’ll probably fire me if I do that again. And I need that job I guess, because people are coming in almost every day asking us if we’re hiring or anything, which, if you think about it, we’re a shitty little bar only halfway up an Uptown Skyscraper, we don’t even have a cloud view, just booze and a shitty holo player Bilal turns on for matches, so if we’re in high demand it must be bad out there. And it’s not like I can do much else that anyone will pay me for. Not anything else I want to do, anyway.
I should have told that guy the only thing I’m into now is going home and going to sleep, that would have been the truth. Not because I was tired but because I wanted to go back to that world, with the dust and the weird orange light and those hills. Last night there were these machines, robots I guess but big, and they looked like robots, not like people like the ones do nowadays. Anyway, they were sort of floating on these long spindly legs, like two stories tall, and turning and looking around as they floated away sort of towards those hills. They seemed to be looking for the condenser towers, because I could see a few of those in the distance, but then in the dream I wasn’t like, oh no, they’re gonna steal the water and we’re gonna die, like you would think, I was more like, wow, maybe I can float away too with them, and find somewhere else.
And so I lie here in the dark, where it’s not that different if I close or open my eyes, but I close them anyway and try and think about that dream, that world, it’s like I’m willing myself to go back there and hitch a ride on one of those big spindly robots and head for those hills. It never works, though.
Strange, beautiful
And now I’m floating away
Strange, beautiful
Could you take me away?
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So this is the first one where the writing influenced the song. Which is sort of what I hoped was going to happen. I built this song, sort of, out of a bass line from a song of mine for my band, Molly Tigre. I took it out of context, starting playing weird synths over it, and away I went. But then I got stuck and left it for a few days, lyrically I just had no ideas aside from the opening, 'strange beatiful' So I sat down and wrote, and that story came out, and I realized the song is about that point when you wake up from a dream and you want to go back to it, so you close your eyes but of course, you can't. The story is vaguely sci-fi, which, I don't know where that came from, but it fits i guess. So i finished the lyrics pretty quickly then, added more dreamy weird synths, and here it is. Not done exactly, but close enough.
Strange, beautiful
now I'm floating away
Strange, beautiful
I want to drift for a while
Strange, beautiful
Now I'm floating away
Strange, beautiful
now I'm drifting away
I lay with eyes open a while,
dreaming your color, your smile
I wish I counted 1, 2, 3
I close my eyes and you'd flood back to me
And endless sea of orange, purple and gray
somehow beautiful despite the haze
spindly legs that hover off the ground
sucking air I lie and hear the sound
Strange, beautiful
I feel you pulling away
strange, beautiful
now I'm drifting away
Intruding reality
I fight but it overwhelms me
sound and color all rush back
like a window pane, dirty and cracked
the characters they circle like flies
"hey girl look, my color matches our eyes"
seems like a plastic cabaret
I grab at you but you just spin away
@kvnwoodruff Feb 2022
This is...I'm not sure how else to describe it except to say it's dope as all hell! That beat is SOOO PHAT. Is it because it's going into a 4 track? It's sweet as hell man.
@wolfkier Feb 2022
very cool, it just shifts and bends and transports.
Trippy and hypnotic. I really love it...
@andyt13 Feb 2022
I hear so many things to your stuff. Like this vibes super STP to me.
@guatecoop Feb 2022
This is what I expect when I click on a song by you--I will have absolutely no idea how that idea happened, what was the inspiration, and that I will be amazed by something that I've never thought of or heard of before. Yup. Pretty much there right now. The liner notes and the piece about the dreams and bar set me off on a path and in a mind space that I just didn't expect. This is the kind of thing when I reconfirm that I have no idea how people do some things and that I just am lucky to have access to them. The music and words just match up so well. Excellent song and writing.
@bachelorb Feb 2022
Reading your liner notes gave a really different perspective on the meaning of the song. Without them, Iwould have thought of this as a sunrise/sunset song.
I loved the synth sounds (as I do with all your songs). The fade out really worked here.
@thedutchwidows Feb 2022
The vocal has a warpy, bendy feel that evokes the best dreams and works really well over the slightly other-worldly music. I'm loving the story/song combo - there's so much depth here, it's truly impressive.
Since the whole pando started, I've had the maddest and best dreams of my life, and I hear lots of others say the same. Sometimes I have got back to them on the same night and sometimes on subsequent nights. I love them; they're the most interesting things I've done in the last 2 years.
@seppo Feb 2022
Oh, brilliant. I really like those weird ass harmonics.
@spazsquatch Feb 2022
If I said this was strangely beautiful would that be low-effort? Really works.
@nahlej381 Feb 2022
when that sub kicks in..just delicious. all the chop stops add really nice tension...the change ups are so cool. love that 8bit type synth. this is wild, man. super enjoyed this. the instrumental and lyrical content are superb. killer dude!