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User
Soundoffs 1
Album Ratings 23
Objectivity 35%
Last Active 06-04-18 5:06 pm
Joined 05-29-18
Review Comments 61
| 'Fun' Info about The First Requisite Is Life
Hey, I thought I might do this for some of the people who enjoyed my band (Rosehall)'s album, The First Requisite Is Life. I'm just pointing out some facts about the recording/producing process that might be interesting to some. If it's boring to you, oh well. If it isn't, hooray! Might update if I remember more stuff. | | 1 | Rosehall
Dialogue
• The main piano line repeated throughout the song is actually a shameless sample from one of my favourite 'RYM-core' albums, Dialoghi Del Presente. It's a beautiful Italian post-minimalist album by a man who took his own life not long after the album was produced, and I thought it fitting for the melancholy mood of the track.
• This track features multiple samples - dogs barking (inspired by Pet Sounds), pebbles falling in water, trains, paint brushes being scraped - all from freesound.org. Good site. I promise I'm not sponsored, it's just genuinely a good site.
• The title of this track came from the fact that I wrote it and put it at the start of the album in an attempt to begin to engage in a dialogue with the listener. Like 'hey, I'm gonna tell you this stuff, let me start talking.' | | 2 | Selfish Heart
• This song, if it isn't clear, is about reclaiming your sense of self after abuse.
• The cymbal-like crash before each chorus is actually me hitting a toilet roll holder against the bottom of my mic stand and then holding it up to the mic as it resonates.
• The wordless 'oo's' at the chorus were added last minute because the song felt empty and I tracked them all in about half an hour in my boyfriend's shed. So now you know. | | 3 | Fragile
• To me this is probably the least hopeful track - I tried to maintain a grain of hope in each song but I feel like in this one, especially at the end, that had all but died out. A mood is a mood, I suppose.
• The buzzing synths at the end of the song are actually a 15 dollar keyboard I got from Gumtree (basically Australian Craigslist) run through my practise amp and distorted, then miked. | | 4 | Holy, Holy, Holy
• All of the 'choir' vocals were tracked on my boyfriend's couch while he was asleep, while his dog watched on in some confusion.
• I was so unsure about the spoken word section after the first 'holy' breakdown that I nearly removed it. I'm glad I kept it now to be honest.
• The opening speaker is a friend of mine from a Facebook group, Patrician Music Chartposting, who hails from Ireland. I asked him if he wanted to record a spoken word piece for my album and he just happened to record something absolutely perfect thematically and sonically.
• The nature sounds at the opening of the track were recorded at a place called The Zig Zags in the Kalamunda Hills at 2am. I really bloody like that sample. | | 5 | Sunday's Cool
• Drums on this song, Vines and Spiders were recorded by an old school friend of mine Ezra, drummer for GAZEY (look em up, inventive psych pop/rock worth your time), which I was very grateful for.
• The song starts in F#, drops to D in the second section and then after the 'finally, I can see, etc,' section it climbs back up to F# again by a semitone every couple of bars.
• In the ambient section of the song, you can faintly hear my friends (now-band member Jacob Gimpel and editor of the album's cover art Daniel Yeung) playing Lego Star Wars.
• Ethan wrote his own parts for this song (on tenor sax) with some guidance from me and you are uh... well let's just say you're gonna be hearing a lot more from him on the next release. | | 6 | Vines
• The odd pitched-down drum groove and scattered drum beats at the breakdowns of this song are actually chopped up pieces of Sunday's Cool's drum tracks.
• The lyrics to this song were inspired by my frequent dreams about the apocalypse.
• The changeup at the end was inspired mostly by D'Angelo (though a poor imitation it may very well be.)
• The drone/ambient/noise sections of this song wouldn't be what they are without Ethan's beautiful sustained tenor notes. I love Ethan so much. | | 7 | Frost
• This song details the death of a childhood friend of mine. He is symbolically represented as a crane in the narrative, and addressed directly in the spoken word section.
• The spoken word section was recorded with a contact mic to my bare chest so that my heartbeat could be heard.
• The stabs of noise every few seconds on the second part were made by me slotting a xylophone stick between the strings of my classical guitar, turning the gain on my mic far too high up, and pulling back the stick so the strings went BRBRBRBrbbrrb.
• There's a brief vocal/lyrical reference to Childish Gambino's Redbone in the narrative section. This was my friend's favourite song before he died. | | 8 | Spiders
• This song contains a sample of Zabelle Panosian's I Am Servant Of Your Voice, recorded in 1917, as well as the earliest recorded singing ever, and some snippets of early electronic music (made from cobbled-together train sounds) from the 1950s.
• Another sample, admittedly shamefully stolen, is from Clara by Scott Walker, from his 2006 album The Drift. Clara is one of my favourite songs ever. | | 9 | Love, I Swear It
• The drums for this song were recorded on... Garageband. Yup.
• This song was heavily inspired by free jazz, though I originally wrote it as an acoustic folk song, and even features a sample of Ornette Coleman's 1972 track The Jungle Is A Skyscraper from his amazing album Science Fiction.
• The saxophone on this track was not played by dear Ethan - instead, a lovely friend from Patrician Music Chartposting, once more, Sam Alexander Watson. Look him up on bandcamp, he's a highly creative player with a beautiful sound.
• The sample of the ocean before the very end was taken on my phone on a day out with my boyfriend. I wanted it to represent the peace I felt that day.
• The very last thing on the album, Ethan laughing and saying 'let's start that again.' is an outtake from him stuffing up a sax line, but also subliminal messaging on our part for you to play the album over again ;) | | 10 | Extra stuff
• The collagey approach with spoken word segments was initally inspired by Swans' Soundtracks For the Blind.
• The cover image was taken about six months before the album's release, by my boyfriend, minutes before sunset. We were driving around the suburbs near his house and happened across this church and he snapped a photo. Turns out the sunset made the image even better.
• The album's arc was, generally, designed to start off somewhat hopeful, progressively become more and more hopeless, and then become a little more hopeful at the end, representing the cyclical nature of moods and circumstances in depression. | |
DoofusWainwright
06.04.18 | Thanks for putting this up, the album has a collage feel at times and it's interesting to see where certain elements and inspirations came from. | luci
06.04.18 | Nice read! I'm curious about the cover art: I know your boyfriend took the picture (which is a lovely detail), is there any significance to that church in particular? Did you tell him to take a picture for your album or was this from a previous collection? | Conmaniac
06.04.18 | really insightful and love how DIY some of these songs are, thanks for sharing | Astral Abortis
06.04.18 | No need to be ashamed about using Garageband. I recorded my most popular album with Garageband and an iPhone and it got released by two record labels :')
Checking this album now to see what the hype is about | Papa Universe
06.04.18 | well, now I have to listen to it | TimothyCharles
06.04.18 | Thank you so much guys! And @Lucid, to answer your question, the cover photo was taken on my boyfriend's iPhone 5 minutes before sunset. I was about halfway done with the album and I told him I wanted a picture of a church for the cover, and so we drove around trying to find one until we happened upon that one. He snapped that picture (I also took one of him running like Naruto for some reason) and it was edited and the title applied by my dear artistic friend Daniel Yeung. | Mythodea
06.04.18 | Great album Timothy. It didn't help me in any particular rough times - as I'm sure was the case with others - but it gave me something to lisen to when everything else felt uninspired and empty. Thank you for puting your heart into this, it's one of the best things I've heard all year from a genre I'm not familiar with. Great, great, great album! | AsleepInTheBack
06.04.18 | really cool insight into the record. enjoyed my first spin. | 0xME
06.04.18 | very interesting read; while this is not the kind of music that I return to it is p.good and was a lot of fun to listen to | 0xME
06.04.18 | really fuckin enjoyed the format of breaking down one's own record, I wish more peeps would do that | TimothyCharles
06.05.18 | updated with some more stuff :) also thanks for the comments guys |
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