THROW-IT-BACK THURSDAY #15

The 15th installment of ‘THROW-IT-BACK THURSDAY’
the ‘Catch-and-Release Sessions’
This week:

‘lower’
[from the album ‘sick’, 1997]

The first track from my first album. I was in a dark place indeed, but this album was my therapy. I was fortunate at the time to garner a bit of a fanbase and attract the attention of a few record labels, but unfortunately, everyone wanted me to keep making the same album. This was a very necessary record for me personally, but once completed, it was essential that I move forward.

This particular track is a short introduction to the dark to follow. Having, at the time, listened to virtually no popular music for almost 2 years, the first ‘pop’ I heard was the latest Nine Inch Nails record. I had intended my first solo album to be more akin to Peter Gabriel’s ‘Passion’, but instead I became intimate with my anger over my father’s death and made my version of ‘the downward spiral’.

Oh well. So much for ‘Sensitive World-Music Guy’…

I had performed and recorded in a folk duo for several years before all this, so there were many people who only knew me as ’Sensitive Folk-Music Guy’ (with a pony tail). They seemed to be ok with my new shaved head, but I think a few of them have still to recover from the shock of buying ‘sick’. (To be fair, I did warn them.)

While it is difficult for me to listen to this album (for many reasons), I still love this opening track. It states in a few minimal lines my recurring feelings about human nature and how, instead of elevating ourselves and each other, we keep going downward and inward until our inability to articulate our emotions is manifested in resentment, rage and violence. It is, however, essentially a plea for us to be better.

On a technical note, the cold, mechanical sounds were sampled from an old sound effects record I had had for years (I have always been in love with the sound of machines) loaded into my Akai S1 mono sampler. The rest is my trusty old Korg Wavestation EX keyboard and a DR RHYTHM 660 drum machine. I wrote and recorded the entire album with these 3 pieces of gear (Thank Bog for Long & McQuade!) and an Atari 1040STe, maxed out with 4mb of RAM.

credits:

Performed, recorded, produced & mixed by brilliantfish
Mastered by Peter J Moore

lyrics:

fall from grace with the rage of angels
it won’t take long before you’re lower

look around you when you cross borders
it won’t take long before you’re lower

this flesh, these hands
is all we’re given
and it won’t take long before
we’re lower

[© 1997 brilliant fish music]