Antlerland is pleased to announce the release of the new album Intercapital Daylight. You can download it straight away at antlerland.bandcamp.com in whatever format you prefer. (Unless that's cassette.)
- Judge Not
- Wronghead
- Rudi
- The Sharpest Knife
- Dunga
- We Don't Know Where We're Going But We Know How We'll Get There
- Solar Sails
- Going Out For The Milk
- The Device
- Fadeaway (at last)
I'm really happy to commit these tracks to a more-or-less definitive form, though no piece of music is ever really finished in my opinion. After the good responses to the Friends Don't Let Friends Electric mini-album and some recent live gigs, I was re-energised to go over the considerable backlog of material and rework it for proper release.
Some tracks, such as Wronghead and Dunga, were previously released as so-called Christmas singles (heh) and in fact I considered them done. However having to ready some of these tunes for live performance made me rethink how a lot of them were structured, and so everything was considered up for grabs again. A huge boon to this was the Renoise music software, which has built on the legacy of the vintage mod trackers and brought the concept firmly into the new century, and as such allowed me to bring in a new dimension to whatever the hell it is I think I'm doing.
Song Descriptions
Judge Not is a relatively old song and remained pretty much unmolested from its demo form, at least structure wise. I felt that it was a straight-forward track to start off things, even though it does have its quirks, such as the middle section which sits around one note, played repeatedly, while everything goes nuts around it.
Wronghead is an absurdly old track which has resolutely refused to settle into any kind of stasis. As mentioned, a previous mix was released some time ago (and which will be released again some time in the future) but of course, with all cards in the air, the mix was stripped back and rebuilt. As it became apparent that the nature of the songs and therefore the album was taking on a dubwise feel, it was obvious that Wronghead, with its siren (actually a found saxophone sample looped for a middle eastern) and central hook, would be the one to set the tone early on. But it needed something more. Curiously, working with it live revealed that what it really needed was a piano counterpoint to all the spacy nonsense. So it got one.
Rudi just don't make any sense, and I'm not going to try explaining it, I'm sorry.
The Sharpest Knife was another of those tracks that was pretty good, but somehow needed to be better. One version begat another, with quite a few radically different takes being spun out - a few which will see the light of day later. Nevertheless, the quixotic central hook remained at the core of it all. If you want to play along, it goes E minor for a couple of bars then Gm, Bb, C, F. At least until the "twist" starts.
Dunga - I'll let the fellow who commented on the Antlerland page at The Sixtyone explain: "its like melodies from mars mixed with a heard of elephants." (sic) Can't put it any better that. There's a reason I made it the lead single.
We Don't Know Where We're Going But We Know How We'll Get There - probably the most overt embrace of the dub element on this album, but we also have kalimbas, beatboxing, polyrhythms, and blokes complaining about trains getting in the way.
Solar Sails - from trains to ships, a poignant little tune reimagining the great sailors of yesteryear into the future where man once again embarks to new worlds on which to subjugate the natives and exploit the resources. Or maybe it's just a poignant little tune inspired by the Solina string synthesiser (even though we're just using an ersatz simulation of one generated on a CS1x).
Going Out For The Milk - of course some people may still think it's a long way to the corner shop to get a bottle of milk. And depending on what they bump into on the way, they could well be right!
The Device is some kind of post-rock-inspired nonsense I came up with a few years back and I haven't been able to replicate it since. As you can hear we're well into the cooldown stage of the album.
Fadeaway (at last) - ending with a gentle melody and soothing rhythm, only the occasional interruption of car alarms and someone falling over the cord. And someone whacking a goddamn cymbal like it's Christmas morning and they want attention. Oh well. That'll do for now.
FUN FACT: This album was going to be called "Leave Technofetism To The Experts" until I realised that it made me sound like too much of a wise-ass and also a little ambiguous. I mean, who is the expert at technofetishism I am referring to? I leave that as an exercise for the reader
- Graham Freeman
June 2009