‘Tom Slatter is a quintessentially British eccentric with a quirky imagination who has produced some of the most innovative progressive music in recent years.’ – Prog Magazine
Lines Overheard at a Séance began life as an improvisation for last year’s 50/90 songwriting challenge. I turned on the keyboard, sat down and began to play. The only decision I made beforehand was that I was going to start on a slightly unusual chord: D/C#
Before long I had the rising bassline and out of kilter chords. The lyrics came to me at the same time, exactly as you hear them on the recording – in fact I’ve only ever played and sung this song once: everything you hear from vocals to piano to bass is all one take and semi-improvised.
Lyrically its what the title suggests – I’m not too sure any more explanation is needed.
We Sprang into Motion, When they told us the news
Half a herd snared by the beast of the air
Propellers a-whirring, we took to the sky
Off to ensnare the Kraken
And as we rose higher, our engines a-blur
A strange copper tang, filled up our lungs
The scent of the kraken, afloat on the breeze
Grew stronger the closer we flew
The beast of the air wails a song
Wails a song to keep us dreaming
An eye through the clouds
Tentacles reaching
An eye through the clouds
Tentacles bewitching
The beast of the air wails a song
Wails a song to keep us dreaming
They say history changed that day
When they tried to switch the lights on
Half a thousand dead
When the tried to switch the lights on
Maybe bad luck, maybe poor design
But they changed the law that day
Now we’ll never switch the lights on
A century of mining
Of oil spills, and gas explosions puncturing the earth
A century of digging
Gave us blackened skies and ruined fields and cities filled with smog
And from this balloon we see
The world encased in iron
And from this balloon we see
The world we used to have
And from this balloon we see
The world encased in iron
And from this balloon we see
The world we used to live upon
before we turned her sour
Bad Dreams, the fifth song from Spinning the Compass is one of my favourite of all the songs I’ve written.
It began life as a short song for the 50/90 songwriting challenge, the absurd summer competition where songwriters challenge themselves to compose 50 songs between July 4th and and October 1st. Here’s the original demo:
As well as the production values, there are some obvious differences – I’ve since composed an entire middle section that foreshadows one of the vocal lines from the end of the title track from the album (‘They’ve been spinning the compass again…’).
I’m really happy with the solo section after the second verse, which borrows heavily from Frank Zappa, via all the Steve Vai and Dream Theater songs I’ve listened to. The structure of the song, with it’s three verses portraying various nightmares, was heavily influenced by ‘One More Red Nightmare’ from King Crimson’s ‘Red’.
Does that leave anything original in the song? I don’t know, but I’m still really proud of this one.
The cables break
Car begins to fall down
An electric flash and I’m heading for the ground
All around me people panic and scream the cables break
Another bad dream
Bones begin to fall down
The ashes begin to rain
Red washed cry a strangers cry of pain
Your safe safe world is nothign like it seems
Bones begin tof all down
Another bad dream
They’ve been spinning the compass again
Changing the rules as we play
These Bad dreams are spinning me round
With this compass a way can’t be found
They’ve spinning the compass again.
Spinning the compass again.
Flashing knife broke through my guard
A bolt of light dazzling my eyes
Trip and stumble red water in the stream
A flashing knife
Another bad dream
My first is in steam, but not in engine
My second is in engine but not in trial
My third is in love but not in trust
My fourth is my second come around again
My fifth is in never and not in freedom
My whole is a number to enter in here
Solve the puzzle, figure out the password and you get to hear a new demo song. Fun Eh?
Home is a song I’ve had hanging around for rather a while. How long? Here’s a really rough ‘first time I’ve ever heard the thing’ run through with a college band. It was recorded in 2002. That’s how old it is.
There’s a violin on this that you can just about hear. Great violin player, but she was standing too far away from the little mini-disc recorder.
Oh, and isn’t it obvious how unprepared the drummer was? I think he was halfway through a residency with a Blues Brothers tribute and was completely dead to the world when attending college…
Anyway, the song itself is about missing the object of one’s affections because you’ve been away from home too long hunting big game from an airship.
Of course.
The lead parts were improvised – I recorded plugged my guitar into my Sonuus G2M midi converter and recorded both original guitar sound and the midi signal through a synth patch. Lots of fun.
I was going for big pop chorus with quirky verses, and personally I think it achieved that. Still, although it gets listened to, Home appears to be the least popular song on Spinning the Compass.
At least I like it.
Leaving the earth was such a thrill
A ship of the sky, lighter that air
At hunting grounds we made our kills
Kings of the great game, on top of the sky
They say we’re took the long way
Say we’ll soon touch down
I don’t see that, I’ve only eyes for home.
Thrill of a lifetime but I’ve been away too long
What I would give, to touch the earth again
They say we took the long way
Say we’ll soon touch down
I don’t see that, I’ve only eyes for home
They say we’re coming home soon
They say the clouds are grey
I don’t see that, I’ve only eyes for home
And all the kills, all the trophies, all the game that we bought down
All the hides, all the skulls, all the savage beast we found
I would give them all, every one if it would bring you close to me
I’d chant your name like spell, reach for you just like a drowning man
They say we took the long way
They say the clouds are grey
They say we’re coming home soon
Say we’ll soon touch down
I don’t see that, I’ve only eyes for home
They say we took the long way
They say the clouds are grey
I don’t see that, I’ve only eyes for home
I can’t deny the Radiohead influence on this one, particularly in the subject matter, but also in the composition – building up to a climax, in this case the pitch-shifted harmony vocals, is quite a Radioheadesque thing to do. The slow build-up of layers and the high pitched vocals are quite Radiohead as well I suppose.
Do I ever write anything original?
I have all the time you need
I have all you want
My arms are always here
To make you feel complete
Even when you’re crying, I still smile.
My face is fixed in a permanent grin
My latex skin never frowns
You bought me, to make you feel complete
And I’ll always be here
Even when you’re crying, I still smile.
And your last touch of real skin hurt too much.
But I have all the time you need
My love never dies
I thought it might be fun to do a blog post about each of the songs on Spinning the Compass
This song is a little naughty. It began life as a song about the antikythera mechanism but as so many things do, eventually ended up about sex.
This mechanism it’s driving us apart,
It shines a prism on the kind of love we share
This mechanism is making passion spoil
It tastes of something the cloying tang of wine and oil
Our love relies on clockwork
The careful use of gears and wheels
More specifically, it’s about a love affair that has been corrupted by toys, cogs and machinery, to the point where genuine human contact seems impossible.
Of course, such despairing and bleak lyrics have to be set to a jaunty tune.
You and me in the gaslight with our machinery
Our artificial steam powered hearts will never set us free
This mecanism isn’t you or me
The song was written for February Album Writing Month, and began as a couple of largely wordless improvisations (Warning, what follows are very rough demo recordings of a work in progress).
This is the first improvisation I recorded. At this point I had one line of lyrics, some chords, a vague idea of the groove/bass line and little else.
You can hear me trying out ideas, and playing little bits of melody on the guitar to make clear to myself what I was singing.
This is how I usually improvise – guitar and voice at the same time and little idea of what the eventual lyrics will be – though I usually do have at least one line to give me an idea of mood.
Here you can hear me improvising to try and figure out a chorus – some of the original chords from this survived, as did the ‘way you get to me’ arpeggio.
One difference you can hear is that I’ve a much clearer idea of how the verses will sound. In between these improvs I wrote a few lines down.
Both of these sound files, as rough and ready as they are, illustrate how the song began to develop. Here’s the demo I posted for FAWM09 – the finished song, albeit not recorded as well as the version on Spinning the Compass.
The full lyrics are:
This mechanism it’s driving us apart,
It shines a prism on the kind of love we share
This mechanism is making passion spoil
It tastes of something the cloying tang of wine and oil
Our love relies on clockwork
The careful use of gears and wheel
This mechanism it isn’t how we feel
You and me in the gaslight with our machinery
Our artificial steam powered hearts will never set us free
This mecanism isn’t you or me
The games we’re playing type writers for our hearts
The rules and rhythms
The limits of a steam powered love
It started somewhere lighter
Somehow we got lost somewhre
This mechanism won’t get us anywhere
You and me in the gaslight with our machinery
Our artificial steam powered hearts will never set us free
This mechanism isn’t you or me
Oil is the wine
Roses in the chains
Burning a pilot light
Isn’t carrying a flame
You and me in the gaslight with our machinery
Our artificial steam powered hearts will never set us free
This mechanism isn’t you or me
It was easily the most fun I’ve had at a gig for ages, especially because of all the silliness in the ustream chatroom.
The sound and vision were pretty good, though listening back I would have liked the guitar quieter. Rather than ripping the audio straight from here, I’m thinking of doing another seperate acoustic recording of some of these songs today. Because I can.
Thanks to all those who listened, and if you didn’t the video above will show you what you missed.
