featured image provided by Miles Cottrill
Track Dissection aims to capture the essence of an artist’s song: the effort behind it, the context surrounding it, and the emotions etched within it. In each piece, the artist pulls back the curtain of their work, revealing its intimacies.
Journal Entry
It was Feb. 13 and I had just woken up in the reclining chair of my friend’s house in Eagle Rock. We nicknamed the house “Junkyard” — it’s essentially that. The house was previously a massage parlor that was cracked down on for human trafficking, and is now occupied by a bunch of untidy college boys.
The previous night, I had played a show at The Oblivion with an electronic rap group I’m a part of named 4dollar; it was our first show. Afterwards, we went out to the classic Red Lion/Cha Cha lounge bar crawl in Silverlake, and somewhere along the way I found myself asleep at Junkyard.
With a head full of fog and flashing memories of last night, I arose before anyone in the house was up. I stumbled out onto the porch and picked up a guitar leaning against a chair. My voice was shot, but I decided I wanted to learn some Fat, Evil Children songs on guitar, so with my phone pressed up against my ear, I fingered my way to the chords of “Big Ol’ Bird.”
I wanted to write a song like that — a real singer-songwriter-y kinda song about being young and such. That’s also probably why “bless yr heart” became a waltz. I recorded this voice memo of the original idea, which later that day served as the starting point for writing.
Writing and recording this song was unlike the process of any other Lone Fir Cemetery song to date. It was complete within a few hours of opening my DAW in my cramped, dirty clothe laden dorm room. It’s the first release that I’ve done everything: recording, mixing, mastering — if you can even call slapping on a cracked EZmix 3 plugin with the “Rock Master Modern” preset mastering haha.
I basically had the guitar loop and then freestyled over it. It was after that first 4dollar show, when I realized how much I had been dragging out Lone Fir Cemetery as a band; I felt like it was slowly disintegrating. While writing this song, it made clear all my love for the project had drained away. It just came out during the freestyle and I was like, “Oh, this is how I really feel.” It scared the living shit out of me, because I didn’t know who I was without this band I had been running since freshman year of high school.
After recording the verse, I started chopping it up, reinterpreting it, creating new melodies and pockets, which became the chorus. I’ve been primarily listening to underground rap and making a lot of electronic music with 4dollar, so sonically I think the song reflects that a lot with influence from aspects of cloud rap and the current wave of rage rap.
I used this free plugin that my friend Nate showed me called “Backmask” by Freakshow Industries. It essentially reverses all the transients of an audio file, so it keeps the main melody/rhythm of the thing, but reverses every hit. I turn it on a few times to tease it near the beginning then heavily use it during the outro. It just seemed to emulate my feelings so well into sonic form so I had to shout it out.
Lyrics
I’d like some input
I’m too young to have it figured out
I’m too young to be burnt out
I’m so tired of my own sound
Since moving to LA, I’ve gone through a wild journey of self discovery through Lone Fir Cemetery. I mean this in the way that I thought I was mature and sure of myself, but the reality was I lack so much experience and have no idea what I’m doing. So I’ve just been throwing shit at the wall and having an identity crisis every few months. I burnt myself out by fixating on aspects of being an artist that were unfulfilling.
Oh bless your heart, but
You can’t do it for me now
Nobody can do it for me now
My heart is over and out
My house has burnt all down
Around a month ago, I sent out a few packages of our merch that were going to the UK. I wanted to be really excited and appreciative about it, but in reality it felt like a chore—and I hated myself for feeling this way.
Oh I’ve seen it
Oh I’ve seen it
Oh and now I’ve seen it
Oh well
Oh
Oh Lord, I’ve seen it.
Check out “bless yr heart” and its inspirations here!
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