Today's entry is on "Almond Dust," the album I'm going to release most likely on June 30th this year!
As I'm going through some music-related things, I realized that the same music file I used to record "The Tiger And The Lighthouse" before I left Miami also has "Graduation" from Burnout on it.
The recording, at this point in my musical-sound technical career, is like, "wtf?" I can hear the 'speech enhancers' on Ringo doing their thing. It sounds *awful.* But I made it just last year, and it'll go on Burnout, and I'll make it sound as good as I can by compressing it and what not. At least that version of the recording is nice and bright. Although I now realize listening to it that, for copyright purposes, I took the alma mater out. I think it sounds better with it.
But this still makes me cry at the end. I realize what I weaved into the song, and it makes me both happy and sad at the same time. At the very end of Graduation, there are five chords that spelled out what I wanted for my future. None of that has happened. Though when I saw the end of the song, in my head, I saw the way the story was supposed to go. I do this a lot for my songs, and oftentimes, the first picture I get I'll consider a gift from God, a little tagline that I shouldn't take too seriously but I should use to inspire myself.
My tagline for "Graduation" involved me getting my degree and walking down off the platform, then seeing somebody I loved on the other side. He held out his hand, and I just cried, with a smile on my face. As I sniffled, the song ended, and I realized after I wrote it that the song had a bittersweet quality to it. Why I was crying, I might never know. But perhaps I was crying because I knew -- even then -- that somehow, I had what I wanted at that moment, and I knew it would all be to waste.
Good morning, my miko.
Jonathan's Lullaby ended up being written the same way, with a "tagline." But more on that in a minute.
I'd like to say a few words about the songs I've written for Almond Dust so far. Let's start with "The Tiger and the Lighthouse," which I actually wrote while I was still at Miami. In a way, "Tiger" plays the same role that "come alive" did at the beginning of Russian Mountain Nation -- it bridged a gap. "come alive" was written at the end of my high school career, the summer before I went to Miami; yet, it was included on RMN. Likewise, "taskana" was put in as an introduction interlude -- it was my way of saying "okay, we're done with that period of my life, moving on now." So "come alive" and "taskana" are *VERY* much like "Tiger" and "1:15:23" on Almond Dust. "Tiger" is my way of saying, "okay, let's start this sucker off." And "Tiger" fits my theme of this album, which is "What's your story, morning glory?" Each song on "Almond" is written for or about somebody else, other than the interludes (which I think there will just be 1:15:32). "Tiger" is written for Dylan, because he "is" a tiger, per se. I know it's not a perfect recording of "Tiger" that will be included on the volume, but it'll still be there. It's gonna be like my 'track 0,' a bonus track of sorts. I think it gives the image of me arriving at someplace, not sure of how or why I'm exactly there (which explains right now very well).
1:15:32 was an interlude track I wanted to write. After I moved, I put up my clock from Miami, and it stuck on 1:15:32 for a long time until I swapped the battery out. I felt like it represented what I was feeling, graduating from school and just going back to my hometown. I felt like I had failed myself in some way, and I wanted to express that chaoticness...while still being open to what the world might have for me. 1:15:32 includes motifs from Triangle (from Yes Yes Lord Amen! and Yellow) and The Tiger And The Lighthouse, which are very similar to each other in chordal structure. To me, 1:15:32 also represents stepping away from who I was at Miami and saying, "okay, we're done with that. Let's move on."
That brings me to "Broken," which is a song I wrote for my friend Jesse (you fuzzball!). If you know Jess, you know that, while he lives far away, he's very perceptive about things, and I wrote the song from his perspective, but I also put a lot of my own thoughts into it. It was written shortly before Midnight Rave -- the Garageband version puts it at about the 3rd of July.
I have all of these tracks and their order finalized -- The Tiger and the Lighthouse; 1:15:32; Broken; Midnight Rave. Broken will be followed on Almond Dust then by Midnight Rave, which I consider a beautiful mess. The story behind Midnight Rave is something that only I can fully understand, and it's about somebody who is very important to me (though I won't say who; TTR readers probably know). It's a beast of a song at five and a half minutes; I worked on it at the same time as Jonathan's Lullaby and while I was doing that I was like what the heck, this is a huge song. I just recently mastered it, though I've had the information for a while now. But I think I sang this track very well, and it will be effective. It'll be my one introspective, experimental track.
After Midnight Rave will probably be other tracks I haven't set down yet -- Mirror, which is the song with the lyrics I posted earlier, and a piano-only track called Things Will Change (written for somebody -- or a lot of somebodies). Fitting in there is Song of the Miko, which I have written on before.
The last track on Almond Dust will be "Jonathan's Lullaby," which is just that -- a lullaby that taps out at less than three minutes. It took me a while to write it -- it came in pieces. One of my coworkers is expecting, and the baby will be named Jonathan. I wanted to write something that she could sing to him at night. Surprisingly, though, God gave me a "tagline" for the lullaby. (On that note, Octane 93 -- Haru is gonna end with Prodigal's Lullaby. What's up with lullabies being the last word?) The tagline happens right after the guitar and the strings, the other two of the three instruments, fade out and it's just the piano. In this tagline, I see myself singing the song, weaving its colors, on a stage; then, after I'm done singing, I jump down from the stage, where someone else is waiting for me -- the person I started the album off with. He holds out his left hand, and I take it with my right. With that, we run off to the right of the stage, into a blinding light. This tagline is not bittersweet, but it is happy and lifting.
Almond Dust is officially getting its own tag. No, freaking seriously, people, this album is going to be awesome. Six tracks are done, and they all sound great. And, of course, I no longer want to sleep! Night turnover. (sigh)
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