(for more information on the upcoming audio project, click on the QUICKSAND category, to the right )

The demo version of broken can be streamed in entirety from Last.fm

Inside of you I can sleep at last
No pain
Only rain

Mirror speaks of baby angels
Burning under ocean ice
Multiphonic patterns sweat
Sewn-up eyes taste loaded dice

Promise me the beauty of the insane
So real
Surreal
Inside of you I can sleep at last
No pain
Only rain

Flowers singing visions smear
Ceiling melted by black rain scream
Falling sideways smelling salt
Lines erasing realitydream

Blades of lace in zippered mouth
Mother father twisted strings
Bleeding doll head burial mound
Broken promise tarnished rings

Promise me the beauty of the insane
So real
Surreal
Inside of you I can sleep at last
No pain
Only rain

[Demo}+:

• exotic feel of quieter sections; the middle-eastern/Phrygian tonality is exactly what I was looking for, sort of a soundtrack to a horror movie kind of thing.
• the timbre of Stef’s voice, as well as the melody she came up with, is perfect.  The dreamlike quality is excellent.
• the dynamic wave across the song is exactly what it should be — rise and fall between sections
• ducked delay on the lead vocal
• structure (not execution, sadly) of the instrumental bridge section
• to this day, I still love the simple, heavy F-F# solo backing chord structure.  Phrygian mode all the way.  I really like the melodic pull of the solo, though the tone I used at the time (and my lack of technical ability, to execute what I envisioned) makes me cringe.

{Demo}-:

• Rhythm/drums.  They’re there, by the way, in the form of some drum machine programmed with no real grasp of what I was searching for in the way of heavy drumming; they’re just buried in the secondary mix, as this was originally built around the percussion heard in the first sections.  The primary difficulty in fixing this song is going to lie with a drummer, because along with coming up with appropriately heavy rhythms, I want the dynamics to stay ranged.
• Daniel’s voice and the (lack of) melody really bother me, in hindsight.  Again, at the time, I think I was oversimplifying “heavy” in my head. And I’ve never been good at crafting or intuiting melody lines.
• The guitar tones.  Enough said.
• Bass.  Or lack thereof.  Equalization.

{Backstory}:

Yet another divorce song.  I’m fairly sure, though lacking notes to back it up, that the lyrics were a result of me listening to the first Thought Industry disc a whole lot in this period.  That disc has a real intense industrial sound that manages to stray into some really surreal, experimental areas, and the lyrics are total surreal nonsense.  The first two tracks, too, feature some odd percussion and drum tones that drives a lot of the beginnings — again, a pretty good sign that this resulted from that. The lyrics are all meaningful to me.  Some of them are obvious (broken promise tarnished rings), some intentionally less so. The only thing I can definitely say about the background is that I was having a hard time adjusting to and releasing a lot of the feelings; I wasn’t processing anything really well, and all of these phrases (or variants thereof) were scribbled on notebooks and bar napkins over the course of a year.  At some point I decided that I was going to just throw them all together with as little tweaking as possible, and this is the end result.

{Demo notes}:

Vocals by Daniel Farris and Stef Martin; bass guitar by Shawn Bumpers;  everything else by me.  All music and lyrics by me, with the exception of the female melody line and the bass line.

{Fixes/Influences}:

Note: these link to YouTube videos, most of which are probably unauthorized.  If one of them is down, try searching for the song.  And as always, if you dig the songs, I highly recommend dropping a few bucks on the full discs — these artists are well-worth your financial support. Feel free to leave comments or suggestions in the comments.

• Along with the help of a drummer — not necessarily a primarily metal drummer, but that’s the way I’m leaning right now — the arrangement of the song with probably get tweaked a hair, perhaps lengthening the instrumental section.  I really like the idea of merging the quiter percussion with a really chaotic but on-beat drum concept.
• Wrong Side (Strapping Young Lad): Devin’s got the perfect vocal style for this. No matter how much he screams, there’s always melody evident underneath — a multitracked chorus with slight differences between each timbre might be the perfect approach.  Also, the rapid-fire arpeggios he places behind the bridge (“Say the word and I’ll be gone”) are excellently chaotic.
• Pixellate (Devin Townsend Band): Ditto the above, this time accented with a female voice.  He’s got an emotional intensity in his voice, too, that feels so much more honest and unfaked than 95% of every other metal frontman out there.
• Hello (Evanescence): Yet more dreamy, ethereal, wistful vocals. Amy Lee’s got a phenomenal voice, regardless of genre (see also: Good Enough).
• Tierra del Fuego (George Lynch): I’m thinking that Carlos Pino will be the perfect person to ask to play the lead spots on this, hoping that he can incorporate a) the exotic tonality that I want (and being as musically educated as he is, I suspect that won’t be a problem) and b) the liquid, fluid, slippery quality that so defines Lynch’s lead work (see the solo beginning at 3:00 — between his scalar choices and his legato technique, it’s perfect). (There’s also the thought of getting Carlos to double a few lines under the female vocals with his sitar…)
• Third Eye (Thought Industry): When in doubt, return to the source…