Desert Scorpion

Influences

Nortec (generally)

Drum and bass (generally)

As One, “Freedom Waltz” (for the piano bass)

Story

I’ve had a longstanding fascination with nortec, the combination of traditional Mexican instrumentation and electronic music that flourished in the noughties.  It does a great job of putting acoustic and electronic instruments side-by-side like it’s natural rather than awkward.  I have a lot of production inspiration from it, so I wanted to make an actual song in the genre, with accordions and trumpets going where electronic instruments usually went.  (Look up “Tijuana Sound Machine” sometime – killer track.)

But I wanted to up the tempo from nortec and bring it more into jungle/drum-and-bass territory.  When I found the north African doumbek, it became the perfect match to the north Mexican sounds; different parts of the doumbek could take the place of a kick/hi-hat/snare while still sounding like a single live player.

To add to that, taking what is often a hyper set of synth lines in drum-and-bass and transferring that energy to the bass line of a piano completed the notion of doing an entire electronic song on the “wrong” instruments and in the wrong ranges. (Also, given that a lot of my production mentor’s tutorials discussed the value of layers, I wanted to see how few layers I could get away with.)

It’s named “Desert Scorpion” for two main reasons.  About halfway between Mexico and North Africa is a spot of the Atlantic Ocean by the Azores, and the only interesting thing in that spot is the wreckage of the USS Scorpion, sunk in the Cold War.  It’s also a play off the Ian O’Brien album Desert Scores, the closest natural home for this song.

This is the song that most makes me go, “where did this come from?” It’s the most outside the box I think I’ve gotten.

Some press about it

“Fascinating textures.” – Jon Ireson, music-news.com

“A definite highlight is ‘Desert Scorpion’. A trumpet-laden intro capped by otherworldly, bouncy percussion and careening, folky textures start the journey before the tone shifts to a wild cyberworld ride punctuated by accordions and gurgling pianos. This track is brimming with imagination and childlike fusions of wildly different pairings, and whatever you conclude, it’s certainly unique.” – Barra Ó Súilleabháin, HeadStuff (I admit that I conclude differently on this track from listen to listen – I wish I had produced the brass less starkly/less trusting of Spitfire Audio’s default settings – but I still admire the track regardless)

Next song: Turn Soul Over; End of Life 1