Shadwan

Influences

808 State, “Plan 9”

Ultramarine, “Panther”

Madison Park, “Breathe” (maybe? We share a like of acoustic guitar lines at least)

Any Genesis song where Tony Banks plays cross-handed (“The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway,” “No Reply at All,” and “Fading Lights,” e.g.)

Story

This is the first song I made for the album, and as I made it, I realized it should be the closing song.  Maybe that’s weird to you, but it’s how I think.

I knew I wanted to have something with a longer buildup, something where I wasn’t relying on a big fun bass line, something where I didn’t automatically end cinematically, and maybe something with psytrance elements (as I love giving songcraft life to genres regularly considered “cheap”).

Those converged on an influence I hadn’t had on the first album: Ultramarine’s classic album Every Man and Woman Is a Star, particularly “Panther.”  Some of the reasons I love that song permeated the rest of the album composition (though probably to a lesser extent than I think).

Shadwan is an Egyptian island nearly on the 34th meridian.  As the song is in 34/4 – first as (8+8+8+8+2), then (6+6+6+8+8), then in (12+10+12) – Shadwan was Mediterranean and island enough to picture in my head that it was like an Ibiza-sounding place – you know how a bunch of random dance tunes are just names of Mediterranean party islands? – only it was more where stuff like mine goes.  And there’s not much else on a 34th meridian or parallel that stood out to me otherwise.  I added some other references to 34 (or twice it, 68) in the song – sounds reduced to 34% of their original volume, or crash cymbals starting 68% of the way through a measure.  There probably are some I forgot.

The middle arpeggio is initially on a Farfisa.  I made a cross-handed play pattern in the style of Tony Banks but then turned it into its final form (amateur tip: feeding a real-life playing technique into something else is a great way to bring humanity to the music).  The psy lead that doubles it up eventually goes off-script into held-out notes (I love finding out how to play something “wrong”/unexpected in a synthesizer patch and then exploiting it) and then dives down into the bass range.  Switching an instrument’s role in a song is just fun.  And ending not with a flurry of notes but with oboe felt like a great development in my songcraft and a touching way to end the album. From an emotional standpoint, maybe because I’ve had longer to sit with it or maybe because of the decisions I made with it, this is my favorite track of the album.  On the first album, I would have made this busy automatically; here, I held back on purpose.  I’m not used to doing that, and I think it worked out.

This song has shown up in the most YouTube videos by some distance. That might be down to my putting it in a Thematic genre that doesn’t get as many submissions. It isn’t vocal, it isn’t pop, and it isn’t lo-fi/bedroom chill. Come to think of it, it’s also one of the only tracks in there that’s over 7 minutes, I bet. So that turns out to be a good recipe for getting noticed in a filter-based setup.

Some press about it

“The closing track, “Shadwan”, is the most cohesive cut here and a clear album highlight to this reviewer.” – Jay Honeycomb, notransmission.com

“#Shadwan takes us back into the naturistic feel found earlier in the project. I love the contrast that this offers. An acoustic guitar pluck synth gives us a melody to rely on whilst the futuristic and mindful layers bring relaxing frequencies to our minds. As the bass elements join in to the mix we hear what sounds like the heartbeat of the track.” – Tamara Jenna, TJPL News

The next album: Quality Mirrors