Big Cats! with some thoughts on our new EP

So, a couple days ago, Guante posted a track-by-track breakdown of our new ep. What follows are my thoughts, from a mostly musical perspective, on each track from our new EP.

The Calm (An Open Letter To The Living):
This beat is kind of a weird one. I’ve been trying to arrange my beats in a more linear way lately. Like, just having a bunch of cool parts/sections/riffs that all fit together, one after the other. So, instead of a more typical A/B/A/B/C/B type of structure, it would be A/B/C/D/E/F, naw mean? I think it would be fun, and kinda piss people off. Like, “hey, that’s a really cool part! oh, it’s gone. oh, it never came back. I only got to hear that really cool part for 10 seconds.” This one isn’t quite that crazy, but there are lots of subtle changes, and not much repetition.

Originally, this track had no drums on it, but Guante had this idea to keep the drums out for most of the song, and then have some sort of massive drum mania right at the end. My initial plan was to have Mike, the drummer we play with live, track some live drums on it. For whatever reason, that never worked out, so I decided to program them myself. I programmed them one hit at a time in the sequencer in acid. Just a bunch of one hits on a grid. It was probably the least efficient way possible to do it, but I think it sounds pretty dope. Like Guante said, this is probably the best hint, both musically and content wise, of what the full-length record will be like. Sorry all you happy people, maybe the next record will be for you!

Old English Letters:
This is an old jam. When I first started talking to Guante about working together, I had just finished up my last solo record, Sleep Tapes. At the time, I was thinking of that record as more of a beat cd that looked presentable enough to maybe sell a couple copies of. So, I gave it to kyle and gave him free reign to pick some beats. He grabbed this one right away. It’s been through quite a few changes since the first, instrumental version, but it’s still the same beast. I don’t really get the whole tattoo thing, never had one myself. I do kind of want a giant, back sized tattoo of a green, leaf eating dinosaur though. If anyone knows someone who can hook that up on the cheap, get at me.

The Hero:
Another one that was on my last record. For the 19 of you that actually bought my last record, and feel like you’re getting hosed by rehearing these beats, do not fear. The full-length is all new shit. And, these songs are quite a bit different live, so if you come to the release party, you’ll hear some very cool, new stuff. The outro was recorded live from our set at Hyder Ali’s release party at the Turf Club on March 20th. I worked my engineering genius to line it up with the original outro of the studio version.

Dragons:
This beat is pretty cool. One of the more simple beats I’ve made in a while. I put it together last summer, when i had all my gear at my parents house, because I was in the process of moving. I had just been out to Providence and Boston, and spent some time hanging out and digging with the homie, Prolyphic. In addition to all the records I bought, he gave me a stack that he wasn’t using. So, I spent a week or two with a big stack of records, a piano, my upright bass, a guitar that wouldn’t stay in tune, and a two piece drum set. I wasn’t working at the time, so i just spent my time making a couple beats per day. The reverb on the track is from the mic picking up the monitors in the room. I didn’t have my headphones, so to hear the track i was playing along to, I just had to turn the monitors up.

1 10 20 200:
I wanted to make a straight banger. Guante rapped his ass off to it. This one is definitely one of the more fun tracks to play live. I don’t remember a whole lot about making this beat, haha. It was one of those that I didn’t think much of at the time, but going back to it later, I realized it was pretty dope. I do recall that there’s some pretty stellar upright bass playing going on in there though.

One of These Mornings Remix:
Fun fact #1: the crazy sub bass noise, and the keys/synth are from the same sample. I think it was something kinda corny, maybe 5th dimension or something. I was listening to a stack of stuff at Cheapo, and there wasn’t anything else good about this record, but there was an intro that had this HUGE bass sound, and this weird bell/chime thing going on over it. So, I bought the record, sampled it, filtered it a couple different ways, and loaded it up on the the keyboard. The flute sample really pulled it all together. That vocal sample is actually from a really dope, fairly popular record from 99 by Zap Mama. It’s from the single of that record actualy, called “Rafiki” (ft. Black Thought from the roots). I loved that song circa 7th grade, and when I came across the acapella on vinyl many years later, I had to pick it up. Please don’t tell Universal and get me sued.

Catasterpiece:
I keep wanting to make a new instrumental record, and keep coming up with tracks that would be great for it, but my mc friends keep jacking all my beats, ha.

The organ sample is from Rare Bird’s first album. Really cool organ/bass/drums rock stuff. Don’t know if they made any other records, but this one’s dope. Played live bass on it. Another track with a lot of one hit programmed drums. Acid is the homie.

Fun fact #2: the vocal/synthy stuff is actually me singing into a 58. I’m looking for a roland space echo re-201 so i can make even more out there, mangled sounds. If anyone sees one on craigslist or something, put me on to it.

Alright, that’s that. Come to our release party at the Nomad on May 9th. Good times guaranteed.