Is it still just an escapade?

Link to buy/stream: https://peteescapologists.bandcamp.com/album/chronicles-of-a-dead-end

Well, here we are.  Today, a musical journey spanning more than half of my life (up to this point, I mean!) comes to a close with the release of Chronicles of a Dead End.  It's free to stream, but the paid download throws in two bonus tracks: faithful recreations of the goofy original "Modern Art" and the "March for the Age" intro to "Escapade".

On finishing Escapade 2 back in 2012, I recall remarking "I'm quite pleased with this" or something to that effect.  I think deep down, I knew I was fooling myself.  In fact, the consensus was that 2 was an even worse experience than the original, probably as a consequence of the way the (relatively!) improved production exposed other aspects of the album's presentation that undermined the material.

It says a lot that, despite Chronicles including basically all the Escapade material in some form, including the (previously) Escapade 2-exclusive stuff, this incarnation of the album trims away so much bloat that it ends up being the shortest version by a significant margin.  Excluding the bonus tracks, Chronicles clocks in at a scant 35:26 - in contrast, Escapade lasts 39:10 and Escapade 2 a hefty 44:47!

Anyway, this time around, while I'm a little nervous after 2's savage reception, I'm also genuinely excited by the performances I've got out of the musicians I worked with.  The thunderous 5-string bass in "Them" particularly stands out to me.  Moreover, the impression I got throughout these sessions was that the artists honestly liked the material and wanted to give it their best.

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In a final, strange twist of fate, I recently found myself in a situation where I needed to play back MIDI from my family's old Acorn computer.  This necessitated the acquisition of a General MIDI-compatible synthesizer with an old-fashioned 5-pin MIDI input, instead of USB or Bluetooth connectivity.  It seems they don't make those anymore, and I wasn't about to try to figure out what kind of adapter to use, so I ultimately opted to buy a second-hand PSR-5700.  That's right: the instrument that kicked off this story is back.

I wasn't playing.  I was just having adventures in modern (circa 1992, I guess) recording.

Having played with it a bit, I honestly do get why my childhood/adolescent self associated its capabilities with exciting, yet comforting feelings.  But I was also struck by the way that some kinds of music stand up to it better than others - some of the MIDI files I played through it sounded pretty cool, while others sounded so dull that I couldn't finish listening.  The implication is that this, too, might have been not such a dead end, had I trained myself to discern what makes a piece of music sound good filtered through MIDI.  After all, pre-PS2-era (or thereabout) video game composers would have had to do just that!  I probably still could, actually, but the kind of organic, emotional music to which I instinctively gravitate is indeed incompatible with this technology on a fundamental level.

In closing, I'd like to reflect that starting out, I had not the faintest inkling that this project would ultimately lead me back to my classical roots, of all places.  Just because something isn't a dead end, does not necessarily mean that it leads where you think it will!

The final "Escapade" session

We all entered this project knowing a digitally simulated string section was possible.  How about we leave it with something new?  Instead of using a PSR-5700, or a Jupiter-80, we use strings.  Real strings!  A 34-piece orchestra.  Then we'll get not megabytes... but gigabytes.

We've come full circle.

Yes.  That is the thing that required me to keep the length of "Escapade", the song, under 8 minutes (160 bars at this tempo).  Who would have thought that my first time working with an actual, professional orchestra, would be on the 7th and final track of a (re-)remake of an album that, in its original incarnation, was accurately described as "William Shatner + lo-fi + 80s revivalism"?  Not only does this create a suitably big sound space for the album's finale, but it ends this project much as it began - with a musical direction that had previously seemed like a dead end being revealed, in fact, to be not so.

15 years, or is it 18?

This month, July 2024, marks 15 years since I recorded and released the original "Modern Art", goofy synthesizers and all, which I consider officially the first act of the Escapades saga.

In fact the story could be said to have begun some three years earlier, as most of the musical ideas on Escapade date back to 2006 - significantly, this is before my emotional state descended fully into the utter hopelessness that ended up pervading so many of its lyrics.  There was more then-recent material I could have plundered for Escapade if I'd wanted to, but I felt (I believe correctly) that most of it was some combination of hookless, overly sentimental and/or too bombastic without the substance to back it up.  Let's just say that "One of My Goof Attacks" is very atypical for me writing in 2008.

Anyway, the vocals for "Escapade" (the song) are in.  Lynsey's phrasing often reminds me of Agnetha Fältskog of ABBA fame (that's a good thing), which I feel is great for conveying a sense of tragedy without losing sight of hope.  (Think the Arrival deep cut "My Love, My Life" for example.)  At the end of the "After the Party" interpolation, I convinced her to leave in an unplanned acciaccatura.  I would never have thought of that!

This could, in theory, be the end of the project.  But for this song, there is one last thing to do.  A consequence of opening the piece with the very sparse "B" section of "March for the Age" is that it leaves the synth strings very exposed, to a far greater extent than on the original.  I think this song could stand to make a better first impression than that...

Addendum: I suspect that not many people, when recording such emotionally charged music, take the precaution of bringing a plushie to a recording session.

It is a cat.

Being specific

The take-home message of the whole Escapades saga is clearly emerging as: Don't be a control freak.  It's paradoxical, but what it fundamentally took for this material to sound in reality the way it always had in my head, was for me to relinquish absolute control.  In particular, rhythm guitar parts are extemporaneous by nature, with the result that a real guitarist will almost invariably have a much better idea than me of what will best serve the song, even though they didn't write it!  My previous unwillingness to admit this reality presumably accounts for complaints expressed by some that the arrangements on Escapade/Escapade 2 sounded unfinished, besides being overly synthesized.

At the same time, though, if one does know exactly how a part should sound, it's better to write it out as such, rather than saying vaguely "Oh, this bit can be more expressive".  The bass in "Escapade" is a case in point.  Having already familiarized myself with Bruno's style by the time I prepared the score for this song (concurrently with "Modern Art" and "Them"), I was able to notate the expressive inflections in the two passages where the bass becomes a lead instrument, rather than just writing out the "main" notes and having the bassist guess.  The result probably ranks as my favourite performance of his in this entire project, and that's saying a lot!

Incidentally, the second of these "bass solo" sections (adapted from "My Next Escape") was executed with an acoustic guitar patch on both previous versions.  It goes down to C#2, though, so to play it on a real guitar would have required either down-tuning by 3 semitones (à la Black Sabbath) or using a baritone guitar, both of which struck me as excessive for a passage lasting only 4 bars out of the song's total of 155.  So I chose to make it a bass solo instead!  In a bit of outside-the-box thinking I'm rather proud of, I transferred the actual "bass line" in this passage to the bottom line of the string arrangement.

Escapologist for a day

I still have my flute.  I can still remember the fingerings for every note from C4 (it hasn't got a B footjoint, by the way) up to B6, including the alternate fingerings required to play high trills.  I haven't actually played it in years, but I'd expect the muscle memory of the embouchure to return to me pretty quickly if past experience is anything to go by.

What I don't have is the ideal microphone for recording such an instrument, nor the knowledge of where to place said microphone.  Thus I realized it was far more efficient, in every way, to bring in an extra player for the flute part in "Escapade", rather than playing it myself.  Enter Yuri Villar (via Musiversal).  His phrasing is certainly more refined than mine would be, which helps out in both relevant passages: the nearly ambient intro now takes on a slightly exotic character (hints of Toru Takemitsu, perhaps?) while the jazzy phrases in the "After the Party"-based section are just that!

Incidentally, I originally wrote the instrumental obbligato in "After the Party" with saxophone in mind, not flute.  I have a vague recollection that "Last Day", the song created at Dartington 2006 that inspired "After the Party", featured dramatic saxophone solos.  Whether that was the case or not, the baritone sax near the end of "Shine On You Crazy Diamond, Pts. I-V" was certainly then among my favourite moments in all of rock.  (It still is.)  Anyway, when it came to recording "After the Party" in its excruciating entirety for Escapade 2, I drew the line at trying to synthesize a saxophone, and didn't want to outsource anything for reasons already discussed, so I ended up making the lead instrument a (real, for once!) flute instead.

I did consider transferring the line back to saxophone for Chronicles, but felt that since another part of "Escapade" (the song) features the flute anyway, the piece would gel better if I didn't.

Healing tones for a healing song

In the autumn of 2019, I had a healing experience.

I don't know why I chose Pink Floyd's The Division Bell (1994), of all albums, to listen to during a long journey to a conference.  But I did.  Meanwhile, at one point while waiting for a bus, I got what felt like my 10000th glimpse of a young couple being, well, carefree and coupley.  Unbearable pangs of envious longing caused by this sort of thing had felt like a curse on my very existence since the events described in "Look and See" - this was also my starting point for the Chronicles iteration of "Them".  In this instance, though, the usual horrible feeling of inferiority simply did not happen!  This also happened to coincide with the brilliantly executed cross-fade of "Take It Back" into "Coming Back to Life"; the sublimely beautiful guitar intro to the latter song thus became the first music I heard as a free person.

I've always seen this as one face, not two.

Thus, even if it's admittedly not to everyone's taste, the achingly pure and sweet guitar tone on "Coming Back to Life" seemed an appropriate choice for the more tender moments of "Escapade" - itself a song about leaving despair behind.  These moments would be, roughly speaking, the beginning and end of the track.  Contrasting this, we have a pair of dramatic, distorted rock solos encasing the "After the Party" interpolation.  As I write this, I'm laughing a bit at the jarring contrast between that tone and the tinny MIDI clarinet that's a placeholder for the vocals!

Program with caution

The power of technology to suck the very life out of a piece of music (at least, one that relies heavily on its emotionally charged nature) should not be underestimated.  The drums in "Escapade" illustrate this starkly.  Replacing the programmed percussion with a human player already makes me far less inclined to lose focus while listening to the track in progress - despite the fact that, on the face of it, the parts are almost identical!  I suspect that the difference is only perceptible on a subconscious level, but this only serves to illustrate the power of the subconscious.

I do find it appropriate to be thinking about this in the context of an album whose central theme (to the extent that it has one) is the layered nature of the mind...