Poetry Corner II

I went into this set of lyrics expecting to re-work them much more ruthlessly than I ultimately did.  I think that might be because, in the original version, there's one line (in the first verse, no less) that disproportionately jumps out at me as cringe-inducing:

"And I have to work the day to get my bread"

In the context of this song, I have two big problems with that line.  The first is that not all work is created equal: in the years since the Escapades, I've become much more aware of how fortunate my peers and I are to have not been born in, say, a coal-mining town around 1890 or so.  The second is that it brazenly ignores the non-financial reason why work - be it paid or not - is important: keeping oneself at least somewhat busy is paramount to good mental well-being.  There's a reason why it is so common for people's health to go into a sharp decline right after retirement.

The other bit I've always thought was awkward is the "B" section (which appeared twice in previous versions of the song, but won't this time).  Again the problems hinge on one line:

"I knew the day would come"

If we take this song to be a metaphor for the longed-for end of hard times, then this line clashes with the reality of how painful it is when you don't know if (let alone when) things will get better.  Moreover, as the later stages of the COVID-19 era illustrate so vividly, finding one's feet emotionally after such a season is extremely challenging in its own right.  (This does, as it happens, beautifully contextualize the dark, instrumental "C" section!)  Therefore, I started by re-writing the "B" section with this in mind, before turning my attention elsewhere.

While the "B" and "C" sections treat the titular island as a metaphor, the "A" sections are a far more literal musical postcard.  I left the chorus completely unaltered, but revised the verses with (as it happens) a recent visit to the real-life place fresh in my mind.  I also added a new third verse, replacing the repeat of the first that, in previous versions, was yet another factor in the last 3 of this piece's 9 minutes being ludicrously anticlimactic.

I'm tired of all the noises of my home,
Where I'm lost in my head,
And I fight every day to get my rest.
Can't you find a way to escape?

So take the train from home tonight,
And all around's the morning light,
Come with me,
And I'll show you a faraway island where you can be free.

The sun is brighter there, the woods are green,
And the clear river flows,
And the rocks lead the way to the calm of the soul.
Not to go, you'd be a fool.

So take the train from home tonight...

Did you know the day would come
When the island appears on the skyline
And we'd see the death of the scapegoat?
Now we face a new unknown
But the island's a place where we listen
For a guide watching from the sky.

So take the train from home tonight...

[section "C"]

And so the love I'm feeling all around
Stills the undying storm,
And at last all my thoughts are on solid ground.
Can I find a way to bring it home?

So take the train from home tonight...

Somehow, until now I haven't mentioned the biggest difference in my lyrical approach between the Escapade era and the present day.  That is, I no longer try to force rhymes.  I now think it's much better to have effective imagery that doesn't rhyme, rather than contrived imagery that does.  And if I can come up with a good rhyme, that's a bonus.

(I love the irony of how the poem that inspired "Modern Art" - the song that started this entire saga - pokes fun at poems that don't rhyme.)

I'm tired of this structure

We come now to the first real challenge of this project.  The sprawling "Faraway Island", in its Escapade and Escapade 2 incarnations, has some lovely ideas but fails to hold my attention for its entire length.  This mostly has to do with its overly rigid formal structure exacerbating the production weaknesses.  (In all fairness, it also doesn't help that on the Escapade version in particular, I'm audibly struggling with the vocal even by that album's standards; let's just say I do not plan on singing it myself this time.)

So before turning my attention to the lyrics (which could use quite a bit of work) I've sat down and refined the song's structure and arrangement.  The extention to the intro I wrote for the Escapade 2 version will be retained, as it contextualizes the "C" section nicely:

The very opening, minus the echoed piano and sound effects

The distinctive chord progression of the "C" section, plus the first note of the organ solo

The first real change is one that my younger self would have been unwilling to make.  Previous versions of this song included an earlier-than-expected instrumental verse in the first "A" section (à la "Nowhere Man"), with the intention of telegraphing the song's scope to the listener.  I now feel that this solo is redundant in that spot because the big, sweeping intro has already served that function.  More pressingly, though, the solo needs to be held in reserve for later.  There's a reason why an instrumental verse is almost always late in a song - "Nowhere Man" is the only exception I can think of, off the top of my head.

Both the "B" and "C" sections have their origins in separate sketches.  This is significant because, in previous versions of "Faraway Island", I truncated the short guitar solo that tops off "B", thinking that its second half wouldn't fit.  It turns out, however, that with a little tweaking it does fit after all.  It also makes a far more interesting transition back to "A" for that triumphant chorus!

The guitar part sounds as written.  Yes, I know it should, strictly speaking, be written an octave higher.

The "C" section consists of a set of five variations on an unusual chord sequence somewhat reminiscent of early Pink Floyd, transcribed above; the final two change key.  I've decided to elaborate the bass part in variation 3, and (hopefully) variations 4 and 5 will have an improvised guitar solo of gradually building intensity.  This section needs a far more dramatic build-up than in previous versions, if it's to avoid being the point where the song becomes boring.

Not unexpectedly, I've decided to remove the second "B" section altogether.  It simply didn't work as a pay-off after "C".  What I think will work, though, is the very same synthesizer solo that I chose to cut from its original place in the first "A".

Just need to find the right synth tone, now.

And from there to the end, it's pretty straightforward!  I've written a new guitar fill for the final verse, based on one lick from the original "B" solo that would otherwise be lost in the process of restoring the original second half.  The final chorus and coda, though, will be as per the Escapade 2 version.

And with that, it's time to start thinking about the lyrics.

Presentiiiiing...

One down, six to go!  In contrast to the very clandestine way I presented Escapade and especially Escapade 2, I plan to make tracks of Chronicles of a Dead End available for preview as I go - the ability to do this is one reason why I'm trying to do this strictly in order.  The quality you get listening on YouTube admittedly doesn't do the material justice.  At the end of this video, I've included very brief snippets of the previous versions of the song, both for jarringly comedic effect and to highlight just how far the material's come.

In the end, I decided there was one moment in the vocal that glaringly bothered me, so I quickly re-recorded that line.

Since there's not much else to talk about here, I think it's time to introduce the line-up!  On guitar, we have Vitaliy Tkachuk (via Musiversal).  He is a phenomenal improviser.  On this track alone, the wild main solo, alternately fiery and contemplative countermelodies, and gruff rhythm work all greatly exceed any expectations I could have had for any Escapade material going in.  And his tone is almost terrifyingly intense, yet not so distorted as to detract from occasional moments of beauty amid the sonic storm.

The rhythm section consists of Adam Alesi (via Musiversal) on drums and Bruno Migliari (via Musiversal) on bass guitar.  I've actually worked with Adam on other projects before, and have consistently found that he tends to come up with drum parts that are like what I write out for him, only much better.  Bruno is workmanlike, but knows when to add a little extra flair, as demonstrated here in the breakdown section after the solo.

I first came across Musiversal, the platform that makes this multinational collaboration possible, by way of a YouTube channel that I watched quite a lot of during the COVID-19 crisis.

But despite being a fast and virtuosic song, for me this was kind of a mere warm-up due to following the Escapade version relatively closely.  Next up is "Faraway Island"... this is where the fun begins.

The effect of a good bass part

I find it curious how strongly a good bass part tends to uplift the other parts around it, once properly mixed in.  Subtle imperfections in other parts that might, in isolation, have become annoying, instead become details that merely give the performance character.  "Days to Midnight" is coming together nicely, now anchored by some great bass work closely based on a meticulous transcription (done solely by me) from the Escapade version.

Interestingly, despite this being one of the shorter and more straightforward rock songs in this set, the bassist commented approvingly on the prog influences detectable in the song.  In particular, the harmony vocals at the end of the chorus reminded him of Gentle Giant.

In reality, I don't think I'd heard a note of Gentle Giant when I first came up with this arrangement (it's lifted from the Escapade 2 version).  If I was thinking of anything proggy, it was probably rather Peter Gabriel's tendency to use these open 4ths/5ths to create a rustic, pleading effect in his vocal harmonies.  Think "Come Talk to Me" (from his 1992 solo album Us) for example.

There's one other small revision to the arrangement worth mentioning.  The drum part I provided included instructions for some atmospheric, improvised cymbal rolls in the coda.  The consequence of this was that the two takes of this passage that I got were significantly different from one another.  I ultimately used Take 2 for the coda, but felt that Take 1 of the passage was too good to waste.  So I put it in the intro, replacing the rather functional hi-hat part I'd written.

Which just leaves the guitar - and possibly some re-done vocals on a few lines.  I'm still undecided on that.

Slight diversion

While I want to be quite strict about only working on one track of Chronicles of a Dead End at a time, I've already had to renege on that just a little bit.  It just so happens that the holiday from which I have now returned, was my first post-2020 visit to the real-life place that, in part, inspired "Faraway Island" - a sprawling song that will be track 2 this time.  And I decided to bring my recording equipment with me, hoping to capture some sound effects to use in the song.  The trip proved a fruitful one, but before I go into detail I'd like to recap the two previous versions.

The Escapade version of "Faraway Island" begins and ends with what sounds like static filtered through beach noises.  That's, in fact, basically what it is: I generated some white noise, then filtered it using the PSR-5700's "seashore" effect as an impulse.  (This is essentially the same technique that I used to generate a synthetic "choir" based on my voice in that album's version of "March for the Age".)

The Escapade 2 version, then, features stock Jupiter-80 sound effects at 4 points: a "train" sound during the slightly re-worked intro, which is repeated after the long instrumental "C" section, plus "wind" at the start of "C" and "running water" at the very end.  Based on this evidence, I have come to believe that this kind of stock sound effect is only really useful for comedic effect.  This song is definitely not meant to be funny!

Nonetheless, the Chronicles version will be mainly taking 2 as its structural model, as I think I was basically on the right track in thinking that "C" could use more stuff adding to it, lest it grind the track's pace to a halt.

Not to be confused with the now-infamous video-conferencing platform.

First, I captured a few minutes of the ambience of a not-particularly-busy railway station.  It rapidly became clear why the "train" sound effect sounds so jarringly out of place in the Escapade 2 version: real-life trains sound nothing like it!  I'm already pretty sure I know exactly which part of the recording I'll be using - taking great care, of course, to make sure that no clear voices are discernible in the finished track.  For the intro, I plan to combine this with the heavily-echoed, staccato piano chord from the Escapade version and the pre-echo of "C" with which I replaced it for 2.

Second, for the "C" section itself I decided to record actual seashore sounds.  Finding a good spot to set up my equipment proved challenging, but it was worth it for an extraordinary stroke of good fortune.  About 40 seconds after I hit "record", a seagull started up a plaintive song, which then developed into a remarkably intricate duet.  This was an incredible, mind-expanding experience, as it's the first time I've appreciated for myself the complexity and expressiveness of birdsong, even if as humans we can't fully comprehend it.  I understand, at last, why so many composers (most famously Messiaen) have been entranced by it.

Finally, for the very end of the track I recorded the much gentler sound of a stream trickling over some pebbles.  I have to give the Jupiter-80 some credit: the "running water" sound effect that ends the Escapade 2 version of "Faraway Island" does sound remarkably similar to what I ended up with.

As I have yet to record anything else for this song, it remains to be seen exactly how these will fit into the final arrangement.  Still, this is really exciting!

"And now I am become Death..."

It's pure coincidence that the drums for "Days to Midnight" were recorded the same day Oppenheimer was released on DVD, but given the song's roots I think it's incredibly appropriate.  (Sadly I haven't got my copy yet.)

I found the first take of this drum part breathtakingly cathartic to witness.  Not only was it a testament to how good Escapade material can potentially sound, but it also crystallized in four exhilarating minutes the intense feelings that have been hidden in this song this whole time.  In many ways, that moment felt like the real beginning, and everything before it a mere warm-up.

I'm actually going on a much-needed holiday next week, but after that it'll be time for some bass guitar.  The lead and rhythm guitars are going in last on this track.

Skeleton of an (anti-?) apocalypse

My parts for "Days to Midnight" are (provisionally, at least) done.  I think it's generally good practice to have as many recorded instruments in place as possible before letting other musicians loose on a song, so they have the best idea of what's going to work well.  This is where being a keyboardist gives me an advantage, as I can easily create placeholder "guitars" and "basses", whereas if I were primarily a guitarist I probably couldn't make placeholder keyboards.

There's actually a bit less piano in the song this time.  I think the busy piano parts in the original "verse" sections don't work too well, so they'll (hopefully) have some rhythm guitar work instead.  In the "refrain" and "solo" sections, meanwhile, I didn't follow the original very slavishly, instead basically sitting down and improvising a part around the chords and what I could remember of the arrangement.

For the synth pad, I chose a soft, fairly bright "strings" sound rather than the not-very-convincing "pipe organ" tone used in the Escapade 2 version.  This actually brings the feel of the song more in line with the Escapade version, if anything, which is only appropriate given the far less pessimistic lyrical tone.  For the "Strange Days"-like looped synth line in the "intro" sections, I fleshed out the arrangement a bit by giving it to two instruments: a "plucked" synth tone in the foreground, and a more sustained bright bell sound tucked into the background.

(I should note that in 2009, when I wrote the music of this song, I hadn't heard any Doors beyond their self-titled debut album, whose atmosphere I found off-putting.)

I removed the "Westminster Quarters" quote in the "re-intro" after the solo.  Besides not really fitting with the re-worked lyrics, it clashed harmonically and, as it now turns out, I'd got the quote wrong!  My guess is that what I was remembering, when I arranged this for Escapade all those years ago, was not the actual Westminster chime but a simplified version in my maternal grandparents' old clock.  I can't verify that, as I no longer have access to said clock.

I basically did the lead vocal in one take - it seems that the "Look and See" history is repeating!  There are a few very slight rough edges, but it's interesting that those little imperfections become much more acceptable when the performance is captured on a microphone that's actually intended primarily for singing into.  It probably also helps that, because of the song's age, I've had plenty of time to think about how to phrase the melody effectively, even with significantly changed lyrics.  As in the Escapade 2 version, I added a supporting harmony part underneath where the melody goes into my (still pretty weak) falsetto at the end of the refrain.

I sang the backing vocal parts through... how should I put this?  Through an accessory for the lower face that, not so long ago, was horribly familiar.  This has the effect of slightly obfuscating and depersonalizing them, without making them sound artificial in the way that electronic encoding in post-production would have.  I found it startling, though, that the effect is akin to a mild version of the ludicrous close-miking of the vocals throughout Escapade.  Still, I like the symbolic value of having, in this first track of Chronicles, "good versions" of both previous Escapade vocal sounds.

Finally, it seems I was correct that a slightly slower tempo makes this song a lot more impactful.  At 170 BPM instead of the 180 of previous versions, the solo section in particular already rocks out more than either of its predecessors.  This is especially impressive since, at this stage, the solo section is just a pounding piano and placeholder MIDI guitar and bass.

So this is already promising!  Drums are (hopefully) coming next.

Poetry Corner I

Since there's little to change musically in "Days to Midnight", I'll dive straight into the lyrics for this one.  Originally, this song was vaguely apocalyptic in tone, with "midnight" referring to the iconic Doomsday Clock.  (I don't think I was familiar, at the time, with the Iron Maiden song that does this reference so much better.)

It's honestly one of the (relatively!) less embarrassing offerings, I think.  If it were to be buried in the middle of Chronicles, I might even consider leaving it unaltered.  The fact that it is going to be the opener this time, however, gives the song bigger shoes to fill.  An opener usually sets the scene for the whole album, and if I do it wrong, it's just going to bog the proceedings down in the same way that "March for the Age" did.

So rather than having it be a refined version of an apocalyptic vision, I'm instead going to frame this as a put-down of those who incessantly spout alarmist rhetoric in situations where it accomplishes nothing besides spreading feelings of hopeless futility.  On a meta level, it was those same terrible feelings that found their way into the Escapades, and I really don't want Chronicles falling into the same trap.  Hopefully, this will nip that issue in the bud.

When the clock is ticking every day,
So, you always say,
And the people, they could never care,
No, you say beware.
I hear it's closing in,
The day there'll be no more.

I hear you on the phone,
The signal's breaking down,
And the flames are flying out of town.
So I'm stuck with you alone,
With nowhere to run or hide,
You leave me feeling dead inside.

As I hear you more, I can't contain
Those clouds in my brain,
And I watch the people walking out,
So, who'll hear you now?

I hear you on the phone...

Now you've got me right here in the room
Where you'll speak my doom,
If you won't let me answer your call,
Why bring me here at all?
I feel it closing in,
The day I lose my mind.

I hear you on the phone...

I've chosen not to include, in the above transcription, the backing vocals that sing the title during the call-and-response refrain.  As much as I'm not a fan of post-production gimmickry, I think it might be worth experimenting with heavier vocal encoding for those (there's some light phasing in the Escapade version and nothing of the sort in the Escapade 2 version).  This should further emphasize that it's not ME being a generic prophet of doom this time!

Also note that the revised lyrics are quite a bit more dense and tongue-twisting.  Using a slightly slower tempo (because it doesn't have to be exactly 4 minutes anymore) makes that practicable.

The Plan

Broadly speaking, there are three areas in which the Escapade material needs improving.  These are the production, the lyrics, and the way the material is framed.

Production

Since the release of the Escapades, several people have cited Frank Zappa's Synclavier experiments of the 1980s as an example of the computer-music approach "done right".  Consequently, in preparation for this project I decided to familiarize myself with some of this stuff.

Actually not as misleading an album title as some have insinuated, I think.

I think the difference lies in Zappa's artistic aims (even at his most purely musical) being significantly different from mine.  The atmosphere the Synclavier creates is an eerie one, and Zappa tends to lean into that.  The unsettling mental picture I get is of a computer engaging in some sort of Satanic ritual.  Certainly none of the programmed music remotely aims for the kind of rarefied beauty so much of my work goes for: the track that does, "St. Etienne", doesn't feature the Synclavier at all, and is instead edited down from a surprisingly moving live rendition of "Drowning Witch".  It's lovely, and the effect of the preceding "Damp Ankles" segueing into it is almost cathartic.

The obvious conclusion is that while the computer-music production approach isn't inherently a bad one, it is a poor fit for me.  Fortunately, other developments in recent years have made it so that I can't pretend that I need to make music that way anymore.  The huge game-changer is the fact that it's now possible to work with other musicians remotely, meaning that the high quotient of classical specialization among my immediate acquaintances is no longer a barrier.  Moreover, it's already become clear that my grounding in classical is eminently transferrable, as several of the artists I've worked with on other projects have warmly complimented the clarity of my notation.

So this time, there will be a healthy dose of real guitars, real basses, and real drums!  I shall be playing piano and synthesizer.  There'll probably still be some programming, too, but only for parts where that's actually the right choice.  (Some string parts in "Faraway Island" come to mind.)

I'll probably be handling about half the vocals.  I basically have the same range as Mark Knopfler, so it's not like my voice is unworkable for this material, but I do have a plaintive intensity in my higher registers that probably isn't the best fit for a lot of it.  And more generally, I've known for years that my voice is more naturally a soul voice than a rock one.

To the surprise of some I don't use anything more sophisticated than Audacity for mixing these days.  While this free program used to be a bit of a joke, it's evolved over the years into something quite respectable.  It doesn't offer a lot of post-production gimmicks, but I've never been wild about such things anyway.  Moreover, by forcing myself to do things the hard way, I greatly reduce the risk of falling into the mixing complacency that so crippled Escapade 2.  Finally, my background in classical (in which a rigid tempo is rarely desirable) means that thinking in seconds, rather than in beats, at the mixing stage feels normal to me.

Lyrics

The lyrics will be re-worked much more ruthlessly here than on Escapade 2, where (notwithstanding "Look and See") I only ironed out some of the more flagrant verbal creases.  It's been so long since I originally wrote this material, that my thoughts and feelings on what I'm writing about have become far more nuanced.  This different perspective may well make it easier to come up with enough verses to fill the songs without having to repeat anything: I feel this could improve "Faraway Island" in particular.

"Modern Art" will be instrumental this time, probably with the melody on nylon-string acoustic guitar or something.  While the author of the text did give me his permission to turn it into a song all those years ago, I feel guilty that some of the mockery that met the Escapade version spilled over onto the actual poem, too.  I just don't want to fan those flames again.

Presentation

As Escapade 2 made painfully clear, the original running order bogs the album down.  Setting the scene is all very well, but only one song is needed to do that.  Since most of "March for the Age" is going to be cut, I no longer have the option of using that slab of electronic bombast to open the proceedings.  And "My Next Escape" isn't really opener material without it.

Therefore, instead I'll be opening with "Days to Midnight".  It's fast, it's catchy, and in the context of this project it has the advantage of being a song that requires (relatively speaking) little attention besides lyrics.

On both extant Escapades, "Days to Midnight" is followed by "Modern Art".  I, however, have always seen "Modern Art" as middle-of-album material more than anything, so that won't do this time.  I think a controlled amount of contrast is needed.  Another fast song would throw the whole album off-balance, while "Look and See" would be too jarring.  That leaves only one (perhaps surprising) choice: "Faraway Island".

After this, "Modern Art" falls into place as the "side A" closer, taking its rightful place as a relaxed, moody breather of sorts.

"Them", in any version, is going to be quite a wake-up call of a song.  On Escapade it follows two slow-to-mid-tempo songs in a row, and I think that works quite well.  Therefore, "Them" will retain its place as the "side B" opener.

"Them" is fast but quite dark, so I think the best way to follow it is with something that keeps the energy level up but in a more relaxed way.  The Escapade 2-exclusive "One of My Goof Attacks" is perfect for this.

Possibly my favourite juxtaposition on either Escapade is that of "One of My Goof Attacks" and "Look and See" on 2.  Moreover, retaining this transition also makes "Look and See" the penultimate song on the whole album, giving it a role akin to what "Faraway Island" tried to be before.  Its more vulnerable tone compared to the visionary "Faraway Island" makes it far more suitable, if anything.  Even the keys that "Look and See" and the "Escapes" are in seem to have been hinting at this all along.

Finally, there's the matter of the "Escapes" themselves.  I do think the long C-sharp major chord that ends "My Last Escape" is the right ending for the album, and (hopefully) won't make me sound like such a Pink Floyd wannabe in this new structure.  Therefore, I think the thing to do is to rework the "Escapes", together with salvageable material from "March for the Age" and "After the Party", into a suite to close the proceedings.

I'm not planning to call the album Escapade 3.  That would just draw attention to the fact that it took me three goes to have it not sound like the sort of thing that gives home-made music a bad name.  Instead, unless I change my mind before finishing the first song, this album will be called Chronicles of a Dead End - yes, the nickname I gave to the set after coming to terms with 2 having failed.  This title appeals to me because, while it might not have been the musical dead end I once thought, the place in my life the material came from was an emotional dead end.  I've always loved a good double meaning.

In summary...

Chronicles of a Dead End (?2024) track listing:

1. Days to Midnight
2. Faraway Island
3. Modern Art
4. Them
5. One of My Goof Attacks
6. Look and See
7. Escapade

Song titles are subject to change, too.

Escapade 2 examined

I remember it just being boring, less "outsider art" for want of a better term. - I remember someone saying this of Escapade 2 but I'm not sure who, or when.

Escapade 2 (2012) track listing:

1. March for the Age / My Next Escape (7:21)
2. Days to Midnight (4:00)
3. Modern Art (3:00)
4. One of My Goof Attacks (3:35)
5. Look and See (2:57)
6. Them (6:04)
7. After the Party (4:50)
8. Faraway Island (9:21)
9. My Last Escape (3:44)

As far as I can tell, Escapade 2 divided listeners into two camps.  The first were those who had an instinctive reaction along the lines of "it's still MIDI, therefore it still sounds horrible".  The second camp, on the other hand, appreciated the improved sound but felt that it exposed other weaknesses in the album.  In hindsight, I think both had a point.

I shall be doing this review backwards from the way I did that of Escapade: first I'll look at the actual songs, then turn my attention outwards to the production and the overall effect.

Songs

Five of the tracks are only cosmetically altered from their Escapade counterparts, so I shall be focusing solely on the other four.  These comprise two that are drastically re-worked, and two that were previously unreleased.

This version of "Modern Art" mostly took inspiration from the informal, piano-only rendition I'd done the previous year.  It's no longer a massive quasi-unintentional musical joke, but I'm not sure that the serious tone of this version fits the poem too well.

The other drastically re-worked song is "Look and See", which pairs the melody (and some aspects of the arrangement) of "What Is Mine" with completely new lyrics.  It's also much more stripped-down in its approach, lending a particular vulnerability to one of the more confessional songs in the set.

I LOVE "One of My Goof Attacks".  It strength, I think, lies in my awareness that my singing voice isn't ideally suited to rock, and particularly not to hard rock.  Thus, much like "Them", the short sung verses are merely a springboard for some fun organ and guitar solos.  I particularly like how the two big solo sections use chord sequences different not only from the verses but also from each other, while still having a logic to them.  And I really like the coda, in which an organ/bass breakdown seems to be reaching tranqility but then the riff suddenly bursts in again to close things out.  Plus, on a meta level, Escapade itself definitely counts as me having a goof attack.

"After the Party", on the other hand, is the only song on either of the Escapades that I outright dislike.  For starters, the piano styling is a shameless knock-off of "The Great Gig in the Sky".  I might once have justified it as a sort of harmonic what-if scenario: what if that Pink Floyd classic stayed in the key it seemed to start in, instead of quickly modulating away as it actually does?  Noble intention is all very well, but the reality is that if the result sounds like a knock-off within 2 notes, it effectively IS a knock-off.

On top of this, the pompous arrangement "After the Party" quickly builds into is completely inappropriate.  It turns the track into a bombastically depressing disaster on par with something like "Without You" by Asia!  Note that that song, too, is track 7 on a 9-track album... I don't want to think about the implications for where my inspiration was subconsciously coming from.  I do like the flute solos (played by me, no less!) but they're wasted here.

Sound

This time the keyboard used for the vast majority of the instrumental sounds is a Roland Jupiter-80.  I still have it.  Compared to the PSR-5700 it has many more different tones available, and some of the "acoustic" patches come close to sounding like their real counterparts.  I'm not sure that last point is necessarily a plus, though.  If someone were to say that this sends the sound even further into the uncanny valley, I'd at least understand where they were coming from.

To me, however, the instruments seem okay at first but become tough to take over the course of the whole album.  It doesn't help that, in contrast to the meticulous (if wasted) mixing work throughout Escapade, the mixing on Escapade 2 is haphazard at best.  I think I got complacent: with access to more sophisticated software than before, it was super easy to make the mix functional and I'd say "meh, that'll do" rather than refining it further.  Relatedly, while Escapade sounds notably better played on good hi-fi equipment, Escapade 2 sounds worse on the same setup.  The loud drums in particular quickly become annoying, and there's little bass presence to speak of.

The vocals are a mixed bag.  There are places where I sound genuinely good, but others where I sound horrible.  In general, it's easy to guess what order I recorded the tracks in based on how well I sing on them: "Modern Art" and "Days to Midnight" were the first I recorded, mimicking the order of the Escapade sessions, and accordingly suffer from moments of unbearable hoarseness on par with Gordon Haskell on Lizard.  Again, one could be forgiven for thinking I'm a terrible singer, based on that evidence.

On the other hand, I handled "Look and See" and "Them" quite well!  The former is especially impressive considering that I only did one take, eager to be done with what was then my least favourite song in the set.  There are a few sour notes, but they're not as bothersome as they would be if I didn't sound so surprisingly self-assured.  As for "Them", I specifically remember saving it for last because it's my favourite, so that's just a case of me having figured out by then how best to use the voice I've got.

The rest of the time, I sound very ordinary.  And while my performance on "Look and See" is strong, it also exposes another huge technical issue: the microphone I used (the only hardware retained from the Escapade sessions) wasn't very good.  I was able, this time, to sing at a reasonable distance from it, but this made for a poor signal-to-noise ratio and I had to use aggressive noise reduction so as not to have everything covered in hiss.  And because it was a stereo microphone, the resulting artifacts are all the more noticeable as they slither randomly between channels.  On much of the album, I consequently mixed the vocals very quietly, but on the more stripped-down material that wasn't an option.  The results are hideous.

Other weaknesses exposed

Stripping away Escapade's most glaring faults also had unintended consequences.  Most obviously, the lyrics come through much more clearly on Escapade 2, as I indeed knew they would, and while I re-wrote a few lines to be less glaringly embarrassing, I don't think that was enough.  There's a strong emotional thread of hopeless futility throughout, and the high quotient of non-sequiturs actually reinforces this instead of obscuring it.  It's not a pleasant effect.

Relatedly, the sequencing of tracks doesn't help matters.  Having two bleak scene-setters to start the proceedings is just excessive, and the oppressive atmosphere they create is never really dispelled.  The more stripped-down approach taken on "Modern Art" and "Look and See" (f.k.a. "What Is Mine") serves those songs well in isolation, but also undercuts the emotional relief that their Escapade counterparts did bring in that context.  "One of My Goof Attacks" helps a bit, but not a lot, as its humour is of the self-deprecating variety.  And "After the Party" speaks for itself.  All this leads to a startling conclusion:

It didn't need to be a concept album.

For the longest time, my reaction to this would have been along the lines of "But the concept is the POINT!"  No.  It isn't.  Even in something like the Who's Quadrophenia (1973) the heart of the proceedings lies in the music itself: it's not hard to imagine someone who doesn't know a phoneme of English enjoying that album greatly.  Or to use an example from further into the past, do we need deep knowledge of mediaeval Latin, and/or Catholic liturgy, to appreciate a requiem mass?  I don't think so.

The bottom line is that the overblown conceptuality on Escapade and especially Escapade 2, far from improving things, has the unfortunate effect of making the music seem much more mopey than it really is.

Conclusion

Escapade 2 is a failure, at least if we take its aim to be turning Escapade into a genuinely good album.  The one consolation, really, is that I think this failure had to happen.  If the original Escapade were the only one extant, I'd probably still be under the impression that a slavish, cosmetic remake along 2's lines would suffice.  Even though 2's production leaves a lot to be desired, it's still enough to make it abundantly clear that even a superbly produced version of this would still fail to do the material justice.

In the next post, I shall be setting out my plan for the third version of this set of songs.

Escapade 1 examined

How could a terrible album be this good? How could a good album be this terrible? - razumov22 on RateYourMusic.com, 27 May 2011

 Escapade (2009) track listing:

1. March for the Age / My Next Escape (8:21)
2. Days to Midnight (4:00)
3. Modern Art (3:45)
4. What Is Mine (3:27)
5. Them (6:04)
6. Faraway Island (9:48)
7. My Last Escape (3:42)

This is going to be longer than I anticipated, so I'm actually bothering with headings.

Sound I: instruments

I think the best place to start this examination is with the general sound of the album.  The first thing one notices is, of course, the somewhat primitive MIDI instruments used almost exclusively throughout.  (There's at least one exception besides the vocals, but it's not captured well.)  Many have derisively commented that they sound like they're from a 1980s Casio or a cheap sampler program.  In reality, they are from the General MIDI mode of a Yamaha PSR-5700 - actually quite a sophisticated piece of kit, but probably not being put to its intended use!

As for why I thought this was a good idea, the easy route would be just to say I was naïve and leave it at that, but I'm not sure that was the case.  Some months before making Escapade, I remember seeing this scathing review of Eric Clapton's Pilgrim (1998) and thinking to myself "oh, recording my own music this way might NOT be a good idea".  I must have suppressed that thought at the time.  I wish I hadn't.

I'm not familiar with Pilgrim, by the way.  I have little interest.

I think there were, broadly speaking, two factors behind my production choice.  The first was that I didn't really hear the tones of the PSR-5700 in an objective way, because I'd basically grown up with the thing.  My late father (also a musician) had bought it when I was about 4 or 5, probably for the purpose of playing back scores from the original Acorn version of Sibelius.  (This was before such software packages came with instrument samples built in.)  On top of this, I used to love to use the instrument to put on little "concerts" at home, just for myself: I'd be endlessly fascinated by the ability to, say, hear what "Michelle" sounds like with the solo on acoustic guitar or harpsichord or whatever.  So, not only did the PSR-5700 MIDI tones sound normal to me, I actually associated them with feelings of comforting conviviality.

The second factor was that, while aware of MIDI's poor reputation, I regarded it as the lesser of two evils.  I didn't want anything to do with a sloppy, amateurish, lo-fi garage band sound, and was trying to get as far away from that as I could.  It's also worth noting that in the neighbourhood where I grew up, rock was a niche interest at best, so I didn't have a lot of opportunities to work with other like-minded musicians.

It's not all bad news on the production front, though.  One thing I've learned in the intervening years is that hi-fi audio equipment tends to make a good mix sound better, but that it also makes a bad mix sound worse.  With this in mind, it's more than a little shocking that Escapade, of all albums, is one that actually benefits from being played on good gear.  (I currently use a powerful Marantz amplifier for home listening.)  There's a nice, strong but slightly mysterious low end to the sound, mostly due to the PSR-5700's Acoustic Bass tone - there's a reason that was my go-to!  (Only "Modern Art" uses Fretless Bass instead, and suffers accordingly.)  I also remember taking great care to ensure decent, but not overdone, stereo separation throughout.

Sound II: vocals

The vocals, on the other hand, are an unmitigated disaster on every level.  I can sing, but you wouldn't guess so based on this evidence!  It mostly had to do with a crippling, and inexplicably intense, lack of confidence on my part.  That's why I chose to sing "Modern Art" in falsetto (except where the melody goes below A#3 or so); I found it comforting to hide behind a different voice.  (Just as I was hiding behind someone else's lyrics and a towering wall of dissonant synthesizers, really.)

Anyway, once "Modern Art" was ridiculed to the point of becoming a sort of independent Rick Roll (albeit, thankfully, on a much smaller scale than that meme) my confidence in my singing ability suffered further.  The result is that on the other 6 tracks, I was basically just going through the motions of singing, resulting in deliveries that were listless at best.  Perhaps this lyric from the track "My Next Escape" best sums up the vocal situation:

"There's no use trying anyhow."

There are a few moments where I break out the falsetto in fits of a "this is how I do things" sort of defiance.  At a climactic moment in "Them" it even comes close to working.  The rest of the time, it doesn't.

Unlike the instruments, the vocals are also captured extremely badly on a technical level.  If memory serves, there were difficulties getting my microphone to work with my sound card.  It was a stereo microphone, so the issue probably had to do with that.  Whatever the reason, I remember having no choice but to sing very quietly right up close to the mic, with the result that my voice sounds simultaneously muffled AND overpoweringly loud.  (Again "Modern Art" is a slight exception, but it's not necessarily an improvement.)

If there's anything good to be said, it's that I at least did a decent job of synchronizing the stems in the few places where I harmonize with myself, notably on "What Is Mine".

The microphone issue is also felt in the above-mentioned rare use of an instrument that isn't the PSR-5700.  That would be a brief passage for flute in "March for the Age", which I played on a real flute, albeit using varispeed because C-sharp minor (that's 4 sharps) is an awkward key for woodwinds.

Songs

That about covers the shortcomings (and few strengths) in the production, but if that were the full story I wouldn't be doing this remake now.  Admittedly the opening "March for the Age" makes a poor first impression in the composition department.  Its pretentious title frames it as a sort of funeral march in memory of some vague cultural golden age, and also makes me look and sound like a self-important idiot.  It's really a good example of how, whenever I sit down to write music just for the sake of writing something, the results are usually rote substanceless mush.  I do like the strings/flute middle section, but that's because its melody and chords are adapted from something else.

That something else was the sketch that also evolved into "My Next Escape", into which the march eventually segues.  This is a brooding, slightly funk-tinged (filtered through Pink Floyd) pop song about, as far as I can tell, feeling conflicted about moving on from a bad breakup.  The lyrics, as is standard for this album, are gibberish with the occasional inspired nugget, but I mostly like the actual music.  The main riff, the descending bass underneath it, the anthemic chorus and the call-back to (the one good part of) the march are all suitably moody without being too bogged-down.

Up next is "Days to Midnight", the fastest song on the album.  The uncanny production particularly hurts this one, I think, but the call-and-response refrain is quite catchy and I really like the decision to use its chords for the "guitar solo" that immediately follows the second refrain.  This song might actually be more impactful at a slightly slower tempo; as it stands it's taken at exactly 180 BPM to make its 180 bars last exactly 4 minutes.  (Yes, this song is about the end of the world.)

I'll bashfully admit that, listening to this version of "Modern Art" for the first time in years, I laughed a lot.  I think it's best simply to list, in order of appearance, the elements in this song that are so preposterous that they turn this attempted put-down of, well, modern art into a huge quasi-unintentional joke...

1. The intro is just a bunch of ear-piercing upwards chromatic scales before the bass and drums come in.
2. The occasionally out-of-tune falsetto vocal.  Enough said.
3. The drums, which first appear halfway through the first verse and resemble a loud, programmed version of the "A Day in the Life" fills.
4. After the second verse, the intro is played again, but with the scales this time using a synth-sparkle-like patch.  At least this use of the sound can't possibly be accused of being overly commercial!
5. Near the end of the third verse, a random applause sound effect plays in the right channel.
6. Shortly after this, we get a long passage consisting of no fewer than FIVE sawtooth synthesizers all climbing up a chromatic scale, starting from a low-pitched chord of B major and converging to a unison F-sharp, with a pulsating repeated F-sharp in the bass underneath.  Sound familiar?
7. After the fourth verse, the music briefly pauses altogether and a strange drum effect plays for five beats, bouncing its way across the stereo field.  Then the fifth verse begins right away.
8. Finally, just when it seems I've run out of ideas for random silliness, the song ends with a loud, dissonant chord played on tubular bells.  Admittedly the harmonics of metallophones in general make almost anything sound dissonant on those.

The actual "song" part (consisting of five verses, with the last two in a higher key) is quite a nice tune.  It should be noted that, while I didn't necessarily mean the track to be funny, the normal and experimental elements clashing was absolutely what I was going for.

"What Is Mine" is a theatrical piano ballad.  I actually used to hate this song, largely for some lyrics that evoke a creepy possessiveness, but revisiting it now I've come to realize there's more to it than that.  In particular, the line "Even if you say I'll lose my mind" is possibly my favourite lyrical turn of phrase on all of Escapade, just about summing up where I was in real life at the time.  In any case, there's something very satisfying to me about the sturdy, forthright piano styling here.  The track has gone from being my least favourite in the set, to a highlight for me.

My favourite has always been the following "Them", though.  This is in large part because it's the closest the album gets to making a feature of its ice-cold sound, as the song's mood is one of despondent alienation.  The few lyrics are about romantic jealousy, but they're not the main focus.  This is a complex, classically-influenced piece and its middle section is even organized as a full-fledged development, as you'd typically get in the first movement of a symphony.  I think my favourite detail is the way that the organ theme in the exposition gets subtly varied to become lead guitar in the recapitulation, but really this is a composition where things just come together in a way that works.  Even my singing bothers me less here than on the other songs.

The following "Faraway Island" is the album's big epic and a far less successful attempt at fusing rock elements with a bulky classical form.  It certainly has tremendous potential, as all three of its main musical ideas are among the loveliest to find their way onto Escapade, but it loses my attention around the 6-minute mark.  Unfortunately, the song is 10 minutes long.  I think the problem is that it follows its classical template too slavishly.  The form (excluding the intro and coda) is essentially A-B-a-C-B-A (the lowercase "a" stands for a very truncated reprise), but the second B section feels like it's there because the textbook says so, and makes for a wholly inadequate pay-off after the tense C section.  It doesn't help that section C itself is too repetitive (in this recording, anyway) to quite pull off the mood it's going for.  If "Faraway Island", as a composition, came close to living up to the potential of its themes, it would be hands-down my favourite track on the album.  As it is, it's in the running for my least favourite.

Finally, "My Last Escape" is a reprise of "My Next Escape".  There's not much else to say except that I sort of like the way it ends with a long C-sharp major chord with some instrumental noodling as it fades... but doesn't that sound familiar?  That brings us to one last major weakness in the album: I so badly wanted to be Pink Floyd!  The album's structure is basically just Wish You Were Here with more songs - it even shows in my heavy use of synth string patches that wanted to be Richard Wright!  It is fortunate that the musical personality in the actual songs, underneath all the simultaneous overproduction and underproduction, is my own.  Again, if that weren't the case, I wouldn't consider the album worth remaking.

Conclusion

I'll echo what others have said: Escapade has a good, or at least respectable, album buried therein, but as it stands it's not it.  What fascinates me the most is the way that its overinflated ambition lets it down in ways that are as damning as they are subtle.  This, plus the above-mentioned bad production (actually downright hard on the ears in places), adds up to something that I still feel justified in being embarrassed about, 14 years after the fact.  Yet I am confident that it can be made right.

In the next post, I shall be taking a (probably shorter) look at Escapade 2, my first attempt at doing exactly that.

The story so far

In the summer of 2009, I released a song called "Modern Art".

It was a goofy, experimental novelty song with a bizarre falsetto vocal and a lot of discordant synthesizer parts.  An unusual choice for a first song to share, for sure.  The reason I chose it was because, in contrast to the other pop/rock-style material I had on hand, the lyrics weren't my own, and I felt particularly insecure about lyric-writing.  (I should mention that the poet did give me his permission, way back in 2006.)

I was completely caught off-guard by the song's explosively derisive reception.  Desperate to save face, I composed a completely new song called "Days to Midnight".  This was a much more serious effort, with a much lower-pitched vocal, original lyrics about the end of the world, and an attempt at a more "normal" sound.

Exactly why I thought it was a good idea to sing half-heartedly over a bunch of MIDI instruments and call it a "rock" album is beyond the scope of this post.  Suffice it to say that, by the end of 2009, I'd done exactly that, with "Days to Midnight" and "Modern Art" as tracks 2 and 3 of Escapade.

I think I knew it didn't sound very good, really, but stubbornly insisted that that was just how I did things.  I even planned a second album using the same sonic template, but didn't get further than recording one song.  That song was "After the Party", an ambitious dirge about the transience of relationships.  In hindsight, I'm very glad this second album came to nothing.

Ultimately, what little material I'd come up with for an Escapade follow-up, got re-worked and absorbed into a return to my first musical love: classical composition.  I eventually started to worry, however, that Escapade as it stood could harm my credibility in that field, and so one day I informally re-recorded "Modern Art" in a lower key with just my regular voice and an honest piano.  I didn't really know how to mic an acoustic piano (actually, I still don't) so it was never going to be studio-quality, but it did get me thinking about other things that could be done to improve the Escapade material.

My solution was to re-record the whole album, as Escapade 2, released in 2012.  It was still just me and a bunch of electronics, but I did take care to ensure that I chose as appropriate a sound as possible for each part, and also tried to sing better.  I added two extra songs: one of them was the above-mentioned "After the Party", and the other was "One of My Goof Attacks", an attempt at a comedic hard rock song written in (I think) 2008.

Once again, this wasn't too well received.  I think the consensus was that it didn't sound as obviously bad as the first version, but failed to sound good.  I eventually came to more-or-less agree, and (history repeats?) a planned follow-up was shelved.  I went back to classical composition again, seemingly for good, although I continued to enjoy listening to and absorbing rock and pop.  I got more into R&B/soul around this time, too, and more generally I've become more open-minded about music genres as I've got older.

I ultimately started calling both Escapade 1 and 2 by a different name: Chronicles of a Dead End.  That's when I thought about it at all; most of the time I ignored it.

Then the COVID-19 pandemic happened.  Almost overnight, I found myself forced to make music completely on my own once again.  This quickly resulted in my creativity shifting away from classical, as I'm definitely not skilled enough on keys to be a solo concert pianist.  And although life has since opened up again to a large extent, it still seems that my so-called "dead end" was in fact nothing of the sort.

Which means that ignoring the Escapades is no longer possible.  It's time for another re-recording.

This will not be as slavish a remake as 2.  My aim, this time, is simply to present the songs in the best light that I can.  In the next two posts, I'll examine both Escapades in more detail, looking at what works and what doesn't.