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.