Looking at the regularity with which I update my blog it looks like I’m bang on time with my yearly post.

For those of you with kids, i’m sure I have your empathy – for those of you without, well trust me, time and space become tradeable commodities. Much like sleep.

And although you might think the title of my new single, Time / Space, is a play on this, it actually has more to do with… er… consciousness.

Things that preoccupy me when i’m in writing mode these days tend to be a little deeper than what they used to be. I explored the subject of climate change on ‘Swallow’ and on ‘Time / Space’ I’m pre-occupied with consciousness.

So… a few questions then. Is consciousness something that transcends death? Is it analogous to a soul? Is it separate from our physical self? Is it transferrable? That is, can our consciousness inhabit another form which got me thinking about re-incarnation and the rules around that.

(all of this just reminds me that I need to read more)

So I don’t necessarily have any answers, maybe just ideas so I’ll share them.

Everyone everywhere – feel the current in the air

So we’re all made of the same matter, i think we can agree on that so in that respect we’re connected. But taking that a step further perhaps there’s a common energy that resides in and is shared by all of us. And maybe you could call that a soul.

So here’s another idea that has no foundation in science / fact, but maybe this shared energy is agnostic of its host and accumulates the notion of consciousness through experience and memory.

And maybe, when a person dies that consciousness dies with them, the energy lives on and perhaps returns to source, and maybe that source is analogous to the concept of God, or a god.

Lotta maybes. Heavy stuff.

Well that’s what i was thinking about when i started to pen lyrics to this song at 2am, knowing that i’d be woken up in 4 hours by my kids.

Faces lost faces found – carry them in the background

I don’t want to dissect this song too much, it means ‘something’ to me and I’d rather it mean something more personal to the listener. So what about the style and production…

Well, it’s a departure for me somewhat, in that it doesn’t have a bog-standard pop ‘verse – chorus – bridge’ structure, in fact it has only a single 4-chord progression throughout. I’ve varied the instrumentation to create tension/release/light/dark whatever term you want to use to distinguish one passage from another and I’ve used a lot of EDM inspired keys and samples.

A picture that’s not quite clear – a breath in the atmosphere

It started as an iPhone recording, a guitar line and a lyric/melody idea, then it became a Logic demo and after agonizing about whether i should treat it like a pop rock song, or more of an ambient electro song, it sort of turned into both. It’s taken by far the longest of any of my songs to produce, not because it was in any way complicated or intricate, although there is some intricate programming in places, but mainly because of my reluctance to deviate from my tried and trusted reliance on a traditional song structure. I did a bunch of versions with actual bridge and chorus ideas but none of which I liked. Analysis paralysis.

Eventually I settled on that four chord progression that repeats throughout. Once I’d come to terms with that (and the realisation that 90% of EDM tracks only have 3 / 4 chords throughout!) I started to relax and began to experiment with sounds. I found myself in uncharted territory and free to play around. Stripped of all my ‘go-tos’ I felt uninhibited, and just went with my gut.

It’s worth mentioning that I did do some homework. So i listened to a bunch of dance, dub, acid, electro bands I was into around the early 2000’s – Massive Attack, Prodigy, Aphex Twin, Portishead, Fatboy Slim, and some of the EDM stuff i’m into these days – mostly melodic House like David Guetta, Gryffin, Armin VB and a few others.

Can we go back to the start – you’ll find me there with a broken heart

If I have time I might do a brief video deconstructing the song into it’s parts. In the meantime take a listen – it’s available pretty much everywhere.