MEET ME IN MONTAUK
this was another old mossyrock song slated for that never fully realized album which i salvaged and turned into a taperecorder song. i remember how this one first came about. DP was fucking around with sounds that i had made and stored in my sample bank. she was playing with this bell sound. a little earlier i had done something strange with this echo effect but wasn't really into the end result. i asked her to move so i could try something. i ran the bells thru that effect and soon came up with the main part of the song. i did some layering and arranging of the sound before coming up with a great little beat to put under it. the beats were nice and squelchy and had that glitchy feel i was getting into. anyway, i sat on it for a while and when i listened to it again i felt like the sound was too pretty to be constantly overtaken by the beat. i tried letting the song build from nothing into the beat part but then was struck with the thought that it might work better the other way; have the beats disappear a third of the way into it. it worked! i played with some filters and slowly ran it over the whole mix to give the end part a little bit of swag. it was done. or so i thought. it sat around for a while, looking for a home. we had released a couple of EPs that it didn't make sense on so we figured we'd put it on the new album we were working towards. in the meantime i was asked by chloe harris to make a mixtape for her radio show. i made it and used a bunch of number stations recordings (mysterious shortwave radio stations of uncertain origin believed to be operated by government agencies) as interludes. one of them was used over the end of 'meet me in montauk' and i could never hear the song the same way without it. so for JUST RAMBLE & THINK OF GHOSTS it was added to the final mix of the song. oh, and as much as the song shares its name with something that someone in eternal sunshine says, it came about before that movie was released!
DON'T FORGET TO WRITE
just a short little pop song. the original idea i had was to layer rae spoon singing the words 'don't forget to write' over top of warbly guitars and woozy bouncing beats. i wanted to do something similar with the vocals that i had done with the guitar and mandolin on gatineau. i wanted there to be just hints and blips and glitchy parts of rae's voice building until the full vocals came together at the end. i think i came close. the thing is, after deciding on using the bethany version of 'cold spring' for the album; also planning on using 'on the wall' which bethany sang on; and finally having to use bethany for 'denmark' because rae wouldn't sing the one line: it was starting to seem that it might make more sense and be more cohesive if just had bethany sing on 'don't forget to write' also. so she came down and when i played her (a different arrangement of) the song, bethany pulled out her little book of words and started singing what became the words for the song. she changed a little bit to the title of the song and presto: we were done! just a quick note on the recording of bethany singing; we tended to use two of the best takes and pan them hard right and hard left. giving it a really nice stereo effect. i tried this with some other singers and never quite ended up with the same full sound. dunno why. anyway, the rae spoon version appears on the single for cold spring. i pretty much like them both equally!
ALIGHT/ALONE
i had the idea in mind for 'JUST RAMBLE & THINK OF GHOSTS' for a while before it came together. i wanted to release something on vinyl. i wanted it to be guitary and organic sounding and electronic and vocals all coming together. i had been trying to find one more song to pull the whole thing together. i had fragments of the second part of 'alight/alone' laying around but for some reason just couldn't make it come together properly. while taking the amtrak adirondak back from montreal to new york (a lovely but long 12 hour train ride along lake champlain and the hudson river) i was fucking around with a different song (inspired by a visit from a certain girl from montreal) and realized it shared a lot of things with what became the second half of alight/alone. i began combining the parts and tweaking things here and there. moving parts around. suddenly i had a song. sure it kinda sounded like two songs combined, but it was certainly a whole piece. it still needed some lyrics though, and i was going into the studio within a few days and had no time to go drink booze at the levee to help me come up with some words. a certain sweetheart of a girl i knew had shown me something she had written which contained one of the most beautiful phrases i'd ever read: "mapping a new familiar". i asked her if we could use her words for the lyrics and thankfully she said yes! bethany sang it perfectly. she changed the melody i had in mind a little bit and of course it was way better than what i had come up with. the song was done and i think it fit the album so perfectly. we released an edited version (which was made for the video) and james apollo did an absolutely incredible cover of it using an old four track recorder. i still get goosebumps when i hear what he did with it. they both appear on the single for 'alight/alone'.
ON THE WALL
this is a cover of the demo version of 'on the wall' by the jesus and mary chain. i always loved the faster demo version which i first heard on the darklands 7". anyway, i had figured this was a simple little song we could cover that might actually suit the singer of mossyrock (DPs) voice. i laid out the drums and kept asking and asking DP to find some time to do the vocals. she never ever seemed to be able (or willing) to find the time. in fact, she never ever seemed interested. one time bethany was over (she was living about 2 hours away now in allentown). i was pretty sick with a cold and feeling really worn out. it was winter and brutally cold out. we stayed in and kept recording bits of this song late into the night. she laid out 4 or 5 different guitar tracks on top of one another. then i recorded the bassline. it was one of those simple but badass basslines. then we recorded her vocals. we finished up around 6am so excited about what we had just done. we woke up late the next day and played it back. we were both absolutely happy with it. a few tweaks here and there and we were done! i remember playing it for DP and she was pissed that we had recorded it without her. i think she was more mad at herself but was taking it out on us. anyway, we put it aside and were planning to include it on the unrealized mossyrock album. when i was putting together 'just ramble & think of ghosts' i simply lifted it and re-eq'd it. it was a perfect fit and perfect end to the album.
i always saw 'just ramble & think of ghosts' as a guitar based electronic music album and i had always imagined it being released as vinyl record. at one point i started planning on releasing a vinyl version of the album and a digital version of it. the digital version would be more electronic, have alternate takes, and some new songs on it. we had actually recorded a lot of those songs. the more we recorded though, it became obvious that those songs were becoming their own thing. becoming their own album. i was contemplating releasing the 'ghosts' album in may and the other songs on an album called 'the devil is a busy man' in june. i even went as far as recording the first tones you hear from the opening song on 'the devil is a busy man' (a song called zesty mordant) and including it as a lockgroove at the end of the vinyl version of the album. as time and money dwindled and the big european tour was fast approaching i abandoned those ideas and shelved 'devil'. ooh, also: i got the name of the album from david lynch. rus tamblyn (who played dr jacoby on twin peaks) tells the story of how he asked david what he wanted to him do in a certain scene and david quietly replied 'just ramble and think of ghosts'.
