Now Playing. "Orbital Mind Control Lasers" by T1na Badgraph1csghost
Last night, while dinner was cooking, I wrote a song. I started with a bass riff and thought, "ah, this is no good, I can't do anything with this." 5 loops later, I realised I could do anything with this, and I had done anything with this. I'm quite pleased actually with how Kraftwerk-like it turned out. Ralf and Florian were not afraid of repetition, so I decided to make myself unafraid of it as well.
As for meaning... really, it's all over the place. As I was playing the bass riff, I was thinking about Geiger counters, don't ask me why. While I played the mallet line, I was thinking about Los Angeles and how the LAPD, noteworthy for their excessive use of force and extreme prejudice in their day-to-day operations, declared the protest that the US Marine Corps had been deployed to quash was peaceful actually. As I monkeyed around with Dexed patches, I was thinking about Ronald Reagan and the various effects his regime had on culture in the '80s, including the Church of the SubGenius, which I'd seen John Flansburg of They Might Be Giants talking about on Tumblr a few days ago. I'm pretty well-acquainted with the Church through Devo, whose members were all disciples (though some took it further than others; I think Bob 2 genuinely believed in it from a religious perspective), so I've seen scans of most of their pamphlets and newsletters from the early '80s. I particularly liked the concept of orbital mind-control lasers, to the point I've made references to it in my writing work before; not because I like the idea of being able to control someone's thoughts through the use of low-orbit laser emitters, but the ridiculous notion that such a thing could be achieved in the first place, and how many millions of 1981 dollars the CIA would have dumped into making it happen. The watershed moment, when I realised this song had value, was when I added the distorted strings. First off, I didn't want any acoustic instrument simulations in this song, I wanted pure electronics. I did an experiment with the FLEX envelope settings on "Earth-Ridden Slime" where I made the chorus patch sound like an Orchestron; doing this same thing to the FLEX General MIDI strings ensemble, I got a Mellotron out of it, so that counts as electronic... or electrical, at any rate. I did various things with the strings, trying out various things that didn't work, until I hit upon 5ths and 4ths. Don't play anything else but these 2 chords. It might seem lazy, but it took 5 or 6 goes to make just right.
As I was playing the track's final form, I started thinking about the mechanical nature of the corporate feudal state, how there are no humans anymore, just robots. Robots are not afforded the freedom to dissent, to think critically, or to do really anything at all without reprogramming, but the programming is perfect for the making of vast stores of money for people who don't need it, so no one changes it. The uncanny-valley quality of the Mellotron strings— an electromechanical representation of an acoustic instrument— is perfect for organic robots, marching to the beat of capitalism. Work to death for pennies per dollar, dreaming of an illusory fortune just out of reach. Go home at 5, eat piles of salt, watch mindless content on Video as a Service, scroll through mindless content on the phone while the expensive ads play. Sleep for not long enough, drag out of bed, do it all over again, then get blind drunk on Friday and Saturday before going to church on Sunday to hear all the ways everyone is bad and why you're bad for not believing hard enough.
"Pfft, you weren't thinking all of that while you were playing the piano." Oh ye of little faith. My autistic brain brings up volumes of data in a single firing of synapses.
The title, as mentioned is from the Church of the SubGenius. So, what's this song about, then? Whatever you need it to be about. For me, it's about the artificiality of blind faith in consumerist capitalism and the general unwillingness to change.
, don't ask me why. While I played the mallet line, I was thinking about Los Angeles and how the LAPD, noteworthy for their excessive use of force and extreme prejudice in their day-to-day operations, declared the protest that the US Marine Corps had been deployed to quash was peaceful actually. As I monkeyed around with Dexed patches, I was thinking about Ronald Reagan and the various effects his regime had on culture in the '80s, including the Church of the SubGenius, which I'd seen John Flansburg of They Might Be Giants talking about on Tumblr a few days ago. I'm pretty well-acquainted with the Church through Devo, whose members were all disciples (though some took it further than others; I think Bob 2 genuinely believed in it from a religious perspective), so I've seen scans of most of their pamphlets and newsletters from the early '80s. I particularly liked the concept of orbital mind-control lasers, to the point I've made references to it in my writing work before; not because I like the idea of being able to control someone's thoughts through the use of low-orbit laser emitters, but the ridiculous notion that such a thing could be achieved in the first place, and how many millions of 1981 dollars the CIA would have dumped into making it happen. The watershed moment, when I realised this song had value, was when I added the distorted strings. First off, I didn't want any acoustic instrument simulations in this song, I wanted pure electronics. I did an experiment with the FLEX envelope settings on "Earth-Ridden Slime" where I made the chorus patch sound like an Orchestron; doing this same thing to the FLEX General MIDI strings ensemble, I got a Mellotron out of it, so that counts as electronic... or electrical, at any rate. I did various things with the strings, trying out various things that didn't work, until I hit upon 5ths and 4ths. Don't play anything else but these 2 chords. It might seem lazy, but it took 5 or 6 goes to make just right.