MOTIVES

01. Head Full of Stone

Believe it or not, HFoS was the last track I wrote on the album. By this point, I knew I wanted to continue this, so I figured the best way to approach the track would be make it feel like the beginning of something. I grabbed a defunct Sansui SC-3000 cassette deck, mic’ed it up with a Monoprice LC200, and quite violently slapped a cassette in it- I believe it was Europe’s The Final Countdown - and pressed play. I let the mic capture the plasticky sounds of loading the tape plus a few seconds of electrical hum. I felt that the literal sound of musical media being started would decorate the beginning of the album aptly. The title was an admission of my own stubbornness refusing to let the album be published without one more track to start it off without theatrics.

02. Drowner

Drowner was one of those hit record and just jam with it tracks. I borrowed Emily’s kalimba and mic’ed it with a Shure SM58,fed it through a native delay on the cheap Behringer mixer I was using at the time. The kalimba, belonging to my then-girlfriend who was going through a serious jazz phase at the time, inspired me to back the track with more subtle, warm acoustic pianos and the Dean Edge bass that I used on every other track.

03. Clockwork Rehab

This was the funnest track to put together. I’ve always loved messing around with alternative time signatures, but up to that point, I hadn’t gotten far into projects without creating a rhythmic mess that didn’t resolve, had little groove, and was only a demonstration that I know how fractions work. The fluttery arpeggio was actually Emily - I set up the drumpads on the Nektar LX88 to fit a G# Aeolian scale on a Spitfire Labs piano preset, and told her to go nuts. Little did she know, I had the DAW set to record and quantize to 16th notes. As nonconsensual as it was, it was the first of many tracks that I would have her on as co-author. The title Clockwork Rehab was a story of two parts. The ostinato of stick clicks and rim taps sounded eerily like a broken grandfather clock, and the deviation from normality in songwriting was a sort of rehabilitation for my writing habits.

04. Lonely Thoughts

This was a stroke of inspiration, and easily the most popular track on the album. Gloomy, dusty, and hard hitting. I remember writing the piano riff at 2:00A.M. in June 2019. It was hellishly windy, and I had the windows flung open and half a bottle of Pernod Absinthe down. The goosebumps on my arms after listening back to the final takes is a creative high I have been chasing since. I wrote this track at the end of a long bout of social isolation, primarily for my mental health and social tolerances - hence the title Lonely Thoughts. It was released in July of 2019 as the album’s second promotional single.

05. Winos at the Eucharist Station

I was on a kick at the time I wrote this. I was listening to an unhealthy amount of Boney M., Joywave, Mark Ronson, and more from the Weird Funk™ branches of influence. I wanted to play as much into that upbeat and four-on-the-floor style of songs. This one was the longest and most complex production at the time, seemingly growing every time I opened FL Studio. The title is a line lifted from Bo Burnham’s Rant - which aptly described the largest conflict in my life at the time. This song was written during one of the most severe periods of religious overreach from hypocritical family members.

06. If I Should Fail

I like to think of this track as a microcosm of Motives. Warm, optimistic, and contemplative. I was deep in the habit of leaving the recording going and idly noodling on my keyboard while I watched Rob Scallon’s musical tomfoolery on YouTube. Most of the track was written in spare parts throughout the few hours of audio that these sessions created. I finished writing this the same night I bought the diamond for Emily’s engagement ring.

7. Casket Case

This was another jam track brought to release. I was killing time in the studio in an FL session that was merely Addictive Keys and Fruity Delay on the master track. After I had the riffs I wanted, the rest of the track was merely following the inspiration on whatever instrument I figured it needed next. The title is a play on the term basket case, made on a conversation I had with my mother when I was mixing the track. I was on my second day of skipping sleep to produce the album, which she said that I must either be crazy, or have a death wish.

8. Prayers and Papercuts

This was the first track I finished for the album, done fully under the theme of Fuck it, don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. A jam session put to mixing and mastering, I wrote the song after finding a good arpeggio groove with Spitfire Labs’ Peel Guitar virtual instrument. I produced the rest of it to follow the same chilled ambiance that I was wanting to cultivate in the Motives album as a whole. I figured to let first-takes, mistimed drums, and other flaws slide. I figured that I can’t make music to mirror my gentle humanity if I edit all the humanity out of the track. The title was inspired from a journal entry from 2014 that I logged while dealing with my messy divorce from Christianity:

Nothing has given my life more meaning than the notion that it doesn't have one.

I'm not someone's plan, and I'm not going anywhere after I die. My life is contained entirely by the electrochemical nature of my brain, and once that synaptic energy stops firing - that's it.

Cut to black. Roll credits.

But it's in that knowledge that tells me my life is precious and should be savored. Every breath, coffee, popped knuckle, papercut, is only one of a limited few I'll have before my time is up. It's the concept of irreplicability that gives things value.

Why savor a sunrise when you'll see a trillion more in the afterlife?