Release : Darkness Lullaby
Overview:
The third release from Raized by Robotz’ Into the Machine collection, Darkness Lullaby is a hyper dramatic dirge, between extremes of a dream-like environment, and a kind of tragic helplessness. The first half of the song sets up a fog of night dreamscape. But at the song’s midway, the sudden seawall of sound plunges us perilously into the tragedy unfolding for the protagonist. Musically, it’s Bowie meets Blade Runner.
Storyline:
Fresco: What were you going for with the imagery in Darkness Lullaby?
RxR Well I think your depiction is pretty spot on. I wanted to capture a dream state, one we've all experienced - or will. In this dream, we’re trying to flee from some terrible force. But we find ourselves mysteriously separated from our lover, at the worst possible time. We can’t get through to them, we can’t reach them, and catastrophe is about to fall. Your profound love for them, combined with your powerlessness to save them, feels tragic, and more so because you are watching it unfold, and you should be able to prevent this tragedy, but you can't. We’ve all had dreams like this - or we will.
The lyricists I really admire usually arrive at a period in their work where they're not necessarily telling a story, but creating imagery, and it's up to the listener to render the story from those images. I'm not sure I could write a story, or one that was any good, so I try to keep it simple and create a vibe with the words, and hopefully the listener can connect them all into something imaginarily interesting.
With this track, there's an impression that things are not what they seem, there's the fog of confusion and the sense of impending danger, and a no-win scenario. Along with that, that you may be alone in this realization, and how tragic that might feel as this realization comes with loss. I'll leave it at that.
Music:
Fresco: Go!
RxR: Oh, well, the sound kinda fell into place around an idea that popped out at me while I was mucking about with the [Moog] Subharmonicon and DFAM [Drummer from Another Mother], and this bell-like patch I came up with on the Korg Minilogue XD. I think I have a little video of me first playing the melodic idea against the arpeggio.
The Subharmonicon is interesting, the sub oscillators provide some extra crayons to color with, mixing-in frequencies below a note’s fundamental. It gives you access to more dimensions, giving depth to a note’s character. At least that’s how I hear it. You can go into percussive territory, too, with the Subharmonicon. The first and fifth notes in the slow arpeggio played by Subharmoicon have very percussive characteristics, anchoring the downbeat. So you can get all kinds of functional sound from this box.
The Subharmonicon has two sequencers that can move at differing subdivisions, so I dialed-in this slow moving ostinato, kinda this ascending / descending cradling motif. From there, I wanted a soft percussion part, a pattern you wouldn’t expect, to thread itself through the whole tune. I grew up next to train tracks, and I’ve copped a number of patterns from the repetitive sounds created by trains passing by at various speeds - this DFAM pattern is one.
Anyway, these three parts came first - the Subharmonicon playing this arpeggio of sorts, the DFAM playing a light percussive thing, and the Korg’s ethereal melody - and together they form the base of the tune, on which sit the other parts. Sonically, it’s a little like an upside down pyramid, given the heaviness of the parts that come later.
Fresco: So with that demo, you captured the basic structure of the tune. How did you come up with the rest of the material, and what’s your process for adding parts.
RxR: Well, on the technical side, I’m using Pamela’s New Workout to clock all other hardware. You could go the other way and clock out from your DAW, but I don’t find myself doing that often, probably because I’m working from the hardware, first. The reason for using a master clock while recording should be painfully clear to most of us, especially if you’re layering parts - someone has to be the air traffic controller - the conductor - otherwise the next time you reach for a sequencer to add something you’re hearing, you’ll have a hard time of it - pun intended. But that’s how I tend to work, get the structural things recorded, then layer, mix, effects, master.
Specifically in this case, the setup is Pam’s clocking-into the Subharmonicon, and the DFAM is clocked to the Subharmonicon. I think most of the other parts layered after, I just recorded by performing them myself, like, old school.
In terms of how to come up with ideas, I think once I find something interesting as a starting point, I can begin to hear the other parts. It’s a little like listening to music from outside the room in which it's playing, you kinda of imagine parts or melodies, sometimes because certain harmonics are being attenuated by the walls, and you hear something that isn’t quite there, but is there. I dunno. So, it’s like the tune is there already, you just have to pull it into the world. And I think it’s the harmonics that give you the clues on which parts to pull.
Fresco: The first half of the tune is interesting in the way you developed the melodic content. Can you talk about that?
RxR: Ok cool, well I loved that little tracey melody, and I didn’t in fact develop the melody itself, the melody is merely repeated five and a half times through the song. But I developed everything else around it. So, it starts with just the melody with these twinkly trails…
Fresco Yah, that’s pretty ear pleasing, how’d you do that?
RxR: Oh, that I think is an envelope follower type effect, and it reads from the input source, in this case the Korg Minilogue XD, and samples it, playing back kinda sonic shards of the original signal, so they are relative to the melody. On each repetition of the melody, I played in some parts to echo or follow the melody, to animate, thicken, dance around the melody. I think all those embellishments were done on the Arturia PolyBrute.
Fresco: How did you come up with that dramatic wall of sound mid-way through the song?
RxR: I wanted this stark contrast to happen at the moment the protagonist realizes, “Hell, we gotta get outta here”. I had a dream once where I was hearing this kind of sound, actually. It was stark to the dream, and overwhelming. So I was trying to recreate that, I guess. Enter many synths.
There’s a few lower spectrum bass parts that are added through the second half of the song. First, the Prophet REV2 is in with all 16 voices - that’s the first bass part you’re hearing, on top of which the [Black Corporation’s] Deckard’s Dream is playing the upper registry chords, organ-like parts. Both instruments are fierce in their ranges on this track.
I don’t think there’s any effects on the REV2, actually, beyond some echo I’m using to place it within the stereo field. The Deckard’s Dream is I think going through an Audio Source Collider, with a bit of reverb from that unit (love that pedal). But the Deckard’s Dream patch has this kind of grit on the attack, almost like it’s being bit-crushed or something, so it can distort randomly during the attack phase, and the sound is just glorious.
About mid-way through the second half of the piece, to add some movement, first I’m kinda shadowing the Prophet part with the Moog Minitaur, and second I’m adding an ascending bass line, also on the Minitaur, to outline the chords finally, and create some forward motion.
I then added some moving vocal parts to take the drama level to 11, right at the moment the protagonist realizes she can’t reach her love. These are just very tight intervals, moving in concert with the Deckard’s Dream chords. I loved this vocal thing the Police used to do: Sting would double these very tight intervals, then spread them out. Check out Omega Man. I’m always looking for a place to apply this, I just think it’s a very cold sound.
Listen
Listen to Darkness Lullaby by Raized by Robotz.