Let’s go on a road trip: down to San Fran then on to see some girls, girls, girls at the Strip. We’ll cross the pond to drive by the seaside, march on Paris, and get totally lost outside Atlanta. We’ll get worried and depressed in the dark & rain, then leave the planet.
Roads is one of those projects where the theme was there from the beginning. Looking for the name for the first piece, I knew it would be all about roads in one way or another. Maybe I have a deep psychological need attached to movement (or to not being here).
This is not the first time I have made a record based on pictures in a Google search. I guess I should make pretty claims about how much I travel and how creative it makes me. I don’t like travel much. I like the idea of feeling like I might be elsewhere, but pictures are easier than reality. This way places are as I want them, not all messy, smelly etc. I mostly started pieces and then found an image that matched the beginning I had. All explained below.
I wanted to follow the process of some of my older works, seeing recently I have felt a bit formulaic from a) working on other people’s songs where they want them to be more Pop and, b) fallout from my Effective Music Making course that became a habit for a while seeing I was teaching it so much.
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Gear Talk
The cover art is again deliberately very simple. In no way do I want this to seem like it is a product of an AI factory mindset. While those AI images are all very popular, they are not what I am about.
I really don’t love talking about gear. I know some musicians build fantasies about their instruments & studios. It helps some sell when they say they use all kinds of analog gear, when in reality they use the same sort of software that I do. Sad but true. As always 100% made in Reason (version 13 now) with all sounds made in the pieces; that includes most drum sounds too.
No A.I. – No Loops – No Presets
I am much more interested in the below:
Track Insights
- California State Route 1 was the first piece. I like the feel. It won’t be Top 10 as it is a slowburn. Simple motifs repeat and vary as we take our road trip to San Francisco.
- Sunset Strip is the area made famous by Rock bands over the 70s & 80s with Mötley Crüe’s “Girls Girls Girls” becoming the quintessential view of the area. This take is musically very different from the Glam Metal approach, focusing instead on a surreal walkthrough – like a dreamy montage from a movie like “Rock Star”.
- Great Ocean Road in eastern Australia is famous for the sea views but has become somewhat infamous over time for the amount of traffic. In this piece I created several zones: center is the while lines on the road, left is the sea, right is the road with traffic. A seagull swirls, glides, and swoops over everything.
- Avenue des Champs-Élysées actually translates to avenue of the Elysian Fields – the place dead Greek soldiers went (think 300). This bit of road has strong attachments to soldiers, so that is what came out. I start with a harpsichord, then it becomes a sort of martial thing, as if seeing the armies that have paraded up this road.
- Atlanta Overpass – Spaghetti Junction is a kooky one, it doesn’t fit any of the usual genres. It constantly feels like it is shifting sideways. This seems to fit the mind-boggling complexity of this overpass.
- Streetlights on Osborn is about the fear around this London street frequented by Jack the Ripper as it was dark. Fear underlies the prettier/safer parts as streetlights reduce savage crime.
- Köthener Strasse seems obscure (or obtuse) but the road has a famous studio in Rock history known as Hansa By The Wall, famous for Bowie records among many other well-known recordings. One of my favorite bands, Japan started out on Hansa’s label. The lyrics & vocals are by Jane of Jane Is Not Afraid. I deliberately kept the tentative guide vocal for the more vulnerable feel. No AutoTune etc.
- Earth-Mars Ballistic Transfer is not a road in quite the same sense as the others, but eventually, we will see space travel as similar to road travel.
If you enjoy my work, please be sure to
support me by buying this album at Bandcamp
Benedict Roff-Marsh 