Notes on 'Agrestic'
This album, unlike the others, started with the title. I wanted to make a colorful counterpoint of sorts to the grey atmosphere of 'Metropolis', so I settled on the name 'Agrestic', a little known but immensely sexy word. As the previous one wanted to show you how disgusted and anoyed I am by city life, this one is about conveying to you the joys of living closer to nature and away form crowds.
For a very short while I entertained the idea of making it a concept album, like I did with 'Metropolis', but discarded it almost imediately when I thought about the ridiculousness of writing lyrics about how nice it is to be around trees or skipping meadows. I quickly realized that making music for music's sake would be much more representative of those pleasures than actually describing them. As it turns out, it's much easier, at least for me, to write lyrics about stuff I hate than about stuff I love. So there you go.
Primer
This song wasn't going to be the opener until I realized that it was representative of the whole album. That's also where the title came from. Plus, there's a musical idea I used in all the guitar solos for this album that first happened in this song's solo. I call it the 'agrestic solo line'.
Electric chamber music
This one goes back seven years and was originally a “classical-sounding” piece with no drums, called 'epitaph' for some reason. I thought there was some potential for an electric version of it. I didn't know what to call it and 'epitaph' didn't sound right anymore. So I used a strictly descriptive title.
Agrestic
There were at least three songs called 'agrestic' from the initial twenty I worked on for this album, the other two not making the final cut. Not much too say about it really. Since the other two agrestics were ultimately left out and I wanted a song with that title on the album, it became this one, for the simple reason that it was the longest. It may also be my favorite, though don't hold me to it, because that changes pretty much every week.
The unpredictable song
The only song with lyrics in the album. One day I was goofing around with the acoustic guitar, and I guess I had been listening to some kind of medieval music, so I came up with the melody for this one. It sounded like it needed lyrics. So I pretty much wrote something stupid because I didn't want to sing about trees being cool. There was another one in this vein that was left out, with lyrics making fun of Twitter, but that just seemed like too much.
Floydian Sleep
As soon as I finished this one I thought it had a Pink Floyd-wannabe vibe to it. On the other hand, I liked it. So I just decided to go with it and make a play on words for the title.
Interlude I
I had these two songs that kind of resembled each other on a structural level. Since I was struggling to find titles that I liked I just called them interludes. On a musical sense they are probably the most post-rock-like tracks on the album, like musical landscapes.
YHWH
This one went through several different phases, and a lot was left out from the original one. Eventually I settled for the spacy, straight forward version that's in the album.
Wildlife
This was the first one composed for the album. It might sound like it starts in the middle, because it does. There was a whole section of flutes, banjos, acoustic guitar and harpsichord that was cut, not really sure why at this point. And there's actually a recorder “solo”. I tried not to make this one too spacy. The story of the song is about me wanting to be friends with squirrels. That accounts for the recorder.
Snow
This was originally composed while I was living in Scotland, a year or so ago. It sounds colder than the rest of the album because, in case you don't know, Scotland is fucking cold. It ended up pretty different from the original. It was included because I really like snow. Not to be confused with snow resorts. Those suck.
We can jam in the woods
I dreamt about being in the woods and jamming with the trees. I woke up and made this song.
Interlude II
See 'Interlude I'
Setting sun
The keyboard part in the beginning is something originally made for the harpsichord three years ago. But nobody gave a fuck then, so why not include it here, now? Plus, I wanted to make the lead guitar sound as weird as possible. Mission accomplished. The sun was coming down when I finished: that's how I got the title.
Green weeks
I was listening to 'Verdes Anos' (which translates to 'Green Years') by Carlos Paredes, a portuguese guitar virtuoso (not a guitar virtuoso from Portugal, but a virtuoso of the portuguese guitar). I wanted to make something as melancholic as that song to have as the last track, so I started playing the main riff in my guitar, than started tweaking it until I got something that was loosely based on it, but not in a copyright infringement sort of way.
For a very short while I entertained the idea of making it a concept album, like I did with 'Metropolis', but discarded it almost imediately when I thought about the ridiculousness of writing lyrics about how nice it is to be around trees or skipping meadows. I quickly realized that making music for music's sake would be much more representative of those pleasures than actually describing them. As it turns out, it's much easier, at least for me, to write lyrics about stuff I hate than about stuff I love. So there you go.
Primer
This song wasn't going to be the opener until I realized that it was representative of the whole album. That's also where the title came from. Plus, there's a musical idea I used in all the guitar solos for this album that first happened in this song's solo. I call it the 'agrestic solo line'.
Electric chamber music
This one goes back seven years and was originally a “classical-sounding” piece with no drums, called 'epitaph' for some reason. I thought there was some potential for an electric version of it. I didn't know what to call it and 'epitaph' didn't sound right anymore. So I used a strictly descriptive title.
Agrestic
There were at least three songs called 'agrestic' from the initial twenty I worked on for this album, the other two not making the final cut. Not much too say about it really. Since the other two agrestics were ultimately left out and I wanted a song with that title on the album, it became this one, for the simple reason that it was the longest. It may also be my favorite, though don't hold me to it, because that changes pretty much every week.
The unpredictable song
The only song with lyrics in the album. One day I was goofing around with the acoustic guitar, and I guess I had been listening to some kind of medieval music, so I came up with the melody for this one. It sounded like it needed lyrics. So I pretty much wrote something stupid because I didn't want to sing about trees being cool. There was another one in this vein that was left out, with lyrics making fun of Twitter, but that just seemed like too much.
Floydian Sleep
As soon as I finished this one I thought it had a Pink Floyd-wannabe vibe to it. On the other hand, I liked it. So I just decided to go with it and make a play on words for the title.
Interlude I
I had these two songs that kind of resembled each other on a structural level. Since I was struggling to find titles that I liked I just called them interludes. On a musical sense they are probably the most post-rock-like tracks on the album, like musical landscapes.
YHWH
This one went through several different phases, and a lot was left out from the original one. Eventually I settled for the spacy, straight forward version that's in the album.
Wildlife
This was the first one composed for the album. It might sound like it starts in the middle, because it does. There was a whole section of flutes, banjos, acoustic guitar and harpsichord that was cut, not really sure why at this point. And there's actually a recorder “solo”. I tried not to make this one too spacy. The story of the song is about me wanting to be friends with squirrels. That accounts for the recorder.
Snow
This was originally composed while I was living in Scotland, a year or so ago. It sounds colder than the rest of the album because, in case you don't know, Scotland is fucking cold. It ended up pretty different from the original. It was included because I really like snow. Not to be confused with snow resorts. Those suck.
We can jam in the woods
I dreamt about being in the woods and jamming with the trees. I woke up and made this song.
Interlude II
See 'Interlude I'
Setting sun
The keyboard part in the beginning is something originally made for the harpsichord three years ago. But nobody gave a fuck then, so why not include it here, now? Plus, I wanted to make the lead guitar sound as weird as possible. Mission accomplished. The sun was coming down when I finished: that's how I got the title.
Green weeks
I was listening to 'Verdes Anos' (which translates to 'Green Years') by Carlos Paredes, a portuguese guitar virtuoso (not a guitar virtuoso from Portugal, but a virtuoso of the portuguese guitar). I wanted to make something as melancholic as that song to have as the last track, so I started playing the main riff in my guitar, than started tweaking it until I got something that was loosely based on it, but not in a copyright infringement sort of way.