BLACK WING - "No Moon" - Full Album Download, Thoughts (Patreon)

Well, it's here.

"No Moon" release day.

Here you go - full album, downloadable, master tracks.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/acu3i2c16w1edwm/Black%20Wing%20Mastered%20Tracks.zip?dl=0 

Play it loud.

I just happen to be feeling pretty disconnected/sad at the moment (not connected to this in particular, just the normal ups and downs of the everyday), so to cheer myself up (maybe) I'm going to listen to this now and write down some thoughts.

BOLLYWOOD APOLOGETICS

One of the very last songs to really come together. I had the drum beat hanging around for a really long time without any clear idea of what to do with it.

Like happens a lot with songs like this, I rediscovered the file after several months and walked around my office neighborhood listening to it on repeat. The first lyric - "I've got time to myself, but I don't want it" - emerged organically from that process, and once the vocal melody clicked in the rest of the song started to make sense.

It's not always clear to me where the words come from. Sometimes it's purely rhythmic, and the meaning comes later. Other times there's a scrap of language trying to find a place to live.

Also: no Black Wing is considered finished until there is at least one point in recording where I feel the need to yell, "WHOOO".

OMINOUS 80s

One of the oldest songs on the record. At some point I lost some of the original instrument files and couldn't make edits, but fuck it. Perfection is for cowards.

I love this song. It is pure, unadulterated Depeche Mode worship. It was the very first song I had that made me think I had another Black Wing record in me.

Every time I hear it I wish the volume on whatever I'm listening to went higher than it does.

The HAVE A NICE LIFE formula of "the end is what we played before but now it's louder" is undefeated.

ALWAYS A LAST TIME

I was a bit conflicted on including some of these "stranger", quieter tracks. There's a version of this record that's just "all the bangers" and nothing in between.

Ultimately, I went for "record as time capsule" rather than "record as string of potential hits." Both because I think the quiet moments help to make the heavier bits feel heavy, and because I didn't want to pigeon-hole myself into "Black Wing makes dance music."

I will forever be uncomfortable meeting people's expectations too closely. There will always be a part of me that wants to reject, to be difficult, to make people prove they "really mean it."

I think it's pretty. It makes me tear up. I don't know why. I don't listen to it very often specifically for that reason. Some things you make on purpose. Others come out by accident and tap into things that make you uncomfortable.

This song feels like being a new parent, somehow.

Featured in this song: My first son, crying.

IS THIS REAL LIFE, JESUS CHRIST

Probably the oldest track on here.

Originally this was going to be a HANL song, and Tim at one point had recorded a bass interlude for it. But I lost that version of the song, and ended up returning to this one many times over the next few years.

I like how rough this song feels. it dovetails into the crying from the previous song, for me; there's something going on about self-pity. Now that I'm listening back in order, self-pity is a recurring theme I had really intended on (see: Choir of Assholes, which is about the ultimate rejection of self-pity).

I remember playing this song for Tim and he said "Great job on the space noises." Certain compliments stick with you. True to my artistic temperament, I can essentially never be complimented enough to fill the bottomless hole of self doubt that drives me to do this shit in the first place.

ALWAYS HURT

Fuck, is this another song about self pity? Jesus fucking christ.

This was one of two potential inclusions on here; the songs sounded pretty different but were similar enough in that they were both "slightly amorphous, slightly more experimental soundscape-type-things with the looped 'I want impossible things' motif." 

Probably best not to go full-bore on those. Always Hurt seemed the stronger of the two.

It's a song I space out to. It verges on Deconstructionist territory; still feels like there's something interesting there to explore.

VULNERABLE

This is a good example of a song that was started with a clear topic in mind: the double bind, of being asked to be vulnerable while knowing that vulnerability will be punished.

I also really wanted to experiment with distorted/noisier soundscapes. I liked where the song ended up, but this is one that didn't scratch the itch for me. It feels more like it's pointing at something else, rather than "being that thing in itself."

I'm not sure if I can get to where I wanted to go on this song without guitars.

I do like the transition from Always Hurt to this, though.

SLEEP APNEAC

When you can't sleep, that's all you want to do. When you can sleep, you take it completely for granted.

The song at the beginning is really beautiful; almost too beautiful, since it often makes me feel the shit I actually wrote that comes after it isn't quite as good.

I like how the key changes when the synths come and creates an instant sense of unease. I like how some of the arpeggios lag juuuuuuust a little bit behind where they "should" be. It makes the whole song feel a little lazy, a little off-kilter.

With digital music it's too easy for everything to be perfectly on time - and to feel completely meaningless as a result. No humanity. 

Lyrically, something happens to the "love and to be loved" motif here.

We started with the plain statement in Always Hurt - 

Then we pass through Vulnerable, which explicitly rejects the need to open up in order to receive love of any kind - 

And we end up at Sleep Apneac, which repeats the motif but adds the line "This just doesn't feel right."

We start at wanting it - then rejecting the method of getting it - then having it, but not experiencing the expected result.

CHOIR OF ASSHOLES / YOU THINK IT'LL MAKE YOU HAPPY, BUT IT WON'T

This song was written in two parts. First part was written several months before the second.

It worked well enough without the last half, but I knew from the beginning I wanted something to go there.

The structure is weird - the entire first half is a crescendo...but so is the second half. It just starts from a quieter point and never quite hits it's expected peak. In some ways it's an inversion of the "HANL formula" I mentioned earlier.

More than any thing I remember writing, this song comments on my other work. It's sometimes hard to get across - I write music in my weakest moments, my lowest moments. So the bulk of my creative work reflects that.

But the rest of the time, I'm in an active struggle to counteract those tendencies - to build things, to try and find meaning, to make the world around me a little bit better, to not be such a fucking asshole, to not whine, to not take things for granted.

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

The voice memo at the end is just that - a random voice memo taken from my phone. In therapy once someone asked me to visualize myself as a child so that I could care for and "parent" that younger version of myself.

I see myself as working so hard - struggling so much, suffering so much, being so angry, so resentful, so hurt, so sensitive, so afraid of so many things - and why? For what?

When I talk to myself, nothing's ever enough. Not successful enough. Not good enough. Not enough love. Not enough validation. Not enough security. You never know when it's all going to fall apart.

But if I was talking to my son?

I'd say you're already enough. Their rules aren't your rules. Their goals don't need to be your goals. And you can work without struggling. You can create without suffering. And you can love without needing them to love you in return, because you're already enough.

TWINKLING

I wanted to end on something more ambiguous than Choir, and this song felt right.

That's two very long songs in a row, which is probably poor album-construction, but so it goes.

Looking back over this record, it now feels very much like my first "parenthood" record.

The songs seem to plot a course from resentment, to the desire for love, to fear of receiving that love, to the realization that love isn't something you receive at all - it's something you give. 

You can't give love if you're so bound up in self-pity that you can't bare to give someone else the upper-hand. 

So, hopefully, you learn to get over it.

No lie - you're the only one I care about, the only one I hope stays alive.

But I'll die before I ever say those words aloud - it's safe inside, and I'm never coming out.

It is so fucking hard for me, still, to let my guard down. To stop being hurt long enough to care for other people.

In the end the whole song kind of falls apart - there's the dissolve into the string sounds, basically me leaning on the keyboard and trying to play as many keys as possible. The delay changes, which destroys the rhythm...

But then they realign in unexpected ways (an accident in recording, which I built the later parts around). Maybe there's some resolution here. There's a moment of insight, of peace, of feeling like I can let things go.

And then it fucking loops. I even keep the fucking CLICK sound in there to let you know I cut the track in an arbitrary place and looped it. Everything is starting over. It's the same shit, over and over again. Because fuck you. And fuck your moment of clarity.

But it's also different now. It's not the same thing over and over - something else builds on top of the loop. There's recursion but there's variation - a mutation that becomes something completely different. Things break apart and get put back together in a new way.

How can I know?

There's always a last time...

So how can I know?

You can't ever know. 

Any time could be the last time.

All those times you spent worrying about your hurt, your resentments, your grudges, about how other people didn't love you the way you wanted to be loved...

All those times could have been the last time. That could have been it.

You'd better fucking wake up and appreciate what you have while you have it.

There's always a last time.

Don't sleepwalk through it.

Anyway. 

Hope you enjoy the record.

I enjoyed listening back through it and writing this.

I'm not going to re-read and edit because it's probably embarrassing - talking about yourself usually is.

Just know that I appreciate you. Thank you for your support. It means the world to me.