So thankful for the responses to my first post, and gratified to be part of a new "global tribe" with the ethos of supporting each other in a tangible way. I've got a million ideas of what I'm going to do here, but here's one of the first - an ongoing series about incredible collabs I've done with people I would never have met in a million years, but for the formation of digital global tribes. I have worked with people living over a full day's time zone from me, and people who weren't even born when I started performing. People with severe autism, people with agoraphobia who have not left the house in years, people who are brilliant musicians but technologically beginners or vice versa, people who completely floor me with their knowledge, people who are total beginners but have some magic intuitive spark that just makes it work.
What do we have in common? We are passionate about making sonic art. And excited by the stimulus of working with someone new. Making a song is almost like the surprise of having a child and seeing which features it inherits from each parent. You have ideas, you have strongly inheritable genetic traits that are likely to be passed on, but you will always be surprised and it might not even look anything like either of you but something completely new!
So here's the first (and most recently released) story, about my ongoing friendship with Jett, a 17-year-old producer and brilliant jazz student from somewhere near Portland, Maine.
Jett and I met, of course, through the EDMP Discord. At the time he was going by "The Third Floor" - and I was immediately drawn to his juxtaposition of complex jazz chords, dark brass hits, and intricate yet head-nodding scattered, hard-hitting percussion. He was also of sweet disposition, and happened to be half-Asian (like myself), so jokingly started calling me "Mom". Many of the younger producers in our Discord actually do call me Mom, but he was one of the very first (and carries the "Child" role tag, reserved for my closest young mentees).
We also share a penchant for brooding bouts of depression, as do many artists - quite a lot like that clinging Maine fog that Stephen King often employs in his stories as a dramatic narrative device - and we became extremely close, counseling each other through rough personal times and life's stresses. Although we've never met, I consider him a close friend, and was extremely happy when he reached out and asked me for vocals for a collab to be featured on an upcoming Phuture Collective compilation.
Phuture is an amazing, grassroots artist collective with the same vision that I'm trying to spread - supporting through community, constructive feedback, and unyielding support. Their compilations are released with strong themes, instead of just being collections of tunes, and they've been one of Jett's strongest supporters. At this time, he'd just changed his name to nine plus, and this would be one of his first releases under the new name. I immediately thought of a song I'd written awhile ago that didn't yet have any orchestration. I felt passionately about the lyrics, and imagined they'd go well with Jett's dark, brooding sound. Magically, he felt the same, and didn't take too long to come up with this track, which has become a live set starting track. Lyrics below. Hope you enjoy as much as we did making it.
And I look over endless city skylines
And I see this world laid out so clearly
We all just be fighting for the bottom line
Every sun, every moon, every thing consumed
All the little things we do tryin to stay true
Just another hazy day
Draining all these thoughts away
Everything we know has changed
Nothing happens as arranged
Well what did you expect?
When you feel that something owes you?
You feel you’ve been cheated
You think that things oppose you
VIP mistreated
No one understands the dark you’ve seen.
I think I know just what you mean
And as things fallen idle…
Why we so entitled?
Losing track where we came from
Louder as we idle
Why we so entitled
Don’t we know where we came from
And we’re headed for the sun
Tryin to stare into the sun
And falling like gold on the horizon
It’s time to close out
We’re always thinking longer, later, better
Drawing lifelines, make things perfect
In these square frames
It’s a move by the truth
Gotta blow up the news
All the little lies we tell tryin to stay true