ALBUM RECOMMENDATION (Jason Mraz - Waiting For My Rocket To Come)

I have to admit that Jason Mraz’s music didn’t cause me a great impression in the beginning. I guess that this was due to the fact that the type of music that he does is not what I would usually listen to if I had the choice, because it’s the kind of happy naïve style I dislike sometimes, in contrast to the sad melancholic or angry type I’m rather used to listen to. However, after listening to one of his most popular songs, I Won’t Give Up, I decided to give him a chance and pay more attention to his works, since I found this song a clear example of what good songwriting is. Ever since the first listen, I loved that song and the beautiful and honest message of the lyrics. So thanks to that wonderful song, I decided to buy some of his albums and one of them is this Waiting For My Rocket To Come which I’m going to write about and which I consider my favorite. This album was the first that the singer released and, unlike the following ones that were to come, which were rather folk and relaxing musically, it has a little 90’s pop vibe that I really love, although it was released in 2002. Still, the 90’s vibe is there. I guess that’s why I like it so much. I think that most of the lyrics are good but what I find most enjoyable about the album is the melodies, which are very catchy and happy. Besides, Jason Mraz’s voice sounds great in all of the songs, proving that he is very talented doing his music style. This is, with no doubt, the kind of album you would listen to over and over on a sunny day in the countryside.

Favorite songs: You And I Both, Sleep All Day, Who Needs Shelter, The boy’s gone, The Remedy, and Curbside Prophet.

THE MAN FROM EARTH Tribute

While most of the movies I’ve written about on this blog had already been on my reference list of cult movies for a long time now, this one was a relatively recent discovery and, although I feel that I still have to watch it more times so that I can get deeper into its universe and messages, I’d say that The Man From Earth has already become one of my top fetish movies in that list. This is due to diverse factors, but the main one is probably the fact that, just like the movie Cube, it is a low-cost movie basically sustained on an excellent script, and when a script is good enough to supply most of the shortages of the rest of departments, this really deserves to be mentioned and taken into consideration. Cinematography, performances, edition, and direction are ok but, as I’ve just said, the script is so interesting that you finally get to forget about those other aspects that are not so bright. All of the strengths in the script are sustained by the characters and the way in which they interact between them. No great occurrences take place in the story, it’s all about the dialogues and how the power of words can change our minds and our perception. There’s also plenty of room for existential and philosophical messages, which, in this case, are literally expressed by the characters. So, if you like movies with a good idea as the principal root without needing different scenarios or catalyst actions, you’re gonna be capable of appreciating how interesting and original this movie is.

I wasn’t completely sure about using the frames of this movie for the song Here And Now because, just like I explained before, the enchantment of the movie resides in the script rather than the images, so I thought that maybe the final result would not cause such great impact as other tribute videos I’ve made, which looked already good without needing the people to watch the movie first to understand the point of it all. However, I think that the lyrics and messages of the song are directly related to the thesis of the movie and there’s even a reference to Jesus Christ that perfectly matches the movie so, in the end, I decided that there was no other better one to use for the Here And Now video tribute.

THESIS

This movie is definitely about the Carpe Diem concept and breaking the laws of time. The plot in itself, including a man who never dies, is self-evident proof of that. The movie also expresses this idea of how religions and the concept of God have been continuously misunderstood by humanity, leading us to prejudgements. In both cases, perception plays a primal role in how we decode what we have in front of our eyes and how we decide to interpret it later.

Thesis: Here and now is the only thing that exists. The rest is just an illusion.

ALBUM RECOMMENDATION (The Cranberries - Bury The Hatchet)

The Cranberries were my teenage years! If there’s a band that reminiscences that moment of my life, it’s clearly them. They were a perfect combination of alternative rock and catchy pop melodies, proving that being musically alternative does not necessarily mean making a weird sound or being difficult to swallow from the first listen. It’s hard to choose just one album of them because I equally love most of the songs that they have released as well as each of the albums in which those are included, but, in my opinion, Bury The Hatchet is their best. I know that most people prefer their two first albums but I think that, as a band, they acquired their best sound with this one. Dolores O’Riordan’s voice sounds great as always and all of the songs are very well composed and produced. Besides, there’s a concrete song on this album that gets me the shivers every time I listen to it. This song is Shattered, which has ended up being one of the most important songs in the personal soundtrack of my life, just like a cult phenomenon beyond fiction. This song is extremely sad and melancholic, but there’s room for diverse tempos and styles in the rest of the songs, which is also something that I really like about this album, that is pretty versatile but at the same time maintains the essence of the band’s sound. To summarize, an essential album for any rocker lover and one of the most iconic and notorious works of the nineties.

Favorite songs: Animal Instinct, Promises, Shattered, Desperate Andy, Copycat, Delilah, and Fee Fi Fo.

HERE AND NOW

Songwriting

I wrote this song in September of 2013 as an exercise that my producer told me to do. We had just met for a short time until then, but he had already noticed that my songwriting methods were particularly unusual since I would start writing the lyrics first and add the chords later, so he proposed to try it the other way around, that is to say, starting to play the guitar chords and adding the lyrics later or simultaneously. 

Invaded by that enthusiastic spirit that I was feeling back at that time, thanks to the idea that making music for real was becoming true, I did what he told me to, and Here and Now was created in less than an hour, melody and lyrics as well. I remember that the first stimulation to start writing the song was a purple sky I could see from the window of the flat I was living in back then… so placing an E minor chord with my fingers on the guitar strings, I started to sing: “Purple lights in the sky, butterflies in disguise…”  and developed the rest of the song very rapidly. 

Developing this song was quite easy because it is structurally and melodically simple; actually, it is a very simple song in general terms of songwriting, although this does not necessarily mean that it is a superficial song. In fact, I would say that, despite the simplicity of the structure, the song is very effective the way it is and it feels to me as if the final result could not have been any other way. You may like it or hate it, but this song was born to be this only way. I personally like the lyrics very much, with all the abstraction and mystical concepts, I think it is still easy for anyone to understand the message. A clear example of how applying the “less is more” rule can sometimes improve a song rather than spending hours searching for complicated melodies or lyrics.

By the way, I would like to mention that the final rap of the song was an idea of the producer. I wasn’t very sure in the beginning but I really like it now. The time is now to make this kind of experimentation, after all.

Production

The demo of the song was always pretty clear. Still, I wanted the song to have a distinguishable touch and that’s how the idea of the pizzicatos came to me. The producer did a great job creating the intro and the guitars, although I didn’t want the song to be so rocker at first. But in the end, the guitars were essential to turn the song into a more powerful one. Vocally, it is one of the best songs that I have ever recorded, in my opinion. I’m starting to like the tone of my voice a little more as time goes by, so I guess that this has to be noticed when I’m singing, that I do it more fluently, or, at least, that’s what I’d like to believe.

THE ASCENDING

In view of the non-existent repercussion that the Faith In Chaos project has achieved, I have decided to do things differently with this second project. Instead of waiting for all of the songs to be finished, and having unrealistic expectations about them, I am going to publish each song of the new album on youtube as I go recording them. Let’s see what happens next. The system of the blog will remain the same: I will write about the songwriting process and the production of each song, which will come accompanied by a lyric video and a movie tribute video that has something to do with the message of the corresponding song.

What can I say about this new album? Well, I’ve already written all of the songs, a total number of ten, and the production of these is gonna be more conceptual. The idea behind the title comes precisely from wanting the whole album to be a concept. The Ascending is like a climb but in a spiritual way. It’s a desire of going from uncertainty to a better place. We could call it a transition. That’s why the main idea is that the songs go from dark and sad to brighter and happier as they advance along with the tracklist. Lyrically it’s gonna be more poetic and less visceral and, once again, the messages will be focused on the universe and the mystery of life rather than love or relationships. Musically, it will be less rocker and more melodic, although there’s still gonna be room for electric guitars. With this album, I want to describe a concrete moment of my life: my teenage years when I was addicted to smoking weed. In fact, some of the songs or concepts come from that era of my life, when I was 15 or 16 years old more or less. Part of me became very mystical because of that and, although it all led to a psychotic break that turned the whole thing into a descent, straight to the hell in itself, the idea is to invert the concept and turn the tables around, showing all the learning and turning the pain into something beautiful.

Here’s the tracklist for The Ascending:

1- Into The Unknown

2- Better Tomorrow

3- Nothing Pure In Me

4- The Rose Fairy Tale

5- Runaway From The Mask

6- Here And Now

7- I Don’t Really Wanna Know

8- A Movie Called Life

9- 15 Years In The Dark

10 - The Ascending