Local view for "http://dbtune.org/jamendo/record/4783"
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"Deviations"^^xsd:string
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"2007-03-20 17:28:07"
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"It took a very long time for "Deviations" to happen. Two bands were started and disbanded in the meantime (The Good Lays and Horse in Retirement). I have moved from Warsaw's suburbs into Amsterdam's Red Light District; fallen in love with guitar rock, witnessed the New Order revival and downfall and realised that I will most probably never be a megastar, so why bother trying to be fashionable. Meanwhile time was passing (my last proper LP was recorded in 2003!) and I kept on writing songs... and when I had about 20 I thought I could as well do something about them. So I kept on writing and producing and recording and re-recording... and now it's 2007 and the album is ready.<br />
<br />
"The boy with the stars in his eyes" was the last song written for the album. It was also the first song I ever wrote with an acoustic guitar, which is why it mostly consists of the E and A chords -- I simply couldn't play anything more difficult. The lyric was initially heterosexual, but then, going with my "why bother" philosophy I changed "I wake her up" to "I wake him up", even though the song isn't autobiographical. I was trying to write from the point of view of someone who has a McJob, lives in a small town and doesn't have a chance to make it into a big city; someone who will never make it into the papers unless he becomes either a victim or perpetrator of violence.<br />
<br />
"To be a machine" was a song written because of frustration. I had an idea of how a song that didn't make it to the album, "Jake the Stripper" should have sounded but I was just unable to sing it the way I wanted to. Also, I'm both insecure AND a perfectionist, which doesn't exactly help matters. For "To be a machine" I did the vocals only once and didn't clean them up, leaving all the noises in and putting excessive AutoTune over the vocal track which I mixed with very, very analogue and repetitive electronic backing. I can't decide whether I hate or love the final effect; from the artistic point of view it works, but from the aesthetic... Oh well. Art doesn't have to be beautiful.<br />
<br />
"Extra" was written very quickly and initially sung in falsetto only, which excited me no end until I asked dVTB what he thought of it and, as kind as he is, he told me he wasn't extremely fond of the singing. So the falsetto track was relegated into background and it actually works much better this way. The song is about nothing, really, it started with me wanting to sing "you are extraaaaaaaa" and the rest of the lyric is just random phrases that sounded good. I'm rather happy about the way this is sung, which is basically me trying to ape Prince in a thick white duke kind of way.<br />
<br />
"Walk" is me being New Order. When I was recording "World (The price of love)" for the Community 2 tribute album, I did about three or four songs that weren't New Order, but sounded as if they were. This is the only one that was eventually completed and I was so thrilled with it I wanted to release it as a single immediately, even though I didn't have anything half-baked that I could put as a b-side. Then, as is the case with songs I immediately fall in love with, I completely got off it and dropped it from the tentative album tracklisting. And then, when finalising the tracklisting, I decided it was "rather good really". The title happened before I even started writing the lyric, because the backing track reminded me of The Cure's "The Walk" for some reason.<br />
<br />
"Mylenotronic" is one of my favourite tracks I have ever recorded and most probably will be the third single. Initially I wanted to do an English cover of Mylene Farmer's "Je t'aime melancolie" and then I realised I couldn't work out the chords, so I wrote a new song around the bit I already had. Mylene Farmer is a major inspiration for everything I do, really; this song allowed me to express that in words, adding some bondage and leather for the sake of it. (Actually I have this idea that I should look like the male version of Mylene Farmer, but I think Devendra and Patrick Wolf took care of that already and there really isn't anything I could do, so for the time being I settled for a mohawk macho look. But watch this space.)<br />
<br />
"Transition" was written and recorded very quickly when I found out I was about to move to the Netherlands. It's a pretty straightforward description of my feelings about that; I felt really strange, when I went for a walk and realised I didn't feel at home in Warsaw anymore yet there was no other place I could possibly call home at that moment. This feeling is gone now, but the song makes me come back to that place in mind that I was only in for a very short, transitional period of time.<br />
<br />
"Deviate" was me trying to be Underworld with proper singing, except I did the vocal track about five times and still couldn't be satisfied, so I just gave up and played "To be a machine" a lot. The song was inspired by "Deviate" by Vanessa Daou, which is about John Coltrane's music; my song, on the other hand, is about boxes, which was quite fitting considering I spent the last month in Poland living on a big pile of boxes and waiting for the green light from the Dutch government. Backing vocals were done by Amanda Anoda, who's about to become a huge pop star in Molvania.<br />
<br />
"Miracle" is a song that was quite carefully planned. I decided to re-write an old song of mine, called "No happy ends" and produce it so that it sounds like a Mylene Farmer track. I was quite obsessed (still am) about the sound Laurent Boutonnat achieved on the second and third Mylene Farmer album; the sound that was so specifically Mylene Farmer it sounded like her even without the vocals. I deconstructed parts of the songs and used them here, like the guitar strums, piano melodies, looped drums and bass programming. So parts of the song are old, parts are borrowed and the lyric is me consciously reaching back to the time when I was suffering from depression and writing from that place in mind; the "demon in my head" is depression.<br />
<br />
"Get you tonight" is an effect of my fascination with glam rock as presented by Goldfrapp; reconstructing a very rock sound using almost purely electronics. The lyric is about the metrosexual and blurring the boundaries of the genders; I think it's rather fun. It might still be a single. I owe the "there is gonna be no party tonight" bit to Noddy Riot, even though he might not be aware of that fact.<br />
<br />
"No Disco" is a really old track. The original, VERY stripped down version appeared on EP1 (you can download it for free from the Music section of my website). Then I reconstructed it with The Good Lays and it sounded really fun with guitars, bass and live drums. Then The Good Lays split and I reconstructed the song again for Horse in Retirement. Then I did it once more for this album, adding a lot of Pet Shop Boys-like sounds, orchestra hits, Hammond organ, filters, falsetto ad-libs and everything but the kitchen sink, really... I'm really happy about the way it sounds now; it's kitsch, camp, gay, queer and whatever you can think of really, which means it's a bit like Mika and Scissor Sisters, which means I can still become rich and famous while having loads of fun.<br />
<br />
"Rebound" is one of the first songs on which I worked with Marek from The Good Lays. Initially The Good Lays were meant to be just me and him; I wanted to have synth sound with guitar elements, a bit like Human League with guitars or Pet Shop Boys doing "We all feel better in the dark". The guitar solo at the end of this song is heartbreakingly beautiful. The song has been around for ages and I didn't really change anything about it except for remixing it slightly for the final release."^^xsd:string
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All properties reside in the graph file:///var/www/sites/dbtune-rdf-services/jamendo/static-rdf/jamendo.rdf
The resource appears as object in one triple:
{ Ray Grant, foaf:made, Deviations }
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