I'm back with another video.
If you were wondering where I’ve been, I’ve been busy…
Over the past six months, whenever I found time between a house remodel, a burglary, and three moves, I was plugging away at this cover.
The goal here was to make the limited time I had in this space count. This beautiful home studio my wife encouraged me to create for myself in our house had to come down for a big remodel. But now I’m back online, eager to share what I’ve been cooking up.
Warren going Electronic?!
Since just before the pandemic, I began teaching myself synthesis, the basics of MIDI, and programming electronic instruments. I’ve taken on the mighty task of learning a few new instruments in a few short years.
I’ve been guilty of binging on geartube like everyone else… but slowly collected some instruments that spoke to me, moved on from the ones that didn’t, and started to learn how to wire them all up with my pedals in hopes of finding a whole new sound.
By 2022, I believed I’d found something. I reached out to a professional mixing engineer and producer in hopes of getting my debut album over the finish line… it’s been way too long (some of these songs are as old as 2010). I’m now nine songs in.
Through learning these instruments, a door to a whole new intimidating but thrilling experience has opened. I’m talking about the portal to a liminal space… one where where electronic music lives with acoustic instruments. Sometimes awkwardly, sometimes in pure sonic bliss.
This should be no surprise to any who have followed my journey that I’ve chased after artists like Thom Yorke, James Blake, Bon Iver, and Jai Paul for years. And every new artist I fall in love with has usually found a way to blend the synthetic with the organic. They’ve coaxed the spirit from the machine.
What genre is it? I never know how to answer this question.
And I’m still learning. But at this point, I wanted to give you a glimpse of what the madness has brought forth thus far. And humbly, I present a tribute to one of my favorite new songs (three albums ago already!) from The Smile, “A Hairdyer.”
(While the original features incredible drumming from Tom Skinner, I felt it would be better if I made it my own rather than attempt a mediocre rendition of it with my much slower drumming chops. As I sat down to record the various parts, the cover took on a life of its own. I hope that comes through.)
Until my debut albu, this is something I couldn’t be more proud to share with you all.
The Smile - “A Hairdryer”
Recording two detuned guitars, electric bass, four vocal tracks, learning the lyrics, a dreamy Prophet pad, some gnarly bass and arps from the Matriarch and Model D, sppoky ambient effects from the pedalboard, and a video montage was a lot of work… but I figured it would be a pretty good excuse to be back in your inboxes/notifications, yeah?
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