Process Journal 4

Nov 8, 2024

4 min read

Surprisingly, I found GarageBand hard to leave behind. Even after the completion of the EP’s title track, I found myself jonesing to swoop back around and put the finishing touches on things. In the background of the production of the main three tracks, I was trying to use the leftover scraps from each one to make another one, something I was calling “Bits and Pieces” as a reference to “Weird Science” by Oingo Boingo, which was one of the inspirations for the project as a whole. Ultimately, I decided to go in another direction.

Before that, I returned to “Club Luna” and cleaned it up. At the time, it felt great to have a completed track, but upon re-listening, its construction felt pretty shoddy and had random loops just to put a band-aid over my inexperience. Going back, I wanted to retain the sound profile of those loops with self-composed parts, which I think I accomplished. I even found a way to keep the “Never Gonna Give You Up” chords in there. While a little less bombastic, “Club Luna” feels and sounds a whole lot more complete.

Afterwards, I stumbled upon this short video called “we need jungle (i’m afraid)” by starpowerdrummer. On a whim, I gave the video a shot and was then introduced to the world of jungle music. The clip that starpowerdrummer is drumming over seems to come from a very British game show. The clip has gone on to become a bit infamous, sparking more than just starpowerdrummer to perform jungle beats over the clip itself. (This remix seems to be the one that starpowerdrummer is covering.) Online, Jungle is more associated with PS2-era video games, particularly racing games, than its rave and club roots. Most guides on the subject, like this one by christhescientist, specifically mention wanting to mimic the sounds of 90’s/2000’s era video game OSTs.

I watched a micro-documentary on the subject by “What Makes Something Jungle?” by Resident Advisor, a seriously well-produced little video that cracked my world wide open. As a fan of dance music genres like house and techno, I loved a deep-dive into another dance genre I had heard before but couldn’t name. I needed Jungle, I’m afraid. I thought about infusing Club Lunda with some Jungle, but instead, pulled the plug on “Bits and Pieces,” (which wasn’t going anywhere, if we’re being honest), and started fresh with the EP’s one and only bonus track.

The Resident Advisor doc mentions that many Jungle tracks incorporate samples from movies of the time. Jungle itself is built off of samples, so I felt that if I didn’t try my hand, then I wasn’t doing it right. I recently watched “The Substance,” which features an instantly memorable line-read from Margaret Qualley shouting “CON-TROL YOUR-SELF!” which made for an effective intro. “The Substance” was more than just inspiration for the intro, as its unique brand of bio-organic sci-fi inspired the gloopy techno sounds on top of the breakbeat loop. I didn’t feel bad using a loop for the percussion this time since that's how the Jungle greats started with their samples of 70’s funk breakbeats.

The song went through a few names, my favorite of which was “Control Substance,” just to be indulgent. I settled on “Acid Arcade (I Can’t Take It Anymore)” to keep in line with the nomenclature of the rest of the titles. I imagine this plays in the Resonance Hotel’s arcade. I procured my sound bite of my good friend Steven Flickinger shouting “I can’t take it anymore!” to incorporate here. It felt appropriate.

The last thing I did was create some album art for The Resonance Hotel EP. I tinkered around with Canva’s presets until I found one that was nearly there. None were exactly what I wanted. In my head, I imagine the cover would be some cracked laminate surface with the image of a castle with lighting crashing behind it on the other side. Instead, I went with something that emulated the sound of the project. The art I picked is the cover to one of my favorite comic books, “Y: The Last Man” #15, by J.G. Jones. The image of the skeleton in the spacesuit has stuck with me for years, and I think it represents the cross-section of fantasy and sci-fi that the album inhabits. (It also evokes Arctic Monkeys' "Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino", another influence on this project.)

Looking back, the amount of progress I’ve made is staggering. It took me two weeks to make my first song and now I’m making entirely new ones in less than a day. Of course, they’re still amateurish and missing a lot of parts, but I was at least able to execute on my creative vision, which makes up for a lot of doubts and insecurities I have about these tracks. My pipe dream was that I’d actually have a complete EP, but now that I’ve actually done it, it's a little surreal. Three songs a bonus track does not make a musician, but it's more than I had a few weeks ago, which is enough.

Links to Tutorials: Updated