This was made in 2007.

I continued on with my growing enthusiasm for field recordings and samples, developing my approach further. I remember watching old WWII videos showing planes bombing targets, wondering what it might sound like to be in one of those bombers as they went about their business. I spent several days after that combining samples until I found something that agreed with me (heard up until 0:55).

Then I found an explosion sound that sounded great at the end of this. Then I found what I think was a shortwave radio sample that went well under this as a rhythmic textural loop. Then casually browsing Freesound for more field recordings, with the intention of keeping this a textural, non-musical affair, I found an awesome bass loop from this guy:

freesound.org/people/harri/

(Thanks, harri bionic! Hope you like what it's ended up in!)

I threw it into the mix to hear what it sounded like. I slowed the loop down and threw some distortion on it. Suddenly the track became musical in nature. This was exciting!

I got a huge burst of inspiration to start throwing in percussion (had always toyed with the idea of doing something freaky with bells in a track - let me know how I did), deciding to go for a 7/4 time signature in the first percussion part, 'cause why not? I then picked up my guitar and started jamming and recording until the wee hours of a Saturday morning.

I didn't let myself go to sleep yet. I spent a few more hours programming the drums you can hear before collapsing just as the sun came up. On Saturday evening I rearranged bits and removed the MIDI bass I'd been using in the later parts, painstakingly cutting up, combining, pitch-shifting and overlapping at least a dozen random bass loops to get that awesome slap-bass sounds you can hear, as well as what I can only describe as a 'twongy' underlying bass in the heavier parts.

I thought it would be fun to do something weird and ambient in the middle, just as an excuse to revisit harri's awesome loop. I went on to add a nice lead guitar bit with some wah-wah on it to revisit that funky Zappa-esque part I came up with previously, and then topped off the whole thing with a frantic and heavy ending.

At the end I thought why not, and added a novel antique turntable sample to finish it off, finding the texture to well match other textural samples I'd used so far. After some exploration I found that the sample also sounded good laid under the beginning of the song too.

Come Sunday night and a couple of power naps later, I had the track you hear now (without the slightly better polish it's got currently). I listened to it dozens of times.

Eventually, what with the war noises at the beginning and all the strange sophisication hidden in this dynamic, weird-as-hell track, I chose to call it Oligarchy. Not sure the association really is all that strong, but eh, poetic license (he says as he frowns and squints, then rubs and pinches the bridge of his nose looking downwards, a bit tired, completing the expression with a dismissive half-wave in the audience's general direction).

This track was a hell of a lot of fun to make, equally to listen to. Hope you find the same value in it!

(The photo I used is from here: www.ww2incolor.com/news/site-updates/15-astonishing-world-war-2-photos-that-bomb-your-senses and the license harri's loop is used under is here: creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode)