I started initiating songs with just simple, understated guitar parts – not chord progressions, not riffs – to leave room in the mix for other types of sonics like synth and layered vocals. That led me to try experimenting with speed.
And I don’t mean drugs. I’m talking about how fast the music is going. Set Reaper to vary the pitch along with the speed – just like you would with tape – and you can build up layers of vocals that become a mesh of different frequency profiles. This technique, sometimes called “varispeed” was used extensively in Motown to produce the famous “wall of sound,” and was used heavily as an effect by proto-shoegaze band My Bloody Valentine.
Dream was the most developed song I had going on when I decided I was done with the “album.” I wanted to release digital singles and videos. So this became the first of five around this time period.
The video was shot in one night in my room. I only had a vague idea in mind about backwards subjectivity – that a dream is an inward gaze that looks out at the rest of experience. So I came up with the idea of the eyes stuck on a movie screen while a film plays outside of it – a film that the screen is also the subject of. Of course, that analysis is totally after the fact. I’m just glad it worked.
The B side here is just a digital fourtrack sketch I made at some point.