Zephyr Device

Fugitive Plastic

Author's Commentary

Adam:

This song was built from an ancient bassline. I had this dinosaur of a bassline that we all thought was just too fucking cool to not be in a song. Bill and I had tried to work it into some Meltdowns stuff, but it really didn't seem to fit there at all. However, it was absolutely fucking perfect for ZD. Working with that first bassline and just messing around in Bill's apartment, we very quickly wrote four distinct parts for the song; the first part based on that initial line, a second part that is more straightforward less dance, a really big instrumental bridge complete with tom rolls and multiple guitars, and strange salsa-esque part which morphs into psychedelic Acid Mothers Temple salsa to end the tune.

“ I think Satan planted that bassline in my brain.

For part one, I had nothing but dancing in mind, not really any particular artist or genre. I think Satan planted that bassline in my brain. Parts two and three I must admit that I was thinking a little bit about Yo La Tengo and M83 (mixed with a little bit of old skool Heavy Metal), and the Fugazi brain was fully active in coming up with the Salsa thing. Although, I cannot recall any moments in which Fugazi made anything that seemed even remotely close to salsa. I probably intended it to not sound anything like salsa at all, but Bill picked that up and we ran with it.

I added a little distortion and chorus to the bass in the song to give it that cheesy 80's "wet" feel. Andrew's vocal performance - especially with all the hard work he did on overdubs - is absolutely fucking perfect. We could do this song 200 more times and I don't think his vocals would ever get better. Bill and I even get in on the vocal overdub act a little bit.

“ Conan, what is best in life? To create, to love, and to continue.

A specific memory, I can recall Bill exclaiming during practicing this song one day that this was "exactly the kind of music" he wanted to be making. I lamented not being able to perform this stuff live for people. Conan, what is best in life? To create, to love, and to continue.

The last little bit has me hitting some kitchen pots, & all of us working it out on some hand drums.

Billy:

Fugitive Plastic is the first song we did in which each movement goes right into the next. Unlike "Target Market" and "White Collar Nomads", there was no need to have actual pauses in the music to separate the movements, one flowed to the next rather seamlessly. Perversely, this song also gave us the most trouble, in terms of writing the music. We went through so many many many riffs the night we set about writing this song, and for the first movement we ended up going with this bassline that Adam had written months before, this deranged and shifting hip-hop/funk bassline he had originally penned for a Meltdowns concept. I love the evil-sounding minor sixth and second that he hits in the middle of the phrase. For the first few weeks after we wrote this song, I just mimicked his bassline because it was so weird; I could not figure out what else to do.

“ I was obsessed with Jimi Hendrix and Sonic Youth, and clearly these things were made for each other.

This ended up being, however, one of the few guitar parts I had down and practiced prior to recording. We had recorded Andrew's vocals with the bass already, and Adam had this drumbeat programmed with a kind of A and B variation that was very distinct, so I tried to write The Riffs™ with that in mind, one being very flowly and low, the other being very choppy and funk, and at a slightly higher register. And from there I couldn't help but keep it moving. I didn't want to get comfortable and just play the same two things over and over, so the difficulty in recording the part came in recording an improvised performance of a composed part that didn't have any flubs and was actually interesting, matching the vocals and all. At the same time, I was trying not to compete with Andrew's vocals, so I had to keep the improvisation from getting too wiggity-whack but still give it that sound of driving desperation.

The second movement was a jam that somehow grew out of the first bassline. I think Adam just messed with something after we stopped, and something in my brain went "no, wait! that's it!" For whatever reason, the bassline hit my music brain's G-Spot.

Billy writing last-minute parts

Back in high school I would plug my guitar into all these old effect units (a Roland SpaceEcho, a Mutron Bi-Phase, various other things) and I would turn all the lights off, revealing the ceiling of my bedroom covered in glow-in-the-dark stars. In fact, the ceiling fan had glow-in-the-dark paint on the blades. I spent hours trying to trip myself out by doing my best Sonic Youth impressions (sans intoxicants [little access to drugs], too, I was all about losing my mind by entrancing myself). I was obsessed with Jimi Hendrix and Sonic Youth, and clearly these things were made for each other. At one point in one of my first bands I had experienced this incredible rush, this out of body, ecstatic, orgasmic feeling while performing, being totally wrapped up in the moment, the music, the enormity of it all, and I was constantly trying to get back there. People who were clearly out of their minds and feeling it while performing became my idols.

So halfway through the second movement of this tune, when Andrew's vocals drop out and the bass shifts register, I drop right into psychedelic-youth-bedroom-mode, winging it and trying to make it as fantastic sounding as possible. Although nowadays I try to do that with far fewer effects. In this tune, it's just the distortion of my amplifier, hot Fender reverb coils, and a Boss DD3 delay pedal. Do you hear what sounds like keyboards making choral voices during the guitar solo's shred fest? Me too. I asked Adam if he put those there. That's actually the first guitar solo, moved to the background. That high 'booooo' that kicks off the second movement is some harmonic noise I made with my guitar by accident during recording that Adam found while mixing, and boosted the gain. I love happy accidents like that.

“ People who were clearly out of their minds and feeling it while performing became my idols.

The third movement: I had been listening to Repeater + 3 Songs quite a bit around the time that we wrote this part. The goal was to give the piece something melodic with a bit of teeth, but still fitting the raggae feel that I felt Adam had goin' on with the drum beat and the bass part. I'm not sure who made this drum beat. Probably Adam. Looking back on it, I think we ought to have given Andrew something a little more punk here, but we spent mad long coming up with that part, and I'm proud that we got there.

Adam and I spent so long on the third movement, attempting to find a modulation, and ended up not only changing key, but the part as well, yielding this outro movement. The intent was to continue with the chill vibe (before the storm!) with a lot of spacey whispyness, hand drums with heavy phaser, a spoon banging a glass, a drifiting and meandering guitar (thru the Mutron Bi-phase). That little "wissssshhhhhh!" that you hear going up and down in pitch from one ear to the next is the inadvertant result, I think, of some phase-shifting done in software to the drums that instead picked up microphone line noise. I don't really know, but it's perfect!

The music nerd in me really enjoys what's going on in these last two movements because the bass and guitar parts are rather distinct, each has it's own voice, and at no point does one play the other's part [i think?] (and after all that, they still sound good together).

Andrew:

“ Clothes don't give two shits about you or your first dates or your big speeches or your important meetings or your first day at school

I won't go into too much detail with this song because I think the lyrics are straight forward and self-explanatory. This song is about how silly and disgusting and superficial the commercial fashion industry is in America. Unfortunately, fashion has now fused with medicine and people see nose jobs and tummy tucks and chin implants and brow lifts and tattooed blush and eye shadow as fashion accessories thanks to unethical shows and celebrity-inspired appearance obsession. Which came first, the desire to have fake tits or the show about fake tits you ask? Ah, that is what the philosophers and Bob Dylan and Paul Simon and the Others think about in those special dreams that humans sometimes have, the ones in which we realize we are dreaming yet continue to stay submerged in the dream and feel as though we can tap into the thoughts of the ancient salt in our tears and the feelings of old clouds, and that tit dilemma, if solved, could reveal the key to saving some wretches from dying as desperate, scarred, human Barbie Dolls, it could clearly illuminate the flaws in the educational achievement gap, it could help us understand why presidents and world leaders easily float to the top of the scum even when their consciences are heavy and weighted with grave pasts. Which came first, the yearning for the tit or the show about tit yearning?

The image that started the initial run for this song was a woman nervously rushing into a store and exhaling as she crossed the threshold as if she didn't fit into the outside world and only felt comfortable inside the security of a clothing store. I then moved to the image of college-aged, ultra-skinny women walking catwalk-style down "family beaches" like Ocean City, New Jersey and making the married men drool and fantasize. I think that it's criminal what the fashion industry is doing to America's youth and adult population. Girls feel fat if they're healthy. How seriously can a society give guidance to other countries and invest time in its own domestic social philosophies when its own girls think that appearance takes priority over health?

“ There's a massive pile of them rotting away in every thrift store in America

I pictured my father as a "checkbook commander" reprimanding my mother for buying unneeded things (she's not a "fabric addict" but she maintains equilibrium in their relationship by filling the role of buyer which forces my father to fill role of budget monitor). I pictured tiny children, or teenage children, making clothes in distant factories, behavior that never receives a just amount of coverage in different media. The image that struck me most and was most clear in my mind when I wrote this piece is the image in which a person is quietly standing in a dark closet, pushing up against still-price-tagged dresses, smelling the new-clothes-smell, and wishing that the clothes could fix a problem that really has nothing to do with clothes or anything that can be bought. I love how Bill and Adam did the "Movado aficionados" section with all of the Oooing and Ahhing in the background.

Seriously, how much money can we reasonably spend on things that shrink in high temperatures, things that hold and cherish a random splatter of ketchup for years like it's a divine teardrop? Investing in clothes is just plain absurd, yet people do it. I really like the overdubs for the "in" sounds in the "investment" section. That section is a good example of something that was born out of a sound and my attempt at trying to repeat that sound many times in a short section using different words. I really like the "oogling" and "drooling" and "boobies" progression just because it's fun to try to seriously use the word "boobies" in any piece of writing. "Pointy heels jab at foot fat and don't look back" is about how unforgiving clothes are despite the fact that people feel they bond with their outfits, their favorite shirts, their favorite shoes. Clothes don't give two shits about you or your first dates or your big speeches or your important meetings or your first day at school, so I see no point in treating them as if they do, as if they'll save you from getting the axe at work or as if they'll snuggle with you in front of a warm fireplace on a blustery night and read you a particularly comforting passage from Little Women. They're just clothes people! The keep us warm, hold our boobies in place in the gym, and protect us from the sun. Yes, couture fashion can be extremely artistic, but the clothes that average folks spend their children's college savings on are usually safe clothes that don't possess a shred of conformity-shattering artistry and demand a high price only because so-and-so's name is stamped on the label or lapel. They're just clothes people, and there's a massive pile of them rotting away in every thrift store in America because of our obsession with looking like we just finished up a sweat-free round at the polo club.

She enters stores and exhales Basks under bright lights in the pale Glow of plush deco, a bare bones boutique That seeks the roaming fashion leeches

I imagined these "fashion leeches" using family beaches like Ocean City, New Jersey as a runway, strutting their bikini's that are better suited for college-meat-market-beaches like those in Cancun, Mexico or some similar place.

Zephyr Device

"Departure"

Lyrics

Authors' Commentary

Fugitive Plastic

Author's Commentary

Adam:

Billy:

Andrew: