Requested by Ken Ostrander.It seems a while since I took drastic liberties with a song, so today, with the help of a copy of the newly mastered longform Butterfly Distractions session, I did so. And yet not... a lot of the essential elements of the original are present on my cover. Jittery dance beats, paranoia and confusion, synth washes, and power chords in the right place... all there. The fact that the chord sequence is at best implied and often worked against by the pre-recorded Butterfly jam makes for some really interesting tonal collisions. It's part experimentalism and part practicality; Miranda's bass playing is very discernible on the Butterfly recording, and it would've interfered with any other bass I might've added. I could have processed or EQed her bass down, but that would've compromised the recording of all the guitars as well, and I didn't want that, and as it shaped up, the colors provided by those occasional bass notes and the lock grooves working against the tempo of the drum loops created some of the coolest moments.
I'm not the world's biggest Duran Duran fan, but working on a song like this makes me take a closer look, which was always one of my goals for myself on this project journey deal thingy.
Personnel:
BUTTERFLY DISTRACTION:
Miranda Broome ~ bass
Rex Broome ~ guitar
Derek Hanna ~ guitar
Clifford Ulrich ~ guitar
Vocals, additional guitar, keyboards, loops and editing by Rex
Butterfly Distraction performance extracted from the improvised composition "In Between Half Birthdays", available here.
wowey wow wow! i was hoping you would do something different with this and you came through in spades! i hear shades of joy division and tom waits and eno and gang of four. sorry it took me so long to find it. i've been distracted myself this week with river starting a new school. this all seems very appropriate.
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