Album: One (2011)
Track: April
Enter the TesseracT:
The track begins with clean electric guitar saturated with a washy delay. The drums and bass guitar enter together sitting a great deal louder in the mix. The effect of this is a fairly dramatic entry both volume wise and rhythm wise. Only drums and bass are heard for eight bars before the lead vocal enters with the return of the guitar.
Engine room:
The rhythmic base is broken into two layers. The first is the china crash playing quarter notes. This is mixed relatively loud - it stands out against all other sounds. Under this straight rhythm is a syncopated groove powered by the kick drum and bass guitar. In between these layers is the back beat provided by the snare.
Slappin' da bass, mon:
The performance technique applied to the bass guitar in the opening section is called slap. It creates short stabs of bass with quieter reflex sounds in between. This is similar to and compliments the ghost notes (soft strokes) played between the snare accents. The roll of the bass in this track is linked tightly to the kick drum. The short, sharp and odd rhythms are driven take priority over melodic purpose for the most part.
Space:
This song is quite thick in sound - it has the 'wall of sound' created by many saturated simultaneous sounds. All the vocals are fitted out with long tailed delays and 'ghostly' reverb. At times I have a strong feeling that they are double tracked also.
Two guitars:
There are two guitar parts to be heard in most sections. One plays a long and high melody over each four bars whilst the other plays a short and lower pattern. The second has a close relationship with the bass in some parts of the arrangement.
Pounding low, washing high:
The way I think best describes the sound structure of this track is rhythmic lows and washy highs. In the higher register there is a wash of cymbals, guitars and vocals. Each of these sounds have long tails and mix into each other quite a bit. Beneath is the rhythm provided by the kick, snare and bass guitar. Due to the rhythmic complexity of their parts the snappiness of sound is highly important. We are faced with a wall of sound through which the low end rhythm punches through to our chest.
Production and release:
The producers of One were Acle Kahney and Amos Williams. It was released on Century Media.
No comments:
Post a Comment