In the final month of 2005, after hiring a lawyer and going to court, it was decided that I would have custody of my daughter and that I could fly out right away to get her. Currently she was in the custody of children's aid for reasons I won't get into and which aren't important now, but this was the reason for this whole legal campaign in the first place.
I had never been on a plane before and have a terrible phobia of them, but I was prepared (somehow) to do this in spite of my fear. While I was visiting with my daughter in a private and supervised setting, the decision was overturned in a court there, and I was effectively cut out of the loop. It was my last ditch effort to get her back and I'd sunk all my money into the effort, and had no more ammo.
When I got back, I wrote this song.
Everything in this arrangement means something, and I didn't realize it until the song was complete, and I was able to decode it. I listened to this while falling asleep one night, and it was as if the music was speaking narrative to me, and this is what it said:
strings = fate
syncopated bassline = time
analog synth, medium range = my daughter
tech hits = me
saw bass in time = red tape
percussion = emotions/flight
warbly pad = opposition
vocals = subconscious
With this legend, It accurately tells the story of this trip, from my anxiety at prospect of the flight, being out of control of the craft, the anticipation of seeing my child again, of being with her, and then having it all taken away.
The vocals and plane samples were overdubbed in 2007 during mastering. I thought it needed something at about the halfway point when the big buildup happens, and these words just came to me: "I feel it coming down to this..." ...when I started to sing along to the track looking for melodies. It reminded me of my song Waiting For The Axe To Fall, and I remembered feeling something along those lines when I was flying out there... that the whole thing was too good to be true, and that something was bound to go wrong.
Because I was so obsessed with this song, I continued to explore it after the original version was done, and the first bonafide remix of it to get completed, was Return To Flight Deck. The remix was done expressly for the Glory album, but also ended up on the single before that release.
By the time 2006 rolled around, I had made peace with my ex regarding the legal custody battle we'd had the year before, and we agreed that I would still be allowed to see my daughter whenever I wanted, so I made arrangements to fly out that summer. Return To Flight Deck is a musical montage of my ten day trip. It's a lot lighter and less desperate sounding than the original because there was no pressure. It was a vacation to a place I'd never been, and so the remix has kind of an Ibiza feel, because of that.
The amount of work that has gone into this track spans about nine months. The base track was done first, then had to be mostly redone, due to a hard drive failure, then the keyboards were overdubbed, then the vocal track was added in 2007 along with the original version, and then several soft synths had to be replaced because of further computer issues I was having. But the result was worth the effort.
At one point I had done a dub version of this arrangement, but I seem to have lost the source files since then.
The Immaculate Contraption remixes started out as a possible version for Glory, but I was having frequent troubles with the arrangement, so I scrubbed the idea for several months. I rediscovered it in 2007 when going through my detritus of chiptunes trying to decide which ones were worthy of deletion. I heard this one again, and finished it off immediately, and it was the reason I decided to make Flight Deck a single. Without really intending to do so, I ended up slicing, retriggering and filtering the string part so that it sounded reminiscent of Royal House's Can You Party. It became the YYZ Remix.
The counterpart to this remix is the YVR Dub. As frequent flyers might know, YYZ is the airport designation for Toronto Pearson International. YVR is Vancouver's airport. So this all ties in with the original context of the song.
The Daniel B Remix: My longtime Internet chat buddy Daniel B from the UK was also messing about in FL Studio, and I asked him if he'd consider trying his hand at a remix of the track for the single. He agreed, and I sent him the various bits of the multi track over cyberspace. There were a lot of problems, however, with the file transfers in general, which was neither of our faults, but it was slow going, and I wasn't sure this would get completed in time for the release date. He had sent me several different takes on his version of the mix, ranging in intensities and sounds, but in the end we decided on this one, which was only half completed by the time it was t-minus one week. When I got the file parts to plug into the software, several of the samples he'd used failed to work on my end. This was also neither of our faults, just the nature of intercontinental collaboration and computers as a whole.
So I had to come up with a different arrangement and progression based on his ideas. I used some of the percussive elements from Return To Flight Deck including the drums, and added the breakdown and piano line in the middle. What I really like about his arrangement was that it was in a different key than the original, and the chords were slightly altered, so even though it was based on the idea of Flight Deck, it was a completely new production, using only one really recognizable part from the original. I came to regard this remix as the theme song for my third trip to see my daughter in summer of 2007. It's by far my favourite incarnation of the track.
Finally, the YYT Mix was a track I put together for a 2009 remix bundle, using a couple of elements from the original music, but mostly it a rhythm exploration in a house/trance style.
VERSIONS
- The Flight Deck (10:49)
written, produced and arranged by Perpetual Emotion Machine.
2005: The full length instrumental. Earlier bundles of Omega featured this arrangement, without the vocals and effects overdubs. unreleased. - The Flight Deck Suite (10:00)
written, produced and arranged by Perpetual Emotion Machine.
2006: Album version -- identical to the full length version, but without the string intro, and the last remaining bars of Reunion overdubbed at the beginning, the two tracks combining seamlessly as one track. - The Flight Deck (Full Length) (10:49)
written, produced and arranged by Perpetual Emotion Machine.
2007: The full length single version features the string intro.
- The Flight Deck (Edit) (3:46)
written, produced and arranged by Perpetual Emotion Machine.
2007: A different arrangement from the full length mix. It was quite a task getting a ten-minute track down to under 4 minutes, I can tell you.
PREVIEW
- Return To Flight Deck (8:40)
written, produced and arranged by Perpetual Emotion Machine. keyboards by Archibald Macdonald
A new production of the track, taken from a more 'chill-out' sensibility.
- Return To Flight Deck (OCIII Live Dub) (7:59)
written, produced and arranged by Perpetual Emotion Machine. keyboards by Archibald Macdonald
2006: An alternate take/dub of the 'return', featuring more of Archie's sessions, somehow lost along the way... unreleased. - The Flight Deck (YYZ Remix) (8:40)
written, produced and arranged by Perpetual Emotion Machine. remixed by The Immaculate Contraption.
unreleased production exclusively for The Flight Deck single release.
- The Flight Deck (Red Bull Edit) (5:55)
written, produced and arranged by Perpetual Emotion Machine. remixed by The Immaculate Contraption.
Edit of the YYZ Remix, intended for demo submission to the Red Bull Music Academy, 2007.
- ">The Flight Deck (YVR Dub) (8:37)
written, produced and arranged by Perpetual Emotion Machine. remixed by The Immaculate Contraption.
Stripped down dub version of the YYZ Remix.
- The Flight Deck (DNA Dub) (2:56)
written, produced and arranged by Perpetual Emotion Machine. remixed by The Immaculate Contraption.
An alternate version of the YVR Dub, created specifially as background music for a friend who needed something for a Nexuis level he was working on. Designed to be looped infinitely during play. Not released officially.
- The Flight Deck (Daniel B Turbulence Mix) (8:21)
written, produced and arranged by Perpetual Emotion Machine. remixed by Daniel Bodenham.
Remix for the single.
- The Flight Deck (YYT Remix) (8:21)
written, produced and arranged by Perpetual Emotion Machine. remixed by Earl 3.
An entirely new remix done in the summer of 2009 for the Excursion remix bundle.
The FLIGHT DECK single is available for purchase at artists-first.net.
0 comments: