1. Come On Get Your Feelings Hurt (feat. Thirteen13)
Made this song out of a quiet drum sample of We’re Not Gonna Take It
and a Third Eye Blind cover of Blood Bank by Bon Iver
and a drum part of a Joan Jett cover of Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap by AC/DC
and a drum part of Violence by Blink 182
and Nightcore - Boulevard of Broken Dreams (Wild Cards Remix)
and Water Over Sex by Lala Lala (2 versions, one from the album, and layered with the drums from a live version)
and Damaged Goods by Gang Of Four
and OF COURSE the genius Thirteen13, I emailed him a bunch of track out of the blue and then we played a show together at a frat and he was like “by the way I wrote some stuff to those beat you sent me awhile ago! I’ll send you my parts!” and this whole part of song was ACTUALLY in a different song but that song never actually blossomed into anything and so it felt right to slice n dice and add it as a coda to Come On Get Your Feelings Hurt.
2. Wide Awake (feat Erne M)
Erne came over to my house and brought a million pedals over, we blasted the track a few times, Erne set up a mic thru those pedals and recorded some vocal tracks, haunted and powerful, a voice truly as an instrument, processed and transformed as one would any other instrument. At first the track was jarringly blasting from one chugging part into a full fledged plucking clean guitars and bending notes. But this was too much too quick, instead we took everything but Erne’s voice out, adding a vocal screech to play the role of that EDM style filter sweep type of thing to act as a bridge between the two parts. Adding in a big deep sub bass slam to take up the whole low end while Erne’s voice lives and morphs and builds while we then slowly bring in the guitars and the synths. We then took chops of Erne’s voice and went back thru the heavy parts of the track and sprinkled them in, unifying the track. It was an honor! We had met at a freaking show in Iowa City YEARS AND YEARS ago!! (7?8?) and have crossed paths sporadically ever since and Erne truly rescued and transformed this song in ways I could have never imagined. The rest of the stuff was all things I programmed or recorded on guitar, no samples here! All the guitar parts I recorded while back in Iowa over the summer.
3. type beat (feat. Rob Apollo)
I met Rob a few years ago we played a show in Saint Louis and I fuckin knew he had a creative passion and drive that I extremely related to. His shit goes extremely hard and he can do this amazing thing where he can be at times extremely sweet, while also being funny, while also being next level horny all at once. Most people fail to convey the interrelations of those three notions, mostly they got bogged down in one and force the listener to forget that they are all capable of existing simultaneously. But Rob is able to see clearly this holy trinity for what it is. I have been extremely honored to have played TWO fuckin album release shows for Rob’s albums like holy shit.
I made the beat to this song by searching “old town road type beat” and layered two of the results on top of one another. The guitar part comes from the audio of youtube video called Georgia Guidestones - The Mystery Decoded - New World Order & Secret Societies
4. Become What We Despise (feat. BaabyCaash, Pansy Vanian, 03sem, VBAK)
This song had a millllllllllliiiiiioooon different parts, well, it still kinda does but wow, before i started to really slice and dice and editorialize. Holy shit.
Eva (BaabyCaash) is come over to my house and I played her those million different parts, some mosh, some chill, some little plucky guitar, some EDM ass synth stabs (those didn’t end up in the end result) and she ended up finding a part she vibed with and wrote a part right there on the spot and recorded it fuckin instantly and frankly NAILED it. Then I had to figure out what the fuck to do with the rest of the track. I knew I wanted it to go from Eva’s rap part into that heavy ass mosh part. Tabi (03sem) suggested we should have a throwback to the mosh part to a different track I had made called Been Bitten, they recorded themselves yelling it with the lyrics switched up a little bit and suggested we also get Pansy to double it with a full on blast scream, they came over and just absolutely OWNED the take, sounding soooooo fucking powerful with their yell god DAAAAAMN!
At some point in all this I emailed Vishal (VBAK) the track and asked him to record his part, by now I at least had sequenced out the instrumental and knew which parts I wanted to go where. I sent it to him and I knew he would give me gold! You see me n Vishal go way back! We lived in Iowa at the same time, now he lives in the Bay Area and I live in New York. But I knew he would bring the passion and his work ethic is FUCKING AMAZING! He literally sent me NINE different performances of different moods and shit of his verse because he’s just that fucking next level, I think I went with number 7 if I am not mistaken.
5. Feel The Teeth
This track has been a millllllllion different things over the time I was working on it. At first it was just the trance blast part and the vocal loop sample from this Ships In The Night song. But then while back in Iowa in August I had the plan to somehow make it slam into a DIFFERENT song I been working on for an equal amount of time, but was not trance and was not nearly as fast! I needed a way to both make it transition both vibe wise as well as tempo wise. So I recorded some riff ass riffs and made them slow down slowly. A Thing I had been wanting to do conceptually for a bit because, given that all these songs are made in ableton, they are pretty locked in rhythmically, and so it feels kind of novel to make a song that is computerized to be rythmically perfect, do one of those things that mostly bands do, the slow slow down of the tempo. The intro also has a blast sound I got from a video of a guy selling guns. It also has a little loop of Metallica - ...And Justice for All (vocals only).
6. Whatever You Find Down There (feat Rainé Rainé)
This song is also no samples and all just recorded guitar and programmed drums and midi! Rainé and I have gone on tour together and they are…….. a fucking genius. I know this doesn’t have much to do with music per se, but they are SO good at TALKING and are SO god damn smart, like when I am having an inkling of an idea or some kind of opinion about something, Rainé will be able to soooooo succinctly communicate what I was trying to put into words from my brain. ANYWAYS, Rainé came over to get a tattoo from Tabi but while they were here we were like, u simply must slam out a little something on a track! So they sung their part and then was like “hmmm I think I want to double this in a kind of weird harmony kind of thing.” and then BOOM first fucking try they just nail this unhinged harmony part that is beyond my comprehension.
7. Kissin On The Beat (feat. Y.Samuel, Lashes)
This track came into concept from literally just, kissing on the beat! U ever kissed on the beat? it’s fun and nice! At one point i tried to add kiss sound effects actually on the beat, but the mix is already so damn busy that there was no way to really make it clear it was a kiss and not just some weird extra noise in the track! Anyways it has a chopped up scream that Lashes emailed to me, as well as a few different tracks by L.O.T.I.O.N. Multinational Corporation.
I played a show with Y.Samuel in Saint Louis, in fact at Rob Apollo’s album release show! Anyways we came up with the plan that we should make a track together! So I emailed him a bunch of early versions and he vibed with this one, some fuckin really sweet romantic delivery that was perfect to offset the kinda crunch of the drums at this part! The beat finishes with a remix of CKY song 96 Quite Bitter Beings as well as an acoustic guitar version layered on top of one another.
8. All Locked (feat. 03sem, Pelo Malo)
This is also a zero sample beat! It uses all guitar and midi stuff. I downloaded a version of Massive (the vst) but it was only a demo so I couldn’t save the sounds or use it for more than 30 mins at a time, so I would write the parts and export each part using a few different presets. Then Tabi (03sem) listened to the first verse part on loop and came up with something and we slammed it out right there. We made up some adlibs, one including just saying “innit” over and over, then took the innit loop and pitched it around so if you listen real close you can hear tabi’s voice saying innit over and over in the pitches of the chorus. Aydin (Pelo Malo) recorded a verse that absolutely brought the entire track to the next level, which is perfect because even though the parts of the instrumental that he raps over are parts that I thought sounded cool and I knew should be in the song, I had NO IDEA what to put there, Aydin popped in there with this fuckin life saver!
9. Push It Down (feat. Thirteen13)
The intro to this track has a flute sound from a free jungle sample pack at Blue Marten .com, as well as the vocal clips and the tiny quiet piano chords in the intro. There’s also yelling from a video called My loudest and longest scream ever. This one has parts from Kaio (Thirteen13) that actually he recorded to an entirely different song but was the same tempo. In fact originally the whole part was all guitar but it just felt right to switch it up with a more pulsing bass ass type part.
10. If You Dig (feat. Chaz Monroe)
Every guitar part on this was written and recorded by Chaz! They came over and slammed out all the parts pretty much effortlessly, first take style. I added a bit of drums and sub bass but this is pretty much basically an all Chaz type beat! A long ass time went by and i finally ended up finding the vocal parts that would fit over it, and eventually also sent the beat back to Chaz, and they recorded their verse.
11. Crushing You To Death
This is all recorded honestly! I wrote all the piano stuff with a midi piano thing but ended up recording the piano with a real ass piano! everything else was kind of just whatever was laying around the recording space that I was working on all this in. I got access to a little space that a bunch of people shared when I was in Iowa for a sec, and just kind of used anything that happened to be around the space, the arpeggio of the bass in triplets, the synth stuff at the end. All things that happened to be there at the time.