How I wrote Elastic Man
Bad Astrology, the annotated version
Life itself is an exile. The way home is not the way back.
― Colin Wilson
It’s not every day that my band releases a full-length LP, on black vinyl.
Here it is - Bad Astrology, ZR017 on Zelle records, vinyl pressed at Holiday Records’ New Zealand plant.
I’m going to discuss the writing and recording of every track, but first a little news about the band, because there have been changes since The New Existentialists’ last album, the 2020 Lockdown Project Didn’t Have Time - work in progress 2019-2020. Then, we were a three-piece with Ned Bycroft on drums and Jamey “Danger” Holloway on bass. Jamey’s a natural-born guitarist - as you can hear on this album, where he adds colourful solos and punchy chops through most of the songs, allowing me to stand back in awe at times - so having him on bass resulted in a complex, almost proggy feel, which we’ve retained on a couple of songs here - ‘I Don’t Need The Light’ and ‘The Love Commandments’ - by moving him back from guitar to bass, which is mostly played by newer recruit Andrew Moore. Andy’s bass style, combined with Ned’s “long distance drummer” consistency, gives a looser, deeper “feel” to the bottom end - veteran of countless bands he’s also the acclaimed director of the skateboarding film No More Heroes and award-winning co-director of the King Loser film. On Didn’t Have Time all the synths were played by me and producer Fray Fray, on Bad Astrology the more striking synth effects are created by Pat Faigan, AKA Godfather of Kiwi gonzo Duane Zarakov (The Axel Grinders, Space Dust), using the presets on my old iPad in ways I can’t begin to emulate. The album was produced in three sessions over 2 or 3 years in the West Auckland studio of Matthew Heine (S.P.U.D, Solid Gold Hell), who brought a fine Metal sensibility to proceedings and contributed a couple of guitar parts (Matthew’s also filled in on drums a couple of times for live sets when Ned’s been too busy, so the producer’s kind of a member of the band, which is super cool). The tracks were mastered by Angus McNaughton, and the wonderful cover art is by Hayley Theyers.
Bad Astrology is released by Zelle Records of Vienna Austria, run by a great fan and friend of New Zealand music, Arno Loeffler, and pressed by Holiday Records in New Zealand; hard copies can be bought at Flying Out stores in a couple of days.
https://flyingout.co.nz/products/the-new-existentialistsbad-astrology-vinyl-lp
500 YEAR
This song, composed in 2022, could be seen as my poptimism manifesto, though I hadn’t heard that term back then. I was in freefall down the rabbithole of internet music but all I could see and hear in my real life was the Mojo aesthetic, everyone in my timeline sharing yet another Kinks re-issue or Velvet Underground tribute act. No-one wanted what I wanted and the expectation was that, in my right mind, I wouldn’t either. Finally I’d had enough and started this blog, but before that I wrote 500 YEAR. The style was influenced by listening to Rapley’s Dirtbag Radio show on BFM and the 13th Floor Elevators, whom I’d never really cared about before, believe it or not. Sometimes, new music helps you hear old music. The title refers to the 1979-1981 TV show Buck Rodgers in the 25th Century, and Buck’s struggle with the electro-disco music of future Earth, which I’d always found amusing, but also hints at Bob Marley and the Wailers via ‘400 Years’, because there’s never been a better time to free yourself from mental slavery.
Last Days of the Internet
I started this song in 2019 with the hook and one lyric: “you were the last girl on the internet, it’s broken now”. Over the next couple of years I watched the internet implode and the tribes I thought I belonged to scatter into warring factions and isolated, frightened refugees like everyone else. It’s all in the song. Jamey’s guitar licks reveal a debt to David Mitchell (3Ds, Goblin Mix) but there’s also a Dylanesque interaction with my Jen Brio P-49 organ figures. Sealing the deal are Pat’s synth tones, including a sub bass that distorts the top end nicely in places. Hayley and Andrew made the official video, which includes among its cast cultural figures including artist Andrew McLeod, arts catalyst Aimée Ralfini, Auckland’s answer to Alex Jones, Jeremy Draper, and Elfie the kelpie, RIP.
Changes 9
I wanted to write a new love song for my lady, but I wasn’t ready to slow down. In the modern tradition, this is a very short song, and it’s driven harder and harder as it goes by Ned’s kick pedal. I’m especially proud of the snappy turn-around in the middle - you can just do that. I’m singing through an ancient Bakelite condenser mic that was used long ago by RNZ announcers. The title? Everyone’s in therapy, right? How many Germans does it take to change a lightbulb?
Conflict w/t Authorities
This is, practically unchanged, a song I wrote for The Spies in Wellington in 1979. The line “how can I forgive them their silliness Frank” was a prompt from Bill Vosburgh, who I’d only just met. I thought for a long time that my emo lyric was a bit immature but the older I get the more I relate to it, as you’ll notice as this album unfolds. In the production we’re going for a “dark Bowie” tone, which is the best Bowie.
I Don’t Need the Light
I came up with the title “I Don’t Need the Light to See the Way” in the early days of The New Existentialists, because I usually have psychedelic effects going on when it’s dark due to youthful over-indulgence. The song came into being one night in 2017 when I was watching Toa Fraser’s film The Dead Lands on Māori TV. There’s a scene where the hero falls into the underworld and meets his tūpuna (ancestors), and watching it I realised that my dead friends are very much my tūpuna, and that I meet them all the time, and that there ought to be a pop song about that. The arrangement is going for a ‘1979’ feel - it’s no ‘Psylocibin and Daisies’, but Matthew Heine’s acoustic overdub helps it along, and I’m also thinking of The Clientele in those jangle-pop bridges. This is one of the songs where Jamey plays bass and Andy plays a second guitar and sings backing vocals.
Bad Astrology
Andrew’s a bit of a pop mastermind himself, so we thought we should try to write a song together. One night, while Hayley was back in Transylvania, we took acid and fried our brains listening to neo-shoegaze and trap metal. In the early morning, we plugged in our axes and started up the Zoom h4n Pro. This is the song, pretty much as written on the night - you can hear our original demo, which I finished at home the same morning with some guitar overdubs, TD-3 sequences and Audacity effects, as the “Shoegaze Hell Mix” version on Soundcloud. If Bad Astrology was a film, it would be The Island Of Doctor Moreau.
Here’s a cool live version recorded by Hayley on the K; I’d been having Covid or something so my vocal goes off-pitch in ways I’d love to be able to replicate without an infection.
INVOCATION
The music for INVOCATION was written in 2022 when I was trying to work out what made the best trap metal so effective, how the chord changes seem to teeter on the brink of vertiginous drops. My original demo for the riff used Hayley’s backwards scream for a vocal. The song itself came into being after an experience of cosmic dread while contemplating climate change. Metal songs are meant to be scary? I know something that’s really terrifying.1 Ned excelled himself with that crashing drum intrusion, over Robert Mitchum’s demented scream. The instrumental breaks are deliberately protracted. Doom takes its time, but its footsteps ring loud to a sensitive soul. Christchurch underground rock legend Pat Faigan summoned those weird and tormented Air and Water synth sounds, and other Christchurch underground rock legend Brother Love lit three Fire guitars under Jamey’s Earth guitar soloing via the internet. Here’s the official video, directed by Hayley Theyers and shot in the Waitakere Ranges in the aftermath of Cyclone Gabrielle and the Lockdowns, which couldn’t be more perfect.
Operation Pedestal
Mike Love, not War. Time for another love song, this one written around a double-stopping guitar pattern in 3rds and 4ths that reminds me, if not you, of an Arthur Russell cover by a brass ensemble on the Red Hot & Blue compilation.
I wanted to use the version without the weird vocal effect but was over-ruled by the band and producer, so I asked Cosmo Potts (Frog Power) for a wonky internet guitar lead to match it. Matthew prepped us with the Holidaymakers ‘Sweet Lovers’ for that feel-good hit of the summer sound. See you at the beach!
Metaphor
Early on in my addiction to internet music, maybe early 2022, I was walking on Huia beach wondering about the method behind some too-easy seeming combinations of melody and beats and found myself composing the first verse of this song exactly as it is. Suddenly remembering this opening verse intact at home a couple of hours later, I worked out the chords and finished this tribute to the most important relationship in the life of an artist. Weirdly it has a kind of country rock feel when we play it but that’s okay. Because the verse is so good it simply repeats itself, producer and band have played around with this arrangement, towards the end dropping out the drums, and dropping in Andy’s tambourine, bass notes on Matthew’s slightly-out-of-tune piano, and a verse of Andy’s stylophone, while Jamey doubled up the bass part using the volume knob.
The Garden of Earthly Delights
A short, fast punk-pop song about internet psychology, see ‘Changes 9’ and ‘Last Days of the Internet’. Here’s an addictive drug that it takes millions of people being online to produce. The prosocial hit, the ultimate high. I don’t have much to add… but making the video with Andy at his Ruru 2 club was a lot of fun.
The Love Commandments
This song was begun on the same night as ‘I Don’t Need the Light’. The riff was inspired by a David Crosby tweet about his favourite guitar tuning, which, arpeggiated on a guitar with normal tuning, gave me this riff, and a 12-barish verse which I improved with a major scale melody on the 4 and an original chorus on the 5. The lyric is cult leader fantasy, possibly more Father Yod than Charlie Manson but if you want to surrender agency to me that’s your lookout. Extra tops on Ned’s drums and Australian guitar crawl pacing give it that hypnotic Lizard King vibe.
The Nerve
I’ve written lots of love songs but as someone who made music during post-punk’s anti-love austerity drive I can’t help critiquing the love song genre itself.2 The women in most of them seem interchangeable and, back in 2005, I wanted to write one that was unmistakably about the woman I love, and our life together. The Puddle recorded a fast version for Playboys In The Bush, which sounded good but for whatever reason didn’t make the final cut. TNE revisited The Nerve as spreadable Southern funk, in one take with no overdubs, and it worked. Jamey and I trade lead licks, or rather Jamey plays licks and I respond as best I can, the rhythm relaxes and so can you. All of the bad trips are over now, baby.
Whether it’s happening or not is Science, whether you believe it or not is Psychology.
The Puddle got together in 1984.