Loud Sounds 43
Cover photo: March Fry
"Loud Sounds" are some of the best new tracks we've found. We are coming back with the 43rd installment of the series.
Morty – ASTROLENS
Morty's ASTROLENS brings together deep bass, calming arpeggios, a rich percussive pattern and ghostly vocal chops to create what feels like a sonic equivalent of a night sky — the facade for the bottomless space. It evokes the profound feeling expressed in a classic poem by Afanasy Fet:
Upon a haystack in lands of South,
I lay, while facing skies of night,
The choir of stars, alive and couth,
Was trembling, spread at every side.
The earth, mute as a dream half-hidden,
Was fast receding into space,
And I, as if the first in Eden,
Alone met the black night's face.
Having worked as engineer and producer on records by many major label artists including engineering credits for such legends as Dr. Dre, Rodney Jerkins and Timbaland, Morty has a rich background in pop and hip-hop music and surely knows how to create a sense of drama in his electronic productions by both sonic and song structure means.
Morty's ASTROLENS brings together deep bass, calming arpeggios, a rich percussive pattern and ghostly vocal chops to create what feels like a sonic equivalent of a night sky — the facade for the bottomless space. It evokes the profound feeling expressed in a classic poem by Afanasy Fet:
Upon a haystack in lands of South,
I lay, while facing skies of night,
The choir of stars, alive and couth,
Was trembling, spread at every side.
The earth, mute as a dream half-hidden,
Was fast receding into space,
And I, as if the first in Eden,
Alone met the black night's face.
Having worked as engineer and producer on records by many major label artists including engineering credits for such legends as Dr. Dre, Rodney Jerkins and Timbaland, Morty has a rich background in pop and hip-hop music and surely knows how to create a sense of drama in his electronic productions by both sonic and song structure means.
Morty
ASTROLENS is the fourth song off my debut album that will be titled FIRST LIGHT scheduled for release on November 11, 2022. The title comes from my wife and I shooting nighttime photography and trying to come up with a good name for a the lens that we used for taking pictures of the night sky. Astrolens seemed to work!
I titled this song that because the ambient swirl of arpeggiated chords and melody in the intro just reminded me of the night sky & stargazing. I also imagine looking into a telescope when hearing the intro. Looking off into space and then finally seeing something really incredible when the bigger section of the intro drops in. Kinda of like a whoo moment.
I originally didn't have the added melody in the "first chorus" but thought it would be cool to put a Tycho-like synth melody in there. That then opened up the possibility for more melody throughout this song. As for production, it was recorded in my home studio during the 2020 pandemic lockdowns. All of the synth sounds are analog and either from a Sequential Prophet 6 or Prophet 12 keyboard. The bass is from a Moog Sub37. All of the drum samples or vocal chops are chopped up loops or one shots from Splice. I mixed it and it was mastered by Shawn Hatfield.
A little background about me...I come from a professional pop and hip hop background as a recording engineer so I naturally tend to structure all of my music that way compared to a lot of other electronic music I listen to. I'm also a drummer so you'll most likely find a lot of varied percussion elements throughout my music. It wasn't till Coachella in 2014 that I even started thinking about creating an artist project or really even listening to electronic music for that matter. Now I can't get enough of it and even started a Spotify Music + Talk show in a radio show format to find interesting tracks to bring the spotlight on & talk about it publicly.
I titled this song that because the ambient swirl of arpeggiated chords and melody in the intro just reminded me of the night sky & stargazing. I also imagine looking into a telescope when hearing the intro. Looking off into space and then finally seeing something really incredible when the bigger section of the intro drops in. Kinda of like a whoo moment.
I originally didn't have the added melody in the "first chorus" but thought it would be cool to put a Tycho-like synth melody in there. That then opened up the possibility for more melody throughout this song. As for production, it was recorded in my home studio during the 2020 pandemic lockdowns. All of the synth sounds are analog and either from a Sequential Prophet 6 or Prophet 12 keyboard. The bass is from a Moog Sub37. All of the drum samples or vocal chops are chopped up loops or one shots from Splice. I mixed it and it was mastered by Shawn Hatfield.
A little background about me...I come from a professional pop and hip hop background as a recording engineer so I naturally tend to structure all of my music that way compared to a lot of other electronic music I listen to. I'm also a drummer so you'll most likely find a lot of varied percussion elements throughout my music. It wasn't till Coachella in 2014 that I even started thinking about creating an artist project or really even listening to electronic music for that matter. Now I can't get enough of it and even started a Spotify Music + Talk show in a radio show format to find interesting tracks to bring the spotlight on & talk about it publicly.
Also check out his excellent previous single SHIFTY.
March Fry – Waiting Up
March Fry's new single with its slow groove, calming melodies and fresh-sounding psychedelic guitar tones is a perfect example of modern sophisti-pop. We can't wait to hear which direction she takes on further.
March Fry's new single with its slow groove, calming melodies and fresh-sounding psychedelic guitar tones is a perfect example of modern sophisti-pop. We can't wait to hear which direction she takes on further.
March Fry
'Waiting Up' was an interesting, fun and sort of arduous process. My producer Amyrion and I built the foundation for instrumental and wrote a completely different melody and lyrics to the song, sort of lost faith in it and put it on the shelf. One day we opened it back up and the song just started to flow out between us lyrically/melodically and we spent an entire session day writing. After we had pieced the melodies together, we just started tuning into the sound design and really creating a unique sonic palate. The chorus especially is an ode to timeless melodies and songwriters such as Stevie Wonder but we really wanted to capture that chill, dreamy, psychedelic west coast vibe with a classic songwriting approach. It's definitely a song about yearning and the clarity in hindsight, which is always a really potent theme in relationships. It's a lighthearted approach to a weighty topic with a sunny disposition and maybe even a little humor.
