The Making of “Sleep Through the Quiet Lust”

Lyrics and music inspired by 2 dreams from 5/20/2020 and 7/17/2020

Written June 2021

The lyrics weren’t about the events of any dream in particular, although they are about sleeping/dreaming. The title lyric was sung by my church’s band in my dream, which is why it sounds a bit worshippy. Almost all the lyrics of this song came from what I heard in 2 dreams, with very little conscious lyric-writing. Because of that, it was extremely easy to write. 

I mentally debated over the album title for a long time. I couldn’t name it "Requirements For Sleep 2" because I’d already made something called Requirements For Sleep Version 2.0 when I re-recorded my first album, and that’s extremely confusing. I settled on naming it after this song title -- I felt like it was symbolic of the themes of most of the songs on the album, and it was also a lyric that came entirely from a dream. 

Making it was pretty easy and straightforward. I re-recorded the vocals at my school library’s free vocal booth, which is an awesome resource to have. The progressive vocal takes got better and more powerful. As I played the song live, however, I realized that the complexity of the guitar rhythm makes it extremely hard to play at the same time as I sing the lyrics -- they have such different rhythms that I keep twisting them up! 

The Making of “Airpush Down the Stairs”

Lyrics and music inspired by 2 dreams from 7/27/2019 and 2/19/2020

Written March 2021

The lyrics were inspired by some kind of cartoonish dream where I defeated a robot villain. But now he’s about to die, and something that he needs to live has just fallen into the water. I could go underwater and grab it for him and show him mercy, but I could also just come back up and lie “I couldn’t find it” and let him die. In that dream, the lyrics “I can’t find it, I couldn’t find it” played during a drum solo of a rock song, which was an alternate-universe version of the vocal break during “100%” by Sonic Youth. 

The second half was inspired by a barely memorable dream about pushing a baby stroller down the stairs for some reason, maybe to just get it out of my way. This is where the title “Airpush Down the Stairs” and the lyric “I’m gonna lower the secret baby side / You didn’t notice that I was alive” came from, which I always laughed at as extremely ridiculous. 

I decided to combine these two narratives with an overarching message about how the person in these dreams just isn’t who I really am; I’m not the kind of assertive, selfish person from those dreams. But it also feels like everyone around me is that person. 

Another easy-to-make song without collaborations. The drums were somewhat difficult because I don’t know how to play drums, and I don’t have my drums or recording equipment properly set up. I recorded the vocals both high and low to see which one I liked more, but then I realized that they sounded weird and cool when I put the high and low vocals together -- so that’s what I did. 

I recorded the ending that references “But When I Know Who I Am” before I’d even started the other song, which is why it sounds so weird. 

The Making of "I'll Be at That Point"

Lyrics inspired by a dream from 9/6/2020

Music inspired by 2 dreams from 4/17/2020 and 6/20/2020

Written March 2021

The song has pretty straightforward lyrics that deal with an interaction in a dream about religion and its emotional implications for me. 

I made a demo of the song in early 2021, but I’m not sure why I did so, because the demo was extremely similar to the final song. I was submitting the demo for a school project because my professor wanted a portfolio of creative works that I’d done outside of class. But I just learned that there’s no point in making sloppy “demos” if the final version isn’t that hard to make. This song was fairly easy to make because of no collaborations, but it was still difficult to get the vocals right -- about 5 or 6 vocal sessions in, I finally got one that was acceptable. 

 

The Making of "But When I Know Who I Am"

Lyrics inspired by a dream from 11/30/2020

Music inspired by 2 dreams from 12/9/2019 and 9/30/2020

Written December 2020/March 2021

This song was inspired by a dream where I saw a boy from my elementary school (who inexplicably appears in my dreams a lot) as if we’d gone to the same school again. In some strange dream situation, I’d come back from the future to prevent him from dying. He was sitting in a small, empty room in the school, and I knew that he was going to stay there forever and die if I didn’t help him. I couldn’t think of anything to tell him to make him leave except to make a false love confession. He jumped up and started following me around school as I was just doing a bunch of people’s errands. 

The two lines that came from dreams were “And the blood came rush before me, / But we always knew our lines” and “But when I know who I am / There are so many things to add”. These are obviously both lines packed with meaning... I carefully found a way to weave them into the narrative about the boy from elementary school. The title lyric of the song was heard in a dream in which I was listening to one of my favorite albums from my early teen days, Sondre Lerche’s Heartbeat Radio. However, I later realized that the song he was singing was not real... even though it sounded extremely similar to that album’s style. 

I set out to make something as similar to Heartbeat Radio as I could. My friend Tobias makes electronic music that I really admire, under the name Carndye. I showed him “I Cannot Let You Go” by Sondre Lerche, along with my demo. In two amazingly creative sessions, we crafted the instrumental for the song that somehow turned out exactly how I wanted it.

 

The Making of "Poor Face"

Lyrics and music inspired by a dream from 5/18/2020

Written June 2020

I learned about deepfakes in my computer science class during my senior year of HS and was absolutely mortified by the concept of them. Of course, soon enough, I was having nightmares about how deepfakes could be used for evil purposes. I dreamed that my family and I were watching a TV trial about a teacher whose identity was defaced by a repulsive deepfake. In the same dream, I heard a song that went “Light crying out from the moon”. It was hard to write the song to convey the meaning of the dream, but not get too into the disturbing details. 

This was perhaps the first song to be finished completely, and one of the easiest to make, because it didn’t involve any collaborations. The vocal ending was somewhat improvised, being written and recorded right on the spot. The high note was a struggle but people say that they really liked that part so I guess it’s fine. 

 

The Making of "Bodies Fall Apart"

Lyrics inspired by 2 dreams from 5/13/2020 and 6/22/2020

Music inspired by 3 dreams from 3/9/2018, 11/10/2019, 12/21/2019

Written June 2020

I had ideas to make “Bodies Fall Apart” either rock or electronic-influenced, but I ended up settling on indie/experimental rock. “Touching and mutilating bodies, insane!” was a lyric I came up with all the way back in 2018 that I somehow remembered. “There’s something about the way he moves that made him fall apart” was a dream-lyric that I knew I had to incorporate in some kind of slower ending section. 

The lyrics were inspired by the events of a handful of dreams in which bodies were weirdly morphing. A memorable one was where I found a drawer in my old house that had two dolls realistically modeled after me and my brother when we were very young -- but when I tried to pick up the dolls, they started melting in my hands as if they were made of slime. The lyrics were difficult to write because of how weird it was to convey these dreams through the lyrics. I’m sure they still come across as very cryptic and absurd, despite my several rewrites. 

After making a chaotic demo with no real energy and completely out-of-sync guitar tracks, I used that as a starting point for how to improve for the final version. Being mostly a self-produced song, making the core parts was relatively easy. I finished most of the song in mid-2021, being one of the first things I did for the album. However, the difficult part was the whistling. I asked what seemed like all my friends if they knew how to whistle, and they all either said they couldn’t whistle or just bailed on me/forgot about my request. Finally, in Spring 2022, I found some friends who were eagerly willing to whistle on the spot - three friends, in fact. “Bodies Fall Apart” was, I think, the first song I started recording and the last song I finished recording. 

The Making of "Flower"

Lyrics inspired by a dream from 5/12/2020

Written June 2020

When recording “Cabin”, I randomly edited the piano riff backwards, and realized that it could make another song. It was inspired by a dream about being in a stadium for some event, and sitting next to a girl whom I didn’t know anything about, except that her name was May and we’d both gone through some kind of assault experience. Chaos started happening on the stage as some men revealed that our assaulters were in the audience, and people were screaming and running out of the stadium. I guided the girl outside to help her out. She seemed depressed that the event had been disrupted and I tried to offer her a flower, but she rejected it.

I started to explore the city with my new friend, first going to my middle school, where we seemingly trespassed into some areas, but were allowed by a kind custodian to wander. Then we went to the museum where my mom works at and ended up in the staff area. Instead of going to the right exhibit, the girl wandered off into an unfinished, mysterious room that was off-limits; she got scolded by a woman who mistakenly called her “Blossom”. 

The dream was very chaotic, and incoherent at times; but I find it fascinating how the different places we explored represented the ways in which that girl was violated in her experiences, and the flower could have represented lost innocence.

I reached out to Joey again for the piano because he’d already made “Cabin” with me, so I should also make the song’s sequel with him. While it was extremely difficult to play the piano and also edit the piano to get the precise tempo (in retrospect, I could’ve done this song myself to make it way less complicated), I really appreciated Joey’s creative contributions; he composed the piano bass and gave other suggestions. The vocals were hard to record, taking at least 5 vocal recording sessions.