The Making of “Only a Hunter”

Lyrics inspired by several different dreams

Music inspired by 2 dreams from 10/14/2019 and 7/1/2020

Written July 2021/November 2021

My goal for the album was to be as eclectic as possible, so of course, I have to include a dance-pop/club-influenced song. The song is about various situations in which you just become evil when you’re by yourself (“The club of the hide, the things I hide, the things that you can’t see) -- especially in a dream, when the mind is unhinged. Because of the album flow, I had to put this song after “Poor Face”, but it does kind of hurt because that song is about how we don’t have to live like animals, but “Only a Hunter” is basically about living like an animal (“Whoa, place is allowed, only a hunter”). 

This was definitely the hardest song on the album to make. For the first demo, I was too embarrassed about my electronic production skills to make anything substantial. I made a generic synth and beat to convey what I basically wanted with the song, but it was nothing like the dancey house music that was in my mind. I gave Ramiel this demo to mess around with, and said that I was hoping for something like deep house and the group Everything But the Girl.

But it took maybe 20 iterations and back-and-forth changes of this song to get something that resembled the final one. A big problem was that we had disagreements over the genre influences of this song -- should it sound like drum and bass? No, that doesn’t sound like it did in my dream. Then Ramiel suggested that it should be really crazy and experimental, deconstructed club-esque, because then it would “fit” the sound of the rest of the album. But like, I didn’t really need this song to be experimental or deconstructed, or for the album to have any kind of genre cohesion -- I just wanted to recreate my dreams. I repeatedly had to show the evolving song to my other friends to get some outside perspectives on it because something was clearly going wrong and I was stressed out. Ramiel still helped a lot, though, by making a genuine house beat for the song. They made some really wildly different versions of the song that I would lift small ideas from, to gradually get to the perfect version. 

The Making of “Theme to Being Stuck in a Dream”

Lyrics and music inspired by 2 dreams from 8/27/2020 and 6/28/2021

Written June 2021

I had a dream that I heard a 20-minute Sonic fan soundtrack or something that was so viscerally horrifying that it made me close my music app and throw my headphones across the room, and I was too scared to listen to it again. The beginning was plunderphonics-influenced, with samples of songs that were similar to the work of The Caretaker, but it gradually turned into something like harsh noise that was devastating and sent tingles down my spine. I wasn’t sure whether I hated it or whether it was the best thing I’d ever heard. So, of course, I had to recreate it. I decided to make this a track within the album instead of its own album because I thought that would be an insane idea. 

My idea for the basic structure of the song was to start with instrumental plunderphonics, fade into harsh noise and spoken word, and then end with a repetitive ambient melody. 14 minutes of experimental hell with something somewhat poppy for the last 4 minutes would be such a cool effect. Where would this ambient melody come from, though? I had an epiphany during a lucid dream. I was in my house in the dream, and when I realized it was a dream, I tried to wake up, but truly couldn’t. As I struggled to open my eyes, a simple, sad melody on an electric keyboard was playing; as I listened to that strangely beautiful song, I implicitly thought, “this must be the theme to being stuck in a dream”. And so the lyrical theme for this long experimental song evolved into “being stuck in a dream”. I was so enthusiastic about this beautiful song idea that I finished writing it on the same day I woke up with it.

“Writing” this song was weird because, instead of making chords or melodies, I was writing descriptions of dream sounds. For the lyrics, to convey the experience of dreaming, my structure was inspired by the stages of sleep. The spoken word section is the early stage of dreaming, during slow wave sleep, where dreams are vague, surreal thoughts. It doesn’t feel like sleeping; when you wake up, you usually deny that you fell asleep at all. I wanted to express the feeling of trying really hard to sleep, when you don’t realize that you’re sleeping already. In a state of delusional insomnia, you start thinking these weird urges that keep you from sleeping, like “I can’t sleep unless all of my body parts are laid down like rocks and thoroughly put to sleep individually”.

Except the lyrics of the spoken word section weren’t written for this album. I reused my old lyrics from a 1-minute song called “Shape Your Arm” from Requirements For Sleep. When I wrote “Shape Your Arm”, I attempted to start with a dark, experimental, electronic part with lyrics that expressed that insomniac experience... but I was extremely inexperienced with production and songwriting in 2019, and had no idea how I was gonna do that. So I just said, fuck it, I’m going to speed-read the lyrics and just make the song super chaotic, even if it doesn’t accurately convey the experience of insomnia. At least no one else has done that in a song yet and I can be unique, I think. 

3 years after writing “Shape Your Arm”, now that I have some experience, and people who’re willing to collab with me, I think I can finally make what I originally wanted to do with “Shape Your Arm” and convey insomnia and slow-wave-sleep dreams. So I just lifted the old lyrics directly for the new song. I revisited my a capella demo of that “dark experimental electronic version” of “Shape Your Arm”, and lifted the melodies for the brief singing parts. That was a super complicated 3-year process to write a song, but I hope that makes sense.

The final section of the song is inspired by a lucid dream, which happens during the REM stage. I sang it over the ambient melody that I heard in my own lucid dream, which I mentioned earlier. Lucid dreams sound like the most fun and cool experience, but it’s not really been that way for me, sadly. I’ve tried to live out my fantasies in lucid dreams, but I’m apparently not very skilled at conjuring things to appear in the dreams. I just see empty space, or end up walking around an area that’s something I could already see in real life. And if I do get a person or thing to appear, it’s usually silent and emotionally empty, like some kinda clone, or the dream visual starts turning black and I start waking up. These are interesting experiences to write about, but I wish I could have a “normal” lucid dream. 

While producing the album, my main collaborators were Tobias and Ramiel. Because of their different creative processes, I decided to give songs to Ramiel that they could take a lot of creative liberties on. On the other side, I gave songs to Tobias that he should be able to make according to my precise vision. I gave an outline of “Theme to Being Stuck in a Dream” to Ramiel... all I had on the page, for the first 7-minute section, was a vague description of the song that I heard in my dream. I said that it was made up of “samples”, and I wrote down some experimental songs that could be an inspiration. I was pretty scared how it was gonna turn out because I’d given such a vague description of what I wanted. 

But somehow, it turned out really good when Ramiel sent me their composition for the first instrumental section of the song. I guess the inspiration tracks that I provided were enough to communicate the vibe! Ramiel decided to only use samples of my old songs, instead of songs from random other artists, which was an excellent call. I hadn’t even considered doing that. Even though the “Sonic soundtrack” from the dream had more of an “old music” vibe like The Caretaker, this still worked really well with samples of my music. Being a big plunderphonics fan, Ramiel also used some clever sampling and editing techniques that put my song snippets into completely new contexts. 

And for the middle section of the song, I already had a “noise” song that I’d made ages ago that catalyzed the production of this whole thing. This has an even weirder backstory, so buckle in. During an awkward video call with my online friends, I was playing guitar, Joey was playing keyboard, and Tobias pulled up FL Studio and said he was gonna sample us. I said jokingly, “turn it into harsh noise”. Tobias took a 7-second sample of us playing and heavily distorted it, making an intense noise song in about 10 minutes. Everyone was laughing hysterically when he played the tune for us. After the call ended, I took the noise song and played around with it a bunch, making it into more of a Dark Ambient style. 

Months later, Tobias asked me if he could use the noise song as the closing track on his next EP. I hesitated to allow him to include it, because I was planning to also use it on my album -- but Tobias suggested that we could both use it, and it would actually be pretty cool if people were listening to my song and recognized that part from his EP. It kind of felt like a joke because this thing was absolutely grating to listen to, but “Flood” ended up being the final track on Carndye’s The Darkest Day EP, and I have a featured credit on it.

The final section of the song was straightforward to make, as I produced it myself with synthesizers. I considered adding another collaborator, but I was happy with the version I made on my own anyway. 

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.