Pioneers

friends and fans, here is the fourth (and for now, final) installation in my serial ep, had we met in another life. i originally conceived of this project in late 2008, and it has finally come to fruition. i may pick it up and continue it later... there is at least one "b-side" in this series. ultimately that is the best thing about doing serial releases; i can always pick it up again later. but right now i am already working on a new project (check out jacobearl.net for a visual preview of the new series of songs, beginning very soon).

as i have recounted before, these pieces that comprise had we met in another life were temporarily shelved for a little bit, while i worked on the companion album, Your First Lover - Incarnations. i think that distancing myself from this collection of songs for almost a year allowed me re-approach them with a fresh angle, and produce some of the best stuff i have released to date.

the final composition of the had we met.. quartet is "Pioneers". this track is actually the first had we met... piece that i composed , at the end of 2008. so i have sat on this piece longest of all, fretting over little details of the composition and production.

"Pioneers" is a long track (almost seven minutes) that represents one of my first real forays into midi synth with my m-audio keyrig 25 keyboard (which i received for xmas 2008 from my awesome family). it was almost like an experimentation just to see what i could do with the new toy. i started out being bored, fooling around with some new beats i had downloaded, chopping up some royalty-free samples that i had, and came up with the backbone of the song as it is now. then i started experimenting with some organ VST sounds i had, and i liked the end result so much that i decided to use it to frame the concept i was developing at the time.

the words and music of "Pioneers" sums up the entire mood and theme of the had we met in another life sequence... which is ultimately why i chose it to be the last song in the series.

originally i wasn't happy with portions of many of the vocal tracks i laid down, so there are at least five or six vocal tracks layered into the background and trapped in the murk of reverb with the subdued guitars. i didn't want to obliterate them entirely from the track. was that a good production choice in the end? i don't know; you be the judge.

really this extended ode is all about the driving fuzzy bass and pitch-wavering organ.

ultimately i don't think it's the strongest of the four tracks... in fact it may be the weakest if i approach the end-products objectively. but there are some moments about it that i think worked out really nicely (ambient resonance created by the layered vocals and doubled-up guitar tracks moving in and out of sync with each other).

i find that when recording, i often stumble upon happy accidents that i end up keeping in the final product. i could never possibly duplicate those weird quirks again, and that's part of the beauty of doing many of my recordings with one-takes. "Pioneers" is a good example of many of these types of moments, and i think that lends a nostalgic quality to the mood of the song.

if you've been following the had we met... previous releases, you probably know that the last track i released was accompanied by a simple video that i created to go with the music. well, i did the same for "Pioneers". only this video is much better, and much more extravagant. i collected some great footage of landscapes rolling by on a train ride, and of my wonderful fiancée maggie playing in the rain in her fancy rain boots. i juxtaposed the videos together to present a visual mood of a long and playful journey. i think it is well-suited to the nostalgic "what if..." atmosphere of the song, and the vein of had we met in another life as a whole.

you can enjoy the video on youtube:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0T3cWIAo3HM

and here is the song for download; free high quality VBR mp3 (thanks for listening and watching!): Pioneers

and the lyrics:

she grew up in a small town out east
her mother alone, her father deceased
she came here to be free
she came here to get away from people like me

she was just seventeen
when i met her on the scene
she carried around a fake ID
what was I supposed to believe?
maybe i wanted to be deceived...

we were pioneers to our own demise
i willingly believed the lies
she gave up and said goodbye
i almost drowned in the tears i cried

we were soldiers on a barren cold front
we were wolves on the final hunt
we were cowboys from the wild west
heading into our final sunset

we were trained to looked the other way
we refrained from thinking of yesterday
there was nothing left there that we could mend
we were pioneers to the end