The House (Oh No)

Demo: November 1, 2006

[ 3:03 | 4.19 MB ]

Lyrics | In-Depth | Stream | Download

Themes: Borrowing From Other Songs, Separation, Isolation, Loneliness, & Abandonment, Sky / Stuff In The Sky / Celestial Objects, Wisdom, Knowledge, or Nescience, Vocal Alteration.
Influences: Masato Nakamura, The Flaming Lips, Sarah Slean.
Instruments: Martin Backpacker, Praat.

Just your run-of-the-mill tale of apocalyptic abandonment, with a touch of cynophobia and non-hallucination.

Here's how it came about: So, while taking a quick trip back in time to play Sonic The Hedgehog 2, I figured on getting some kicks out of the old sound test screen. After chewing on a few tracks, I popped it up to track 10 (hexadecimal 10, mind you) — the by-now niche-famous Sonic 2 tune that never made it into any actual levels. Wouldn't it be cool if this tune had some lyrics? Alright, let's do it.

So I let that percolate for a while...

Hey, and now there's this song sitting there, waiting to be recorded. Okay, that should be easy!

Ack. This needs a female vocalist. I hain't got one on hand... Hey, I know! Let's be all progressive and experimental and use Praat to up the pitch and timbre some.

Hey, that's got a nice texture to it. But it's kind of hollow sounding. But hey, backwards reverb is cool, and should cover some of the imperfections. That was a technique used by The Flaming Lips from time to time in their early albums. You can hear an example in the song "You Have To Be Joking (Autopsy of the Devil's Brain)", which may still be available for streaming on their official site.