Perpetual Emotion Machine
from Omega
2006
This song is track three on Omega, and was a collaboration with my sister.
The track began as an experiment to try and create a track that sounded like Underworld circa 1994. I wanted something long and ambient but dance-worthy also.
When the sequencing was finished, I thought that it needed something and tried to write lyrics, some kind of a tone poem, but it was not something I was used to doing. In the end I put out a call to all my writer friends asking if they had any poems that would be willing to contribute, and I got this one from my sister entitled Where Were You. I liked the tone of it so I recorded myself reciting it into a set of headphones plugged into my mic jack which gave it a really lo-fi sound. Then I manually chopped it up and elongated it in spots in a wave editor and distributed it across the length of the song.
The poem tells of a lonely soul, abandoned, questioning the loyalty of those around them, and then discovering — by way of necessity — their own inner strength.
Where Are You is the track that I started to rediscover the sound of my favourite instrument, the piano. It begins to appear more commonly in my work after this.
Under
Perpetual Emotion Machine
The demo version of this, without the poem added. Also there is a sample from a well known track by Seal which prevents me from putting this on the interwebs.
Where Were You
Perpetual Emotion Machine
Second demo with replacement drum loop, but no lyrics.
Where Are You
Perpetual Emotion Machine
The final album version.
Credits
written, produced and arranged by Perpetual Emotion Machine.
Where Are You (The Immaculate Contraption Remix)
Perpetual Emotion Machine
The harder remix which appeared on the Glory EP in 2007. This actually started because I thought I had lost the original work file for the first version and this was an attempt to recreate it using the same tools. But I did eventually find the other version.
Credits
written, produced and arranged by Perpetual Emotion Machine.