FAINT WAVES

Another anniversary piece here for you. Somehow, it’s been 10 years since I released my EP, Slippin’ Away. For the uninitiated, Slippin’ Away was a messy melange of Worldbeat infused Synthpop that I released in June 2016. I was still figuring a lot out musically, figuring out a direction for Faint Waves, and also making a lot of mistakes as a person at that time. I don’t like to look back on 2016 much, I had a lot of “fun” (what I considered fun back then) and made some memories (forgot a bunch too), but by the end of that year? I had done severe damage to my mental and physical health, which led to 2017 becoming the most difficult and terrifying year of my life. Simultaneously, it’s hard for me to wish it any different, because it led me where I needed to be and there’s no taking it back anyway. Ideally, I would’ve taken better care of myself and cared more about the people around me, but those are mistakes that many before me have made and mistakes many will make after me, too. Decision making when you’re a young adult is not easy and you also believe you’re unstoppable (you aren’t), which leads to trouble. Ultimately, I don’t look back on this music (or that time in my life) negatively, necessarily. I just look at it as a stepping stone. It was something I learned from and grew out of, changing the pace altogether with the next major release of mine, 2017’s Hideaways. For these reasons, messy as it may be, I do consider Slippin’ Away formative.

At the time of production, Tropical House music was very in vogue, and I would be lying if I said that music wasn’t an influence on the sound of the extended play. It was a strange thing because it was sort of in line with a lot of my interests, while also still being very much in the mainstream for a couple years at that point. It was often danceable but mellow. The use of airy synths, steel drums, trumpets, saxophones, flutes, marimbas, it was all very much in my wheelhouse of things I was interested in. A lot of my musical roots for Faint Waves can be traced back to the 80’s and 90’s, with Smooth Jazz, New Age, and Exotica (to a lesser extent) sort of serving as a foundation. Tropical House felt like a modern and vastly streamlined take on a lot of the things I was wanting to do. I never leaned that far into the sound but it was something I kept an eye on and there were maybe a couple remixes I did over the years that were in that vein. At the end of the day, I think I had too eclectic and too broad a musical palette to really box myself in to that genre (or any one genre, really). I grew up listening to Synthpop, Alternative, Metal, and later on, found my own way to Punk and Post-Punk. Along the way too, because of when I grew up, there was a lot of Rap Rock, Nu Metal, Alternative Hip-Hop, video game soundtracks, etc. I think there was just too much of a musical base for me to ever stick to any one thing; that’s why I consider it a small miracle that my music is as consistent as it is, though I’m not immune to drifting, as you know.

Slippin’ Away did feature some of my earliest hallmarks; lush beds of sound, downtempo rhythms, even the sparing nylon guitar here and there. Admittedly, listening to it now, it doesn’t work as well as I thought it did back then. I didn’t really know what I was doing (at all). Even so, it’s functional and stands as a testament of what’s to come. The sound and production would get a little cleaner, tighter, more focused and intentional but a lot of those cues would still be there. That’s why I didn’t want to shortchange this release and pretend like the 10th anniversary was no big thing. It is, to some extent. I think it’s important to remember where you came from, that’s why I’ve got releases up from 2015 and 2016 that I don’t really care for anymore, because I think it’s irrelevant how I feel; that’s an origin point. A real origin point, unlike the false starts in Plunderphonics, Electro-Swing, and Vaporwave that I’m not going to talk about here (I’ve spoken on that elsewhere). We all find our way in our own time.

That’s why I decided to revisit two songs from the extended play, for the very first time. I returned to the two that I found most viable and the two I found similar enough to sit together on a maxi-single: “World Wonder” and “One More Time”. Both tunes were brass-driven, Afro-Caribbean tinged Dance Pop/Synthpop numbers, one was downtempo and the other more uptempo. The original tunes, while inspired, were lacking. If I was going to remake them, I wanted to be faithful to the original material but also flesh them out slightly. You know, actually have another chord change, incorporate a bassline, or use a drum fill. Little things. So, I did. On World Wonder ’26, the maxi-single features top-to-bottom remakes that are mostly true to the original World Wonder and One More Time (with some small tweaks), as well as newly produced reimaginings that are different entirely, those I’m pretty sure were informed by all the Miami Vice I’ve been watching in recent history. Definitely a montage-y, Jan Hammer, cocaine cowboy thing going on there.

In closing, here’s to 10 years of Slippin’ Away. While this is slightly before the official 10 year mark, that being in June like I mentioned, I wanted this out of the way in case I release something new this summer. I did have a good time making these, it was interesting to sort of go backward and work off of what I was doing 10 years ago. A lot of project files have been lost over the years due to changing computers, malfunctions, crashes, etc. That was at least one benefit to these, the reliance on loops and sample packs and minimal arrangement at that time made them less of an undertaking to remake today. I’m not sure what I’ll do for the next big anniversary, as that’s Hideaways, and I’m not sure I want to touch anything off of there; just too titanic a release of mine to fiddle with I think. I’ll definitely do something for it, maybe that’s the day I finally produce Hideaways IV, which I wasn’t sure I’d ever do. Only time will tell.

World Wonder ’26 is out now on Bandcamp, available most everywhere else music is streamed and sold on Friday.