I love concept albums. Love them. I read an article on Cracked.com once that discussed how, since we live in such a fresh hit single world these days, the idea of the concept album has been lost. True and untrue. While they may not be as popular in the public eye anymore, there are still plenty of great bands that still choose to do concept albums (Mastodon, Noah & the Whale, Ancestors, Queens of the Stone Age, The Flaming Lips, Anathallo, Black Tusk, Acid Mothers Temple, to name a few). There's no better way to capture the emotions of a story or manifesto than through sound. No emotion can be evoked by words, touch, or smell, as well as it can be through sound.
So basically, this is totally totally a concept album. I write a lot of jokey, non-serious music in my spare time, but for a musical project that I'm actually taking seriously, I want there to be more to it than just cool noises. So I've been wracking my brain trying to think of a good story for this album, and I finally have one to tell.
It's a journey of a man who has been stranded in isolation, "unfit" for socialization in a world ruled by technology. In his struggle to survive in the wild, as he is nearing his final breaths, the Devil appears before him, offering limitless power. The man accepts, and his journey to destroy the machines that left him for dead continues. As the souls of millennia of dead begin to influence the man, his powers become more evident. Eventually, he infiltrates the compound of the largest digital data storage on Earth and unleashes his true power, the power of an eternal humanity, destroying the data and himself in the process. As his soul drifts away, he realizes he is not dead, but rather, has transcended reality and perception to become one with the universe around him, more human than ever before.
Anyway, yeah, that's it. Since I won't be narrating the album, the lyrics will not be nearly as overt (but they WILL be in English this time). I'll probably do a fancier, more detailed write-up of the story for the liner notes, but that is the story I've decided on.
What are ya'll writing about?
Lobster Shanty more or less focused our theme on a more old school, early 70s funk vibe. There isn't an overall story being told...but it's mostly just our interpretation of some of the great ideas that were present of the time.
ReplyDeleteThe ideas that were flowing of that time were really discrete, punchy, fun, and exciting sounding snippets. Nothing was too much, and nothing was too little...everything jarring fit in well because it was fueled by hearing bits and pieces of riffs, licks, and single notes that would end up complimenting each other in their own individual way. Of course there would be a constant groove as a foundation, to help gel the bits and pieces together.
Besides all that though, I too love concept albums...and I've been writing one outside of record time for the past year or so.