Two songs, a shopping cart full of samples, and every stupid word I could possibly think of later, and I’ve finally decided to release some new music!
As it will take a little while for everything to pop up on streaming services, I wanted to take a second and talk shop about my new tracks —the samples, the construction of them etc. In the past two years, I’ve really started to focus on beat making. So much that it almost felt like coming out of some form of retirement when I was working in my studio last week and decided to plug in the vocal mic for the first time in months.
In an effort to give some innate purpose to the things I make, I’ve started keeping detailed accounts of the music I sample when I make beats and songs. Recently, I watched Tiny Tim: King For A Day (2020), and Tiny Tim’s actions while he was alive really had a deep impact on me. One particular habit of his was to constantly talk about his influences in interviews, often unprovoked. Being that he had such a unique sound, he often covered older songs to try to get more people to listen to the (old) music he loved more than anything.
For me, I think that’s incredibly powerful. Maybe the 2014 version of that was finding a Youtube playlist of every song Kanye had ever sampled (much like this one). I didn’t have parents that indoctrinated me into great music from the come up, nor did I develop a very good taste in music on my own. There’s a TON of blind spots in my music history, and I’m constantly finding new groups and artists I love, but I’ll never forget how much closer I felt to the music in those early ‘Ye songs after listening to and studying over 20+ albums from that playlist that I really vibed with.
All this to say: I think music history is important. I want to make sure when I put some new beats or songs out, I list the samples I use in detail. I know for producers, it can feel like we’re giving the keys to the city away when we show what we sampled, but I really believe it’s beneficial everyone and the future of music if we let people know what we are into at the time.
So… here’s what I sampled:
This release is two just two songs: a single and a b-side. For the first track, “DBL PARK’D”, I had recently watched Tintorera (1977), a horror / shark attack film. From the opening credits I was struck by how good the music was and it only got better. The film kind of dragged and was sometimes not super interesting, however the music really kept my interest and I ended up watching it a few times this year.
The melodic sample from this track is "She Leaves" by Basil Poledouris off of the soundtrack of this film, but truth be told, the whole soundtrack is so good, I could have made something from nearly every track. In addition to that, there’s a couple lines of dialog sampled from the film to set the tone.
I wrote the words to this song about a specific time of my life where I was listening to a lot of Say Anything’s album ...Is a Real Boy. This was probably my fourth phase of listening to that album on repeat for weeks on end, and I wanted to include a piece of my favorite songs off of it in my track, so I pulled a vocal sample from “Admit It!!!”, structured the chorus around it, and that was that.
For the b-side, titled "Golden Hour (Exit 26)” I again drew inspiration from films I’d been watching at the time. This summer, like many others, I had some extra time on my hands than I’d expected to. One of the ways I occupied that time was attempting to go through the entire Hammer Films Productions catalog. This once again led me to a mediocre film with an astounding soundtrack. The main sample for this track is "Carol's Theme" by Mario Nascimbene off of the soundtrack for The Vengeance of She (1968), a less than stellar sequel to the very popular She (1965).
At the same time I was trying to get through a film called Punishment Park (1971), but I could only sit through a few minutes at a time. For a movie made nearly fifty years ago, it was resonating a little too much with the current trash fire that is 2020. I sampled a couple relevant lines of dialog from that, and I eventually finished the movie (it’s amazing). If you can handle more commentary on currently events, check it out.
Lastly, I wanted to give a little nod to a local artist whose music really carried me through a lot of different (challenging) times this summer. I’ve been a big fan for a long time, but I wanted to shout out Benji III and reference his short but sweet "CONFiDENT FREESTYLE". I started with less of a sample, really more of a wink towards his opening line of the song in the middle of my verse, but then to thicken up the drums, I sampled the percussion in the beat of his song and layered it up with the kit I made too.
Well, thanks so much for reading and listening! I promise I’ll check back in with some thoughts about music history / documentation and it’s importance for the future. And of course I’ll be checking back in to announce when my new music is live on streaming platforms! I really hope you enjoyed this early listen!
See you soon.
—Forrest
An Early Listen & Some Thoughts