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Singled Out: The Wild Beyond's Reflex Driver

11/10/2014
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Today Max Hodes from space rockers The Wild Beyond tells us about the song "Reflex Driver" from their brand self titled debut EP, which is being released by The End Records today (Nov 11). Here is the story:

Reflex Driver began to take it's current shape during the editing and mixing phase. I scrapped the mid-song jam we recorded as a band and began cutting and pasting choice moments from the session warm ups. I overdubbed several million layers of guitar. Kevin Corcoran slathered on the keys until we had two choirs, two orchestras, seven pianists, a pipe organ and some industrial padding all aimed at making this thing sound stupidly overblown. After all, it's a song about masculinity as an illness. I think my favorite thematic element in the arrangement is the vocal harmony lifted from "She's So Heavy." Which is appropriate, I think, given the subject matter.

I tried to make each individual track overblown in its own way before mix down. The kick sound, for example, is made of five elements: the original recordings of Charles Goold playing the drum (recorded at close and far distances), a sampled kick, a triggered sine wave, and the triggered sine wave running through a distortion pedal. The sine-triggered-by-kick is a familiar hip-hop low-end method. It sounded like sh*t on Charles' kick, because of the nuance in his playing. But I did it anyway, because Reflex Drivers only care about themselves. While forcing the sh*tty and synthetic low end through a distortion pedal and into the mix, it occurred to me that Reflex Drivers probably shouldn't produce records. Reflex Drivers are a big problem in general and I didn't want to be a Reflex Driver. I just wanted to go home. But I was already at home. There was no place to go.

Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen for yourself and learn more about the album right here!

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