Constant Companions Closeup #9: OBJECT OF AFFECTION
(also on spotify!)
O, wayward soul, I beg of thee an ear;
Companionship, a Constant of desire,
is all too fleeting. Would thee quell this fire?
My love, do you know what you want to hear?
Welcome back to the Constant Companions Closeups - a series of in-depth dives into the songs off of my latest album, Constant Companions! Yesterday was some gay shit (Liaison) and today is some more gay shit (Object of Affection)
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I'm usually pretty good about letting go of the things I make and letting them live imperfectly, but there is exactly one released song of mine that I've ever been actively unhappy with the final product of, that I haven't been able to let go of my displeasure with.
It's not that it's a bad song, or that it didn't have good ideas! In fact, I genuinely think it shares more with the music I make now than a lot of my older work does. Rather, it was incredibly rushed and full of uninspired choices I made for the sake of completing the song rather than making it the best version of itself, and it ultimately ended up falling incredibly flat relative to what I wanted it to be!
I really like the intersection of synthpop/electropop and fantasy. One of my favorite musicians ever is Baths, whose album Romaplasm is chock full of this exact thematic and sonic intersection, and it's so deeply inspiring to me that it still gets put on whenever I want to dream things up. I've always wanted to make things like that! Bubbly and fantastical, brimming with a sense of magic so pervasive it makes even the mundane seem mystic.
...Also I'm just a fantasy dork okay. I like wizards and shit. Sue me
I've been wanting to make a grandiose and fantastical story song for years, and my single attempt to do so felt like it missed the mark entirely. I did touch on fantasy a couple times on Bittersweet, but ultimately, when I started working on this album, I knew exactly what I wanted to take a second crack at.
The intended story in question here is fairly vague, but to sum it up as literally as possible:
A rebellious, disobedient, gender-questioning prince has mildly inconvenienced "his" royal lineage one too many times. Their solution is to invoke magicks widely regarded as heretical - what's a fantasy monarchy without some hypocrisy - to seal their "son's" soul within an automaton body, rendering "him" a perfect, subservient doll.
This doll is promptly spirited away under cover of darkness by a mage, and is granted free will once again. She experiences the crushing weight of newfound self-awareness and nearly spirals out of control, before realizing the mage who saved her is the same - a doll. It turns out being a magical-mechanical construct has its perks if you are TRANSGENDER. then they overthrow the monarchy and fuck nasty or whatever idk this is where the story gives way to things like "metaphor"
this is a song about artifice and being transgender
Seriously, though, I know that being an electronic-music-producing transgender lesbian with a thing about dolls or robots or whatever is a major endless-store-shelves-of-identical-buzz-lightyear-action-figures moment on my part, but dammit, I own a copy of Logic Pro and a genuine leather wizard hat, I inject estrogen into my stomach fat every Wednesday, and I think ball joints are cute. I'm posting this on Tumblr, for gods sake, I am unconcerned as an active choice
With the exception of Liaison, the entirety of Constant Companions utilizes only three unique vocal synth characters - ANRI, Gumi, and Teto. This trifecta was born organically from simply being the vocal synths I enjoy using the most, and in this song, I wanted to use all three of them almost like one single singer, freely shifting intonation based on the context. I messed with this idea before on Ballroom, my voice meshing and melting into Gumi V3's voice, but it felt especially appropriate for this context; Plus, I feel like there aren't a lot of examples of vocal synths being used/recontextualized in this way, and that's a shame in my opinion!!
I really want to do more story-driven songwriting like this in the future as well. Now that I'm a bonafide VocaloP I've been floating the idea of doing a song series with this trio... I'm mostly just worried I'll want to get too ambitious with it.
Off the top of my head, Object of Affection references at least eight other songs of mine - Honor Majesty is an obvious one, but it also directly samples parts of Autumn Every Day, and lyrically references genuinely just a bunch of things. I'm probably forgetting some, even!
I know I'm the Leitmotif Lover, but it's a lot even by my standards. However, this song's entire existence already served to satisfy a fairly self-indulgent desire, and these days, I don't deal in half measures. I think the final product serves as a lovely little look back at where I've come from, though, and perhaps even a little glimpse into the future!
That all being said, Object of Affection in some sense is also a love letter to a beloved part of my creative process - the voice memo. A lot of the audio I've provided with these posts have been recordings off my phone for good reason! Not only are the chops at the beginning of the song entirely comprised of edited recordings I got on my phone, but the sample at the very end happens to be from a particularly legendary recording, never before heard by the public...
Until now. I present to you an excerpt from "the worst beat on planet earth", featuring none other than unit.0.
That's about it for today!! If you have any questions, I'll gladly answer them below, but otherwise, I'll be back here tomorrow to talk about this album's title track laid askew - My Darling, My Companion!
25 SHOCKING TRUTHS ABOUT YOUR FAVORITE CHILDHOOD TV SHOWS😱
1. POKEMON - ash is in a coma and the show is he's dreaming
2. RUGRATS - the babies are on drugs
3. edd edd eddy - they died in 1962 (tuberculosis)
4. scoopy doo - theyre on drugs too and the dog cant really talk :(
5. rugrats - angela is in a coma and the show is her dream
6. spongbob - songebob is in a coma and the show is his dream
7. spongebob - spongebob and his friends are the christian hell sins
8. spoinegbob - squidward is heroin?
9. COURAGE THE COWARDLY DOG - it was real it was all real none of that was a dream or a nightmare everything you remember is real
10. rugarts - angela is on drugs and all the other ones are dead
11. jimmy neutraon - jimmy is weird because he is gay
12. fairly oddparsnts - timmy is in a coma and the show is his dream
13. spongebob - sandy is taxidermy
14. higgly town heroes - higgly town is all cannibals and they eat other people and thats why they do that . how could they do that..? my heroes..
15. max & ruby - they are bunny rabbits and thast because thrre was. an apocalypse and max is a real human little boy but there was an apocalypse and his parents died and he's with ruby but he got hit on the head with a steel pipe because of the apocalypse so now he's in a coma and the show is his dream
16. disney aladdin movie - the tiger head cave is really really scary
17. danny phantom died - this one really happened they tell you in the theme song and you can see it happen in blood and gorey detail if you watch that one scary episode that only comes on at 3am. does anyone else remember that episode
18. dora the explorer - dora is on crack
19. faaiely odd parents - the fairies are drugs and timmy takes drugs and maybe goes into a coma for this reason and maybe has a dream that they're his magic fairies
20. caillou - hes bald. this theoru explains that cailiu has no hair because he is bald. and perhaps his parents are nice to him because he is bald. this could also explain why he has no hair (because hes bald)
21. courage the cowarsly dog - courage is a dog and he's in a coma and
22. the magic schoolbus - its magic because the bus was on drugs and then it blew up (becasue it was high) and they all went to purgatory and clones took their place
23. tom and jerry - tom should have been allowed to cook and eat that baby chick. and its fucked up that the show didnt allow him to. me and my friends watched it and we were all clapping and cheering for him to cook and eat it and we were so excited but of course the writers pussied out and didnt let him do it
24. finding nemo - that thing in the beginning didnt even happen but the dad made that story up so people would feel bad for him
25. sponegbob - in the latest season patrick says "Ok boomer!" to mermaid man and barancle boy
romaincrisis
baratheonpilled
kaledo-art
gummygunk
pixelskylines
ellievsbear
izzy806
annaxmalina
andulkaphoto
snowghoul
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