The other night I was working on this experimental song I was calling "The New New Speedway Boogie Boogie", using these recordings I'd made in January of all those annoying prompts and commercials blasting out of the speakers at the gas pumps. While I was filling up, I was overwhelmed by this cacophony of the sounds echoing from the multiple rows of pumps with all kinds of disorienting Doppler effects and took out my phone to record it, wondering it the phone records in stereo or not in order to capture this strange sound field (it didn't). I thought I'd save it for FAWM in case I was having trouble writing songs (I am).

While I was mixing all this and recording an acoustic guitar, our cat Hazel (who ignores us most of the time) came down to my office and demanded attention, crying and scratching at my chair.

She ended up on that acoustic guitar track (which didn't really work by the way) so I just cut snippets of her meowing and pasted it through out on the right channel. Then I did a fresh track of just her meowing for the left channel.

I'd already put in these automated synth and bass tracks that I really loved but it sounded familiar and then I realized it was the same chords and synth sound I'd done for "LG Appliances" song the other day. So I ended up digging in and changing the synth and chords (stealing chords similar to those used in Kraftwerk's "Autobahn" for whatever reason, just felt right).

But of course the bass didn't match anymore and instead of trying to reprogram it I just used an actual bass guitar and put down a track. Then a new acoustic guitar track.

It was quite a busy mess and as much as I loved the original gas pump recordings (which were the whole reason for this whole thing), I ended up turning those tracks off and renaming it "Katwerk".

This morning I played the finished song for Hazel (who really seemed to enjoy it).

#synthpop