Ashes of Memory – Cendres de Memoire

Based on the 2011 hit by Gotye, "Somebody That I Used To Know". I've used the same lyrical structure and timing, but re-written the lyrics and set them to a Latin beat which seemed to fit so well...

Every day I wake to blue-white buzzing weather,
Little pings that taste like sugar to my mind;
Told myself it’s only “staying close together,”
Yet I feel hollow keeping windows open wide;
All this frictionless stuff steals the space I meant to treasure.

After lunch I slip into another rabbit,
Finger learns the loop and never wants to stop;
Swore I’d only check a single harmless topic,
Blink another hour, there it goes, ker-plop;
It’s a hall of mirrors feeding back a glowing habit.

But I didn’t have to check it all,
Act like every tiny notice is a sacred summons;
And I don’t even want that pull,
But it leads me like a puppy on a velvet rope;
No, I shouldn’t let the minutes go,
Watch my plans dissolve to banners and a thousand pop-ups;
I guess I don’t need any more
Now it’s just a timeline that I used to scroll.

Every thought I chase gets dressed in neon headlines,
Promises of wisdom waiting past the fold;
Tell myself I learn from every clickbait headline,
But the lesson’s mostly “how to lose control;”
Every “just one more” becomes a chain of little bylines.

You say I’m why your calendar keeps stalling,
But you built the door and walked inside to stay;
Blamed me when your quiet felt too sprawling,
Used my noise to hide within a crowd all day;
If you needed room, you could have set your phone to silent
Don’t pretend I crept in, stole your time away.

No, we didn’t have to chase it all,
Treat a flicker like a lifeline or a rare fulfillment;
And we don’t even want that pull,
Let it hum without a handle on our daily ritual;
No, we shouldn’t let the minutes go,
Trade our dreams for little circles filling up with motion;
Guess we don’t need any more
Now it’s just a timeline that we used to scroll.

A timeline that I used to scroll…
A timeline I don’t need to scroll.

A timeline that I used to scroll

Email: enquiries@asinine.co.uk
Asinine is an independent label and the vehicle for my current projects:  BPD and Gepetto Trio.
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Please contact me if you're interested in publishing my music. If you're an aspiring artist who needs help with marketing or distributing your own music to streaming platforms, let's talk.

One hot summer’s day in the early 1980s, a troubled young schoolkid was being supervised alone in the music room for some forgotten misdemeanor. He spent the period playing a drum kit for the first time in his life, and when he was ready to go, the student teacher who had been supervising signed off his report card with the fateful words: “excellent drummer!”

Throughout the ’90s and ’00s, I played drums in “happy-clappy” churches up and down the country, as well as in college, where I toured with a band named Kurios. I’ve always had music in me. I never properly learned to play a “real” instrument — but why would an undiagnosed autistic kid with ADD want to pluck strings or blow through reeds when he can just hit things?!

These days, as I’m getting older (55) and increasingly disabled (I can no longer manage a full drum kit), I’ve finally found ways to get the music out of my head and into yours through the wonders of technology. I record everything in my home studio using a humble Arturia Minilab 3, a PC running Reaper, and a whole range of tools and plugins.

Now, on the use of AI, let me be absolutely clear:

I do not support the swamping of streaming platforms with “AI slop.” However, as an IT professional with fairly extensive knowledge and experience of AI, I also do not support the indiscriminate dismissal and castigation of any and all use of AI in music production — or any of the arts, for that matter. And as a drummer, I suppose I got over it years ago, back when we were being replaced in studios by computers from the late ’80s onward..!

For me, AI is just another tool in the artist’s toolbox — one that helps me massively shorten and simplify my workflows, and one that’s helped to elevate my craft to something much closer to professionally produced work. I don’t sing (very well), but with AI tools such as Ace Studio, Audime, or Suno Studio, I can turn my own voice — or even simple musical notation — into just about any vocal I can imagine.

I don’t play guitar (at all — I’ve got tiny sausage fingers), but with AI I can turn any melody hammered out on my MIDI controller into a lead guitar, bass riff, or just about any other instrument. I’m a musician, but I’m also an engineer, and I hope those skills — along with my hard work and passion — come through in my music and set it apart from the AI slop which is becoming so prevalent . 🙏🙏🙏 (And yes, I did have ChatGPT proof read this Bio, which is why it's full of em-dash symbols 😅)

As for the lyrics in my songs — the stories they tell — those are all me. They come from my life experiences, and from the obsessive scribbling of the angsty autistic teenager who still lives in my head and believes his poetry is so deeply profound. 😅