“Social Credit” is a weird and pretty dream pop instrumental. 

The song is something of a break from form with a slower tempo and soft instrumentation.

It comes after the harder rock sound of “Slow Horses” and several faster, more edgy tracks on this Soundcloud. 

“Social Credit” draws on dream pop influences including Tame Impala and the Cocteau Twins (and music streamed at just about any artisanal coffee bar), as well as the easy listening rock of Paul McCartney and Wings.

The song features a verse of abstract chords and bouncy melody.

The main guitar part is an electric guitar played through a Boss GT-100 multieffects pedal using the “ultra clean” sound that is somewhere between an acoustic and clean electric.

“Social Credit” follows a verse, prechorus and chorus format with a dramatic bridge after the second chorus. 

As a soft song, each section had to be made unique so “Social Credit” didn’t just sound like pretty strummed guitar chords.

The prechorus features a church organ. The chorus itself is the most dark part of the song with a descending line dramatized by a distorted, EBow-style guitar.

The bridge is pure emotion and drama with synth strings, organ, woodblock and guitar.

For variety, the bridge returns to the verse with a distorted but melodic guitar part. 

“Social Credit” was recorded on a Spire Studio device using a Fender Stratocaster, Yamaha YPT-300 keyboard, a drum beat the Quick Drummer app and cymbal added from GarageBand.

The song was mastered in Adobe Audition.


The song’s title comes from China’s social credit system of ranking and rewarding people based on behavior. 

The system is more eerie and sinister than the song. But the name stuck after watching a documentary. 

Nov. 16, 2025

Social Credit

A little folksy ramble about mortality, electricity and such things. 

When I wrote this I was thinking of when I was standing in my old hallway a few years ago. I was watching the lights from an overhead thunderstorm through the retro glass front door. It was the kind of storm where you could feel the strange sensations around your body from the electric charge in the atmosphere. It was such a charge that it somehow managed to ring the front door bell moments before a deluge. To me it was both poetic and a little bit freaky.

Persian sunlight
Wrapped in rugs that trapped it
In your memory so bright

Oxpecker scars
Feasted on your shoulders
As you fast

You have hovered like a kestrel
Watched the winter turn to petrichor
You have followed thunderstorms
Through minds-eye-skies and charge
The bell to your front door

You still resist
A quench for you temptation
And the dead will desist

So much to leave
Before you reach your senses
And can breathe

You have hovered like a kestrel
Watched the winter turn to petrichor
You have followed thunderstorms
Through minds-eye-skies and charge
The bell to your front door

Petrichor

(Whatever Happened To) Reason

There is blood on my hands
and I can’t tell you why
Was it me who pulled the trigger 
Who’s left to testify
(Repeat)

Whatever happened to reason 
Whatever happened to reason
It’s time to say goodbye 

Did my eyes get wet
I came to pacify 
Trouble is my teacher 
It won’t pass me by
Trouble is my preacher 
It won’t pass you by

(Refrain)

Photo: David Rush

(Whatever Happened To) Reason

Weightless

Krakatoa's smoked souls

Krakatoa's Smoked Souls (feat. MondO CorrottO)

Unknown album (10/6/2020 9:08:26 PM)

you are

Through The Galaxy

Somewhere in Space

Another track from the Cage Of Souls project. Had a lot of fun with the build on this one...

The Ideals Of Youth

This is possibly my fourth or fifth recording of this song. I wrote it 10 or 12 years ago after a line in a book about Neil Young made me laugh out loud. Neil was planning on returning to country music for an album or two and his bass player was frustrated because he felt this meant he'd be relegated to playing eat-shit boom boom bass lines. Impatience with this kind of music was the reason he had left Nashville, he said. Well, this song isn't really about bass lines or about dissing country music, which I love dearly. But it did seem to me there should be a song called The Reason I Left Nashville. This is the latest - and in all likelihood not the last - attempt to do the title justice ...


The Reason I Left Nashville

They made me play that eat-shit ‘boom’ bass
Flicked their peanuts into my face
I thought the music was kinda thin
But some of them  people had paid to get in
I think the audience is probably drinking still
That's the reason I left Nashville

Yeah and they wear those alligator boots
Diamonds sewn into their suits
Every other store is selling steel guitars
Why does everybody got to be a country star?
Yeah but they don't want to foot the bill
That's the reason I left Nashville

It's rock n roll from here on in
That's the way it’ll have to be
I never played my own country song
I blew right out of Tennessee

Truth is I guess I've lost my hunger
Should've been there 10 years younger
I was kinda busy, up to no good
To give my song verisimilitude
They wouldn't give me 10 lousy minutes to fill
That's the reason I left Nashville

The Reason I Left Nashville

I would like
float in the sea
of the pretty eyes,
Melt me in a tear.
Wrap me in a crunch.
I want to question
gently to water.
Imagine the curves of a fairy.
Disappear in your ears
I want to play in the deepest
of a human being.

Sleep in a truth

Empathize with calm lakes.

Raðulfr Maganhar

Piano Improvisation 7

Phantom Noise appears somewhere 
Between darkness and light 
Where paths leads 
To the shadowing delight

Making electronica in various kind
Much in retrofuturistic space ambient style
Tune in, lean back and listen for a while

All songs produced and recorded by Phantom Noise.