Disquiet Junto Project 0579: Memory Serves
The Assignment: Rerecord a piece of music.

Step 1: The goal of this project is to simply perform and record again something you’ve performed and recorded previously. Think about something you’d like to revisit.

Step 2: Now rerecord the piece of music you decided upon in Step 1.

Track notes:

Something a bit different this week and certainly something I couldn't perform in SuperCollider! 

For as long as I've been seriously making music (25-ish years) I've written songs as part of that continuum. Sometimes the songwriting has become my primary activity and other times it's been consigned to the background. My 30s during the 2010's were pretty interesting in that regard. I'd started off not writing lyrics (let along performing) for quite sometime and then mid-decade songwriting and performing became my primary creative activity. That's where and when this song, "Queen Tide" first materialised. 

It's a song that's been hanging around for about 7 to 8 years now and I've never been able to settle on a structure that feels quite right. Initially, it fell square into a strummed acoustic folk idiom and I'd often perform it under my Garden Ruin moniker with my friend Tom accompanying on guitar. I've included a video of a live performance from back in 2017 that gives an indication of what it sounds like and how I've attempted to record it in the past.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cO0kNIsKyro

For whatever reason - and about 12 versions later - it just hasn't happened. As this year began, I realised I hadn't worked on songs in quite some time and thought it might be time to revisit some older material and see if it motivated me to work on some newer material. I was up super-early this morning and upon seeing the Junto prompt this morning my thoughts drifted towards revisiting "Queen Tide" and approaching it a bit differently.

Turning my thoughts to a song like "Queen Tide" could have also been the byproduct of the bizarre climactic interlude that has interrupted an otherwise straightforward summer here in Adelaide, South Australia. For the past couple of days, wind gusts have been huge, a cold southerly whipping from the Antarctic has dumped rain and the skies have looked volatile and foreboding. It's pure climate change stuff. "Queen Tide" is about climate change as well and is written from the perspective of wandering around my hometown of Normanville on the Fleurieu Peninsula in the aftermath of a climactic catastrophe.

One of the things I've always liked about the song is the use of an Em sus9 (or Em+2) chord in the main verse. My partner Lauren has often referred to this as the 'Twin Peaks' song, since the melody and structure does echo the TP theme a little bit. It's always sounded fine on guitar, but this morning I thought I'd change it up and find a way to replicate it on piano. I've been listening to a lot of John Cale's work lately as well, so I thought I'd drop the key by a few increments and sing it a bit lower.

So that's how it started and I spent a few hours on it with a few overdubs that turned into several. That was what became the 'kitchensink' version, completely with an 'iPad pedal steel' in the bridge and two simultaneous sets of algorithmically programmed drums. I've spared you of the 'kitchensink' version and presented a more sensibly austere version with a bit of additional keyboard accompaniment, restrained guitar and backing vocals.

[Disquiet_Junto_0579] Queen Tide (redux)

Tristan Louth-Robins is a South Australian artist working principally in the medium of sound art and field recording. Ideas of sound and its signification are key elements in Louth-Robins' practice, traversing the space between the visual and aural his work is realised through the mediums of recordings, installation, visual art and performance. He is interested in sound and its associative implications - including its relationship to objects, technology, urban space, memory and the natural world. 


Since 2005, Louth-Robins has presented work in Australia and internationally as a solo artist, whilst also collaborating with artists, writers, researchers, musicians and performers. 

Working across a vast array of activities encompassing composition, sound design, installation art, field recording and workshops, his work has been featured in events such as the Adelaide Festival of Arts (2006), The National Regional Arts Festival (2012), Mildura-Wentworth Arts Festival (2013), Fairfax Festival (2013) and Adelaide Fringe Festival (2014); and selected works exhibited at galleries including The Australian Experimental Art Foundation (2009), SASA Gallery (2012, 2015), Light Square Gallery (2012) and FELT Space (2015). His audio works have been broadcast on radio including Radio National, Classic FM, The BBC (UK), Acoustic Frontiers (USA) and RBB (Germany).