Tag Archives: Ray Charles

The Last Throwback December: Livin on the West Coast and YarraY

This December/January throwback series has been a look back to the early days of our creativity. We thank everybody that has been riding with us, and we hope that other artists might want to look back on their collections and see their Reflection and Response in progression.

Livin on the West Coast, made earlier than YarraY, was from late 2005. Livin starts with a wah-wah guitar intro with V’s signature driving keyboard elements and baseline and goes into a lead section with some distortion. We toy with using different pickup settings on the guitar for the chorus, with the first part of the chorus sounding more muffled and bassy then the full pickup second half. The track then turns into a synth string mash-up with distorted guitar, a style that appears on other tracks (see taquito). This track shows how we were incorporating various styles, including but not limited to hip-hop and rock, into our arrangements.

Livin on the West Coast

YarraY was an initial foray into sampling. One of our favorite artists ais Ray Charles. For the first part of the track, we took the chord structure and melody from Ray’s Unchain My Heart. While the first half of our track follows a bluesy vibe, we change it up when we bring in  Don’t Set Me Free and throw some synth and 808-drums. We then slow it down at the end of the track as it fades into the future.

YarraY

 

Reflection and Response.

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Argentina Thursdays: Love You/ Tears!!

Buenos Aires, Las Cañitas/Belgrano district, 16th floor circa 2009. One of my first projects in Argentina was a remix of the legendary Ray Charles’ Drown In My Own Tears. Chopped it up, threw some of that Logic synth on there. Pain is universal.

Tears!!!!!

Same location 2010. Whitney Houston’s I Will Always Love You is stuck in my head.  Took the line right before she starts singing the verse and did some things. The flute you hear at the end is the homie Jaime, who plays flute and charango in a folk music band in the city.

Always Love You

Reflection and Response

-P

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