Feature: My Satellite Decodes ‘Person’
How did everything come together?
In 2015, the band was on a hiatus after spending 2014 and most of 2015 playing out on our last album, ‘Lift.’ I was spending the summer in Europe and Andy shot me a text saying that he wanted to do another My Satellite record. This time we would fully collab on it which was something we hadn’t explored yet. I had done almost all of the songwriting for our previous releases and was happy to share those duties. It was exciting to know that we were on the same page and so we slowly started getting into the studio and hashing this record out.
How did you approach the arrangement and composition of the music for 'Person?'
All of these songs began with some piece of an idea that I had written and brought to Andy. The song could be anywhere from 1% to 70% written and then we would rip it to pieces and build something new out of it. By the end, that original idea may have almost nothing in common with the finished song on the album. We had no rules as to how we wrote. We got in the studio, did some drugs, and let our imagination run wild as to what the album could be.
Which track(s) do you like the best and why?
Each track had special moments during the writing and recording process so it’s hard to pick a favorite from our ten children. If I had to choose one, I would choose “Strange Business.” We had an amazing couple nights writing that one where it felt like we unlocked some new cheat code for the album. We developed our bespoke arpeggiating patterns technique in this song. We decided to create parts that function like an arpeggiator, but use different synth sounds for each note. I can’t imagine that we are the first to do this, but it was a first for us. Being free of timbre or rhythmic limitations opened a major door for us. It allowed an arpeggio to groove with the song exactly how we wanted it to, which was an exciting leap forward. And then the bass solo is such an unexpected chef’s kiss on that song. We used a MicroSynth and a Big Muff to create that massive sound and did some really cool pitch manipulations on it in the outro of the song. It may not be the strongest song on the album, but the memories we made writing it will stick with us forever.
Can you walk us through your creative process when writing and composing music?
Every song starts with some sound and chord change that inspires a vocal melody. If I don’t have at least that much going into a writing session, that idea is usually dead to me and I move on. Once a kernel starts to grow with some more chords and sounds, the song starts dictating what it is. It gives us grand ideas of the song it could be and we follow those leads to find the right fit. Andy and I just start throwing down ideas, then ideas that build off of the previous ideas, and so on. For Andy and me there are no bad moves when it comes to tracking. We just get it all down in a creative flurry and then parse out the good stuff later. At some point the song will give me a clue of what it should be about lyrically and then there is an interesting osmosis that happens as the song starts to absorb the lyrical meaning. If I’ve done my job right, the words are an extension of the music and we can find moments where we can paint the words with sound and make the whole listening experience a little richer.
How do you continuously grow and evolve as a band?
I think continuing to intentionally listen to music outside of your genre is pretty important. We don’t get the funk into our songs without listening to Stevie Wonder and Parliament-Funkadelic. We don’t get the orchestral parts if I don’t listen to and am moved by Beethoven and Debussy. And then all the subtle ways that Dre, Kendrick, Dylan, Pink Floyd, Doja Cat, FKA Twigs, Sade, A Perfect Circle, Deftones, Thrice, Joni Mitchell and hundreds of other artists affected us over the years to make us each the unique musician that we are. Keeping the childlike wonder around the magic of good music is vital.
