Tripecac - Decomposed Pie

Recently I'd gotten heavily into Fela Kuti. The title is a pun on his name. The music tries to resemble his type of music (Afrobeat), but doesn't even come close.

The lyrics are nonsense. I just wanted to chant something catchy. "Pidgin" is a pun on Pidgin English (used by Fela in his songs) and the IM client Pidgin, which I had just setup on my laptop. That's the only clever part in the whole song! The rest is pretty dumb.

Oh well, at least this leaves lots of room for improvement.

I've said that before, haven't it?

This is my second attempt at creating Afrobeat.

This time around, I listened carefully to some Fela CDs, and came up with several rules which the first song didn't follow:

1. The key has to be minor (not major).
2. The song has to be modal; the key cannot change.
3. It needs to swing.
4. It needs a spacious bassline, like in dub and reggae.

Hopefully those rules will help give it a more "Fela" feel. If they don't, then I will just have to try, try again!

Again, the title is a play on "Fela Kuti"; I felt like this song was too mellow, too close to easy listening.

This is the third, thought not necessarily charmed, attempt at afrobeat. I listened to an afrobeat compilation the day I started it and realized that other musicians haven't been able to sound like Fela Kuti either, even the cover bands. So I decided to just try to create something that sounds catchy, and vaguely African. The result sounds more to my ears like Can, but it's at least somewhat groovy, though it gets tiring after a while.

The title is yet another a play on "Fela Kuti", and refers to a guy working as a computer programmer. The actual lyrics are about one of G's former bosses, whom at first everyone thought was a suave, a natural leader, and then later turned out to be confused and/or corrupt.

If you merge the two concepts, you can pretend this song is about a computer programmer who goes corrupt. Or maybe a computer that gets corrupted. But really it's just about making noise.

Yet another Fela Kuti attempt. This time I focused on getting the repetitive guitar sound first. Drums came later.

It has a similar relentless feel to some of Kuti's stuff, but lacks funk. And it feels a little empty. And repetitive. And dumb. Oh well. Gotta keep trying!

Lyrically, this is a very oblique reference to the fact that my parents were vacationing "down under" (in New Zealand). Do they have koalas in New Zealand? I don't know! Maybe the hobbits hunted them to extinction?

For some reason I was thinking about Fela Kuti and Bela Fleck at the same time, and the title came to me. This of course meant that I had to use a prominent banjo part, which I did, at least at the beginning. I quickly lost enthusiasm for it (and for the song in general).

The end result sounds much more country or polka than Afrobeat, but I kinda like the energy in parts.

The lyrics have no connection to the title; how could they? They're actually about having to walk home in the changing weather.

This is named after Denali, which means "The Great One". I initially planned to finish it on her birthday, but then I realized that once I went to the hospital, it would be at least a day before I could come back home. So I decide to simple have its length equal her birthday (2008-12-23).

The song itself is kinda lame. It feels empty in the beginning, and tired. However, towards the end it settles into a please rhythm. Maybe this will represent Denali's sleep patterns? I certainly hope so!

As most of you non-geeks and many of you lucky geeks know, tending a newborn is lots of work. Not only for us geeks, but for the geekettes who have to boobie feed every hour or so. Make that two hours. No, make that ten minutes. And then three hours. And then half a minute. In the middle of the night. Waah!!! Waaaah!!! Wet diaper! Waaaah!!! Waaahhh!! Poopie diaper! Waaaah!!! Waaaahhhh!!! Waaaaaaaahhhh!

Lame jokes aside, I find myself too tired to generate non-lame jokes. I'm very literal minded now. My sense of irony is gone. Do you understand the song title now? Not very subtle, eh? Well, I told you my humor was drained! Or did I? I forget! Oh yeah, another thing, the memory goes all jumbly too.

So anyway, here's a song with no real prospect of being great, seeing that it's coming from my diaper-sogged brain. Maybe once we all get on the same sleep cycle my usual torrent of awesome, awesome ideas will, like, erupt into something non-poop-related. Yeah. Whatever. I'm tired. Good night.

p.s. This ended up more Krautrocky than Fela Kutiy. Is "Kutiy" a word? I don't know! Too tired to look it up, too tired to care. I guess I'll have to make words up until my brain's repaired.

You've gotta drop the gold or you'll sink to the bottom.

If you want, you can interpret that to mean that I've got to let go of any ambition to end the album on a bang and instead just finish it quickly so that I can get the rest of the songs backed up and safe. In otherwords, sacrifice the potential gold for the actual copper. Hmm. Yeah.

Anyway, this "short" song is a last stab at getting something percussive and groovy to wind up the album. It doesn't bother trying to sound like afrobeat, which requires too much deliberation for my sleep-deprived mind. Instead, it just tries to be funky and kinda catchy, in a repetitive sort of way. I don't know if it works.

This was the original, slower version of "Baby Dew". I didn't want to throw it away, and thought it'd be easier to use it as a reprise rather than try to somehow fit it with the rest of the song.