Thank You (regarding Songs From Dream Beach)

    I don't wanna repeat myself (what I said on the last blog post), but I can't think of a better way to start. I've been wanting to get out more music for months, and there were quite some things getting in my way while I was finally working on some. But now it's been out for 2 weeks, and I'm proud of it.

    Thank you to everyone that supported me throughout any point in time in which I was working on and teasing it. The biggest shoutout has to go to my good Twitter mutual Flaet, as he was the first to show support towards the EP when I unveiled its cover, and continued to show support during the week of its release. I also want to shoutout my other mutuals james mcguire and Brandy for their support, my media arts teacher from last year that I still talk to occasionally as he offered help with the EP, but really anyone that showed any form of appreciation through simply liking any tweet I made related to it or even checked it out.

    I figured that to show my appreciation, I'll offer insight and facts on each of the tracks so you all could get a better understanding and appreciation of it, so here we go:

    In Dream Beach was the first track I worked on, and you could even find its start as I've shared a bit of a concept of it back in April. I figured it all out through just fiddling with my guitar (which was common with pretty much all of the original tracks), and once I figured out what the chorus would sound like, I though it was nice to include as this switch-up to shift the lyrical focus somehow. The chorus was also the first part of the song I came up with lyrics for, and as I built around it, I thought it was a great way of letting the listener settle into this 'Dream Beach' that the EP is themed quite a bit around.

casually goofballed with my guitar and somehow came up with this. bro. i’m a musical genius. somebody get me signed to xl recordings pic.twitter.com/m1tCiatPjm

— • • • (@SaltehTSS) April 28, 2023

    Never Again was the second track I worked on and the second track on the EP. I envisioned it as an introspective, sentimental teen narrative taking place in the 2000s since I really admire the nerdy culture of that time (you could very clearly see that early on in the song with the Halo 2 line, I was a bit back-and-worth on that line because a part of me thought it was pretty corny) despite not being able to really live through it. The "you got on the train... but you would never look back again" line was probably the first lyric I came up with, and once I started building a story around it and eventually knew how it would all go, I felt really good about it and thought listeners would find it touching. The song's narrative was somewhat inspired by the film 'Waves' (2019), and as I was working on the track I later realized that I was indirectly taking inspiration from Moon Song by Phoebe Bridgers for its general vibe. I know that sounds weird, but I'm pretty sure I gave Punisher a relisten around the time, and it clicked with me more, though Moon Song had always stuck with me.

    Eyes Without a Face is pretty self explanatory, just a short cover of the Billy Idol song of the same name. I'm not a fan of Billy Idol, but I find this song of his to be quite a charming one that kinda fits with the vibe of the EP. I played it at a lower key and skipped out on the "Les yeux sans visage" parts of the chorus, as well as the bridge and everything after that.

    I'm a Failing Man was intended to be a track in which I express my struggle with school that I feel a lot of my classmates don't experience. It was intended to be heavily inspired by Daniel Johnston's music, especially his song "Despair Came Knocking". It was of course, with quite some simplicity to it, but I never truly got to recording it. When I finished working on the EP on October 29th, I literally just redid all of the lyrics and recorded 2 piano layers and my vocals. I would rerecord my vocals quite a few times and ended up putting on a few Elliott Smith songs (specifically some on Roman Candle) to figure out how exactly I wanted my vocals delivered.

    Lastly, Gazing Above Dream Beach was an instrumental track that, believe it or not, wasn't initially intended to be on the EP. I had simply played around on a new BandLab project and ended up making something that I later felt would fit in with the contents of the EP. I imagine it as a sonic reflection of the track's title. I sampled spoken word audio from "Whack Your Boss," a short, interesting flash game I discovered and played over a year ago, as well as a video simply recording city sounds in Seoul, South Korea. I also later realized that I might've been indirectly taking inspiration from "A Quick One Before the Eternal Worm Devours Connecticut" by Have A Nice Life, as I had recently given Deathconsciousness a first-time listen at the time and had been obsessed with it.

 

    I see Songs From Dream Beach as a moment of letting go from everything just for recollecting yourself and kinda looking back at some things. It's been a nice little ride preparing to have it out, finally putting it out, and watching its view count grow over time. I even took screenshots of Album of The Year's "New Album Releases" page 40 minutes after releasing it, and it appeared on the second page with no ratings while the trending albums already had a good deal of ratings.

    I've also went on to make a playlist compiling music that had inspired the EP. Definitely worth your time if you liked the EP and are interested in checking out similar music.

    That's about it. Thank you all for supporting me regarding my new music, and I hope you all will continue to support me as I'll continue to put out more in the future, as I have a lot in mind.

- Anthony “Salteh” S. • • •