Skittletitties (2011)

In the fall of 2011 blah blah blah story about Skittletitties.

The first track SWEETHART opens with the playstation sound effect because at our apartment all we had in the living room was an old CRT on the floor with a playstation and Final Fantasy VII. It's all about that FUCK YOU energy. I wanted the album to sound like the soundtrack to a fucked up playstation game about driving getaway in a beat-up pickup truck after robbing a gas station or something. The organ is a nod to Nobuo Uematsu playstation organ, I think he was trying to capture the Deep Purple sound, but on playstation it makes it sound goofy, in a good way. This song is mainly an exercise in doing longer-than-usual melodies. Like the drum riff goes on longer than you think it will. The crazy brass riff is longer than your average crazy brass riff.  Then the laundromat blues guitar comes in, I was listening to a lot of Albert King's Born Under A Bad Sign at the time. Then it all falls apart down into a sewer pipe for the bridge. I noticed in a Black Sabbath song that the entire band slowed down after the bridge and wanted to recreate that at the ending, so it's just kinda like everybody is exhausted after trudging through sewer water.  I was working at a bus factory (this was around the same time I created Death Factor) and my co-worker, I forget her name sadly, would text me and call me "sweethart" spelled wrong, which I thought was funny, so that's where the name comes from. 

RUBY TROOPER was actually created before SWEETHART, back at the apartment prior to the crt on the floor one. I was into youtube videos of music with less than 300 views, and discovered a band called Potemkin and I think it was called Foetus? Oh yeah, also a musician called Green Ray. Just weird french (I think french? Not english.) avante garde prog rock late 1970's type shit with this weird vibe, so that's what I tried to capture with RUBY TROOPER in the layout of the melodies. Makes me feel like an explorer. Through red crystal caves. Stalagmites. That sort of stuff. 

WILLEM DAFOE was written around the same time as RUBY TROOPER. Wanted to try an idea I had for a bridge of just holding a chord for an uncomfortably long time. Like the way WILLEM DAFOE looks sometimes.

'SPLAINS ME THAT is more Albert King in midi form. I love it whenever someone tries to recreate the blues through a sound card. Like Tim Folin in Plok or Rock & Roll racing on SNES. Or the Street Rod Soundblaster rockabilly on DOS. It's like, the blues is all about feeling and bending the rules and it's the opposite of the rigid 16-bit sequencing of synthesizer square waves. So you have to work way harder than you should have to just to make it sound human and flawed and out of tune like real blues.

SKITTLETITTIES, the title track, is older than all the previous tracks on the album to this point. There was an internet radio station (which sadly I forget the name of, I still think of it sometimes) that had this soft vibe of like music you would listen to when you are just driving in space in the future, just a drive home after work in your spaceship. I think I was watching the anime Planet ES, and it has "Fly Me To The Moon" in a few different variations at the ending credits every episode. Just that sort of mood. Chord progression is like a Gauntlet for NES chord progression. Or songs like I Will Survive lol. I call it the Bach chord progression but I don't know what it's called. It's really easy to do on guitar, just modulating downwards back and forth between the strings.

ALL AMERICAN RECREATIONS was created shortly after SKITTLETITTIES. The instrumental of the song was a failed attempt at trying to make an Eagles of Death Metal song in fruity loops. The science of light from the 50's narrator is just classic Basic Bus Driver from the good ol days, and it lines up funny with the music in a good way. The name is a joke about a local radio commercial about a dart board and pool table company.

I don't remember making VANILLA CROWN. It's a weird time signature. 

The rest of the album is self-explanatory.

blah blah blah etc

To listen to Skittletitties visit the Basic Bus Driver bandcamp page (embedded below):

Skittletitties is available listen for free or $7 digital download above on bandcamp.