They Though He Was Part of the Ship

This song highlights one of the possible dangers of crashing one's ship on a planet inhabited by a totally alien species. I recorded this a few years ago, deciding only recently to mix it down. It features a reklus-modified Korg DDD-1.

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posted by The Great Big Mulp (12 comments total)

Man, your music really has that quality where it's immediately clear one is listening to The Great Big Mulp. I love the on and off voice effect towards the end, it totally works. Mind sharing the lyrics?
posted by Corduroy at 12:20 PM on April 29, 2016

Oh thank you! Yes, I guess I have cultivated a pretty recognizable sound, and that second set of lines was one of the more difficult things I've put together -- getting it to sound right with minimal noise and pops and weirdness from switching back and forth between the normal and vocoded vocal tracks. The lyrics:

A blinding light, a deafening sound,
And now I seem to be awake again.
Towering over me within the wreckage,
An intelligence remarks that "We can fix it, I think."

Sensations I cannot describe
Indicate that repairs are going well so far,
Though I am feeling strangely cold
And significantly heavier than before.
posted by The Great Big Mulp at 12:34 PM on April 29, 2016 [1 favorite]

Oh man, this was great! The title and your description were enough to figure out where the story was going to go, but I was still surprised and loved when the tiny chip tune-y sound first comes in around 0:46.
posted by curious nu at 6:55 PM on April 29, 2016

The bit-crushing is a really nice touch! Great post.
posted by CarrotAdventure at 11:23 AM on May 1, 2016

They fixed it real good, didn't they?
posted by AppleSeed at 7:50 PM on May 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

I love how the squelches and things all feed into the song's narrative. I like a bit of that audio-wise anyway, but really neat approach. Also, liking the sci-fi body horror angle (I read a short story about a Docking Bay once, three guesses what happened to people there).
posted by comealongpole at 8:53 AM on May 2, 2016

This is really fucking great, man.
posted by cortex at 5:00 PM on May 2, 2016

Thank you all! Also, I just noticed the typo -- obviously, it should be "They Thought ... " Ooops, ha!
posted by The Great Big Mulp at 10:55 AM on May 3, 2016

Used a bit of this on this month's Best Of The Web podcast ep!
posted by cortex at 11:45 AM on May 3, 2016 [1 favorite]

I recommend to anyone reading this thread to listen to Mulp's complete MeFi Music ouvruervure. It's some amazing, veer-across-the-median-strip-and-back kinda stuff.

I wanted to ask you, cause you told me a long time ago you can't record a song unless you do it all at once on the same day (or something similar) -- how long did it take you to make this, from start to finish (down time included)?
posted by not_on_display at 11:00 AM on May 5, 2016

Gosh, thanks, n_o_d! How long did this take to make ... hmmm ... well, this one was still recorded and mostly mixed in a single sitting in 2011 (I think?) -- that took 6 to 8 hours or so. I toyed with the mix there a few times after that, probably spending another 4 to 6 hours on it. I originally intended there to be more song at the end, but a month or so ago figured I was probably never going to add more to it, so I just threw together an ending.

So, I guess from start to finish it took about 5 years. Though the actual time working on it was somewhere in the 10 to 15 hour range, and all of the recording was done in one sitting in about 8 hours.
posted by The Great Big Mulp at 8:26 AM on May 10, 2016

This is how you tell a story
posted by es_de_bah at 9:09 PM on August 17, 2023