Kyle Landon - Gold Shadows (2016) Full Album

[@KyleTheLandon]

Wring Me Out. The production started out being inspired by Lil Ugly Mane's Collapse and Appear, but I kinda veered pretty hard from that. A strange, freakish song. I kinda feel bad for it, it's just kinda whimpering there in the corner. Job done. It's easy to go on negative thought spirals, unfortunately. Lying. This song had like 3 completely different versions. It started as a Fishmans ripoff way back when but eventually I found this Echoboy preset that worked beautifully on piano, and found an effect chain that made guitars sound magical and the song morphed. Hotel California type bassline was what I was thinking at the time, but really it's more dub than anything, I know now. I LABORED over that guitar solo and ensured it was one take. I never was the best player but I have my moments. Lyrically, I was just feeling burned by everybody. Hollow Road. I don't know where this song came from. It just happened. The vocal delivery and melody are something I've never done before or since, I just hit record and it happened. I don't know how, it just did. I like to think the song sang itself. I still remember the day I wrote the lyrics, it was all based on how the bassline was making me feel. The bassline felt like it was traveling somewhere. You know how sometimes when you're driving, the sun is shining onto the concrete and makes it look like a brilliant white-gold? Magical song to me, partly because I can't explain it. Moondale. A story. The name came to me in a dream. Well, not really a dream, I just remember waking up one morning, and the word "Moondale" was in my head, so I wrote it down. I was cheated on in two different relationships before writing this, the wounds were still sore. This song was a great challenge to keep interesting but I think I succeeded. I hope the story is interesting to others. There's a big bass hit that happens once that I added because one day I was driving while listening to the song, and some other car drove by blasting music, and the bass from whatever they were bumping mixed with this song in an interesting way. I had fun changing the song and adding little things to accent the different moments in the story, like when I mention someone chopping wood and then you hear chopping sounds, or when I mention driving with the window down and you hear wind. I hope someone finds the big easter egg I snuck into the song. Here's a hint: it happens 5 times. Trillion Faces. Maybe the only song in my own discography I don't agree with anymore. Everybody has a crisis of faith now and then, it be like that. I think the synth vox melody was written 2014, one of the first cool things I ever made in FL back when I was all guitar and Audacity. I've always been inspired by the way Mewtwo's voice sounds in Smash Bros. Melee, that's like the greatest use of flanger ever, I was definitely thinking of it when I was making this. Actually, I just listened back to the Mewtwo voice, its not a flanger is it? Fuzz? Maybe it is a flanger? I dunno, sounds like good content to me lol. I was thinking of Godspeed You! Black Emperor when I put that little quiet part in there, right before the rap part happens. Speaking of rap, this was the first rap verse I ever felt proud of. And beat too, for that matter. I tried a lot but you know, there weren't 800,000,000 tutorials about it back then, and I don't think I would have listened to them if there was. Washed Out. The opening vocal sample is a snippet of a conversation I accidentally recorded between me and an ex. I was in guitar class and had a habit of recording myself in the voice memos if i came up with something interesting, and then I forgot to end recording, and I recorded the next 3 hours of my school day. This song is about an ex... but these two exes are not the same!! I think the lyrics explain most of it. What an explosive track... good job young me! I just remembered, the instrumental, like, the first 4 minutes, are something I played for her before. She once called "pretty" or some uneducated unfeeling nonsense. Using it to burn her to the ground was very fun and alluring to me at the time. Wishes for the Stars of the Seventh. This song's first third is a freakin' nightmare lol. A big production flex. The whole song is more or less an abstract retelling of Goodnight Punpun. I read that thing like 6 times in a row, I feel like it emotionally guided me for a year or so. I love the softness of the second part, I remember it taking me a long time to write it. The third third was originally way different but I completely redid it, which ended up being the last thing I did for this album. It was originally just me muttering on top of a random synth. Hooray for quality control! Tunnel. One of two songs in my life that I came up with in the shower. It's just not the place for me I guess. In the shower I came up with the kick rhythm and that lyric "light at the end of the tunnel; end of the light in the tunnel". The song is about an unrequited love, the girl that got away, the oneitis, whatever you wanna call it. I remember recording it super early in the morning after blasting my voice the previous day, I can't really do this delivery naturally. A very gentle song to me, despite its sadness. Ghost of You. Part two of Tunnel, I realize just right now. Originally called "Ghosts Wear Sundresses" which is really dumb lol. About the same girl, but muchh more artsy and abstract and full blown emotional. The instrumental is the same as a song I did the previous year but had completely fumbled vocally called "Sally" (which is NOT the name of the girl). Except, the drums were wayyy more wonky on that one, and not in a cool way. I didn't know how to write vocals yet with this album (I figured it out on the next one) so it was always a joy when I could figure out something catchy like this while just shooting in the dark. The melody playing on on the synth vox during the chorus used to be a little different, but I had a crash or overwrote them on accident or something, and I have no memory of how it used to be, I just knew that it was different, and the best thing I ever did. Oh well. I like the new one though. They remind me of Kate Bush's Cloudbusting. The "all we need is each other" line that bookends the song has been continuously coming to me in a dream like, since high school. So I figured, might as well use it. To this day I wake up and its sitting right there, on the tip of my brain. Gold Shadows. The ending. Somehow, I wrote this the same way as the first track. I just told myself I needed a good ending song, and then immediately did this. Dunno how. I think both of these songs were written consecutively, too? Anyways, how else do you end things other than a big Swans type post rock crescendo? Exactly. Lyrically, I was just getting into Fishmans (Shinji Sato), Nick Drake, and Townes van Zandt, all artists who had died either before their time or in unfortunate circumstances. David Bowie had also just passed unexpectedly, right as I was getting into him. This song, and this album as a whole, are a reflection of that. Just wanting to exist, to be remembered, and hopefully make a difference in some people's lives, and hopefully I'll be around to know that I did it. The cover is a photo I took of some plastic necklaces I had, taken with flash against my TV for that neat RGB effect behind it. I used to use those necklaces as a prop back in high school for a rapper character I would play named "K-Dub". Lots of people called me that, actually. I guess using it in the cover was just a way to represent the past for me. And of course, had to use the Sonic 3 and Knuckles font. Why not? I think this album being a perfect 1 hour long unintentionally and not a second over or under was like, some sign from the universe that I did it right this time. Hopefully, other people in the future will let me know if I did it right, too.