I have nothing against background music.
Restaurants require something to prevent everyone hearing the conversation at the next table.
Shops appear convinced that purchasing trousers requires a soundtrack.
Fine.
That is not what I made.
Fat-Cat Democracy was written to be listened to. Preview pre-order here
Preferably more than once.
That sounds obvious.
Apparently it is not.
Some Music Is Designed to Pass Through You
There is music built for immediate recognition.
The chorus arrives quickly.
The hook repeats.
You know roughly where everything is going within thirty seconds.
There is nothing inherently wrong with that.
Efficiency is a skill.
It is simply not the way I tend to write.
I like songs that reveal more after familiarity.
A lyric that changes meaning because you finally noticed the line before it.
A musical phrase that seemed incidental until it returns later.
An arrangement that becomes heavier because something has been removed rather than added.
A character whose perspective becomes less trustworthy the longer you listen.
Those things require attention.
I am comfortable with that.
I Do Not Want to Explain Everything in the First Minute
There is a temptation now to make everything immediately understandable.
Get to the point.
Deliver the hook.
Do not make anybody wait.
This makes sense if the objective is to stop someone moving to the next piece of content.
It is less useful if the objective is to build a song.
I do want a song to have a point.
I simply do not believe every part of that point has to be handed over immediately.
Some information should arrive later.
Some details should only make sense after something else has happened.
Sometimes the listener should be allowed to be wrong for a while.
That is particularly important when writing characters.
White Gloves Needs Suspicion
White Gloves works because Iago does not announce himself as the villain.
That would be considerate of him.
Unfortunately it would also destroy the song.
He speaks calmly.
He explains himself.
He presents manipulation as observation.
On a first listen, the language matters.
On later listens, the gaps matter more.
What does he not say?
Where does suggestion become control?
At what point does somebody else’s decision stop being entirely their own?
The song works better when you listen to how quietly the damage is being done.
Hence the white gloves.
Inheritance Needs You to Know Less Than the Portrait
Inheritance works in almost the opposite direction.
The narrator genuinely does not understand what is happening.
It sees damage.
It assumes guilt.
It searches itself for an offence.
If you already know The Picture of Dorian Gray, you may understand the mechanism before the narrator does.
That creates a different kind of tension.
You know why the portrait is changing.
The portrait does not.
So the important part is not discovering the answer.
It is hearing what prolonged punishment without explanation does to the mind receiving it.
Eventually it begins to suspect that perhaps it deserves what is happening.
That change is more important to me than the supernatural mechanism.
Tramlines and Teeth Lives Between the Lines
Kat and Pete are more direct.
Possibly because neither of them has much patience for subtle social negotiation.
I recognise the problem.
They argue.
They resist.
They refuse to bend.
But the important parts of Tramlines and Teeth are not necessarily the declarations.
They are the contradictions.
They stand back-to-back against the world.
They also turn the same armour towards each other.
They call it love.
Then admit the rain is still coming through the cracks.
Listen once and it is a song about two stubborn people.
Listen again and it becomes less clear whether their refusal to change is keeping them together or preventing them from ever getting closer.
I prefer not to answer that for them.
Fat-Cat Democracy Builds Before It Breaks
The title track has the most obvious escalation.
It begins with observation.
Then evidence accumulates.
Missing rungs.
Tax breaks.
Bailouts.
Cuts.
Offshore money.
Rents.
Wages.
Rules.
The language becomes progressively less passive because the people inside the song become progressively less passive.
By the time the revolt arrives, I wanted it to feel inevitable.
If the song had begun there, it would simply have been shouting.
The earlier sections explain why the shouting eventually happens.
That distinction matters.
The Arrangement Should Tell the Story Too
Lyrics are only part of it.
If the words say pressure is building but the arrangement remains exactly the same, something is wrong.
I want the music to participate.
Density changes.
Space changes.
The vocal position changes.
Instrumentation enters and leaves.
Sections should feel different because the idea has moved somewhere else.
Complexity is useful when it makes that movement more effective.
Otherwise it is decoration.
I have no interest in adding three bars of 11/8 simply to prove that I can count badly in an unusual way.
If 4/4 carries the idea better, 4/4 wins.
The song does not receive additional marks for arithmetic.
Repeated Listening Should Be Rewarded
This is probably the standard I care about most.
I want the second listen to contain something the first did not.
Not because I deliberately hid everything.
Because familiarity changes attention.
The first time, you hear the song.
The second time, you begin hearing decisions.
A phrase.
A background part.
A lyrical connection.
A change in perspective.
Something that seemed decorative becomes structural.
By the fifth listen, ideally the song has become larger rather than smaller.
That is difficult to achieve.
It is also why I like progressive music.
At its best, progression is not about length or technical difficulty.
It is about allowing a composition enough room to reveal itself.
This Is Also Why I Take Too Long Mixing
There is a less impressive side to all of this.
If I believe details matter, I can become extremely good at refusing to stop adjusting them.
One vocal phrase.
One automation move.
One frequency.
One reverb tail.
One tiny thing that absolutely nobody except me will ever notice.
Then another.
Eventually I am improving the music at a rate measurable only by geological instruments.
Release dates are useful for this reason.
They introduce reality.
On 14 October, I can no longer decide that the second word in the third chorus needs another half decibel.
Civilisation will somehow continue.
You Do Not Have to Analyse It
None of this means I expect someone to sit with a notebook documenting every modulation.
That sounds exhausting.
Listen however you want.
Put it on loudly.
Put it on quietly.
Listen to the lyrics.
Ignore them and listen to the bass.
Disagree with the politics.
Distrust Iago.
Argue with Kat.
Feel sorry for the portrait.
Or simply decide that one riff is particularly unpleasant in the correct way.
The record does not require instructions.
But it was built with attention.
If you give some back, there is more there.
That is all I ask of music myself.
Four Days
In four days, Fat-Cat Democracy stops being a collection of files in my studio and becomes something other people can hear.
At that point, I lose control over what any of it means to them.
Good.
Music should eventually survive without its author standing beside it explaining the controls.
There are four songs.
They contain politics, manipulation, stubbornness, consequence, literature, distorted guitars and several decisions I will probably question forever.
They are not perfect.
They are finished.
There is an important difference.
FAT-CAT DEMOCRACY
14 October.
Listen once if you like.
I made it for the second time.
— SHANNOW