Brilliant Shower artwork by Shawn Atkins

After all these years, I still haven't found an easy way to describe Essential.

This song was made to be used as a rap beat. From 2004-2006, almost every instrumental song I made was constructed with that purpose in mind. But I soon discovered that most of my original instrumentals were a bit too intricate and busy to make good backing tracks for hip hop tracks. So I started treating them like instrumentals, meant to be consumed without vocals.

Essential is maybe the best example of my musical evolution from that time. The drums were crafted to hit heavy and deliver knock. The bass was meant to growl. Then the synth and guitar were added on top to give the rhythm section some flavor. But somewhere within that process, melody and structure took over.

So I ended up with a hybrid of electronic drums, raw slap bass, heavy synth, and flamenco guitar. Sometimes I wonder if the combination of those disparate styles makes this song sound as if it were built from the kind of pre-recorded loops and samples that come default with music creation software. However, nothing could be further from the reality of Essential. All of the instrumentation you hear are original performances, consciously written for this specific song.

Essential on YouTube...

...and Essential on SoundCloud.

You may have listened to Essential before. It's the end theme on the AudioShocker family of podcasts. And eventually, I did record some rhymes over it. But that song isn't done yet... so I'm gonna keep my mouth shut until it's ready to drop.

Finally, if you were wondering, the answer is yes -- the title "Essential" is inspired by Marvel's Essential comics reprints. At the time I made this song, I was reading Luke Cage v1 and X-Men v5.

NEXT TUESDAY: A personal favorite of mine that was written and recorded as an Xmas present for my girlfriend.

January 31st, 2012 | Tags: Brilliant Shower, Instrumental Songs by Nik Furious
Music | 1 Comment »