Intercontinental Collaborations: The making of Roads, an album by Broken
The reason for the headphones... after months of recording in mid-30s temperatures and high humidity with no fan or AC (for sound reasons) this is what my headphones looked like.
I started working with my friend Chris Jones on some music about 18 months ago. We first met in Bangkok in 2015 through our partners, who were both studying there at the time. Chris and his partner then came to visit us in Kuala Lumpur a year or so later and we got talking about making some music together, just for fun.
I wanted to write a blog just to talk about the process of working remotely/internationally with others and the creative process and potential of the new global creative community we live in today.
Chris was based in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam at the time and I was in KL. We just started sending each other some files for ideas. Chris plays keyboards but has also written a lot of instrumental music in the past and collaborated with other friends. I play the guitar and had written songs in the past with my brother Tony and some friends.
Anyway, we started sharing files, just some simple sketches of chords and bits of melody. I would bring some of Chris's ideas into Garageband (the only software I had - as basic as it is) and Chris would do the same with my files in Reason (a more pro-audio editing and mixing package).
Over time, these sketches developed into song structures and I started attempting to write some lyrics and develop some melodies. During this time, we were also getting to know each other’s processes and musical tastes and tried melding this into something coherent. We had no end goal, just to write and develop our ideas and hopefully write a few songs together.
Chris had written a piano piece that I thought was really strong. He also recorded some video out a train window whilst visiting England in the winter. This evolved into a song called 'Journey'.
The shots of the winter landscape and the rhythmic piano seemed to drive forward and the train footage helped evoke a kind of drive toward a final destination. I began thinking of a journey I did across Eastern Europe by train years ago. I remember thinking of all the train lines through the industrial wastelands in Poland leading to the death camps. I wanted to write lyrics to evoke this dark feeling of this final journey, but not knowing the destination.
I also shot footage from trains in Kuala Lumpur which then merged into the footage from England. I created a silhouetted mask of a train window to overlay the train footage. I then shot a few silhouettes of myself and Chris did the same of himself in Vietnam and sent me these via Dropbox. I made masks from these and animated these as if we were on a boring train journey.
For our next video, we wanted to do something a bit lighter and more fun. This song hasn't been mastered yet, but the idea here was to take old black and white footage from the 40s and 50s and edit together to the music, hopefully in a fun and catchy way. I tried a few techniques, like reversing the footage, or jumping just to the beat.
This track features Flo Feast-Jones who wrote a kind of speaking rap section which I think gives a sinister undertone when watched with the footage of the young boy playing the piano.
We continued developing new songs and made a few more videos. The next was 'Don't Waste Another Day'. By the time we started making this video, Chris was now based in Rome. We both liked the black-and-white theme from the first videos and the feeling of movement from 'Journey'. I had the idea of moving up and down escalators. This then developed into shooting rough street footage moving through KL and Rome, again Chris sharing all his video footage with me online, which I edited to the music. So the end result is us moving through our respective cities as a collage.
Our last video, also shot in KL and Rome was made for the song 'Everyday'. This song is kind of inspired by memories of Glasgow. In particular, I was thinking of Partick, in the west-end of the city. I was thinking of standing at a bus stop on a grey winter’s day in the rain, as it’s getting dark. I love Glasgow, but when I think of the city, I always think of it as grey, wet and cold (sorry fellow Glaswegians). Anyway, I didn't really want to write lyrics that necessarily said anything, I was more thinking of just evoking that feeling, along with Chris's melancholy piano chords and the sound of rain.
We decided to feature in this track, so I did attempt some lip synching. It also features Chris and Flo (again shot by them in Rome) and myself shooting my own footage in KL. For this video, we introduced colour. I started with the album cover image coming out of a red background. I studied photography way back in 1989 and wanted to make it seem like a black and white print emerging from a tray in the darkroom. I also used colour footage from the streets in KL (I love street photography) and edited this with the footage of the 3 of us. Flo did a great job on backing vocals for this track. Don't ask why I have a bandage over my eyes... Just a bit shy I guess.
Anyway... we eventually made a finished album of 10 tracks and had a really fun time in this cross-continental digital collaboration.
If you enjoy the videos have a listen to the full album.
https://wearebroken.bandcamp.com/releases
I love the way that connectivity and digital technology is making the world smaller and allowing people to connect creatively. It's not always about making the perfectly-produced thing with high-end production values. For me, anyway, it's just about making stuff and starting new collaborations and projects.