City Lights
City Lights
Serialising the album Pretentious Incongruity by Key 13 (@keefmarshall)
Pretentious Incongruity: 2020-2024 is a retrospective compilation looking back at some key milestones in the first five years of Key 13 as a recording identity.
Track 7
I had so much trouble with this mix that it nearly didn’t make it onto the album. I’m still not sure which mix I actually mastered in the end. So cluttered, so many channel strips, so much reverb, such artificial vocals.. too fast as well, so this is slowed down slightly.
But, it had to be here, because this is the very first track I made with artificial vocals. I’d written Doomscrolling a couple of weeks before, with my own vocals, and didn’t enjoy the experience at all. I also knew I’d never be able to make the type of music I wanted with my own singing alone, so I thought – I’m using virtual pianos, and virtual guitars, and virtual synths – why not a virtual vocalist?
I tried a few different ones, but Emvoice was the only one which I felt sounded half realistic, and fit my workflow. This one is deliberately supposed to sound artificial – I wanted that feel, but it does sound a bit odd now, listening back. Their vocalist “Lucy” was the only female one they had at the time, and she’s a bit primitive compared to the later “Keela” you’ll hear on many other tracks here, but she has a softer voice which works better on some tracks.
Music-wise – more Phrygian mode again in the chorus. There’s a lot going here in the structure – the stop-start-jumpiness works for me but probably annoys everyone else. The random mix of 80s dark wave synths and shoegazey guitars seemed like a good idea at the time. The lyrics come from the /r/songaweek theme for that week which was “Rain”. The original fades out, and that was how it was written, but I really like that closing section so I included it all here and added a little bit more to fade out with. Some of the guitar patches are re-used from Doomscrolling which I’d just written a bit earlier.
Influences: Kraftwerk, My Bloody Valentine, lots of other random 80s bands.. Depeche Mode maybe? Someone said it sounds like The Smiths, but I don’t hear it.
– From Key13’s Pretentious Incongruity: Track Notes
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Lyrics
City lights in the rain
A stray reflection
Sparks a memory
The rain went on and on for days
Red light at the crossroads
City skyline in the office window
The past is staring back at me
One thing I remember
City lights in the rain
Like a forest full of fireflies
Frozen in lines
Too tired, so late
Gotta get out this time
The traffic light’s green
It’s time to go
Leaving for the countryside and sunshine coast
Goodbye old life
Goodbye old life
Don’t look back, never going back.
City lights in the rain
