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Temporary Thrill
A remnant from the earliest days of Soulganic, this song very nearly died on the operating room table.
Melodically and lyrically this song was unchanged from when it was created. When it was composed, though, we as a band weren’t ready to translate it to the live show and, although it existed, it wasn’t ready to track during the All Directions Forward sessions.
Well, that meant we were determined to include it on our sophomore album. Throughout rehearsals it gave us all types of fits, and finally (out of frustration) we just went ahead and laid down what came naturally.
Eventually, after a few vocal misfires, Cory suggested we add a flute part. Thankfully, Lucas’ bandmate (from Borinquen Sublime and Rhythm +) Tommy Lopez, lent a hand. Once Lucas added his touch and we omitted a gratuitous coda, we also re-cut the vocals (with Joe adding some finishing editing touches) and were able to save what has become one of our favorite songs.
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Moment of Truth
We happened upon this one by accident.
We took a break during one of the first “lets-jam-and-see-what-happens” (aka composition) sessions, and Ryan patiently noodled on his classical guitar. He settled upon a transition chord, thought it sounded pretty as he moved it along the neck, and viola. The basis for what would become “Moment of Truth” was born.
Although it retained its musical identity from the outset, it was initially conceived as a duet with a female vocalist. We actually tracked a rough version with her and Anthony, but once we refined what would become our method for recording the album, we scrapped that first take and left it in the vault.
As we re-attacked the recording process, we tried (unsuccessfully) to capture a take of the song with the right energy. Finally, since it just wasn’t working, we moved on.
As we got close to wrapping up the recording sessions, Ryan relentlessly lobbied for a revisiting of the song, and Cory and Anthony quickly laid down the rhythm tracks during the “Run” sessions. We listened back, liked it, and began fleshing it out. Cory’s keyboard work opened up a few nice possibilities, and we tweaked the song in the lab until musically it said what we wanted it to. Anthony rewrote the lyrics as a response to some external drama, and it became “Moment of Truth.”
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How Does It Feel (Blood Money)
This is another McKeithan special. It was initially just going to be a revisitation of our Organic Soul arrangements: keys, guitar, bass and percussion.
During a percussion session, however, Ryan played the basic progressions for Lucas. Lucas ran and got his batá drums (reclaimed from the trash in NYC) and arranged a folkloric pattern as the centerpiece of the song. This fit in beautifully with the lyrical content, setting a primal, spiritual mood.
When it was said and done, the intimacy and earthiness of the composition became a centerpiece for our creative vision moving forward.
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Forgotten Ones
This composition was resurrected from Proper Motivation (PropMo), the first project on which Ryan and Anthony collaborated, way back at the beginning of the 21st Century.
Anthony presented a slightly rearranged version to the band, and Ryan created a new guitar melody to get the ball rolling.
We also tracked this to tape at the beginning of our recording process, dug the energy, and re-tracked it later on. We tried to mix it in a very garage-like four-track method, with extreme panning and lots of reverb to give it the harder energy we felt it deserved.
The vocals were a flat-out adventure, but finally, at the very end of tracking, Anthony laid them down successfully. They (like the song itself) were slightly imperfect, but it worked for us, and so we let the song live the way it wanted to.
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Carry On
During a drummer-audition-no-show-time-passing session, “Carry On” was born. The song began as the riff that comprises the melody, with additional movements coming as the lyrics did.
Cory later added his creative touch with a beautifully-done nuanced, soulful keyboard part. Ryan tracked and tracked and tracked and tracked and tracked to get the guitar parts right through technical difficulties and struggles with self-scrutiny. And Anthony and Ryan recorded myriad vocal tries before they were satisfied.
In short, we worked on this song till we were absolutely sick of it. But in trademark Soulganic stubbornness, we would not let it defeat us.
Although the end product is quite a long composition, we feel the pace and length serve the overarching themes. Besides, we couldn’t think of a way to cut it without sacrificing something we had grown quite attached to. Perhaps this is a drawback to self-production. But as it is, we feel this song retains our creative essence.
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Make You Beautiful
This was going to be a much bigger production than it turned out to be, with full band and overdubs (what Lucas affectionately calls over-production). However, when Ryan and Anthony demoed the track for various audiences, the feedback was unanimous: less was more.
Although the version on this album is rough in spots, we did not want to re-cut what we felt was a genuine, honest and heartfelt rendition.
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Flower Child
This is Lucas’ favorite Soulganic tune. Ever.
Ryan and Anthony created this one over the summer of 2008, and let it rest in the vault for a while before the band tracked it. After they and Cory laid down their parts, Lucas took the track and ran with it, forming an intricate Latin percussive arrangement that really brought the song to life.
Our good friend Tony McCullough (from the jazz/funk band Groove 8 ) added his inimitable voice through the horn part, and the end result was a great introduction to the second half of the album.
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Melt Away
The original version of this song was born in the Organic Soul days.
After not playing it for more than a year, we cracked open the vault and performed it at the listening party for All Directions Forward. It felt pretty good to let the song live again, but we felt it was missing something.
As the composition process for FTSTTS was in full swing, we revisited the song, added a true hook, and basically let Cory and Lucas do their thing with a slick pocket groove and folkloric pattern, respectively.
In post-production, we decided to take Lucas’ folkloric part and extend it, giving him a forum to pay homage to his native playing style.
We tacked on “After School Special,” a gritty funk-rock jam (born from a sound check Ryan sneakily recorded as Cory and Anthony were grooving) to give the listener a little treat.
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Remedios the Beauty
Ryan composed this for a music showcase in the late 20th Century. The song originally was created as a guitar duet with vocal accompaniment. He continually tweaked the song over the years, and finally laid it down after Anthony got tired of him playing it and no one hearing it.
The vocal arrangement was scrapped, a bridge added and recorded a few times to get it right, and a third guitar part was picked up along the way.
We couldn’t settle on a name, since Ryan felt it no longer fit its original title. Anthony was reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ “One Hundred Years of Solitude” at the time, and suggested “Remedios the Beauty” as an homage to the power and attraction music holds, much like the primal magnetism of that character.
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Let Me Go
During the time we were flirting with the idea of having a permanent horn section, this song was born. Anthony presented a composition that Cory felt was a little too close in feel to “Tabasco Jones,” a staple of our live show. Ryan suggested that we kill everything but the bridge and see what happened. Cory laid down a pocket groove to the bridge and we fed off of that, fleshing out the full composition as we went along.
As time progressed, we felt the song needed something to push it the next level. Ryan pulled a riff out of his bag of tricks (from the aforementioned PropMo days), and Cory added synthesizer touches to complete the bridge. Lucas arranged a dual percussion part to complete the groove.
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Run
This one was a doozy and almost didn’t exist.
During the All Directions Forward sessions, Ryan composed “Run.” It lay dormant in the vault, however, until we were rounding out the final tracking sessions for FTSTTS.
Cory and Lucas had all kinds of fits with the timing and pattern of the song (which, by the way, is 6/8 to 4/4 and back again). But, we stubbornly tried and tried again to finally get the groove locked, and ultimately succeeded, after a marathon recording session. During that session, Cory and Anthony composed the introduction to add a dramatic flair to the song.
We wanted to build this song to a crescendo as it progressed, to mirror the lyrical story, and tried a few different arrangements to accomplish this, including an organ part, distorted guitars and background vocals. After a few tinkers, we settled on the current progression of elements, and were satisfied.
The coda came quite by accident, another product of noodling during a guitar session. After weeks of trying to lay a solo over the coda’s guitar progression, we scrapped that idea. Cory added a piano part, and we slipped in a nature recording to bring From the Storm to the Sun to a close.
Of all the songs, we feel “Run” epitomizes the concept of From the Storm to the Sun in tone, essence and content.