gong native


track: 06

recorded: 20140415 - 20140712

duration: 5.14

type: active / alternative


begun on April 15, 2014, “gong native” is a piece that evolved over a very, very long period of time, with the occasional radical change, but mostly, very small, orderly changes – tiny improvements, tiny additions, until it finally reached the state that you hear it in today, in mid July 2014 – some three months on since it’s creation.

early on, one fairly significant change occurred, the piece had already expanded to something in excess of ten minutes in length, with the main song giving way to a quieter, more ambient tuned percussion piece, which was the planned original “outro” of “gong native”.

I realised fairly quickly, that I needed to split the song in two, so that “gong native” could be about rock, about guitars, and wouldn’t just fade away in an ambient haze – it would have a definite start and end, and it would be more concise than the form it had evolved into.

somewhere in May or June I split the song into two, or, rather, I actually split it into five different tracks:

1) Gong Native – as you hear it now

2) Gong Crazy – as you hear it now (this used to be the “slow” second half of “gong native”, and in fact, if you play them back to back, you can just about hear how it would have sounded if they had remained connected – a long, complex piece with a rocking first half and a quieter second half.

3) Return To Peoria – this was actually a third song that “spun off” of the “gong native” session – from an avant-garde sax solo that I played one day whilst trialling sounds, and I happened to leave it at the end of the piece, and over time, I realised I really liked it – so I evolved it into a third song of it’s own.

4) Smarmy Song – one sax overdub too many mutated a nice sounding bar of music, into one of the smarmiest I’ve ever heard. this is not a song, and it probably won’t be developed into one – it’s just two iterations of this sickly-sweet, sax-heavy pop harmony smarminess – not easy to listen to, but, actually quite good…[in a very "pop" sort of way, I suppose].

5) The Bassist Is Away Again – another “gong native” spin off – this was another unused section, which is simply bass guitar blocking out several measures of music, that never developed and was never included in any of the pieces – another fragment that won’t be used (unless I can think of some brilliant way to save it).

so really, “gong native” was split in two; “gong native” and “gong crazy”, and a third closely related piece, “return to peoria” was created from an out take / partial scrap from “gong native”...

the other two “tracks” are very fragmentary and will end up not being used.

I really think splitting the piece in two was an inspired idea, because this leaves “gong native” with its wonderful, one-note bass (that is anything but) line that supports the guitars beautifully, and this piece is another piece where the process of scoring guitars (and bass) is so satisfying, the beauty of scoring rather than playing guitars is that your own physical limitations are removed – these Notion guitars can do ANYTHING, go anywhere, play very fast, very high, very strange – and it’s fantastic fun manipulating the guitars.

often, I would have a guitar part pretty much mapped out, it would be “done”, but then, I would go back in with effects, whammy effects, bending, sliding, etc. until the guitar parts took on a life of their own, at times sounding like two high-speed pedal steel guitars having a friendly battle – the wonderful bends and twists and turns that the guitars take are really a lot of fun.

the sax player does get a few choice lines here, and I do like the way the sax intertwines with the guitar parts, but it’s the guitars that are the heroes here, and about half way through the song, the tempo picks up, and a long, sinuous, insistent guitar line repeats against a backdrop of ever-growing instrumentation, with ominous low piano notes building up behind the guitar, until it finally crash landed via a tuned percussion "out-roduction" phrase. It's that very same tuned percussion that starts the next track, "gong crazy"...