05. the time we took 5 years to release a song.
Well, this was a journey. I had 5 years to think about what to write on this post so it had better be a good one.
This is the story of Sundayana - The song we were most proud of, the song that still stands as, in my opinion, the best I’ve ever been a part of writing, and the song that we promised ourselves would be the final sign off for Ruby Beach, as it didn’t feel right to end having never released it. A worldwide pandemic, and some other pretty hefty life events both good and bad later, and we’re finally here. Sundayana encapsulates the feeling of a hungover Sunday afternoon, navigating the hazy headspace of leaving your house into a world you're just not quite ready for yet.
AND I FUCKING LOVE IT.
AND ALSO, IT’S THE BANE OF MY EXISTENCE.
When Ruby Beach (that’s my old band, for anyone not familiar with Chris lore), decided that band life was no longer for them, we agreed it would be such a shame to call time on it having never released this, and so I promised I would produce it in my own time. This absolute monster absorbed most of my lockdown life and became the thing that I essentially taught myself music production on. Well, taught me what I know now anyway. I’m not quite sure what happened for the like 2-3 years since, to be quite honest, but we’re finally here, releasing the fucker into the world once and for all.
I spent so long making this song because it took literal actual years for me to get it sounding close to as good as it did in my head, and I really wanted to do this justice. The second we got there I knew it was time to stop, and run away, fast. But seriously, I must have reworked this thing about 8 times. I bought 3 different piano VSTs, 2 different drum ones, literally 8 different string/orchestra options; I changed my speakers (and had to do it all again after this), watched A LOT of Youtube - and my mum and brother spent far too many hours sat on my bed listening to minutely different options for the same thing. Sometimes they could hear them, sometimes they just looked at me blankly, but it’s important to have someone to bounce your thoughts off either way.
In the beginning, Sundayana was a rough demo from a band practice way back when. I have it, but it’s not pretty, so we won’t share it for now. We had the structure of the song down and most of the core parts as we did used to play it live before band ended. Right at the beginning of the journey me and Ana were living together in Manchester and she had an electric drumkit in the flat so we used that to do a midi recording of the drums on the last weekend before I moved home. Eventually this recording was used with Steven Slate Drums and a lot of Youtube ideas about how to make midi drums sound better to get what you hear in the final track. Looking back on them now I think they’re a bit too roomy but you live and learn. I found deep in the old band files a rough midi recording of Greg’s piano part - shout out to him for always recording everything - which was by no means what it sounds like in the final version but was more than enough for me to work with. For a long time I had this through Labs Soft Piano which, for anyone who’s used it, is absolute instant vibes every time - but for this particular instance I found it to have quite a high noise floor which was grating on me somewhat (it’s highly possible that this was down to something I did, so don’t let that put you off) - in the end after a few different options we went for Noir piano (on the felt setting) - which is lovely, but also more than £100 so swings and roundabouts. Dobie recorded his bass dry at home and sent it to me, eventually right at the end I changed this to be amped with the UAD Ampeg plugin I think, although it’s probably the thing I’m the least happy with the final sound of. I posted him my mic sometime in the middle of lockdown and he did his insane Jacob Collier-style harmony hocus-pocus and posted it back.
The rest came from my bedroom. I spent literally so long on strings because as it turns out one does not simply download an orchestra VST and instantly become Mozart - who knew. Eventually I think they all ended up on Intimate Strings (Spitfire) but split out into different parts just like a real composer and everything. Guitars I don’t even remember at this point, but the reverb is and always will be a Big Sky, because it’s the way, the truth and the word - and the only reason, most of the time, that I sound good. Vocals were recorded in the only nice actually useable bit of voice in between one throat operation and another - they’re far from perfect but given the circumstances not bad (don’t ask, but that does make it sound rock and roll so I’m keeping it in) and engineered by my Dad. Shoutout to Dad haha. For a man who once interrupted a Zoom meeting I was on to ask where he could find the function key, he stepped up to the old plate and put his boomer to the side and we achieved a thing. Oh and we cracked the mattress/pillow fort out again because hey, any excuse to make a pillow fort am I right. I think I might just have got the SM7B at this point so they would have been on that. So actually the pillow fort really was unnecessary. A moment of silence for my bank account for buying an SM7 in lockdown when the literal entire world had nothing better than do than make a podcast with their cat. Literally I swear covid fucked me with every single purchase I ever made at that point.
So now we’re sitting at about 170-ish tracks or so, and my OAP Macbook really couldn’t take it any more without making helicopter noises and melting a hole in my desk. Cue an old 5.1 Mac Pro incoming and a lot of amateur hacking knowledge that I now have to make it run OS’s it really shouldn’t, and do things it really shouldn’t. Honestly, I really shouldn’t have, this was about a 4 month distraction using every weekend, ounce of brain space and monetary resource I had and well, Big Bertha lives to this day, but it’s a tenuous and difficult life we live. But that said, you can build yourself a pretty hefty computer out of those old Mac cheese-graters that’ll music produce you to your heart’s desire, run windows and play you AAA titles in 1080p no sweat, for nowadays not much more than £500. It’s a steal, if you don’t mind getting an electronics degree and restarting your computer 3 times to get it to talk to your Apollo.
Right. What have we learnt. In this world where I tried to make this whole website about not being overly perfectionist, we’ve just talked about how I spent 4 months building a computer just so I didn’t have to freeze a few tracks (no seriously actually this is really fucking annoying and I will die on this hill).
Eventually though we got to the point where I was happy with the sound of this and at the time really I felt that this was the limit of what I had to offer it. Is it now? Possibly not - but that’s not the point. Throughout Ruby Beach and all the time, even including today, I’ve discussed the idea with people that what you put out into the world is simply a snapshot of where you were on your curve of growth at that time, and what’s in the world for people to consume is always going to be behind that curve, which honestly is a weird thing to have to deal with as a creative but it’s the same for everyone I guess. It’s also not a revolutionary concept but look you’re here for vibes not some Isaac Newton/Aristotle-shit. So, this is a snapshot of 2-3 years ago Chris and production, but of all the snapshots, this is the one I want you to listen to the most. This was me at my best, this was Ruby Beach at our best and even now I listen to this song and think fuck, we did that. Sundayana was and is the perfect encapsulation of a moment, both in song and also everything it has given to me. And most importantly, it was my core outlet and distraction at a time when I really needed one the most. So for that reason, if nothing else, give her a listen, she’s pretty feckin’ spicy, if I do say so myself.
_cb x