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Download the album, In My Other Life, this week on chilljam.com.
In My Other Life sprung from a set of song ideas that spoke from the point of view of particular people who have lived in history. Although there are only 3 songs in this release, each stands as some of our most unique works and marks a transition for me into starting to use pre-written lyrical ideas and concepts. However, with these songs, I had yet to actually bring the lyrics with me to sessions to work with. Often, I would write some ideas for possible use as lyrics on my computer at home or work and would read them before heading off to meet up with with the guys. Then when we’d play, I’d try to work off of what I remembered in my head.
To download the album:
1 Go to the In My Other Life… Listen :: Album page.
2 Scroll down past the player and you’ll see a link labelled “Download this Album”.
3 Simply click on this link and the album is yours, complete with the album artwork.
Siddhartha retells the life of Siddhartha Gautama, or often better known as “Buddha”, as seen through Hermann Hesse’s book, Siddhartha. Although, I’m not sure I consider myself to be an official “buddhist”, the concepts of the religion interest me greatly and I’ve spent a great deal of time reading literature discussing the religion. The lyrics from this particular piece are from the point of view of Siddhartha, the Boatman. At the end of the novel, Siddhartha Gautama becomes a simple boatman, carrying passengers across a river. He expresses the uncontrollable aspect of water, how it flows in the direction it chooses and it has very little to do with human action. He simply accepts the river and works with it as it allows to work as the boatman. The final lyrics of the song are “Breathe in, Breathe Out, and Keep on Moving”, which distill down what I personally believe is the core of the philosophy.
Turner is an interesting subject matter. I watched a video on YouTube concerning the confessions of Jon Michael Turner’s actions in the Iraqi conflict. The video details, in his own words, a vivid description of his kills during combat and how he felt about them. He seemed a tortured man to me. Later that week, when we played, I had no intention of bringing this story to mind, but somehow this came to mind when Neil and Jeremy played the music here. Nothing in this song was pre-written, I just imagined myself as a young man who went to war and perhaps found something in war that he didn’t expect to encounter in himself.
I love Neil’s crazy drums in James Dean. He just goes off in a chaotic drum-n-bass feel here and Jeremy does a fantastic job dressing the scene in dripping tones. From my perspective, I tried to describe what I thought Dean might have felt in that final car crash that ended his life. He appeared to live the life of someone constantly in the fast lane and died in a blaze of glory, similar to how he seemed to live his life. There are some crazy effects in this one, mostly added in post-production. I had a lot of fun mixing this one down and purposefully going overboard with adding as many crazy sounds as I could. Perhaps it’s a bit overindulgent but that seemed appropriate for a song about James Dean.
Thank you to everyone for your continued support and interest!
In My Other Life… by Chilljam is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at chilljam.com.
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