Josef Umschaid and Lukas Wieser, Austrian music producers who founded ‘My Friend The Chimpanzee’, just released their second track, ‘I Love This Place’. The soundtrack contains a plethora of wonderful creative textures that will pique the curiosity of all listeners. The song’s distinct but strong rhythm patterns truly get us into the groove. The songwriting is also highly cheerful and adds substantially to creating a really happy environment. The lyrics are also kept basic, making it easy for listeners to follow along as the song progresses. The narrative unfolds as the song advances, maintaining a continuous and strong connection. The vocal delivery is particularly excellent, holding the tune together till the very end.
The opening motif sets the tone of the song from the very beginning, which is rather remarkable. The richness of each synthetic tone would fully captivate your nerves as the groove joined in. The baseline would really get us moving, and the music space would gradually expand on us. The area becomes highly intriguing as these textures totally touch our senses. The melodic lines that serve as a countermelody to the voices seem really enticing. The conclusion, in particular, has a massive impact on the listening experience. The synthesized textures are designed with such enthusiasm that they will undoubtedly become the song’s highlight. As listeners find these layers, they will be enthralled.
In the interview below, the song’s producers and songwriters discuss the process of creating the song.
1. How did you come up with the song’s concept? What do you think the song’s origins could be?
We didn’t really come up with the song’s concept, it kind of developed naturally as we went along. We started with creating a bassline and the lead synth that you hear in the intro and then played around with the sequencer of a Moog Mother 32 creating the more experimental sounds such as the “Bleeps” in the quiet part. Once we realised that we wanted to turn the sketches into a song we started to put flesh on the bones, adding different elements and looping certain instrumental parts to create the structure of the song. At the end, we scraped an outro part (almost 30 seconds) because we felt that it didn’t add anything to the song.
The songs origins definitely lie in our budding interest for analogue synthesizers back when we started the project. We have since stopped using the Moog Mother 32 as it takes a lot of work to get something decent out of it and does not include itself naturally into our workflow. But in “I Love This Place” you can still hear it, so the foundation of the song is rooted in the period when we were first exploring and getting to love the world of analogue synthesis.
2. The production components intrigue me tremendously. What was your method for creating these synthetic tones?
“I Love This Place” is insofar interesting to us, as it mirrors our journey into analogue synthesizers. The “Bleeps” you hear after the first chorus in the quiet part are from a sequenced Moog Mother 32, a fully patchable semi-modular synthesizer. It is a very experimental synth, that’s why it inspired us to come up with this unusual melodic sequence. It was among the first analogue synths we got, so you still get the feel from the sound that we were learning and getting to know analogue synthesis. Other sounds you hear (for example the “glitter” arpeggio in the second chorus or the pad in the first chorus) come from some of the polyphonic “flagships” we started using later, such as the Sequential OB-6 or the Arturia Polybrute. These sounds are much more polished and smoother, so the song is testament to the development we underwent and the different stages of our understanding of analogue synthesizers.
The way we come up with the sounds and tones is the reason why we use analogue synthesizers. We just love that you can twist real knobs and change sounds instead of changing values on a computer screen. Usually, we start with a preset we like (if the synth offers presets) and tweak different parameters such as the waveshapes of the oscillators, the amp or filter envelopes or the filter, until we arrive at a sound that appeals to us.
3. Tell us about some of the experiences you had in the sessions while working on this song.
We had one of the sessions in Josef’s home studio while Josef was sitting his mother’s cat Morphee. Because Morphee (which is quite overweight) had been put on a diet, he was quite irritable and kept clawing our legs. Needless to say, we didn’t get much done that day.
4. Is there anything special about the music that you’d want to discuss or highlight?
What we think is special about our music is that we are not trying to sound like any particular style or any other artist. We just include all the instruments we know how to manipulate to create sounds and work it into something we like. We feel that we have a unique sound that developed organically from the influences of the music we love.
5. What can you tell us about your future tracks? What can we look forward to hearing from you in the future?
We have a lot of future songs already written and semi produced so you can expect a lot more stuff from us. In our music we always try to combine catchy melodies with unusual instrumentations or song structures. So, expect electronic indie pop music that surprises you.
Enjoy Listening to “I Love This Place” by My Friend The Chimpanzee on Spotify!
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Discovered via http://musosoup.com
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