We’re onto the second movement of Aaron’s and my wedding symphony! This one is titled Orbs, which is another throwback to the very beginning of our relationship. Orbs was another song Aaron was in the middle of working on when we first met, one that used to drive me absolutely CRAZY actually.
You see, I am NOT a morning person, and for a long time Aaron had this song as his alarm ringtone, so I have deep associations of being grumpy and exhausted and having that melody blare in my face XD
But alas, that melody is nearly unrecognizable in this context now that we slowed it down and switched it from bleep bloops to piano! Another fun fact is that rather than just taking the midi samples for all of these melodies, Aaron actually played in all the piano parts to breathe some life into them.
Anyway, as was the case with the first movement, Indigo, this one is also jam PACKED with references to other songs! Many of them of course came from our own back catalogs, but actually several of them are by other artists too!
I think this really speaks to how much the DJ world has opened up my brain to collaging everything and anything my brain latches onto, not only in art but in music as well. Some of the songs that inspired this movement are not original compositions of ours, but rather melodies that served as the soundtrack of certain memories, and are now etched into the fabric of our musical souls.
Others are fragments we’ve taken from other artists and rearranged into something so unrecognizably different, they almost feel like ours now. My favorite example of this is the “are you ready for the storm” melody that we use in some of our live performances.
Years ago, Aaron sent me a random EDM song inviting me to come up with something to sing over it for a live set, and at the time I was obsessed with IDLES’ album Crawler (still am!), so that line, “are you ready for the storm, are you ready for the, are you ready for the storm?” which is mumbled/shouted repeatedly throughout the opening track, was at the forefront of my mind.
It may have come from a low, slow, grungy post-punk song but it’s been completely reborn into a funky upbeat vocal/sax duet over an EDM track, one that somehow feels like our own even though all the separate puzzle pieces came from other artists. And now that it’s made its way into our wedding symphony, it really feels like our own!
And it’s wild to me how that melody blurs in and out of so many other melodies that we’ve either written or lived with for a while, to the point where even I can barely tell where one ends and the next begins.
For those of you who go way back with us, how many bits and pieces of these songs can you recognize in this movement?
Orbs (by Aaron’s old project As_Is)
Across the Shadows (by As_Is & me)
Only in my Mind (by me, also with a TechTonic remix)
Let it Be - Blackmill (TechTonic remix)
“ready for the storm” (live IDLES mash-up that Mar sings over Aaron’s DJ sets)
Jesus Issues (by me)
Feel it in my Bones (by me, from my upcoming album Violets Bloom)
High (classic EDM melody that lives in our brains bc memories)
Escape (by As_Is)
Have a listen and enjoy the Redwoods here:
I can’t wait for you to hear movement III next week!
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