We kind of considered this the end of the “album.” Seemed like we were ending on the right note.
Category: Diabolickal
Diabolickal was an attempt to record hip hop and old-school rap. The vocals (and a few instruments) were Lee Armstrong, the rest of the music and the production was myself. The songs grew organically out of the beats and out of Lee’s freestyling.
Not only did this track provide us with a name for our act, but the laid-back groove gave us our second video, which is sufficiently abstract that I think it holds up pretty well.
This song developed as it went, and gathered meaning in its abstract nature like a snowball rolling downhill. At an epic length of almost six minutes it was our longest track, it kept growing organically until some kind of bizarre feedback-drenched guitar solo came out the other end.
I think we were playing a melodica. Neat instrument. I didn’t realize when I bought it that it was often associated with dub, but it’s fun to play.
“Me, myself, and my microphone” sang Lee, basically just freestyling over the beat. We did a bit of editing and called it a track!
On a bit of a whim, Lee Armstrong and I ended up making a hip hop album in 2002. I had been playing around with making some beats in Reason, but didn’t have much of a direction. We decided to use the equipment and beats that were sitting around to some good use. We recorded over the course of a week, gradually refining our ideas until they coalesced around six tracks.
In the end, we also put together two videos, both of which had their debut in the Hello! Video show I was curating at the time.