music ©1995,2000 by colin nicholls & walter nicholls
lyrics ©1995,2012 by colin nicholls
This might get the award for "most over-worked". I've worked on this composition off-and-on since the mid-90's. Walter gets credit for coming up with the beautiful slow chord sequence back in 1991. It's used in the introduction, middle interlude, and also the outro. I've retained Walter's late-90's performance of the blistering keyboard solo in part 2, also. You can blame me for the rest of it.
I had vocal melodies and lyric fragments for this since the first demos, but despite several attempts, I could never come up with a "finished" version I was happy with. Part of the problem may have been my attitude at the time which was "OK, I'm gonna write an Epic, about a deep philosphical concept that i haven't really defined yet, and it will be 15 minutes long".
I'm glad I didn't try to make room for this peice on the "Steel Tree" album because the song didn't really fit the concept. Also, at the time, I was disillusioned with "Listen".
But... I still had a lot of affection for the track, and I resolved to give it another go for the new album. It would be the first track completed, I told myself. And so it was... until I went back and almost completely re-did the bass and drums yet a fourth time. And re-wrote half the lyrics in part 3. And then edited the intro and outro severely, removing a lot of "ambient percussion" and "musique concrete" samples, added back when I was trying to be more "Pink Floyd".
Instrumentation:
Recorded in 1989, this digital delay jam contained a tiny musical fragment that ended up in "Listen".
We came up with a patch we called "melange" on the Korg M1. It's a wonderful sound, very inspirational. Although I'm not 100% sure, I believe this is one of several takes of Walter improvising chords using the patch. It represents the earliest take on the "Listen Theme".
In 1991 I acquired a Chapman Stick bass and pretty early on came up with this bass line. I'm not the first guy to come up with a repeating alternating octave riff and I won't be the last.
The archives get a bit muddled during this period but I think this is from 1997. Clearly I'd sequenced a guide bass line throughout. Noteable because this is the earliest version with all three sections strung together, and also for the prototype part 3 with whacky drum solo and placeholder bass line.
Now I cringe that this early attempt was ever released for anyone to hear. But I did submit it to the alt.music.yes user group compilation CD, and it did go out there. I guess it represented my "state of the art" at the time. Ugh. Feel free to skip over this. The final release version on "Inevitable Obscenity" is SO MUCH BETTER. I'm so glad I changed part three up from this.
You can hear how long Walter's solo in part 3 has been around...:-).
The slide guitar solo at the end is a little too much of an homage to And You And I so it's just as well it's much subdued in the final 2015 version.
The outro features multitracked e-bow guitar.
listen to the sound coming through your window
listen to the sound across the floor
listen to the sound, a mystic sibilance
slips the bolt, unlocks a sliding door
listen to the sound coming through the doorway
listen to the sound, you can’t ignore
listen as the sound of information
tricks the mind, exploits the hidden flaw
hear the sound;
hear the sound of waves on the western shore
hear the sound;
take the sounding; see the ocean floor
listen to the sound coming through the airwaves
listen to the sound across the web
listen to the sound that’s in the carrier
throws a catch and slips inside your head
listen to the sound coming through the network
listen to the sound with every nerve
change the channel; set the programme;
view the replay; hearing every word
"It's all right there - all right there. Look, listen, kneel, pray."
- Jeffrey Goines, 12 Monkeys
we are talking laughter; we are talking pain
welcome to our interactive ministry
we are talking life lines; we are scrubbing the stain
redacting Kodak moments from our legacy
we are talking networks; and we are building a wall
somebody’s recording it all, and claiming immunity
we are talking word games; taking SYRUP to SLEEP
cacophony of trivial pursuits obscure the travesty
we are talking life signs; we are filling the space
impossible to find a place where we can start listening
we are talking sound bytes; and we are over-exposed
too much noise from the road, and we’re not listening...
we are taking moon dust; and we are blowing our minds
but to get into the fast lane takes crossing a line
hear the sound
hear the sound of waves on the western shore
hear the sound