It has been an interesting week for our elbo.ws project. We saw Black Mountain’s “Tyrants” climbing the charts last week and were really excited to get to tackle such a complicated song that is sonically about as far from Ruby Isle that you can get. The elbo.ws charts are dynamic and are constantly updating so we sat patiently before getting started to make sure it was going to hit number one. There was some doubt as some tracks came from behind and threatened to take the top spot and then finally on Wednesday it hit the top spot. Watching the chart fluctuate below the number 2 spot was interesting because there was a lot activity down there, but number 2 and 1 did not move. Tracks really seem to catch on and stay on top of that chart.

Image by Aaron Lemay

We sprung to action and started to deconstruct the 8 minute epic to reconstruct it into some sort of pop song. This proved to be a lot more difficult than we thought it was going to be. With key and tempo changes, not to mention the incredbile diversity of sounds within the song itself this was a major undertaking. Mark decided on a key and a tempo and began to lay down the foundation of our version of the track. Mark had laryngitis from a run of shows over the weekend so he layed down a scratch vocal that actually made it into the track as the vibrato/pitched vocal in the verse. He sent it to me and I programmed the drums and the bass lines and added some instrumental hooks. Then I sent it back to him.

We continued to rearrange the track until we all were happy. We added the call and response guitar vs. synth bridge to match the dueling guitars on the original and constructed a sonic battle at the end to try and capture the drama of the track. Mark finally got his voice back and added the final vocals. that really brought the track to life and we were ready to deliver.

Here is what Mark had to say about the track: “Tyrants is an excellent tune which harkens back to a better time in rock. It was a difficult song to make danceable, due to it’s organic and narrative structure - as well as it being in 3/4 time. However, the prog rock elements of the song also dictate on there own where and what can be cut. The tune sways around 140 bpms for the most part, with quite a bit of leeway to tell it’s Sabbathesque story of evil warlords. Incidentially, most of the story telling happens via the band, not the singing or lyrics. The instrumentation is classic 70s heavy metal, down to the flute melotron. It shifts back and forth in between 5 long progressions of soft and heavy, which really could be songs in there own right. It clocks in around 8 minutes of awesome. “One interesting thing to note is that I don’t even listen to the original track while we are doing our covers. Mark listens to it to lay out the foundation and then we put it away until we are done so we aren’t influenced by it. That is why a lot of the melodies and arrangements are different than the originals. Since these songs are new, they aren’t really embedded in our heads yet and it allows us to really change the songs quite a bit.This was an incredibly difficult but rewarding experience. The lyrics in this song are definitely my favorite of the songs we have covered thus far and the original song itself kicks ass. I hope we did some amount of justice. Again, keep in mind, we did this in just one day We give you  Ruby Isle - Tyrants (Black Mountain Cover)

Posted by dan on 07 Dec 2007 at 11:12 am