REVERB AND THE VERSE'S 10th & final album #BLACKWALL out NOW EVERYWHERE
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The A and Z of Things... CAN YOU SAY THE SAME? end
THANK YOU FOR LISTENING HERE'S AN (ALTERNATIVE) TRUTH REMIX WANT TO SUPPORT US? SHARE US OUTWORD, AND CLICK HERE>>> BLACKWALL | Reverb And The Verse (bandcamp.com) |
#BLACKWALL: FOR IMMEDIATE PRESS RELEASE
On April 26th, we released our 10th, best, and final album #BLACKWALL.
It is indeed our ultimate labor of love. For thousands of hours, it has been under our microscope, every beat scrutinized, every Verse analyzed, felt, and hyper-insured against flaws. We believe deeply in it and feel that it's ready for the world to hear, if it's willing. Reverb And The Verse are (and always have been) proudly Conscious punk/rebellious electronic rap, and wish to continue to push musical boundaries wherever we go.
"...AND MAKE GOOD TROUBLE"
BLACKWALL consists of 11 songs, including a dream collab with Denver's best verbalists Curta and the divine Michelle Rocqet from @themilkblossoms.
These songs contain equal parts joy, pain, rebellion, and truth. It has helped us survive. We sincerely hope that it makes you feel.
WORDS TO LIVE BY /// BEATS TO DIE FOR
thank you for the blood thank you for the sweat thank you for the tears thank you for the mud thank you for the ache thank you for the pains thank you for the love thank you for the broken bones thank you for the weight thank you for the no's thank you for the fights thank you for the ghosts thank you for the scars thank you for the words that you never even said
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#BLACKWALL
1_TRUTH:
REVERB: We get so caught up in shouting our TRUTH at each other that we forget that both sides probably cancel each other out. And it's ironic to me that the louder we scream, the less we're heard. When making this one, I stumbled onto the thought that R&TV had never made a song with a real intro and we have always just blasted off from the one. The rules have always been "...get to the chorus within 1 minute" and so we always tried to stay within those boundaries. So I was probably subconciously "seeking to destroy one's own patterns..." and the notion of having no chorus at all was interesting to me. It works great live, and I think it's a good introduction to BLACKWALL.
GEAR: This is just 15 analog synths playing the same lines but recorded individually and panned randomly in the stereo field, washing over each other and then being distorted beyond recognition, filtered and manipulated into a giant crescendo (0.00 dB!) until the beat finally drops. Then, I let go and just do it all again. Fun stuff.
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Truth can be naive
(And I) Wonder how you see? When your head is screwed around All your truth don't make a sound I was standing over there When things were happening then Why did it get so wholly clustered And how will it end Who's wearing shoes that don't belong to them Walking that path What did they bring to get the job done How long will it last Where did all everything go off the tracks We got set back |
I feel like I am drifting away But I can keep this silly act up, if you stay And we can drag the people back up, unafraid I wanna know if I can trust this, trust us A lot of power wants to hush this, crush us And I don't know if we can muster much fuss We know it takes some time to grow this, but we rush I'm disappointed by the dumbness, the crassness The circus boy theatrics, the tactics, the antics Designed to keep us all off balance Scared Diminish our talents Ill-prepared I'm gonna have to take the back routes to find truth Cut me loose and let this do what it do |
2_BURN'R:
VERSE: This feels like a 'classic' R&TV jam - whatever that means - high BPM, lots of energy, aggression, tension, a dash of menace, and an underlying theme of rebellion. That's what I felt when I heard it and endeavored to match the intensity of the track. The sing-song that opens is a take on a break-down, and if I may be bold, skillfully at that. That's a breakdown about someone breaking down - and yet, not quite. Like a familiar hero trope, there was an opening, and we took it. Journeying forward we take another hard look at what's out there, and it's not pretty. Round out verse one, a little machismo, some bravado, and a call back to the song's theme. Diving into verse two you'll find the line that is my favorite of the bars (not certain MCs should ever have a favorite line)..."you ain't living if you ain't livid." It's written almost as a repetitive phrase, but the joy I get in MC'ing is in finding major meaning in minor word changes. Take it wherever you like, and understand I meant, how can anyone not be angry, if they are paying attention? And the prior line, can you guess which finger is raised? Getting to the final verse - well that's one I'll leave encoded. It's not unbreakable, especially if you have walked, are walking, or will walk a similar path.
REVERB: I wanted to make a song without any drums but kicks, exploding all over each other via the best drum machine ever: the Roland TR-8S. I was able to achieve this at first, but it was difficult getting the vocal timing just right with only kicks for a reference, so there were other percussion guns put into it later. I think I ended up keeping 5 different kicks by verse 2, as they began to interrupt each other. I was able to EQ them away from each other. The chorus (if it even IS one) musically is all "devil's notes" which I think is effective for the song. The "light" are all real samples I made lighting matches, lighters, and match sticks. For his vocals, I got multiple good takes-- sidenote: The_Verse is a fucking ROBOT when it comes to exacting vocal timing. I've never heard or seen anything like it. After recording, if I line up all the takes, they look like 1:1 copies of each other, and its hard to tell them apart. Anyways, I thought it might be cool to make multiple versions pan around in the stereo field like it was Quadraphonic sound from the 1970's; when one pans left, the other emerges from the right. These were recorded with a Neumann U67 into a Neve 1073lb into an LA-2A which is complete and total overkill.
Topically, I thought I wanted to wrestle with the idea of YOU/I/THEY for the pre-Verses, said from an androids (or someone with no control) point of view. It might also be someone helplessly watching a fire burn down their lives, or expose them for who they are. In the end, I intentionally destroy the entire stereo mix by increasing the gain and distortion through the Thermionic Culture Vulture Super 15 and Overstayer Modular Channel
Finally, I wanted to end with a shoutout to those people who take credit for our hard work, but only if it's a success. DID YOU BUILD THIS? OK, THEN LETS BURN IT DOWN AND REBUILD IT!
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LYRICS: All your new rules |
I watched you fall apart All the old moves |
They watched us fall apart
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All this bullshit You thought you built Let's disassemble it Let's disassemble it Let's burn it down All this bullshit You thought you built Let's disassemble it Let's disassemble it Let's burn it down All this bullshit You thought you built Let's disassemble it Let's disassemble it Let's burn it down All this bullshit You thought you built Let's disassemble it Let's disassemble it |
3_FREE:
VERSE: Though musically FREE feels like an uplifting song, it engenders pain. What does "free" really mean? In this country that word is thrown around, a lot. Land of the free. We've been verbalizing about land of the free almost since day one of our genesis as a squad. And it ain't been rapping or singing about pride. In the first verse I throw in some MLK, thinking about inspiration, and then dashing that hope with the heavy weight of reality. We're too compromised to get up that hill. Beyond that, verse two. Do you feel the struggle? Am I calling out them, you, or me? Oh, what a question to ponder as we wander. And then the final verse, almost grasping the light, through the filth. But the fingers miss the rope...or do they?
REVERB: No one ever said the words "You've changed my mind" but rather "I've changed my mind"... I remember watching the January 6th insurrection and thinking '...obviously no People of Color there... thus no Police' and immediately I flashed back to my Christian upbringing, which taught me only bad lessons and the notion "the other side isn't just different, they are bad people, and therefore evil" but meanwhile, all the examples I could see in my immediate limited life were so-called Christians using the out of context cherry-picked Bible verses as a weapon. What if we took more time to listen instead of speak? What if we respected that in our differences, we might make something better than it was before, and more equitable, rather than hoarding our self-righteousness? What if we switched places for a day? A week? A lifetime? How FREE can we really be if we're not free to choose what, where, and have the need to invent how we get to our final selves? We are only as FREE as our masters let us be, after all.
R&TV seek to destroy that.
STUDIO: The opening bongo/conga riff is the result of my obsessive "no samples" production mentality. Firing up the Korg Wavedrum, I spent about a week trying to play along to the song as I was adding and subtracting parts to it. Eventually, I realized that the Wavedrum was SO sensitive that it would pick out my fingers just tapping the pad. What you hear is actually 90% finger drumming and 10% hand/palm playing, and 4 or 5 good takes of that. I intentionally left some mistakes in through the song, just to prove to myself that I don't have to hyper-micro edit everything. Underneath, you can hear a soulful electric piano riff that stems from THE_VERSE playing while I was secretly recording. TAKE THAT (AND REWIND IT BACK) The underscoring Rhodes riff is an unintentional shout out to the Roni Size song "brown paper bag" a hugely impactful work on me. When the Mellotron comes in (Mellotron via E-mu Proteus 2000) I dare anyone to figure out how to play it because its pitched really weird, and I can't even do it myself. The final chorus came about backwards: originally, we were going to end it chanting together, but this over-the-top pop version came out, and it wraps it up nicely. This is easily the most accessible track on the record.
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LYRICS: inches apart and revolutions away |
the master of corruption is us |
no grip to make fists |
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4_ARCH: VERSE: How fast can you get a point across? Barely two minutes of rapids (flow). One of the shortest jams in R&TV history and still no punches pulled. There is a story being told, through the wordplay, though you can take it any way it catches your vibration. The main question is asked - and essentially answered. How in the hell we still here? Two plus decades. That's a ton of minutes of existence. Arch is like an iceberg tip. It is bigger than it appears. Did you catch the reference to General Louverture? Sovereignty. No clean lines to it. After this long, no fairy tales. REVERB: this is another two-part song from BLACKWALL (the first being TRUTH) but this time, I let The Verse set me up. It's a decade long callback to our song BLOOD ON DEMAND off VERSATILE. It probably started as a marching song and turned into whatever it is now. If you want to march to it, that's fine, but make sure you believe in what you march for and towards! STUDIO: This started as a march song (noted above) that we just listened to for a while. It was even used as opening music for our set at one time or another. Seeking again to destroy my own patterns, I made this in two acts intentionally OPENER/CLOSER. It's about 4 Moog analog synths playing the same progression and then ducked to the beat. The beat is made by hand by the fabulous Norand Mono, hence its electricity feel. Every measure is different, and it was excruciating making sure it was. Yes, I fully realize that "excruciating" = fun to me!
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5_BLEED:
VERSE: "If you prick us, do we not bleed?" a classic line in the Merchant of Venice. It has been referenced countless times and it could serve as the inspiration here, but instead of 'we bleed' the inspiration here is 'you bleed'. I'm not truly advocating taking actions that would cause someone to bleed, even if everything points to them deserving pain. That's why we do the lyrics. verbal punishment - maybe - enlightenment? did you catch, "ruddy and wet"? verbal gymnastics... as we gain position in society - rise even - actions such as punching someone in the face are seen as low class, uncivilized. So then do civilized folks, rather than throw a punch, create weapons instead? hmmm
"they got us bleedin' from our noses, ears, and eyes.... won't pay attention 'til the'y bleedin' from the'y bottom lines"
It's another a chain of events, these lyrics. this thought must to be tied to the next, somehow. I started with an image in my head of a prison and then let it roll from there. The whole thing isn't bluster, just most of it, with spots of 'come on, people!'
REVERB: This was the first track we recorded for RATV10 I think? Originally, it was written for someone else to sing-- most of our songs I never intended to sing and did so poorly only as a last resort. To me, it is a song of an equal part of hope and despair, victory and tragedy.
THIS IS A REBEL SONG.
STUDIO: Originally this had a much more hiphop beat but ended up as 4 on the floor after months of not working. This is how it goes sometimes. I prefer the slow grind of it now. This song could never quite match the intensity of us doing it LIVE, so we re-recorded it until it did. Fresh off a live set, J's vocals cut through with his typical fire. We wrestled with the vocal processing that I HOPE sounds like a bunch of synthetic soldiers provided the screw-vox to back him up-- I think the message is important enough. The bridge completely cuts away and was done months later when it finally fit. The ending seconds of this is actually where the song started for us, just throwing ideas on top until something stuck. I left it in at the very end.
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LYRICS: these suckas bleeding from they noses "you may bleed us dry |
these suckas bleeding from they ears |
6_BOOGEYMAN:
VERSE: April 7, 1837, a short story was published... that we still haven't learned from. and oh, btw, FUCK TRUMP
REVERB: I remember thinking 'who believes this guy?' and at the same time, who DOESN'T fall for a con-man carnival barker- at least for a few seconds? Sometimes we just want to connect and we WANT to believe. We all really do, and hey, what harm can come from a single man? Well, as it turns out, a lot! Referencing the Emperors New Clothes (which we both were told as children) and how we hear these fables that sometimes come true later in life. This was an early song, and I remember trying to sing it over and over to get it sour enough to stick. It took millions of passes. I flipped the point of view to first person position for the ending, of course, as the figure becomes self-conscious. What if I'm the bad guy?
STUDIO: This was started on the Akai MPC Live, and the basic track is 100% that. I get lots of new gear and I like to use it immediately for the new processes and workflow it may yield. It was one of the first ideas I did on an MPC and it kept begging me to make it into a song. The horn stab really makes it to me because it just jumps out of nowhere, in no key in particular (making it difficult to play live) Thats how horns should be though; raw and visceral. In the background, we added stomps and claps to bring it home a little. Something human underneath all the inhumanity.
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LYRICS: (I'm not crazy you are) (the emperor is naked) i’ve seen the end |
what harm could come from some simple math? i’ve seen the beginning |