Mucha na Dziko

8/06/21 Setlist Part 1 — Psychedelic Punky Funky

Our rehearsals are held at an amazing place. It’s an old paper factory, that served as such before the II world war, but had since been reused by it’s owners as a complex where you can rent different buildings/rooms that don’t serve their original purpose anymore. The place is huge and absolutely gorgeous. Kilijanek’s parents rented two rooms in one of the buildings in order to have a sort of greenhouse there, but very soon Kilijanek transformed it into an amateur recording studio. So currently the smaller room has drums, a keyboard, a couple of amps, a pedalboard, mixer, and some microphones in it, and the bigger room (which is like 4 metres high — very nice reverb btw) serves as the smoking room/chillout zone.

Sadly, very soon the place will dissapear, and we’ll have to start looking for a different location for a studio, as Kilijanek is getting evicted out of there (because the owners are not happy that this space does not serve as a storage space as it should, according to them). But so far, so good.



For the last 3 weeks all we’ve been playing were only jams really. We couldn’t quite imagine the sound we’re looking for, so we were just coming to the studio and doing „warmup jams”, which by the way were incredibly fun, but nothing was really coming out of it. They were mostly reminiscent of the desert blues genre, psychedelic punky, funky stuff, or some standard blues.

Some of it was really cool, like arguably the best song we’ve made so far really (though I guess we won’t recreate it anytime soon, as not one of us is good enough with ear and theory to know what the **** did we actually play ), which doesn’t have a title yet, but we refer to it as „Mario Jazz” as it reminded us of video game music, only funkier and jazzier.
https://soundcloud.app.goo.gl/XsSN1CQMJLFPiy7F7


And last week, during the last jam, we finally sat down and listened through all the jams we’ve had so far (well, not all, but those ones we remebered that were good, and came up with a setlist.

[ It’s then that I realised that the stage fright I was feeling up to that moment wasn’t because of a fear of playing live in general, but because of the uncertainty of how it will all work out during the gig. It was because we didn’t have any sort of plan. But now, when there is a setlist, with very specific songs that we can work on, develop them, etc, my fright completely dissapeared (though another one came to existance, but I’ll talk about that later). ]

The set consists currently of 7 tracks (we’re thinking about including an 8th one, titled „Co-Pack66”, but so far we found ourselves unable to recreate it with the same level of energy as when we played it the first time, so for now it’s shelved); 3 of them being a band efort, 2 written by me and Szelest, and 2 coming from my own personal vault.
Here it is:

1. Witamy w naszym cyrku [eng. „Welcome to our Circus”]

2. Punky Jam 1 [so far no title, as there’s no lyrics, but we’re working on that]

3. Ja Padam [eng. „I’m Falling”, meaning „being exhausted”]

4. Mada! [japanese for „More!”, „harder/faster”]

5. Tea in a Jar

6. Chocolate Man

7. Jasna Strona Słońca [eng. „The Bright Side of the Sun”]


In this entry I’ll talk about songs 1-4, tomorrow (or the day after) I’ll dive into the rest.



Witamy w Naszym Cyrku
This is one of the songs written by the entire band, meaning it originated from one of the warm up jams („one, two, three, four...play!”).
It was the first song during which we switched on the microphone, so one of us could sing. The singer here is the drummer. And I guess the final lyrics will be the ones he improvised during the first take (they're in polish, but I'll write down a quick translation):


I guess t's pretty clear why this will be our opening track.

The entire song consists of one 4 notes bassline, a 2 notes wah feedbacking guitar line and changing drum patterns (depending on whether the drummer sings or not). On top of that, between the verses the singer will be humming, howling, etc a simple repeating melody.
All kept in a exotic psychedelic aesthetic.
The only thing missing would be a sitar and trumpet on top, but on that we'll have to work when (if) album recording begins.
This one won't be long, 3-4 minutes max, as the patterns we're playing are cool, but as there's only the three of us, and no soloist, the audience might get bored if we'd do it for 10minutes.

Still, as an opener – gold.


Punky Jam / Ja Padam
I group these two songs together, as the idea would be to make them blend. We'd start with the so-far-lyricless punk jam (it really hits hard), that is played in Amin and then make a key change up a minor third to C, where "Ja Padam" starts.

Both of these songs started as jams, with "Ja Padam" having the lyrics invented on the spot as well (though, as you'll see, they're not very sophisticated).

Drums and bass lock very hard on this one, especially the bassline with the hi-hat line win order to create this disorientating quasi-rave flow to the song, with the distorted and echoed guitar playing slowly 2 very dissonant chords, that mimic the melody of the vocals (sung by Szelest):

I'm exhausted
I'm falling
I'm so exhausted
Cause I have no home
Oh, I can't go on

As for the Punky Jam, the guitar goes full hardcore mode (to my ears Szelest's guitar here sounds like if Hendrix was a guitarist of a punk band in the 80s), the drums keep a very aggressive and busy rhythm, with lots of cymbals and ride hits, and the bass has a line (which I'm pretty proud of, in terms of rhythm and consonant-dissonance) that goes


in a similar fashion to "Eight Miles High" by the Byrds.


Mada!
And there, when the audience thinks it knows where the show is going ("oh, ok, they're gonna rock our heads off with this psychedelic punk stuff for the next hour") we enter with the jazziest tune in the whole set.

This one is my original composition, going back a year or so, which I wrote when being obsessed by Donovan and Shintaro Sakamoto.
The whole thing centers around a really weird rhythmically baseline, that goes

D – F – F# – A – C – G

With with constant ghost notes and slight variations for the chorus and a solo.
In the original version I went for a simple muted guitar (with it's melody reminiscent of the main theme from the animation "Ice Age"), but for the band version we went with jazzier chords and phrasing, with flat 7ths, 9ths, etc. The drums center around rimshots and tight, closed hi-hat during the verses and going full John Bonham mode in the choruses.

I'm the one singing this time, but in no particular language (so the lyrics are pure nonsense in the likes of):

Kara-mi-wo Ti Ka
Manada
Dolo kviwa todo
Saramada

Wo ti kvana la
Di wu
Gambawoona
Dambura ki da

Mada!

The funny part is that after singing it the first time, I put the words I'm singing phonetically into the google translator, and apparently some of these actually mean something in Japanese. Like "Mada" means "More", and sometimes it even made whole phrases and sentences, like:

"A bra is the final barier"
"Earths breath is looking straight at you"

And some others I don't remember right now.




Anyway, that's it for today. Tomorrow or the day after (as tomorrow I'm going over at Szelest's place to work on some real structure in these songs, so they seize sounding so much like jams and start sounding more like . . . sophisticated jams ) I'll break down the rest of the songs.