about
I wrote the basic, instrumental version of this song in the summer of 2020. Hello Tomorrow was meant to be on a new Black Distortion album and it shares stylistic similarities with the BD song Mind, released in June 2020. Then things happened and the new Black Distortion album eventually became Disco Dystopia.
The first version of Hello Tomorrow felt like an impenetrable mess. Layers upon layers of sounds, instruments, beats and melodies. And no room for vocals. So I let it go.
Cut to early October 2020. I had a Sunday afternoon to myself and decided to work on the vocals. And it was hard. This song is the most extreme version of the "Funnel Method"*) of song writing I've ever attempted and I honestly think the verse vocal melody I came up with is the only possible combination of syllables and notes that works without sounding stupid.
I finished the vocals on that day in October. And then did nothing for five months.
In early March 2021 I listened to what I had recorded, thought it sounded at least interesting if not exactly brilliant, and decided to mix it and release it. I rearranged the song slightly, modified the beat and played a new guitar solo. Then I asked Rachel Fey to create the artwork for it and here we are: the song is finished and you're hopefully listening to it.
*) The "Funnel Method" means writing a song layer by layer instrumentally so that by the end there's so little room for vocals that the melody becomes apparent and doesn't even need to be written. It doesn't work it's a stupid method.
lyrics
Two separate lives collide
Under a yawning sky
A brightness too severe
To withstand
A marble statue flares
Until it’s almost scared
In language much too rare
To understand
Hello tomorrow
A longueur deranged
Beg, steal, or borrow
A vacuum displaced
A carefully contrived
If innocuous mistake
In a horizon susceptible to change
Stare into the void
Into apocalyptic haze
Everything and nothing in its gaze
Two scattered minds combined
Create a rip in time
Imagination no longer
Exiled
A follow-up is planned
Until it’s deftly canned
And out of touch blind mice
Creep from behind
Hello tomorrow
A longueur deranged
Beg, steal, or borrow
A vacuum displaced
A carefully contrived
If innocuous mistake
In a horizon susceptible to change
Stare into the void
Into apocalyptic haze
Everything and nothing in its gaze
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