The Process of 'Possession' Pt. 1

Building a prison-like sound world

I released a new song called Possession a few weeks ago as part of the Deluxe Edition for my album ‘A Reckoning’ which will come out later this year. I thought it might be cool to share the first demo of the song with you.

I wrote ‘Possession’ with Patrick Wimberly from one of my favourite bands Chairlift (here is one of my favourite song of theirs if you’re looking for something to enjoy aurally and visually this week).

It started as a simple demo centered around an arpeggiator I created on an iPad app and an angular, janky drum beat I also made inside the iPad on an app called the DM1 Drum Machine.

You can hear the very first demo here (in a perfectly demo-ish way it’s very quiet for some reason, so give those knobs a crank):

Then began the process of producing out the track with my co-producer Ryan Lott (of Son Lux and maybe most well known for composing the incredible soundtrack to Everything Everywhere All At Once)

We tried various drum approaches including this springy snare approach which I’m actually kind of obsessed with now, listening back…

The chorus doesn’t hit right here though. Thus, the power of experimentation. You discover what you like, what you don’t and each step informs the next...

Since Ryan and I made my album, ‘A Reckoning’ during the Pandemic, a lot of our process happened over the video messaging app Marco Polo. I was touched to recently stumble upon some old videos of us working on the song back in 2020. So here’s a little insight into some of our nerdy inner workings…

I remember this next moment so vividly... when the track really started to fall into place. And I am HYPED.

I love Ryan’s response here. He was such an great co-creator for the vision. Endlessly encouraging my whims while knowing when to challenge me, rein things in or push me to expand them.

After many back and forths of this kind, we ended up with the final version, which you can hear here (or on any streaming platform you use!) :

I love how it turned out, it’s intense and claustrophobic, capturing an experience I wanted to understand better: that of the immigrant and what it feels like to be a prisoner in your own country.

Naturally, there’s always an affectionate bias I have towards demos. A minimalism and lack of self-consciousness. Production always brings multiple perspectives to the table which is, of course, the joy of the process - adding dimensions and layers to a small spark - but I am partial to the old fumbling-in-the-dark demos so I’m excited you get to hear that little piece of the process too. So often that stuff just sits on a hard drive collecting digital dust…

If you enjoy learning about creative processes like my own, I’m actually kicking off a songwriting workshop tomorrow with School Of Song. I know there’s a lot of artists following along over here and I’ve gotta say, I’m really excited to lead this month long course. I love talking about songwriting and I feel confident it will benefit writers of every kind (music, poetry etc).

You can read about some of the themes I’ll be focusing on for the course here and then if you’re interested, be sure to sign up in time for my first ‘seminar’ which is Sunday Oct 1st at 2pm EST. I hope to see some of my Substackers over there!

In my next post, I’ll talk a little more about the lyric.

Till next time