Wisping howls travel the void and permeate constellation. Melancholy angels flit around like dolphins in the deep.
A welcoming waiting room of incubation, a warm anticipation, a preemptive embrace. Lightly humid, not too bright, the smell of fresh laundry, and one other person sitting across the room sharing an unspoken bond of silence. A playful secret shared only through eye contact.
The walls, floor and ceiling open up, sitting on the setted sky. Liquid night fills every pixel. A glint in the stranger’s eyes and a subdued laughing of delightful enlightenment, like a tangerine, as if to say, “Soon you will understand”.
Further upwards until constellations surround. A light refracting hum vibrates from nowhere in particular. Stars chattering with one another, ceaseless twinkling of murmurs of gossip.
White sand fills in below like heavy whipping cream poured from a summer’s jug. Over a dune, decrepit gray ruin with eerie hollow entrance enchants the rare passerby; prayers of the dead saunter from the opening. Like a snake to the charmer, draw towards it and enter.
Follow the path underground where fidgeting flames dance their ritual on dusty walls. A large circular enclosed room where doorway aligns with a statue, sapphires for eyes. Marvel at them and the surroundings turn black.
In the middle of an endless darkness. The ground ripples liquid with every step. Sun in a far directions coming out of hiding. A blurry white light, opening eyes for the first time. The freshness of being born, vague memories, brief photographs, precious recollections and bittersweet traumas, a deep dark chocolate that invokes a sigh of missed longing and aching regret. Near misses, lifelong friends, strangers who come and become forgotten, enduring family, seasonal acquaintances, chapter companions, and others who are written in detail little or large.
Eyes open completely. Hovering back in space but time has stopped. The quiet stranger from the waiting room approaches leisurely. Makes eye contact like a hug, smiles like heartfelt encouragement and continues on his way. Every star is still. Deep inhale….hold breath….exhale. Every direction is a path where every possible path has converged to one. A small glowing sensation in the abdomen radiating like ambient heat from the oven after baking blueberry muffins. The mind feels crisp like an autumn’s flowing creek topped with a singular maple leaf. The heart, a picturesque plain ready to receive any breeze which passes through.
This breeze carries the dusk. A laid back blues scented dusk. A simple wooden chair appears and when sat upon, lowers to the milky sand dunes. A western style town not too far off, candle lights seen through the windows. A woman in a colorful round dress holding a parasol in the center of town. She looks over her shoulder, her expression is forlorn, like a weathered stone that’s been stuck in the same spot for hundreds of years.
0:00- E phrygian, focusing on E drones and melodies using C to B and F to E. Really playing on the characteristic tones of the scale (the b2 and the b6).
There's a vague chord progression using the diatonic chords. E minor, C major 7, G sus and G major. Once he approaches that G sus he kind of hovers around there a while and plays with G mixolydian tones (1 2 3 4 5 6 b7), but generally omits the 3rd (he doesn't play B a lot).
His lines tend to focus on G, E to F, or like E, F, G, A, G.
There's a background guitar riff that is a chord of C and F (perfect 4ths), then the note G, creating this Csus4 sound to suspend us in space indefinitely.
A brief Asian flavored riff of G, D, down to C, down to G.
There's not many true chord tones in this segment, he's dancing around the suspended tones like the 4th and the 5th. And when he DOES play a chord tone, tends to be the 7th (F) when he's doing some F to E line, playing around with a G mixolydian sound.
There's a brief moment around here where he plays a riff using Bb like once, creating this minor tension in an otherwise non-chord specific section of the song.
13:02- D comes in the bass, then goes to C, then G. Making a V7, IV maj, I maj feeling. Still got the Csus4 chord happening in the background (C, F and G).
16:30- He plays a riff that descends in 3rds, starting on D. Still has the Csus4 chord in the background.
18:07- Lands us at a D7 chord, and he utilizes D mixolydian, riffs focusing on specific notes (D, F#, G, A), EXCEPT sometimes he plays F (b3) giving us D dorian vibe. A notable riff is F, E, C to D.
21:00- Still D mixolydian, focusing mostly on D, F#, G, A and C. It outlines the D7 arpeggio, but the 11th(G) makes it a little less angular, softens the tritone between F# and C.
23:40- D A E and D A D arpeggio
24:05- We're transitioning to D minor. He plays diatonic triads D minor, C major, Bb major. Still in the background is a D mixolydian riff (D, F#, D, G).
25:10- Around this timestamp things get juicy. He stars riffing in D phrygian dominant by throwing in the b9 into his playing. Notable notes are D, Eb, F#, G. But he still pivots between this scale and regular D mixolydian and plays riffs like D, F#, G, G, A. and C, D, F#, G, G#(!), A, B, C. This riff particularly sounds a little jazzy coz of his G#(#11) leading to A (5th) and continuing to the B(13th) and the C(b7). He nails a important chord and color tones in that riff.
26:50-Here we get into this A bass drone and he plays these riffs like D melodic minor (D, E, F, G, A, B, C#) or harmonic minor (D, E, F, G, A, Bb, C#). There's very little use of the 13th either way (no B or Bb here usually). But even though he plays some kind of D minor scale, the bass is stable on A, so he focuses on notes like C#(3rd) and G(b7th). He gets into bending G way up to A too, giving a sitar effect. C# seems to be his resting tone to finish off a lot of his riffs.
31:24- He puts on distortion and starts ripping in A phrygian dominant (A, Bb, C#, D, E, F, G). (1, b2, 3, 4, 5, b6, b7 is the formula). Basically just regular dominant chord but make the 9th flat.
33:51-Back to like a Dsus4 arpeggio thang briefly, flowing into G-9 chord. He plays a riff like the left hand of a piano, Root, 5th, 9 to b3. Then a moment of C7sus, so altogether it's like a II- V7 chord progression. A cool voicing to go here is xxx551 for C7sus.
36:00- The background riff here plays around with F# resolving to the open G string, getting a cool buzz between the two notes. Synth does some stuff in 4ths (A and D, G and C, D and G) as mini chords. And like way before, he doesn't play much with any kind of 3rds, so it's neither major or minor. Tonality here is vaguely Gsus coz of the F# resolve to open G string.
38:45-He finally introduces the 3rd when he trills between B and C a lot, setting us into a more stabilized G tonality. The previous F# to open G string riff is in the background, implying G major (G, A, B, C, D, E, F#) but he abandons that tonality in his riffing coz he'll play F natural, implying G mixolydian melodies (G, A, B, C, D, E, F). He does that a lot in this album, where the background vamp will establish a certain harmony that he butts heads with in his melodic playing, but since his phrases are sparse with plenty of breathing room, once they evaporate the harmony re-establishes itself. And we're in this space for a long welcomed while.
46:45- We get into this F# minor / A major tonality, there's some D major and briefly some B major (wtf?) but we're centered in F# minor.
49:50- He briefly plays us in C# minor / A major, and there's a passing by F to F# riff, hinting towards F# harmonic minor. Sounding very Budd/Eno here.
52:00- Still in the realm of F# minorish, guitar approximation can be xxx425 (F#-11) xxx657 (C#-7) xxx767 (F#-). Sounds a tad bit like Starless!
57:15- Prolly a little before this timestamp, but...now we're more in A major. He plays some riffs using the #11 (D#) to create A lydian sounds. The F#- progression from timestamp 52:00 is still present, which doesn't really disturb us in A major. BUT what's cool is since he plays more D#, that flavor blends with the background F#- progression, D# being the 13th of F#, and instead of having the dreary natural minor we had in 52:00, the D# flavors it like F# dorian. So he plays us a slightly different perspective on his previous space, cool stuff!
1:00:32- Suddenly, G in the bass. Ominous background vocals. Some E to F, to D. But mostly D to Eb, to G, mainly with this guitar chord x510xx, it's a big stretch. But the D ringing out into the Eb is important.
1:02:40-There's a brief E vocal like hum that seeps in and clashes with the Eb of the main guitar riff. There he goes again clashing the melody with the harmony! He enters guitar melody using a guitar slide, I think, playing almost blues like, in G mixolydian or G *mixolydian b13 (Since b13 would be the Eb that resounds in the background guitar riff). And for a moment he briefly plays like a C7 chord, as if it's the IV7 chord in a G blues...but the x510xx guitar chord riff draws us back into the moody b13 thing. It's a rly weird combo, coz on one hand the D, Eb, G guitar riff is like G based, but it's also sort of an Ebmajor7 arpeggio, where he plays G mixolydian over top of it.
*I think mixolydian b13 is the same as phrygian dominant, depending on what you wanna call it.
1:08:00- More of the same, but around here he introduces Ab into the mix, giving us G phrygian here and there. Also he rolls in some A harmonic minor (focusing on G#). He's like cycling through the various minor modes all rooted on A.
1:12:15-We're still in the G drone, the G headspace. And I noted that he plays this riff, F, F, F, F, Eb to D, to B~~. And he seems to play a bit of D to Eb trills, with C# in there as well. So I think the scale is (B, C, D, D#, F, G, Ab) whose formula is (1, b9, b3, 3, b5, b13, bb7) and came to the conclusion that he's playing B altered scale..which is a mode of C harmonic minor...all over G drone. I guess B seems the melodic focus point? Maybe it doesn't have to be that complicated, maybe you can start the scale on G as the tonic, since that's the drone point, and see where that takes you.
Wowowowowow, lots of interesting stuff here. Overall, I'd say Clive Wright's bag is he hovers around a vague tonal center, like some kind of suspended chord, or a root 5th root drone, or something with a little bit of scale flavor but without the 3rd and/or the 7th, and he uses the ambiguity as a way to swap between modes that start with that root note. That's why we see a lot of melodic passages with G mixolydian, G harmonic minor, G dorian, or whatever. And it works because even if his melodic playing intentionally clashes with the notes outlined by the harmony, his playing is so breathy and fading that it tenses well with the harmony, dissipates and we're brought back into the original space established by the chords.
