MacJams.com - Wonderland

Wonderland by The Orbiting [Email]

Genre: Pop (Alternative)

Get Flash to see this player.

Having playback trouble, try the Quicktime player:

Attribution-NoDerivs-NonCommercial

Keywords:

ledebutant (46), illuminati (25), Lisa Purdy (3), Matt Smith (1), Wonderland (1), Lewis Carroll (1), The Walrus and the Carpenter (1), love (964), birds (22), clouds (17), rabbit hole (1), one side makes you smaller (1), backwards vocals (3), Raygun Dreamdate (7), falling (21), stars (38), Alice in Wonderland (1), Through the Looking Glass (1), synchronicity (1), 100 NASA scientists (1)

Description:

From ledebutant: I was on vacation last month, the first one I'd taken on my own since before my daughter was born more than seven years ago and it was one of the most relaxing, enjoyable weeks of my life. I sat in the airport terminal on the way home, relaxing and listening to some great stuff. Matt had sent me a portion of this music that morning, and I got onto the airplane in a very relaxed mellow mood and wanted to zone out and listen to it, but I had possibly the chattiest seatmate on earth who didn't stop talking for 90 minutes and harshed my mellow (if anyone has questions about timeshares I can answer them now, by the way). Finally, I had the brainstorm of giving her my magazine and managed to plug into my laptop, turn on iTunes and the visualizer and just listen to some of the prettiest music I think Matt has ever written for me.

As I watched the visualizer, it kept creating circular patterns, which brought to mind the rabbit hole from Alice in Wonderland. I wrote the chorus on the plane, but then didn't do the rest until I was home. It actually took me a month to write the whole song, one of those ones that took some time to develop. The entire last verse is two lines from The Walrus and the Carpenter. Actually, I should probably credit Lewis Carroll as co-writer on the entire song, because almost every line has a reference to Alice in Wonderland or Through the Looking Glass, so thanks for the assist on this one, L.C.!

From illuminati: I feel bad for taking up Lisa's whole plane ride with stories of my time share. I do love airline magazines, though. ; ) The basic track for this was written in about 20 minutes, the details took more than a month. This is the second in our 'land' trilogy, which started with "Neverland" and which will conclude with "Fatherland," our nod to jack boots and 20th century dogma. I'm hoping you're not believing me right now. Actually, the song derived out of my wish for a simple, slow tempo song without traditional percussion (nothing against traditional percussion), something to wrap an album around. And then Lisa took us through the crocodile's mouth and into Mr. Carroll's notebooks and it became, of course, bigger than that.

Lyrics:

Wonderland

Not so small
anymore
the pool of tears
has dried away.

We fall together
this golden afternoon,
but stars twinkle nearby.

Oh, down we go.
Take me down this hole.

So beautiful, this crocodile,
and trusting we float through his jaws.

Oh, down we go,
though there's no where to go,
take me down this hole.

(Wonderland)

The time has come
to talk of many things
We could not see a cloud
because no cloud was in the sky.
No birds were flying overhead,
there were no birds to fly.

Hardware:

Matt's crazy synth array. Lisa's Rode Nt-1a (which she may now have fried accidentally, but is afraid to find out for sure). Computers, computers and more computers.

Software:

Logic Studio

You must be registered and logged-in to comment.

Wow! &mdash 05/27/08 - 01:20:50 PM

jgurner

I've so far only been able to listen to this one the computer speakers at work (yes, I know. I work at a library and I'm not supposed to do that), but, even heard through the tiny MacBook speakers, I can tell this is definitely one of the best jobs you've done on vocals. The song is just beautifully haunting and you could do a lot worse than to have Mr. Carroll as a co-writer.

[ Reply to This ]

Bad Librarian &mdash 05/27/08 - 01:38:31 PM