I (or rather Retro Plien, my long-suffering identical twin - or "niwt") spotted this track http://www.macjams.com/song/44993 by davajonah (Dave) a week or so ago and really loved it as an ambient piece. It seemed to me that it had huge potential to be taken to another place altogether (Mirak perhaps) by adding bass and drums.

Dave agreed and I set off using midi drums and a beautiful fretless bass sound I found in Logic Studio (I love Logic Studio!) to “add some snat”. Once that was done it was screaming out for a vocal.

I had my own idea for a bluesy lyric, but Dave made the following suggestion in an email: “A SciFi story - about some race trapped on the planet as slaves of the [?] to mine the important mineral [?] . They long to break away from their servitude, but never can. They can only dream - there is no escape. Every evening they are allowed outside, can look to the stars and to where they are from, but during the day they are forced back into the mines and can never see the sun. Could be a first person thing about the thoughts of one of the slaves. Or is that too corny?”

This was so much better than the idea I had, and an hour or so later the lyrics were done – so much easier when someone else comes up with the idea!

Retro Plien will be going on an extended vacation (again) and I’ll be posting all my tunes as jiguma from now on.