I don't see an honest man
but that's just cruel
cause I've never been faithful
I've never been faithful

This is the first time I’ve made music by myself and decided to release it in the wild. I’ve finally accepted myself as an artist. I left Wellington in 2012 and went to London for a couple of years and I thought I would meet a whole bunch of cool people and start making music and art. Turns out I needed time out to deal with an arse-kicking Saturn Returns life-crisis so I didn’t make anything while I was over there and it took me ages to reestablish confidence in myself as an artist. Although I was doing stuff with FANTASING which was amazing, they were all in New Zealand and the only time we did music stuff was when I came back for a holiday.

It’s been really hard to say “I AM AN ARTIST” and really believe in myself and my decisions, but what I’ve found is that is what people really engage with. I know people are always saying to others “Just be yourself blah blah blah”, but it’s hard to actually come to an agreement within yourself over that. It takes aaaaages, so if I had to give advice in something like that it would be to go with the flow.

The EP I’m going to put out took about 1.5 years to do. I wasn’t even sure if I was going to put out this song; even though I really liked it I felt really exposed and vulnerable because of the content and also just committing to something I liked. I felt like this song was a bit of an experiment for me.

I started out with the first 45 seconds as a sketch in Ableton, and had the microKORG synth and the main vocal line sitting around on my computer for ages until a random moment of inspiration caught me and I decided to play around with it. I’m not a finicky producer so what I have to do is hit ‘Save As’ a lot, and then I end up making a lot of clunky brutal cuts. I like the surprises that come out of the randomness, for example, the synth bass line was actually just a fortunatate copy & paste from a part of the synth line. After I figured that bit out, I had a kick in there that turned it in to a bit of a house track, but it was too daunting to try and start making house music at the time so I took that out.

I don't see an honest man
but that's just cruel
cause I've never been faithful
I've never been faithful
And I’ve tried the best I can
to not be a fool
the fall is never that graceful

After I had figured out the bass line and other drums I started to work on the vocal harmonies. I worked on them during this verse and did the ol’ “Save As” another 20 times before I started using the transpose effect. I tend to work with ‘feelings’ rather than deal too heavily with the technical side of things (which is also a legitimate way to work as a producer).

Am I dodging talking about the lyrics? Slightly… I’ve never cheated on anyone in a relationship when we have been in love. My mind may have wandered towards the ends of relationships, but that’s because I am shit at dealing with heavy feelings and total honesty. I guess I’m a people pleaser, which also means I can be a bit of a dick. Sometimes I wish things were easy and I could just be all “NO EFF YOU YOU ARE THE SOLO ASSHOLE IN THIS SITUATION” but there are always grey areas. Even when you try and deal with things in a way to make everyone happy there is always shit to deal with.

Cause I can’t have you

These stray lyrics are actually from another song I’m still trying to figure out. The lyrics are “Cause I can’t have you I’m just going to live in that love”. I realllllllly like the lyrics, but I haven’t figured out the right music for them yet. Anyone wanna collab?

Instant Fantasy's The Wet EP is available on Bandcamp now.

Between the Lines is a series where songwriters take us into the writing room
Read (and listen) to the rest of the series here