02/05/2021

Mantis 2.0

carbinax
Blog, General

I started Mantis a long time ago. From what I can gather, it was sometime around 2004, so it was originally a 2ndMOUSE track that appeared on a really early ad hoc album that was kinda thrown together in those really early days when giving away a free track was seen as a new thing, and I was giving away albums.
At the time, I thought they were pretty accomplished, for someone that was fairly new to computers at that time, but, as with a lot of my early material, the ideas were good, but the execution was poor because of the lack of knowledge and production experience.

I had another crack at it in 2008, and released it on another early album called “Full Of Earth And Stars” which is still freely available HERE , and although it was better than the original, it still wasn’t as bold and punchy as I wanted it to be.
Many hundreds of tracks have been made since 2008, and just yesterday, just outta the blue, I thought I’d have another crack at it, and finally make a definitive version and nail it.
I think it was Leonardo Da Vinci who said “art is never finished……only abandoned”, but I hate abandoning things or view a track as a problem that I couldn’t fix.

I had a lot of those in the early days, but now, with tools, knowledge and experience I didn’t have back then, I open old tracks and know exactly how to fix them, and I get a lot of satisfaction in restoring them.
If I wasn’t a musician, I’d be a car mechanic, and for me, working on these old tracks is maybe similar to finding an old rustbucket with flat tyres, smashed windows, grass growing through holes in the floor, paintwork a mess, doors falling off etc…..but the battery still sparks, and the engine is still in good shape.

So, for Mantis 2.0, I took that old rustbucket, and I worked that thing over. I sanded it down, gave it a chrome finish, turbo-injected it, and gave it a full bodykit.
Below is a section that shows how intricate the chordwork and bass pattern was.
Neither of the previous versions even had a bassline. They just seemed to work in the same way as Prince’s “When Doves Cry”, which I listened to so many times and suddenly realised one day that it had no bassline, but the mind seems to fill in the blanks without realizing it. Such a clever track from an absolute genius. That guy had more talent in his little finger than some artists now possess in their entire bodies. Can’t believe it’s been 5 years since he left his mortal coil.
So yeah, Mantis now has a bassline, and although the other versions worked, for me at least, in that same way as “When Doves Cry”, this version’s new bassline brings something radical to the track.

I’ve no idea how to classify it.
If you think you know, please send me an answer on a postcard.
It has elements of an industrial kind of techno, and some glitch, but those big bold chords feel out of place with everything that would normally fall into certain pigeonholes, but I like that uniqueness, and think it sets it apart as the maverick work I always wanted it to be.

It’s a free download on soundcloud and hearthis.at but as I don’t have unlimited space on soundcloud, I’ll upload it here too.
Hope you enjoy taking my new car for a drive =)