I’m glad it was my turn to write this week, because this is probably my favourite track of all Art Fact songs.
Listening to it now on SoundCloud, it’s easy to see that even though the track clocks in at 4:06, the actual song part is only about 2 minutes. It starts of with a 1:30 long intro, and ends with 30 seconds of synth sounds. No wonder we never got a record deal! Per Gessle would be ashamed of us.
I remember that the intro was a different piece of music, that we discovered could work as an intro for Man In Armour if we tweaked the last chord. Since it was another sequence on the D-20, and there was no way of merging sequences, we first recorded the intro on track 1&2 on the Fostex X-26 portastudio. Then we loaded the Man In Armour sequence, armed track 3&4 and listened back to the intro. Then Måns pressed the Start button for the D-20 sequencer just at the right moment. I think we had to try a few times before we got it right. Track 1&2 were then used for the vocals, which required some (not so exact) tweaking of levels, pan and reverb settings during mixdown. Everything was not better in the good ol’ days!
The chord sequence was very much inspired by Depeche Mode’s Behind The Wheel. It uses the same formula of 3 harmonic chords, and then a fourth that is slightly off. I think the whole song was written by Måns by himself. The only thing I remember adding is the metallic touch to the snare. The bass sound used the D-20 pizzicato sample, and the melody in the middle 8 sounds a bit like a clarinet. These two more acoustic sounds are then contrasted by the gated drums and the resonant synth in the outtro.
What I like about this song is mainly the driving rhythm, Måns’ lyrics, and the few seconds just after the first chorus. At this point an extra bar combined with a slight change in the vocal rhythm shifts my whole perception of where beat 1 in the chord sequence is, which is a bit like a magic trick. I don’t know if we did it on purpose, but it still fools me every time.
Although one of our favourite songs, it did not end up on the vinyl record. We didn’t want to argue with the guys at Dödsdans’ selection, and keeping it off the record also opens up the possibility of releasing it separately somehow in the future.