‘Til the End of the Evening

Time for a lil' fun!

This week, a bit of a change from recent programming: a cheeky, fun, dancey number.

You can almost hear the writing process for this tune unfold in real-time. First, the rhythmic synth chords at the start, then the slightly melancholic guitar layers, before I finally seem to decide that upbeat guitars are the way forward. I really do love the main guitar parts, which obviously carry the spirit of a lot of the Southern African guitar work I’ve imbibed over the years. The production is not overly complicated, but it has personality and zip. Once or twice, I can almost hear myself thinking, ‘fuck it, let’s just cut straight into the next section.’

The vocal sample is of DJ Derek, an accountant who became one of Bristol’s best-loved reggae, ska, and soul DJs. The BBC made a short documentary about him, which is still one of my favourite music documentaries. Definitely worth a watch!

In general, I hate arranging dance music. It should be simple! It’s mostly just loops! But, for whatever reason, I have often found it a real headache — like I’m trapped in a world of grids and drops. My friend Pete once said he had a similar problem, and we wondered if we simply don’t listen to enough of the stuff. Dance music is often interesting to me as a repository of sounds and ideas but once I’ve heard the main idea I can sometimes get a bit antsy like, ‘Okay, what else you got for me?’ In the end, a fairly straightforward dance arrangement often presents a much greater challenge to me than an ornate composition with A, B, and C sections.¹

To that end, while prepping this, I found a demo with a completely different arrangement of the tune which I’d totally forgotten about, unheard by me since June 2021. One for the Steve on Steve heads:

1. I now have some ideas of how to do it in a way that will be fun for me, but the music might be fairly weird, but that might be for the best — AI will probably come for straight techno first.