Electro art-rock duo Night Drive’s have compiled their top five most sonically influential tracks ahead of the release of their self-titled record, which drops on June 16th. Here’s exactly why the Texans love these songs.
Anoraak – Behind Your Shades
For this track, I enjoy how he swells and intensifies the saturation of the synths as the song approaches the chorus, which is something that we often do as well. A few years back it was really common to add white noise sweeps to build intensity before a chorus, but because of the prominence of EDM over the last decade that stuff has become a little bit cliche. Though it can still work sometimes, messing with saturation or the filter quality of the pads in a song is an alternative way to have a similar kind of effect.
Washed Out – All I Know
This track, and this band in general, is a good example of how to use lo-fi sounds for the sake of crafting the right mood. The synths, and the percussion especially, are often produced in an “analog” style that is a bit distorted and blended in the upper mid ranges, but that style works for his music because his vocals are a bit more hazy and settled into the music, rather than up front and clear like ours. Because our vocals are more prominent, we tend to make the percussion more prominent as well. I often see a direct relationship between the production of the percussion and the vocals, because they are like the 2 bookends holding together the stack of books that comprise all the instruments in a song.
Austra – Beat and the Pulse
This song is on here firstly because of that arpeggio bass. It just sounds so cool and dark, and it’s a great chord progression that you can groove on for a long time. The percussion is good as well, with the cymbals giving this cool swelling effect. And her voice is of course phenomenal. I think this particular song really captures a vibe that we are often aiming to capture in our songs as well, like a streak of intense pink light in a big dark room.
CFCF – Raining Patterns
The combination of the super-slow tempo, the spacious hall reverb on the claps, and those Juno-sounding synth chords creates such a great atmosphere in this song. When the cascading piano sounds come in, it really evokes the feeling of looking out the window on a rainy day where everything outside looks cold and off-white and still.
Gigamesh – All My Life
Gigamesh’s best original song in my opinion, this track is just impeccably produced. It is a great reference for how to produce just a solid disco track. I spend a really long time on percussion for our tracks, picking the right clap or hat or shaker for a particular song, so when someone just nails it like this I can really appreciate it.
Listen to the tracks here:
Check out Night Drive’s ‘Trapeze Artist Regrets’.
