Afterlife Music has evolved over time. Since I went full analogue and got into modular synthesis, it’s evolved a great deal more. Mushroom Pie is a perfect example of the type of music I can find myself making in the studio. The instrumental backing track evolved out of the kernel of an idea, and then I remembered a conversation with a good friend of mine, the very talented Sebastian Lilja, AKA Hush Forever.
I’ve known Sebastian, for a few years. I’ve always played a lot of his tracks in my radio shows and we’ve always just been virtual friends really? We’ve never even met because he and his music partners are over in Sweden and I’m in Cornwall. He’s always said, I’d love to sing on one of your tracks. Let me have a track when you think it’s right for me. So, one night, I’ve finished the backing track for mushroom pie, which is like just a really sort of jazzy funk instrumental. It was full, in my view, in terms of instrumentation. I just sent it to him on a whim midnight and said, just see if this turns you on. If you want more space in the track to put your vocals that’s not a problem. I’ll just start thinning it out as you do for vocalists. I got a message back the next day, saying, “I absolutely love this. I’m on it today.”
How did the session turn out?
By the end of the day, he sent me the vocal and at first I thought is this vocal going to be clashing with anything? Not an unusual situation when you have sent a backing track to someone on spec, and having not written the initial idea with a vocalist in mind. But, Sebastian had cleverly sang around all the tiny little motifs that come in and out. I didn’t really have to do anything to it. Which was exciting.
I finished the mix by the end of the day and sent it to him. The next job was to sort the video, so I asked him, “can you get green screen?” No problems there, he borrowed a roller green screen and shot his part of the video; performing it in his apartment. All I needed to do then, was add the backgrounds in. It all went like clockwork.
Who is Sebastian Lilja / Hush Forever?
He’s a truly interesting guy. I think he is currently finishing up his doctorate in music, which he started as a teenager, but then got so involved with doing gigs and he didn’t really think it kind of mattered at the time. Now he feels it’d be really nice to finish the doctor off. So this year, he’s just spending all his time on that and doing loads of live gigs.
He’s got a great band, a bit sort of space folk. Very reggae orientated, but 21st century reggae really, where you’ve kept the beats, but you’re spacing it out. He’s got a great keyboard player that plays a couple of Moogs live on stage. I recommend anybody to go to one of his gigs or at least watch them when he posts them up on Facebook. They are brilliant, really superb. I really liked his sort of secret political comment in the lyrics in mushroom pie. That was the bit that really got to me. And that’s what really inspired me to create the backing video that I created for the track as well. It became a completely different animal from the original from the instrumental. That’s the beauty of a collaboration, that melting pot of ideas…
Enjoy this little slice of Afterlife Music. You can find out more about Afterlife here
Til next time
Steve Miller (Afterlife)