Track-by-Track: Loch Awe - Artificial Life from a Digital Sea

Argos, the lazy thing, has been sleeping for quite a while, but is happy to return and especially if he can do so with fantastic music such as this.

You may or may not have heard of Loch Awe, after all they are only a tiny, modest band from the beautiful city of Edinburgh who, amazingly enough, have released their debut album for the amazing price of 0.

Titled Artificial Life from a Digital Sea, the band takes on an incredibly tender and romantic journey across seven tracks, taking inspiration from coastal towns, chilly winds and lost love. It took a mere listen to rocket itself onto the top of my favourite albums for last year, so it is nothing but a pleasure to know more about how each track was created by the band itself.

• The Ocean in Me
  Matthew: The Ocean in Me was written just a week and four days before the album was released. My dad gave me a concertina he’d bought in the Co-Op(!) of all places, and I’d been wanting to write something with it for ages. I started playing around one evening after practice and the whole thing just sort of came together all at once. 
  
  The lyrics are about longing. More specifically, it’s the tale of a man (or woman, we’re equal opportunities miserablists) who tells the story of his time at sea and the profound change it’s had on him before revealing that he’s invented the whole thing. The idea being that he’d wanted it all so badly his whole life, and the only way he could get close to it was by convincing others it had happened, in the hope he’d one day convincing himself.

• Into Words
  Matthew: I’d had these lyrics ‘maturing’ in a folder on my laptop for a reasonably long time, certainly compared to the rest of the album. They started out as my attempt to sound like Withered Hand but, I think, ended up miles off. Still, there was something about them I liked, so I held on to them and when Jack started playing the chords they just seemed to fit. They’re about the breakdown of a relationship, or perhaps a friendship, or really just any situation where you’re so filled with anger and hate that you want to hurt the other person as much as you possibly can.

• Darling, Your Lover
  Matthew: Darling, Your Lover was the only track written before Loch Awe ‘officially’ got together. In fact, it was recorded by Jack and myself back in March of this year, and we just re-mixed and mastered it in August. 
  I’d never written a coherent story-song before, and I wanted to do something in the vein of ‘First Night’ by The Hold Steady, or even Frightened Rabbit’s ‘Poke’. I went for the first time two ex-lovers meet again, a few months after breaking off their relationship, and an attempt by the narrator to seduce his ex.

• Awe
  Matthew: It was while recording Awe that we decided we could turn this project into a whole album. Jack and I had recorded all of the instruments, and I called Joy to see if she’d like to sing on it; she did, and so we started the band. 
  I’d been listening to a lot of Sufjan Steven’s ‘Illinois’ album when we put this together. Can you tell? (Hint: yes).

• Resign:
  Matthew: After I played this to my flatmate for the first time he asked if it was about Margaret Thatcher. I think he was joking, but he’s a politics student, so who knows?
  
  For the gang vocals, we got as many of our (at least slightly tuneful) friends over as we could find, and just had them yell at a microphone in my living room. 
  
  The lyrics are about giving up. Looking back at them now they seem awfully specific but I can’t for the life of me recall what the plotline was supposed to be. I do remember they came together very quickly once I’d figured out the chords, which I did by making up a ukulele tuning and strumming until it sounded good.

• How It Began
  Jack: I wrote the guitar part about a year after I started playing guitar. It’s partially influenced by the riff from Private Number by William Bell & Judy Clay. 
  
  I wrote the verses which I sing and the chorus over the space of about a month. They’re about going camping with my then-girlfriend.
  
  Joy: My two verses were written pretty much as we recorded them. I was thinking of the way time passes so quickly and idyllically in the early parts of a relationship—I don’t know of any other situations which feel quite like that.

• Lullaby from a Digital Sea
  Matthew: This was the first song we recorded. When we finished this I suggested to Jack we record an entirely instrumental EP, but – as I said above – once we finished Awe the record started to put itself together in our heads. 
  The ukulele parts were written back in February, pretty much on the day I bought the instrument. The rest of the parts were essentially improvised as we went until we felt we’d got the sound we wanted. 

What are you waiting for? You can head over to Loch Awe’s Bandcamp page to download Artificial Life from a Digital Sea for free. You shall not regret it.

- Loch Awe @ Bandcamp