I mentioned that No. 162, “It” from Barrabas, is one of the songs I might keep secret if I weren’t purposely giving all my secrets away here on the record show. “Giant Steps” is another such song. It’s not a tune that often draws people to the DJ booth to ask “What is this?” but I like to think it sticks with people who find themselves humming the melody, unable to place it, for a week or two after they’ve heard it. Let’s hear it now.
12 February 2017, No. 237, Interior, ‘Giant Steps’
The quality of No. 237, “Giant Steps” by Interior, makes me think I need to go back and reevaluate this whole album. I have a real soft spot for pleasant-sounding music driven by synthesizers, and this is one of those songs. The drums and sand blocks here are relentless and do a nice job of offsetting the pretty and generally upbeat synth and piano lines. There’s a big rock guitar interlude I could maybe do without, and I think I edited at least some of it out for the mixtape. My other complaint is that “Giant Steps” just doesn’t have the bass to drive big speakers, so I EQ’d it to death on the mixtape. Then I dialed it back a little when I saw the Fouriers in Audacity during mastering, the amplified bass frequencies pushing the tune all the way up to reference level while most of the rest of the songs left my 6 dB of headroom intact. I didn’t dial the bass back all the way, though, and the mixtape edit/remix still adds a nice bit of bottom end.
I mentioned that No. 162, “It” from Barrabas, is one of the songs I might keep secret if I weren’t purposely giving all my secrets away here on the record show. “Giant Steps” is another such song. It’s not a tune that often draws people to the DJ booth to ask “What is this?” but I like to think it sticks with people who find themselves humming the melody, unable to place it, for a week or two after they’ve heard it. Let’s hear it now.
I mentioned that No. 162, “It” from Barrabas, is one of the songs I might keep secret if I weren’t purposely giving all my secrets away here on the record show. “Giant Steps” is another such song. It’s not a tune that often draws people to the DJ booth to ask “What is this?” but I like to think it sticks with people who find themselves humming the melody, unable to place it, for a week or two after they’ve heard it. Let’s hear it now.
