Shipwrecked

‘I was on the hunt for sounds that had a keepsake narrative to them or that felt like they had a soul being passed on from generation to generation.’

This is the first sample pack I've actually ever used to make my own music. I usually have a library of objects I've recorded myself and they all hold some kind of memory or nostalgia for me. I record a lot of keepsakes, like my grandfather's harmonica or my mother's pearl necklace, vintage cups and teapots, buttons, shells and old keyrings.

Only recently I discovered that my great-grandfather and grand uncles were EastEnders from London who made clocks and watches. So I started there. I thought there was some metaphor there of the clock, not only keeping time but also keeping the memory of some of my distant relatives. They had to think about keeping time so much. It was their livelihood. All of this made me feel quite emotional and romantic and nostalgic for these objects. One of the reasons I was really excited for this project was because I saw you had all these 18th century and 19th century clocks and chimes.

I kept the clocks as a time-making mechanism, but I didn't keep their rhythms. I actually cut the seconds ticking and recreated a whole new rhythm. So they still had their mechanical notion of keeping time but they're keeping to a new time that I've made up which is exactly how I value time in my real life.

The song uses the theme of the Cerberus, which was a half-sunken ship near where I grew up. I wanted to write a whimsical pop song. The genre would be under underwater pop.

The music box was quite an extended piece of music. I edited a loop and then I slowed it down and distorted it through Moog MF delay pedal. Then I threw it into a whole other grid of other guitar pedals. There was a reverb and a pitch shift – I haunted it out. I wanted it to feel uncomfortable but on repeat it actually became quite relaxing.

There's so much life in this sample pack and so much to explore that it could make you inspired to actually bring your own samples of life and your own field recordings into the mix. It could be a jumping off point to rediscover all the sounds in your everyday life again as if for the first time and out of context. The options are really endless to make these sounds completely your own.