CREATING SOUNDS OF TOKYO-TO FUTURE PART 13: POISON JAM (PART II)

Album art by Ethan Redd

“POISON JAM (PART II)”

Audio Track Count: 65

Favorite Sound: The horror movie feel of the string stabs at 0:28 and tremolo strings at 1:09

Cutting-Room Floor: A couple false start attempts on a more sincere second verse that I didn’t feel fit the vibe and didn’t get far enough to be worth sharing

Inspirations: Horror film, slasher and giallo soundtracks, the sci-fi raps of Kool Keith

In the intro to this blog series, I talked about the difficulty of following up a very successful album and the trepidation I had towards repeating anything from that previous effort. If you were an artist who felt this way, you probably wouldn’t want to directly reference a popular song from that first album, or title a song to suggest it was a sequel to that song, or anything like that. That would be an obvious misstep. Anyway, today we’re talking about “Poison Jam (Part II)”.

I can’t let horror raps go. It is entirely too fun to rap about cartoonish murder, or give personality and dimension to skate gangs that live in the sewers and pretend they are actual monsters. From the “Noize The Invasion” blog post, you already know that I’m really fascinated by the horror tinge of the Jet Set Radio games. From my Atmospheric Horror Music albums, you already know I enjoy making imaginary horror scores. If there was any aspect of the first album that I wanted to take another swing at from a different angle, it was the idea of Poison Jam. From the slinky verses to the dark and colorful beat, this was a production I would always go back to as the album was in progress if I needed a boost. I wanted these albums to be versatile and surprising at every turn, and after the smooth metropolitan breakbeat of “I Shoulda Known!!”, that detuned echoey guitar sweep kicking off this song certainly accomplishes it.

“Poison Jam, Pt. II” is built around a sample of a creepy, bit-crushed bell melody and a satisfying edgy 70s library music-style bass. On top of that, there’s the swingy drumbeat that owes more than a little to the bouncy production of ‘90s Insane Clown Posse and the vocal sounds provided by me–the creepy little Friday the 13th breath effect and the solemn “I…” at 0:17 adding texture. Yep, that was also me. There are also some saw-like percussion sounds starting at 0:24 that help with momentum.

My favorite melodic element of the song are the pitch-bent Mellotron string samples starting at 0:28 and punctuating the ends of measures. Late in production, I added the tremolo string samples (example at 1:09) from a string sample library, degraded them to match with the Mellotron tape strings, and absolutely loved how genuinely classic-cinematic they sounded. The detuned guitar sweep also recurs whenever I felt it’d make an impact, no particular pattern. It was a relief to make a relatively simple production to sit underneath rap verses after an album of endless complexity, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t making sure every element served a purpose.

The flutes (also Mellotron) that start at 2:06 and continue throughout the song owe a lot to Akira Yamaoka’s work on Silent Hill (this is more or less where I learned just how versatile the Mellotron sounds are) and songs like Fabio Frizzi’s “Voci Dal Nulla” from the soundtrack of the movie The Beyond. It’s really worth pausing what you’re doing and listening to the following incredible track (flute at 1:44).

On my first album, my take on Poison Jam was that they were kind of a cult of teenagers who lived separately from the rest of society and indulged fully in their tastes in horror media and the occult. Whether it came from not having social skills, not feeling conventionally attractive, having relationship/family trauma or not finding anyone they could relate to, it led them to this found family of self-proclaimed “monsters” where they could finally have a sense of belonging and meaning. To some extent, this is a situation I feel empathetic towards.

It’s very cathartic to write about these messy characters, especially as they start to engage in actual crimes and attempt a takeover of the city in “Pt. II” via exaggerated violence, kidnapping and robbery. We live in a culture with an all-time low of media literacy, where art feels the need to make it abundantly clear that it knows its villains’ actions are BAD and it does not condone them. I don’t wanna make cautious, wholesome art. I want to write about Poison Jam zapping people with rayguns they assembled out of stuff they bought at a hardware store, because it’s fun and it makes sense for these chaotic characters that don’t side with authority figures or the GGs, the friendly and welcoming gang that the player character is a part of. Because of how I’ve developed the characters across two songs, I know it will make sense for my listeners, too.

Specific lyrics notes: I get to make TWO Godzilla references in this song. The idea of a computer nerd (possibly a member of the Noise Tanks) trying to do a blood sacrifice and the only “dark music” he can think of is AC/DC was so funny to me. Writing this from December 2022, I’m proud to report that making fun of Elon Musk fans who are going to die as guinea pigs testing out living in space is just about the most well-aged thing I’ve written, which I knew it would be.

I struggled with a second verse that was a little more solemn, a look into the psychology of the Poison Jam member and what they might be going through under all the outward displays of terror. I decided ultimately that it wasn’t the time or place, and once I committed to making this song as fun and extreme as possible, the lyrics just came flowing forth. That more solemn angle is something I still have thoughts on, but I think I’ve already built out Poison Jam a lot from the scant characterization available in the games, and the fun element in the lyrics is integral to what I’ve created. I know I do a lot of mid-song switches, but there are some mid-song tone gaps too long to bridge.

Speaking of mid-song tone gaps, I had so much fun doing the double fake-out fade-out in this song (from 2:29 to 3:01), especially with it feeling so resolved, relaxed and meditative. Sometimes it would even surprise me that the song wasn’t over, when I was only half-listening! That section of the song was originally supposed to be the beat backing for that more solemn lyrics take, but even when I decided not to follow that thread, that composition was too pretty to let go.

When I decided to make a Part II to “Poison Jam”, it was because I couldn’t resist speaking as these characters again. It’s way too fun to write. As this album became less of an explicit Jet Set Radio album and more of a 2 Mello album, I still wanted to exercise a little of that exploration of where the series might have gone had it been able to continue. I’ve seen some comments from people who say they liked the first Poison Jam more, or that they like this one more. However, I wasn’t really trying to one-up myself; reserve that type of “bigger and better every time” sequel behavior for big movie franchises that have to keep from going stale. Rather, I wanted to put a different, darker spin on everything, from the lyrical tone to the music itself. It was really fun and rewarding, and probably one of my favorite moments on the album. Thanks for reading this discussion of how it came to be.

Above: Full view of the “Poison Jam (Part II)” mixdown in Ableton Live. Most DAW programs arrange music from left to right on the timeline, so the left end is my intro and the right end is my ending, with every sound placed in a linear fashion. The rows of color are audio tracks, and the tighter multicolored bands of audio tracks are collapsed Groups.