Listening to Conner Youngblood’s new album Cascades, Cascading, Cascadingly is like listening to the Golden Record that was put into the Voyager spacecraft in 1977. It seems to be comprising the many languages, ideas and even landscapes of the world into one record for humanity and beyond. Here, the Nashville-based artist unpacks each song and shows us everything inside. Youngblood himself produced these alternative liner notes as a companion piece to his beautiful new album, even including the instruments, gear and samples used for each song.
From an Ocean to a Lake
It started from an image of the lake “Sørvágsvatn” in the Faroe Islands [off Scandinavia], eventually going on a trip to the Faroe Islands, and then never finding the time to actually see the lake. I then proceeded to take that feeling of missed opportunity and letdown and try to flip it into a song about perseverance.
It was also just an important song for me in terms of being the first song I had ever self-recorded in my room versus working in a studio environment and gave me a lot of confidence going into recording the rest of the album in a similar matter.
I had the movie “Ad Astra” playing on repeat during the recording of this song. For weeks. If a movie is working for me, I just loop it in the background, subtitles usually on, and sound barely coming through.
Electric guitar, Lowrey organ drum machine, the bass is from the organ as well, maybe a little bit of rain stick in there.
Reveille!
This one was done almost as a challenge set by a friend to make something with a driving rock beat. I also actually started the session as a very quick example session to show a friend how Pro Tools worked and quickly sampled a drum machine, and played to random guitar over it just to show how easy making music could be. Next thing you know I was watching “The Last Unicorn,” heard a quote from the movie that led me to the poetry of A.E Housman, and decided to base almost the entirety of the lyrics off of his poem “Reveille!”. Hence the title. From pretty early on I had a desire to include the sound of Sami joiking [traditional songs of Northern European people] as a sample throughout this song, and spent some time combing through various joiks until I found one that fit the vibe I was looking for. I ended up watching a lot of “Ghost Story” by the end of recording this one.
While no French is sung in this song, that meaning of “Wake Up!” still applies.
Electric guitar, Lowrey organ drum machine (adding in my own drum sounds on top to beef it up), sample of “Inga Karita” by Jan Ole Klemet Hermansen. Song starts off with bagpipes and that loops throughout the song..I forget where I got that sample from. Bass guitar. Sang into the mininova synth to play vocoder.
Running through the Tøyen arboretum in the spring
This song was actually recorded years–4-ish—ago. Mostly just about nostalgic-type scenes running through my head while going on a run in the Tøyen neighborhood of Oslo. Plus some good sounds of little kids doing karate for good measure.
I was mostly just watching F1 racing throughout all of the recording of this song. The loop of the “tu cara, su cara” was kinda just an accidental ad lib take that ended up being looped throughout the entire song.
Persian santoor, karate samples, electric guitar, banging stuff on my desk, various drum samples. A shaker. Mini nova synth. Clapping.
All They Want is Violence
The crazy part about this song only being one line long, lyrically, is the fact that it took me like 4-5 years to come up with. Not sure if that’s something I should admit. But the instrumental was a very quick thing I made while I was just messing around during another song’s studio session, and then had no idea what to do with it for years. It constantly bothered me and I would try to approach writing on top of it every few months for years.
I think I was just finally inspired to say something about violence while watching way too many horror movies. I was watching the 1980´s horror film “Inferno” while writing and recording the vocals. I definitely had “Titane” on at some point during this as well. Crazy movie. I’ve seen it maybe five times by now.
Guitar, flute, ocarina, a very broken-down recording of me playing autoharp to create the main “Jaws”-like instrumentation.
Blue Gatorade
I had just had all of my instruments and gear stolen out of my car after a show in Denver. I decided to replace my old Strat with a Jaguar, and buy all new/different guitar pedals instead of just replacing the old ones. This song was essentially my first go at just trying out and turning on all those guitar pedals at once. Shoegaze galore, but with the hope that the vocals would still be audible and understood. I was watching the French Open and specifically remember Sofia Kenin playing. She was drinking some kinda sports drink—it honestly was maybe red—but the idea of drinking Gatorade and sweating it out was the start.
The “Heaven knows” line must´ve come from The Smiths, but I say that in hindsight, at the time it just felt like the right way to start the song. I don’t even really listen to The Smiths. Once the lyrics started flowing, it naturally just became a song about not being in love, nervously/profusely sweating, and said sweat getting in my eyes and clouding my vision. I ended up watching the movie “Deep End” a few times and that set the tone for the rest of the recording session.
Acoustic guitar, lots of various electric guitars and effects, slide guitar, bass guitar, kick drum, shaker, Hammond b3 organ, hurdy gurdy, rain stick, tambourine.
Sårbare
I’ve been learning/speaking Danish for about eight years now. I had made the beginnings of this instrumental while in Denmark on an out-of-tune piano and recording straight into my laptop mic on GarageBand. I sat on it for years until realizing that it was sort of a bop and then expanded on the idea. I knew right away that I had to keep the Danish vibe and just go along with the ridiculousness of trying to write a song in Danish for the first time. It was a fun little exercise.
Throughout the album’s recording process I had gotten into the habit of waking up at 5:30, practicing Danish and Russian while working out and going for a run and scheduling times with various language tutors at 7:30 to hold me accountable for being up and ready basically five days a week, for two years straight. Not only did my Danish and Russian get much better, but I was able to get started recording nice and early and feeling really refreshed and accomplished every day. It was a super nice way to start my day and managed to keep me motivated and in check throughout the recording processes. Eventually I got a bit bored of only Danish and Russian and added Spanish and Japanese into the fold (both languages I had previously studied in school). I forget what I was watching while making this, to be fair. I feel like it could’ve been “Tenet,” but I hated that movie. Hate is a strong word, but meh. Oh also, “Princess Mononoke” and “Laupta.” Much better than “Tenet.”
Piano, tapping on the piano, Maestro synth, Akai MPC1000.
Misundelig
When all else fails when trying to write in English, try Danish again. I had really wanted to write bossa nova type song in Portuguese actually, but whaddya know, I don’t speak Portuguese. I had some lines from Google Translate, recruited the help of a friend, but by the end, I just didn’t trust my pronunciation, and decided that as long as it wasn’t in English, I was satisfied. I wanted people to have the listening experience of not understanding the lyrics, yet understanding the vibe, aka bossa nova.
I was on a big Brian de Palma kick during this one. Plus the movie “Zama.” And “Zodiac.” Ohh the Estonian movie “November” became a big favorite.
Acoustic guitar, horn samples from the movies I was watching at the time, kids singing with me from the Danish language camp I teach at, electric bass, upright bass, Akai MPC1000, Lowrey organ drum machine, Maestro synth, electric guitar.
Lampi
I teach Danish throughout the summers at a language camp and the Danish camp shares a dining hall with the Finnish language camp. The Finnish camp is called Salolampi aka The Pond of the Woods. I wrote this song on the piano in that dining hall and decided to name it Lampi…“Pond” in Finnish. While recording I had “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” on.
Piano, lots of effects on just a piano after playing piano to create the background environment, I feel like this on was really just piano.
Oh, When I was in Love with You
I just really wanted to do something that reminded me of Supertramp, and then I think I was listening to a lot of David Gray, and accidentally put the two and two together during this song. I once again used the poetry of AE Housman (“Oh, When I was in Love with You”) for most of the words. I had bought his book “A Shropshire Lad,” and was just obsessed with how musical every single of his poems read and couldn’t help but sing his words to a lot of the songs I was producing, and a couple of them just stuck.
I remember watching the ’90s Super Mario Bros. movie during this.
Drum set, Korg keyboard, Roland spd-sx, saxophone.
Attar
I had a random week of diving deep into the world of perfumery, on Wikipedia and YouTube. I needed to know everything and was fascinated by the way smell worked. For like a week. But I decided to name a song “Attar”–an essential oil made from rose. This led me to other horticulture imagery, and then recalled memories of a favorite book “Baron of the Trees” by Italo Cavino. In keeping in the theme of language, I actually include a sign language reference in this song—two fingers to the throat—signifying “stuck.” I think I had “Hateful Eight” on, my favorite Tarantino film, btw.
Hmmm…trying to remember that initial sound or where it came from. I have no idea listening to the song. I think this was also a case of me liking a random sound from a movie or two while recording and manipulating it. I can think of at least three movies I did this with, but don’t want to name them and get in trouble, hah. But nothing is even close to recognizable at this point. But yeah. After that, electric guitar, Akai MPC1000.
Closer
On a sad note, a very good friend of mine died, and while staying with his family in Norway for the funeral I wrote this on his sister’s guitar. It was never meant to be more than a shitty lil’ laptop recorded demo, but I never enjoyed hearing it rerecorded any other way, so I kept it as is.
It would’ve been around this same time that I went on the runs that led to “Running through the Tøyen arboretum in the spring.”
Just an acoustic guitar.
Cascades
This was born out of being invited to studio session, but awkwardly only as a spectator, so instead of just watching other people write music, I went into the other room and wrote this on piano. I had been obsessing over the word cascades, so much so that I named my album after it. When it came to the album title I had such a tough time choosing between cascades, or cascading, I decided to use both, and made up the word “cascadingly” just for good measure and for the sake of alliteration.
I had even tried to sneak the word into the lyrics of “From and Ocean to a Lake” but ending up going with something else. Luckily this song evoked the movement of water cascading for me and it was a perfect opportunity to use my new favorite word once again and tie the whole album together. The Japanese subtitle stems from the fact that I actually initially made a 30-minute version of this song as a dance warm up for a friend (who is Japanese…and a dancer) and the final version on this album is just a nice little remnant of that original version I had sent to them.
I wrote this one while reminiscing over my childhood home getting destroyed by a tornado. No joke. But also, as just a good way to practice my Spanish and try to impress my Spanish tutor. It is about the reminiscing about past, taking in the present, and looking towards the future. And how important it is to practice your Spanish and drink mate.
I was watching “The Red Shoes,” “Safe,” “Rosemary’s Baby,” “La Piel que Habito” [The Skin I Live In], and a French Canadian zombie movie called “Ravenous.” For some reason I remember way more about what I was watching during this song. The TV show “DEVS,” some really bad Russian sci-fi movies, the TV show “Tales From the Loop.” Sometimes I get a bit distracted by the things I watch, but usually they just go hand-in-hand with the music I am working on .
I think I started by tapping on my desk and just really manipulating it to make the drum beat. Lots of various layers and effects. Lowrey organ. Electric guitar. Maestro synth. Upright bass (with a bow at the end). Spooky noise in the background is a sample from a movie that has been really messed with. I really like to have the sound on a little bit with all the movies playing in the background, and I swear, it seems so often that some sound in the movie catches my attention that blends in super well and then I rewind it, record it and try to figure out how to incorporate it subtly enough without getting in trouble.
スイセン
I took Japanese for years growing up in school and am finally making good on all of the time Odom sensei seemingly wasted on teaching me. I feel like she would be proud. I had wanted to write a song about a Greek mythological figure for a while and decided why not do it in Japanese. I also just really wanted to write a short, minute-long song, and thought why not kill a few birds with one stone? A minute-long song in Japanese about Narcissus. Obviously. The title itself – “Suisen”—is the Japanese word for the daffodil aka the narcissus flower. I watched “Basket Case,” “Brain Damage,” “World on a Wire,” “To the Ends of the Earth (旅のおわり世界のはじまり),” and “Being There.” What a movie.
I also watched “Contact” while finishing this one up.
Electric Guitar, lots of drums, Theremin for the bass line. I think I snuck in the same drone mix and changed the key of Hammond b3, hurdy gurdy and rain stick from “Blue Gatorade” to help build up the intro into the second half.
Gear
Macbook
Duet II
Pro Tools
Fender Strat
Gibson non-reverse Firebird
Fender Jaguar
Formanta Solo II (vintage soviet guitar)
Tonika (vintage soviet guitar)
Rouge slide guitar
AKG C414
Akai mpc100
1982 Oktava ML-19 Vintage soviet Ribbon mic
BAE 1084 preamp (bought from vintage king
PX -1000 reverb (vintage soviet effect rack)
Elektronika RC-02 (vintage soviet delay/reverb)
Maestro synth
Mini Nova synth
Akai Miniak
Squire Jazz Master bass
Moog Thermini
Lowrey organ
Pedals
DOD FX51 Juice Box
1981 Overdrive
TC Electronic ND-1 Nova Delay
Catalinbread Talisman reverb
TC Electronic Brainwaves
Boss Dimension C Chorus
Boss VB-2W vibrato Waza Craft
Old Blood Noise Endeavors Procession Reverb
Boss RC-20
Boss VE-20
And a lot of acoustic instruments (piano, acoustic guitars, rain stick, ocarina, stand up bass, drums, hurdy gurdy, Persian santoor, alto saxophone…and some other stuff I can’t remember).