age of rust

Part of what separates the wonder of human made art, from AI-facilitated art, is the joyful embrace of one’s own innate limitations. During the pandemic, I decided to adapt a screenplay idea I had into a concept album. I might be a slight musician and composer, but I’m a diligent producer. Cognizant and mindful of these limitations, I embraced beginning demos and writing sheet music that could be finished and brought to life by other session musicians.

The experience of the musician listening to their own music is a peculiar phenomenon. Most of the time, when I listen to the music I produced during the pandemic, I’m proud of how much effort went into the music; at the same time, I’m disappointed that the music isn’t better and as skillful as my ambitions; the frank reality that I may be a mediocre musician and, thereby artist, haunts every listen. Every listen is a challenge to be better, but also an opportunity to critique my worst habits.

Like many songs I produced during this period, the Kanye West influence is unmistakable. For the track, “Age of Rust,” the principal inspiration is “Power.” The song is built around a vocal sample and interpolation from the Transformers animated film from the eighties. Driving the song, accompanying this sample, is a bassline lifted from “City Slang” by a little known Michigan band. The drum programming was mostly outsourced to Leon Alvarez, a producer I got to know while working behind the counter at Landmark movie theaters before they closed their location across the Guitar Center.

I’m not much of a rapper, so I paid Crazy 8 the Great, who’s one of the best nerdcore rappers on the planet, to bring to life the persona of a character called “Officer Marion.” Over the course of the song, Officer Marion learns that the reason he’s become numb to the sight of violence and carnage is that he’s reached “an age of rust.” The age of rust is an age where robots experience too much trauma and need a reboot to resolve their “code smell.”

My favorite aspect of this production’s arrangement is the way that strings and operatic choir vocals fill the space one minute into the song. The string section here is one I’m particularly proud of, because of a key change that happens around 1:50, where the key shifts completely for a sequence where the strings are supported by a brand new guitar section played by Austin, the engineer who mastered the final track and appears elsewhere on the album I made.

His guitar parts are separate from the guitar solo that I received from a session musician before “chopping” up and treating it as a sample throughout the record. Final synthesizer flourishes were provided by Alex Aquilina.

One thing to note, my friend Fasika preferred the demo of Age of Rust when the string section was performed by a brighter sounding piece of music. The intent of this particular bridge was to dramatize the insanity that Officer Marion feels upon realizing he’s a robot due for a scheduled memory wipe. When lashing out, his violence is ironically scored by a juxtaposition that treats his violence lightly: “Sometimes, niggas wanna, mmm-mmm-mmm.” This melody came to me while I was joking around with my ex-girlfriend during the pandemic. I was always attracted to this piece of music.

Even when I listen to “Age of Rust,” I think it’s amazing how much music was crammed into 4 minutes. There’s three different rappers, and outside of me triggering the sample occasionally, no instruments are played by me. I was impressed that the bassline from one song could complement another sample so cleanly, but I’m especially proud of the fact that the song is packed with new compositional ideas that don’t rely on the sample.

For the artwork, Adisa was inspired by both the story of the song’s concept and lyrics that referenced economic concepts like “Butter and Guns” and the “Black Lives Matter” protests that were filling the news during the summer of 2020. The audience for this music was always meant to be a teenage boy, and Adisa followed that instinct by penning the artwork in a style particularly childlike. This childlike aesthetic contrasts wonderfully against the bleakness of the song’s themes. Ultimately, his art far surpasses the music.