Ocean Floor - Artificial Light, 2008

I think I may have mentioned this in one of my earlier song-rants – the Ocean Floor was written largely under the influence of Sigur Ros. I’m fully aware that they were hideously trendy at the time (2006/2007), but I’m a sucker for pretty music and ‘pretty’ is one word that can definitely be used to described them.

The song itself had been around since early 2006, and was originally written for the band Body Electrica. I wanted a song that grew from nothing into something massive. I started with that simple guitar riff (if you can call it that), and the rest of the song is just slight variations on an F, Am, G progression with more and more things gradually dumped on top of it.

For a long time I had no idea where to go after the second chorus – the song seems to be getting bigger and bigger, and I wasn’t sure how to make it as all-encompassing as I could feel it in my head. Body Electrica’s version of the song went down an odd route: sort of Biffy Clyro-esque, juttery guitars and some kind of mad breakbeat on the drums with some guitar-noodling thrown in for good measure.

No idea what the hell happened there.

When I brought the song to the studio, the first thing we did was scrap the bridge and replace it with something infinitely more listenable. Essentially, we just kept playing the song as it was, but louder. Funking genius. We took out the lyrics, and layered on countless interlinking guitar parts, vocal ‘ooo’ melodies and harmonies, and an acoustic riff I really like (it comes in halfway through the instrumental bridge, and sounds more than a little like That Blondie Song).

Lyrically, I intended to make up for what I couldn’t manage musically. The feeling for the whole song was supposed to emulate that feeling you get lying on the bottom of a swimming pool. Warm and weightless, beautiful, and with the dense pounding thud brought on by tons of water pressing on your eardrums, the sound that acts like white noise, removing any and all thoughts from your mind. And I just didn’t know how to get that feeling across, beyond pushing each listener into a swimming pool.

So the words just echoed all that – ‘Down along the ocean floor, no one makes a sound, no one sleeps a wink, nothing moves at all. Nothing to distract us.’

There are other ideas in there, themes that run throughout the album – loneliness, isolation amongst friends, and hope. My favourite line is “Down along the ocean floor, where my heart beats fast, out of time with yours.” Not much else I can really say about that, I just like singing it when I get to it.

The centrepiece of the song is the ‘time to bring yourself back around’ part. That was always meant to be me shaking myself, saying ‘get your shit together’ in as many words, but I know it’s such a simple line that you can read pretty much whatever you want to into it. Come to think of, it’s not even really meant to be ‘read into’ – it’s not ambiguous at all. But I think the song, throughout the verses, is full of negative, if desirable, ideas, and the chorus is somebody, anybody, telling you to stop being such a dick about everything.
Live, it doesn’t really work, although I really want to find a way to make it work. I think played with enough attention to the dynamics, there could be something special to a solo-acoustic version. Maybe, if anyone requests it.

Mainly, what it would be missing live is the piano part towards the end. That was, I will freely admit, Matthew Roberts’ doing. When he played that back to me, I could have married him then and there. It’s still my favourite moment on the album, and it breaks my heart when I think I had nothing much to do with it. But that’s why I get Matty involved – if I didn’t, it would just be me, with a four-track tape machine, playing little acoustic songs to myself. I need Matty to clap his hands together proudly and say “You know what would sound immense in there? Fucking synthesisers!”, to which I say “Matty, if I even see a synthesiser I’m going to fire you.” I generally haggle him down to ‘a bit of reverb’ or, in extreme cases, ‘a harmony’.

But every now and again, more often than I will ever give him credit for, he’ll pull a sprinkle of pixie dust out of god-knows-where and make me sound like sodding Beethoven. Ocean Floor is the perfect example of this.

You waste it all, you waste it all, you waste it, waste it, waste it. Now bring yourself back around.