What’s good people!

Greetings to all the new fans and old school Auralarians alike and my sincerest thanks go out to everyone who has been following the Polymer project so far. A ton of stuff has been happening lately, but I finally penciled in some time to sit down and knock the second of the Polyblog series out for y’all who crave the inside scoop. So, without further ado, here you go:
——————————————————————————————

WHAT’S YOUR DEMON?

I suffer from anxiety. I know – add it to the running tally of insomnia, sex addiction and OCD, right? It’s a facet of my daily existence. Sometimes, the slightest thing will make me feel like the world is on my chest and I can’t breathe. I want nothing more than to crawl into a hole and disappear. It’s all just too much and it’s overwhelming.

I used to wonder why my mother always had a beer in her hand growing up. Then I moved to NYC and immediately understood. Perhaps it was the speed of the city or my fervor to accomplish everything at once, or perhaps a combination of both that pushed me over the edge. Factor in my car accident and the tragedy of 9/11 and all bets were off. My nerves were fucked.

I’ve always been “cursed” with a million ideas and not enough time to do them all. An ex-girlfriend from High School once told me I wanted to do too much and I would never succeed at any of them because of that. I alluded to this on the song “Homecoming King”:

“But I know there’s only so much time and inspiration that could be left in your lifetime and in the world. Cause you’ve got too many dreams.”

So I’d try to juggle everything at once. I’d be at work, trying to work against a deadline for a large client, designing a cover for my first 12” single, writing a verse for Happy F*ck You Songs, IM-ing with 4 people simultaneously, listening to a CD and brainstorming ideas for a new cartoon series I was pitching – then I’d suddenly feel as though I was dying. I’d struggle to breathe. I’d sweat profusely. Lightheaded. My heart would be POUNDING. Perhaps it was a stroke? No way. Too young for that. Right?

Around 2000-2002, I started having full-on panic attacks. There’s a whole passage in the song “No Hope” that I pulled directly from a real life experience:

“A subway ride, that was once second nature, is now taxing your wits Asking if this, blast really hits, will a casket be fit? Frazzled to bits, with prescription Paxil and shit Trapped in a ditch of a dead-end job, cause you’re two months back on your rent Laughing – cause if that shit happens you guess that would be it Eyeing every passenger standing, cause that could be him So, you sit back and pretend, you’re relaxed and content Knowing that if you go to today, you unhappily went

This actually happened – as described – on a regular basis. I was broke, unemployed and on Paxil, (that shit numbs your orgasms, btw – so I went off cold-turkey). I left out the part about pounding on the subway window gasping for breath as onlookers thought I was a schizo. Or the time I had to leave a movie theater cause I thought we were being gassed. Yeah, it wasn’t pretty – hence the lyrical omission.

Eventually, I had to learn how to breathe deeply and calm myself. There came a point where I had to let go and allow things to be out of my control. If I was gonna go, I was gonna go and there wasn’t anything I could do about it. The chips would fall where they would. When I finally accepted this truth – I was able to let minor things fall by the wayside and focus on only the most pressing things. After all, I’m only one person and I can only do so much – something I wish I could teach 22-year-old Tone, trying to run an entire label by himself. (Something I learned a little too late).

This credo worked for over a decade. Hell, I even made it through multiple Megashows unscathed. That is, until I worked on Demon.

COUNT YOUR PACES (SIX STEPS)

The concept of “Fast Rap” as a musical sub-genre is bizarre to me. The idea that there are a group of people out there (and there are) that ONLY want to listen to dudes “chopping”, regardless of content is ridiculous. Recently, someone on my YouTube channel referred to the “fast rap community” in a comment – so apparently this exists? Yeesh. Personally, I find it somewhat tiresome, honestly.

“Move In, Ride Out” was my first traditional ‘double-time’ rap ever. Sure, I’d done plenty verses with syllable flips at that point, but never written anything in the ‘bounce’ style people think of when they refer to “fast rap”. Listening back, that was one hell of a first attempt. I moved onto “Most High” with The Plague and of course, “Velocity” on HFYS. Skipped a couple years and then had a verse on “Pervert”, followed by a pair of 6/8 Time-Signature goodies in “Case Closed” and “Champion (Freeverse)”

But that’s literally it.

6 Songs out of 100 that are technically “fast raps” – and I’m forever pigeonholed as “the fast rapper”.

Needless to say, this has been incredibly frustrating for me as an artist who mainly cares about musicianship, quality of writing (wit & depth) and emotional impact (most important), but I’m still driven by technicality in rapping (ie. rhyme structure, enunciation, flow and breath control). So, if I can do it…why not set new standards? And if I can do that… why not do something innovative in the process?

When I was planning Polymer, I wanted to tackle this head on. I knew I was eventually going to have to give the fans an entire collection of fast raps, but I wanted to apply that stylistic approach to my aesthetic and life-experience to make it have a point. I could have written a bunch of gibberish and spit it at blinding speeds and frankly, 95% of people would have been happy with that. Instead, I opted to raise the difficulty and find an artistic application for “fast rap”. When dividing the facets of my personality, it only seemed natural that EP #2 would be centered around my constant battle with Time & Anxiety. My Demon.

O, DEMON!

When I write, I’m trying to uncover my own truths and exorcise them in interesting ways. From the gut. Of the five songs, “Moment” manages to present the concept of Time most adeptly, by playfully posing existential questions and exploring temporal conundrums. This wouldn’t have been possible had it not been for my own personal experiences. Contemplating the passage of time constantly. Trying to do too much, too fast. Literally hiding the taskbar on my computer and removing all clocks from the studio in order not to freak out that I’m wasting any time:

Take notice – not a time out/ So I hide every clock in my house/ I don’t wanna be reminded of my anxiety that when I’m idle I’m wasting away while I count…down[/size”>[/color”>

That’s real shit. It’s the truth. It’s gut-writing.

The song, Demon was an immense challenge as I knew I really needed to drive home the nervousness of Anxiety and in order to do that, I needed to push myself into breathless territory. Here, I hit every 16th-note for nearly 2 minute straight in 6/8 time. With minimal breaths (The first pass is 40 seconds non-stop – try that while exhaling). Not easy stuff. More to the point, this song finds me literally putting the “Beautiful Serial Killer” on trial for all his crimes. When Time + Anxiety are “In bed together”, there’s no more fatal combo.

My favorite lryic on this one comes in on the bridge:
h2. “I feel it when I wake up, like I just exposed a nerve/
Cannot shake this feeling, I left a single stone unturned.”

That’s literally what it feels like when I try to close my eyes to sleep. Constantly asking myself, “what’s the one thing I didn’t do today that could’ve change everything”. They answer never comes. I’m glad I could at least get that off of my chest.

YOUR DAYS ARE NUMBERED

Hardcore blue schoolers have been familiar with “Crispy (192)” since I debuted it at QN5 Megashow 2009 (along with “Sunrise”), and had been wondering when it was ever going to be recorded. I originally wanted to tour with it for a while, so that people could SEE ME DO IT LIVE – no studio or video tricks, no BS, just straight skills on stage. I wanted absolutely no talk about my stuff being “doctored” or “sped up” in any way whatsoever after it dropped it. So, as a preemptive strike, there’s plenty of live footage that substantiates my claims.

The (192) is in the title because I’m purposely raising the stakes by putting a factual BPM out there for the rap nerds to quantify. This song reaches 192 Beats Per Minutes. (For further reference, “Velocity” is only 180 BPM – Yeah, let that sink in for a minute). Still, the interwebs love to throw around the term “fastest”, without any hard data to prove it. Putting hard numbers on things gives everyone a reference point. If this was a stat-based sport – anyone doubting my proficiency after hearing this song and seeing the proof is either delusional or a generic hater – because facts are facts. But more on that later. ;)

More to the theme of the record, speed is always used as a device to demonstrate anxiety. The recording of “Crispy (192) paired with the looming deadline, 3 weeks of sleep deprivation, 3 Japanese Iced Coffees and 2 Red Bulls in 1 night sent my body right back into panic attack land. It was full-on system shock. I pushed myself too hard and paid a price with a full-on physical meltdown – waking up an hour after closing my eyes with my heart about explode, my legs searing with the heat of 10 blowtorches, profuse sweating and a numbness in my arms. For a moment, I felt like I was having some sort of stroke. I couldn’t move at all. It was definitely scary, as I called close friends to make sure that if they hadn’t heard from me in a few hours – something was up.

I felt as though I had been beaten with bats by the entire MLB for 2 weeks after the release. I kept waking up with burning legs and palpitations. After several trips to medical specialists… they narrowed it down to my old friend – ANXIETY. Fuckin A. Had I forgotten how to deal with this shit again? I’m not entirely sure. After a month, I started to feel normal again. The record’s out, the response was great. But at what cost?

CHEW ME UP AND SPIT ME OUT

As some have speculated, there is some truth to “Use Me” being written as a love letter to those who feel entitled to my output. So many people only want to hear me do what I did on this EP, so I gave them what they wanted…and still managed to make a “fast rap” record on my terms. Channeling Gladiator, I wearily ask “Are you not entertained?” Somehow, there are still those that aren’t.

Still, that’s only one tiny application of the song concept. It’s non-specific enough to resonate with listeners in regards to love, parents, friends, coworkers, etc. It’s such a sickening sensation to feel and I did my best to share my personal experience with it without being too specific. I had this hook melody in my head for about 5 months before I knew what to do with it. Once I programmed the drums – everything fell into place and the rest was history.

Ironically, after all the super-charged lyricim on the rest of the EP, “Cinder” is the song I listen to the most. There’s something so alive in it that it has me hit repeat immediately after it ends. Funny enough, it started off as that little add-on interlude after “Demon” that later developed into the finished song after I couldn’t get the melody out of my head. I kept going back to it – so I added some words and boom. After a few difficult days doing vocals, I needed to decompress and started randomly hitting keys on my keyboard when that melody spontaneously happened. Luckly I was recording. That little piece of music so succinctly summed up the entire EP, that it was a no-brainer for an outro. I love when stuff like that happens.

JIGSAW FALLING INTO PLACE

With the release of Demon, you begin to hear the shadow of a pattern emerging that hints at the overall construction of Polymer. There is a grand-design at play here. Folks who were completely thrown off (purposefully) with the EDM-flavor of Glutton can now see where I was going with my all-synth approach.

Frankly, good-ole’ Boom-Bap wouldn’t work with this type of stuff. The ethereal concept of “Time” doesn’t really gel with a soul-sample and scratch hook when conveyed sonically. Every EP reveals another piece of the puzzle – interlocking musically and thematically. Everything in it’s right place.

It’s been 2 months since I released #2 and it’s already been downloaded/purchased as much as #1 did over the span of a year. The Polymer experiment is working – people love the EP format, opportunities have been opening up since I started and I’m able to deliver new music much more quickly and consistently. Hell, I even got a surprise email from one of my musical heroes telling me how much they loved it, which reassured me that I was on the right track, (now if I could just get them to gush like that in public, haha?). I honestly feel like I’m making the best music of my life right now and I can’t wait to get the rest of this stuff to you.

With the release of parts #3 and #4 (ie. the full Polymer album) this year, producing the upcoming documentary, FINALLY shooting music videos and touring – this will be a make or break year for me. 2014 will undoubtedly be my busiest year yet – even busier than my 2004-05 and I hope you’re along for the ride. The difference is that this time, it’s all Tonedeff-focused, which is a big change for me. And a wise man once said that change is good, right? ;)

I will be announcing EP #3 shortly. In the meantime, let’s chat about Demon via Livestream on March 5, 2014 (9 PM EST)

See ya then. – Tonedeff

Hold onto this moment, Cause you’re never gonna get it back. [/size”>[/color”>