Last week, we went through the truly one of a kind debut Ep from the ferociously introspective trio, Attonbitus. This week, Michael Brigante from the Adelaide based band takes us track by track through their completely unhinged David Street LP.
“The debut David Street release from Attonbitus combines prog, reggae, and slam poetry elements to create a unique expression of absurd inner dialogue and agitated self-reflection.”
Track by track through David Street explores a very raw series of high and lows, each song taking on a unique synthesis of contrasting musical genres and deeply personalised sentiments to tell its story.
“Before I started writing music, I wrote poetry. for the first four years of my life I was partially deaf, and as a result of this, I developed a language disorder. This for some while started to affect my development in speech and writing; for quite a while I had some teachers that tended to doubt my efforts in English due to my spelling and grammar, and to this day I struggle with that.”
“But, with it came a somewhat spiteful need to show that I was capable. While in high school I persisted to write poetry day in and day out; admittedly my poetry was kinda lame, yet still I kept writing and didn’t start writing lyrics for music until the age of twenty. This opening slam poem is partly showing where it all started.”
Sprooka
this poem is about moments of insecurity where we find ourselves self sometimes seeking critique and stuck in validated compulsion. It’s kind of like a cycle, you build up confidence in setting new ambitions, complete that, and then onto another bloody ambition.
Attention seeking because you want people to take a little notice of your accomplishments because it gives you some purpose. Sometimes it feels like we are aimlessly selling ourselves short, and become some sought of silly Sprooka.
Cognition
This track is about the odd, little annoying things I tend to think about. In the track, I give reference to my talkativeness and the anxiety that comes when I think I am annoying somebody for talking too much. When that anxiety sets in a start to talk more because I feel even more anxious about annoying them.
Sometimes without knowing I start to speak louder for some reason and then realise I speaking more and then I can’t stop because I’m just feeling more anxious. Then after some thought on this, when everything is quiet and I’m by myself, I just start to overthink again
Flas
I wrote this during my years being a bit of a loose cannon and getting involved with a lot of illicit substances. In all honesty, this song is simply about an experience I had with a psychedelic drug called DMT. Toying with this strategy in writing is a bit of a game of chemical roulette; though this is what I got from it.
Singularity
This track was inspired by two different topics. After coming out of that DMT trip, I wrote down a set of lyrics that ended up becoming the chorus to this song. Although this song was also written out of inspiration for Christopher Nolan’s movie ‘Interstellar’, at this point in my life, I became engrossed in research about space and black holes. I was kinda fascinated by the idea of just nothingness. It’s scary, we once didn’t exist and soon we won’t exist again, life in itself is so brief.
Smile
I wrote this track about my ex-partner; during the time we were together, it was safe to say that the relationship wasn’t so healthy, and we really didn’t treat each other so well. My partner did suffer from borderline personality disorder and as part of this mental illness, she would experience numb disassociation and sadness. In these moments I tried my best to cheer her up, by acting silly and just really doing anything to make her laugh or smile.
I sometimes managed to succeed in getting her to laugh or smile, but with every failed attempt, it took away from my own happiness. After the relationship ended I fell into a very bad depression, and at this point, the song became more about my own self-love. I was not eating, I had stopped playing music and stopped taking care of myself, then every time I sang that song, it became more about doing everything I can to get myself laughing or smiling.
Redshift
This track took me two years to create, it started after I had listened to Han Zimmer’s full soundtrack for interstellar. I drew immense influence from film score music, yet I also took a heap of influence from electronic artist like Aphex Twin, Prodigy, and OTT. Over the two years I added new parts to the song, it was more like painting a large picture than it was writing a song.
I sometimes worked till the sunrise and would persistently keep adjusting functions on Ableton Live. During this process I also found myself experimenting with the cognitive enhancing drug Modafinil. This in part was what made the process so intensive and tedious.
Calor
I wrote this little jingle after I traded one of my electric guitars for a banjo, after jamming out on it a while, and just improvising, I felt I really needed to write a song about that incredible feeling you get when your jamming and improvising with friends. Some summers ago, I used to jam alot with my good mates from the bands Jungle City and Causing Hammock.
We all met at this brilliant place we called Finchley; where throughout the day and nights of summer we sang and played music til our heart’s content; that house felt like a big family. I attribute a good amount of my musical development to this point in my life.
Next time around
An interpretation I have for this song is about not feeling heard in a world so saturated with opinions. Kind of caught up with people spitting hearsay from the echo chamber. It feels like there is no use in arguing your point because no matter how logically you sound and well sourced it may be, people will always keep referencing their confirmation bias off of what someone commented, posted or tweeted.
Sellers choice/Sold
Both these tracks tend to touch on the discomfort of the commodification of the self. It kind of touches on paralysed choice in infinite options, and with it, poor attention spans and wasted potential.
What you do
This track was written while I was tripped out causing a ruckus at Rainbow Serpent Festival. I kind of just improvised the main foundations of this track on the open mic stage at the holy cow chai tent. Once I got home and did some reflecting, and wrote down some lyrics. I think this track touches on the things we let others do to us while we are in love.
A Time in June
This is one of the first love songs I had composed in my early days writing music. The song was written about a close friend from University who I was secretly in love with. After I wrote the first demo of the song I showed it to her but didn’t say it was about her, as I was kind of scared to say so. To my surprise that ended up being her favourite song, she had apparently shown it to her family who ended up also really liking it as well.
For some reason, I still kept what the song was about a secret and didn’t tell her until many years later. At the time I kind of experienced an emotional upheaval that drove me into a depression. The feelings I had for her was unrequited, she understood what I was going through and was worried she would lose me as a friend.
Eventually, I started to get better, her family was really lovely and supportive, and interestingly enough her Mum and her Sister were an amazing support base. We are still good friends today.
