Spotlight –Music “Swim”by Kilroy’s Ghost

Kilroy’s Ghost is a music project that has provided several original music tracks to The Big Purple Tree -including the single “Swim”. Based out of Atlanta,Georgia,Kilroy’s Ghost is Self described as

“a group of friends and family who create music and visual art. we are from the united states,and have known and worked with each other for years. we rarely play live,although we love our friends from all over the world.”

We love their music,and it is not only inspirational to listen to,it fits well into video. It is rare and very difficult to find music that doesn’t over power the moving images,spoken audio,or sound effects,and Kilroy’s Ghost nails it with almost every song in almost any video.

“Swim”,in particular,has been incorporated into our videos numerous times. It is a synecdoche of Kilroy’s Ghost as a music project,and the song itself has proven to be an invaluable tool for The Big Purple Tree. (Read below for the musicians’own description of “Swim”.)

Because of their great sound and highly integrable tracks,we’re putting “Swim”and Kilroy’s Ghost in the Spotlight.

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Excerpt from a conversation with Kilroy’s Ghost about the song “Swim”

For me,the whole point of creating an artistic piece of any kind is to accurately express a thought,feeling,emotion,or other intangible state of being through some medium. I then consider “good”art to be a work that does so in a way that connects with as many people as possible. I also believe that the closer a piece is to it’s original conception (you know,the song or movie or storyline that plays in your head,pure and uncompromised),the more ability it has to connect with others,and the more intense that connection will be. For this reason,I find it best to capture an idea as quickly as possible to remember how it was playing in your head. The longer you go without creating a piece from the time you originally visualize it,the less vivid,and therefore more contrived,the piece will become.

The idea for the music of “swim”came after hearing the end of “Where is My Mind”by “Pixies”. During the song,Kim Deal sings this ghostly,heavenly sounding “ooh-ooh”that drops one half-step between “oohs”. At the end of the song,she sings it a cappella,but in my mind I heard it with a different chord progression underneath. (I think I heard this while driving home from work,and was in a burnt-out and frayed sort of mood,and hearing “Pixies”had relieved a lot of that tension),This hybrid tune stayed with me for a few days where I did nothing about it. I had my bass out a few days later and was playing around,and I realized that what I was playing was the chord progression for that hybrid tune that was in my head. So,I started playing it on the bass and singing (very badly,I might add) the “ooh-ooh”part in a falsetto voice.

The bass plays only three notes throughout the whole thing,but the song has a measure structure that is kind of unique (7-7-6 in 4:4). When I tried to play it in groups if 8,like a normal song,it just didn’t feel right. Somehow the odd signature lent a sense of incompleteness and tension to an otherwise mellow song,so I kept it the way I heard it. I could also hear this toy piano thing doing a melody in the background,a cross between a banjo and a xylophone. At this point,I felt I had something worthwhile and knew if I didn’t record a rough version,then what I had in my head would mutate,or worse,be lost forever. I opened SONAR 5 Pro,created a simple drum beat,layed down some simple bass lines,and put the toy piano thing on top of it. I played around with a synth until I found a voice that was pretty close to what I heard in my head and viola! I had the core of “swim”.

I let some time pass before trying to write lyrics. I’ve found that the flip-side of promptness is hurry,and they say haste makes waste (don’t they?). I’ve wasted a lot of good ideas trying to make the square pegs of a lyrical idea fit the round hole of a tune. So I waited. I was listening to the music of “swim”one day and got this visual of a guy sitting in a trashed hotel room. You could tell a good time was had by many just a few hours before,but this poor sap had been abandoned,left to pay the piper alone. (I wasn’t sure if this was voluntary or involuntary,but it doesn’t matter). The feeling I had was that of being completely alone,abandoned,forsaken,as if all the people you thought you could count on had let you down when you needed them most. Unfortunately,I’ve felt this at several points in my life. It was like being tossed in a pool or a lake or something,and realizing that you were on your own,and if you didn’t learn to swim,you would drown. So,I learned how to swim.