Episode 3: “unfair deal” with riley
This week, Aoife interviews riley about “unfair deal” from DEICIDE. “Then, the bottom three strings all go down a semitone, which gives you this really weird chord that, honestly, I don’t even know how I’d begin to notate it,” riley says in regards to the spicy tonality of their DEICIDE hit. “It all seems to work despite the fact that it really shouldn’t… anyone who knows anything about music theory: please don’t come at me.”
riley would like to apologise on behalf of terf island for all of (gestures at world) this
This episode of idol board was edited by Tangereen Velveteen, hosted by Aoife, produced by Tangereen Velveteen, transcribed by SigilCrafter Aya, and written by Aoife and Tangereen Velveteen. Find all episodes and transcripts of idol board at fourth-strike.com/podcast and follow @idolboard on Twitter for updates. Get all episodes plus bonuses by supporting Fourth Strike on Patreon.
Listen to “unfair deal” by the garages on Blandcamp:
Episode Transcript
[musical intro plays]ANNOUNCER:
You’re listening to a Fourth Strike production.[The first verse of ‘unfair deal’ plays, and fades out ]
AOIFE:
Hello and welcome to idol board! I’m Aoife, and I use she/her pronouns. In this podcast, I will be interviewing members of the garages about their songs, the creation process, and possible inspirations. My guest for this episode is garages band member riley. Thanks for coming on, riley! Can you tell us your pronouns, your coffee style, and what song you’ll be talking about with us today?RILEY:
Um… I use they/them pronouns, my coffee style is “No.” and, uh, I’ll be talking about ‘unfair deal’!AOIFE:
So, first off, how did you get into blaseball? And when you got in, when and why did you join the garages?RILEY:
I got into blaseball just from… being on Twitter, and someone I followed I think- a year ago? I can’t even remember why I followed them, I don’t really know who they are, just randomly… uh was just getting into it, I think was a Sunbeams fan, and I was just ‘Oh this seems… interesting! Oh, okay, okay, okay, I’ll see what this is about and- adududududu, I go onto the website and Ooh! Seattle! [chuckles] Guitar emoji! [more chuckles] Seattle garages! Hahaha yeah yeah yeah, that seems quite fun! I’ll join the discord server and- Oh! They have a band! Oooh!” I think I made my first track like, two days later.AOIFE:
Before the garages, uh, what was your musical background before that?RILEY:
I’ve done quite a bit of stuff since like- since like, the beginning of secondary school- middle school for americans- just… and I’ve been- I’ve been in bands for a while? Like… I already had music out on spotify before this, like I had quite a bit of musical experience before this, but it’s been… It’s been fun, it’s been quite a lot of fun ‘cause… it’s so supportive and there’s so much of an inspiration from other people here, like… honestly, just listening to the rest of the garages gives me so much inspiration to just do new stuff. Which I really love.AOIFE:
So, for your song, how did ‘unfair deal’ start? What events from blaseball sparked this song?RILEY:
So… Okay, I’m gonna- this is gonna be a long, long answer so… settle down, have a cup of tea… you’ll be here a while. So, cast your mind back to- I think it was mid-October? Mid-late October, um, week or two before ‘DEICIDE’ came out… and I’m in jam sessions, just, you know, as- as you are… listening to people slowly finishing songs for it, first two songs getting finished, and they’re putting the demos and they’re putting the finished version up on the chat… and I’m just listening to them and I’m going ‘I know I already have a song’- cause I was already working on a song for ‘DEICIDE’ at this point that I had actually gotten pretty far into finishing and I was just listening to all of these tracks going ‘This is, firstly amazing, and secondly, my song doesn’t sound anything like this.’ And I was- it doesn’t- it didn’t feel like it fit. It was way too upbeat, it was mostly talking about the future, it was- as opposed to the god killing that had just happened… I just went ‘Okay, I’m gonna start completely from scratch. I know I’ve only got a few days before this needs to be done, but I want to start completely from scratch because… Well. I want to make something that sounds like it fits on the album’… And… I just started with this kind of… like, okay.I wanted to talk about the god killing because that’s what everyone was talking about at that point. And the main blaseball inspiration was just… there were a lot of people in the fanbase at that time, especially on the main server, who were very like [with overly exaggerated happiness] “Yay! We killed the peanut! The Monitor’s our friend! Everything’s gonna be great!” And I’m just like “Y-you do realize the Monitor is… also a god? Could also just… turn around and oppress everyone in the same way…?” -And yes, gods have nothing to do with real life events, absolutely nothing as everyone already talks about. And I feel like I just… I want to make the point of like… The Monitor is also a god, the Boss is also a god, we need to kill them too.
AOIFE:
Blaseball has very little canon, um, and that leaves a lot of room for interpretations of the deal in question. What is the version of the story that you were telling in the song?RILEY:
I don’t think it is affected too much, because a lot of the events I’m talking about here are canon-canon, like we know there was a peanut, we know about the Monitor, we know about the Boss, they all have canon personalities. We all… They’re the only few bits of proper canon blaseball has. But. The deal I was talking about here was mostly… the deal with the Monitor, honestly. The deal- the deal with almost the league as a whole we seemed to have made with the Monitor of ‘We will give you peanuts and in turn, you will kill the peanut for us… or at least try.’ That is what… I was referring to, I think. I- I think ‘cause this- this all happened very quickly… Um… Going back to talking about the song, and actually how it was made, I… I- this all happened really, really quickly. Like, I tend to write quickly but not this much, like, I think this song went from not existing to being mostly done in about three hours and I was already recording vocals for ‘eyes in the dark’ the next day, and so I went ‘Okay, I’ll just do the vocals then’ because… Well, I’m in- I’m in a flat and I don’t want to- and I’m not belting those high notes in a flat. Definitely not.And so- just after- So like- So like the next day, just after finishing the vocals for ‘eyes’, I went “Okay, let’s record these vocals”, did it in one take, because I felt like I wanted it to have that slightly… improvised vibe to it, I didn’t want it to feel too rehearsed, so I just went ‘One- One take. Do this. Done. Done.’ So I think in less- at one- that track went from not existing to done in less than twenty four hours, so it’s all a bit of a blur, to be honest. [chuckles slightly]
AOIFE:
Yeah, I mean, that’s definitely a thread that we see in our interviews is that… it’s really quick turnaround.RILEY:
Oh yeah, uh- like, ‘DEICIDE’ was relatively chill as turnarounds go compared to all the older stuff, because you had time whereas a lot of the older EPs it was just like “Okay, um, this EP is out in two days, anyone want to do something for it now? Cool, cool”AOIFE:
That- It- It’s just so- one thing that strikes me over, and over, and over again, like, in this is just how completely original… the garages is in its format.RILEY:
Oh. Yeah. I- I’ve never seen a band that does anything like this. [mimicking a newscaster] “Today on the garages, um, pat the garages on the back”AOIFE:
I just look at it and I see… like, something that should be very stressful? But I find that it’s not particularly stressful for most of the members and I think that might be… -just me theorizing here- that it might be due to the fact that the, just, c-community is so positive.RILEY:
Oh! Yeah, definitely! I was- I was about to mention that. It is – It is mostly because everyone is just… there’s such a drive to make stuff because of everyone else. It’s the thing I love about this community most. I- honestly I’m so, so grateful to be in it and so glad to be a part of this, to be honest.AOIFE:
Yeah, it’s- I am just really happy to be interviewing the members and just have a part in this and it is just an incredible experience and… uh, not to advertise for the band or anything but, if you’re… interested in making music, check out The Big Garage discord, um… we’re always lookin’ for new folks.AOIFE:
So the tonality of the song is very… spicy, as it were. Can you explain what makes it so interesting?RILEY:
Okay, so. This goes back to how I made the song. I tend to start writing by um, just, you know, kind of just… I… often write by starting with someone else’s song. So I’ll play around with something else that I know and if I like it, I’ll go “Okay, adududu, I can change this, I can change this, I can change this” and eventually I’ve got a- I’ve got something completely different. And this song started with ‘Grace’ by ‘Jeff Buckley’. It started with the verse of that which, if you haven’t heard it already, go listen to it, it’s a fantastic song. So I started by playing around with that, and just… kind of… went “Okay, the original song is in 6/8, what if I change it into 4/4, adududu, what if I slow it down? Okay. Okay, this is sounding good-”[the intro of ‘unfair deal’ plays briefly, before fading out]
RILEY:
“-Although, that third chord is a little too upbeat. Let’s remove that. Oh, well let’s make it heavy- heavier. Feels like it needs to be a bit darker. Let’s put in a low tuning. Let’s put the acoustic into drop C. Okay, now we’ve got something coming on.”[the guitar track of the verse of ‘unfair deal’ plays briefly, before fading out]
RILEY:
And… the reason it sounds so interesting is because… the first chord you get is… straight D minor chord, just a massive, thick, 6 string D minor chord, which will just ring and ring and ring and that… that makes you go “Okay, we are in D minor, that definitely anchors you in D minor-[a D minor chord plays]
RILEY:
Then, the bottom three strings all go down a semitone which gives you this really weird chord that- it- honestly is- I don’t even know how I would begin to notate it.[the described ‘really weird chord’ plays]
RILEY:
D… minor… major 7? uhhhhh [confused noises] sharp? …Eleven? I think? If you really want to notate it, but that doesn’t really- which- which makes no sense. And that’s not really the point. The point is you’ve got the three- you’ve got three strings going and playing the same familiar note, and then three strings going a semitone lower, so it sounds weird, but it still kind of fits, and then when you start going back up again, and it goes back to the original D minor. You go “Okay”-[the first half of the guitar track of ‘unfair deal’ plays briefly, before fading out]
RILEY:
“-This is just how it is!” Which means later, when you go into the refrain at the end-[the second half of the guitar track of ‘unfair deal’ plays briefly, before fading out]
RILEY:
-You can go “Okay, fifth fret, fourth fret, third fret” And… you don’t really care that it’s in the weird tonality more, your brain doesn’t go “Oh, well this is completely throwing me” ‘cause you’ve still got the three strings at the top that are still playing a D minor chord… and it all seems to work despite the fact that it really shouldn’t.AOIFE:
Yeah, that’s incredible. As someone who’s always been interested in music theory, it’s really interesting hearing that like-[riley interrupts, in a staged whisper]
RILEY:
Anyone that actually knows anything about music theory, please don’t come at me. I have no clue.AOIFE:
[chuckles] Yeah, I just- I- I mean- I find it really interesting ‘cause I never would have guessed that you started with another song.RILEY:
Oh! I do that all the time. Um… I’m trying to think…uh- other songs I’ve done ‘number 14’… doesn’t really? That started with a completely different song that… Um, I had been- I had been working on for years anyway and went “Let’s fiddle around with this!” and that’s where ‘number 14’ came from.AOIFE:
Throughout all of ‘unfair deal’, there is a chorus of melancholic moans-[the backing vocal “oh” throughout ‘unfair deal’ plays twice]
AOIFE:
-Why did you choose to include that in the song?RILEY:
Uhhhh, that’s quite interesting. It… basically started because I was just playing around on guitar and like “Okay, I’ve got a guitar part now, this sounds good”… and I just started doing that ‘cause I thought I needed some sort of almost percussive element to it? I thought “Oh well, having a loop of this would be really nice!” The thing that’s- actually I find most interesting about that, is the… it’s got this… I re- I recorded it- I… not even recorded it, I originally messed around with it, I had… my mic set up for my acoustic, and it had all the EQs, all the filters for the acoustic because you know, I was just messing around, messing around with the acoustic, I wasn’t- I wasn’t set out to record vocals at all, and then when it actually came to record it, I went “Oh, this doesn’t sound- I don’t actually like that much” when I recorded it in a normal vocal recording position, so it’s recorded with my acoustic miced up and recording it from that position with all of the filters and all of the EQ, that I’d have for the acoustic. It’s a bit of a weird thing, like that… I don’t know why it sounded better to me, with loads and loads of high end and all of the bass taken out which is more what I do for acoustics anyway because… It just did! And it’s just a weird thing that happened. The breaths, the breaths are the same, the breaths I also decided to record like that.[the breaths from the second half of ‘unfair deal’ play alone twice]
RILEY:
Um, the breaths were also- also a weird thing. Um… I recorded them at double speed, and then slowed them down… by half, so that what you’re hearing is a half speed and an octave down. To give this really kind of like, inhuman vibe to them.AOIFE:
So for your songs and for the garages as a whole, what has the community reaction been like for you?RILEY:
Um. The community reaction for me has been just… absolutely overwhelming. Like… I’ve spent years doing music at this point and… it’s really weird to have spent a lot of time on other stuff- like the- the tracks that I’ve worked on outside of this where I have spent hours- and honestly days of my time working on it, I just kept working and working and working and working, and maybe about ten people listen to it and out of them, one of them told me it was alright, one of them was just [laughs mockingly] because it’s school and people are being… absolute dickheads because it’s schools… and to have a bunch of people go “Oh, this is my favorite song on the garages!” A group which- I- Which I look up to a lot of people- the members of the garages and I’m just like [Descending from excitement to bafflement] “Oh? This is your favorite song? Oh! O-oh. Ooooh. Oh- uh- okay. I don’t even know how to comprehend that s-so I’m just gonna say “thank you” and freak out… in the corner… by myself. [small terrified sound]”I don’t think that feeling ever goes away, to be honest. Like… um… When- So when- When you join, and you’re like [frantically] “Oh- oh god- everyone’s scary- everyone here’s really good! Oh, you wrote that song? Oh shiii-”and then like- a couple weeks later they’re like “Oh yeah, your song’s absolutely amazing” And I’m just going like [babbles for a moment] “b-but you’re so good? Why do you think that about me? You’re brilliant. Whu-whuhuh [more terrified confused sounds]” That… That’s never gone away for me and it’s been a few months now so.
AOIFE:
Lastly, outside of your own work, what do you think is the most underrated song by the garages?RILEY:
Oooh… I’ve thought about this question quite a few times now ‘cause, like, people bring it up every now and again just, like random stuff and I think I have three answers, and I really don’t know how to narrow it down from there. From ‘in the feedback’, ‘a face to the name’ I- the guitar work on that is brilliant and there’s- there’s one moment at the end, just before it goes into this kind of breakdown kind of thing that I just… there’s a little, like, scream at the end of the verse that I really- this like low scream that’s just [exhales]… Um, off ‘ENCORE’, ‘hurt people’ just oh, just when it comes in right there at the end [sings the end of ‘hurt people’ quietly] “I just hurt people” [speaking normally] that there just gets me every time. And… uh, for a final one, off ‘DEICIDE’, ‘a warning’ um. There’s… most of the songs got this really, really quite deep, like the vocals are really, really low, and really buried and then like nothing- like, I think the second to last or the last verse, they go up something like an octave? And it just gets this slightly scream quality to it that just like [shudders] oh god- god! That takes me- that- that hits me somewhere, that does!AOIFE:
Thank you so much for joining us on idol board, the podcast where we interview members of the garages, an anarcho-syndicalist blaseball band, from the fictional location of Seattle. We make songs about being gay, the apocalypse, and fighting the gods. And you can find our music at blandcamp.com, with an L, spotify, or on youtube. We’ll see you next week! Now, here’s ‘unfair deal’ by riley of the garages.[‘unfair deal’ plays in its entirety]
ANNOUNCER:
Idol board is directed by Tangereen Velveteen, edited by Jennifer Cat, Nerdy Sims, and zach.ry, hosted by Aoife, transcribed by Sigilcrafter Aya, and written by Aoife and Tangereen Velveteen.[outro music plays]