This piece started off largely as an attempt to come up with a dance, techno, or drum-and-bass type of track, which it still sort of is, but clearly pivoted mid-journey to become another visually-inpired bit of underscore. Instead of the juxtaposition of a slow, forboding piece of music against images of destruction I had in yesterday’s track, Infiltration is pretty on-the-nose, at least when you take the title as a literal description.
- Infiltration Ray Toler 3:18
I started this one with drums. I used a factory preset in XO, but started playing around with replacing the default sounds. In particular, I replaced a jazzy chord-stab with the distorted off-beat percussive hit that makes its debut at 0:48. With that, the tone was set and everything the followed (including what would become the 16 bar introduction of the piece) was finding other pieces that fit. The project tempo is 80, but the actual tempo is definitely 160.
This is a track that isn’t overly complex in practice – it’s 24 tracks, 17 of which are drums – but there’s a lot going on that’s more in a supporting role than taking any kind of spotlight. These arrangements are often rewarding to me when listening in headphones because all of a sudden you’ll hear something you never consciously heard before in the piece, but it would be diminished if it weren’t there. One bit of fun trivia, there’s a drum loop in this one that was the main beat of MANET Protocol, a track from my 2016 Song-A-Day output and that ended up on my first album. See if you can find it.
There’s no real melody, no chord progression, but somehow it feels like a complete piece. A three minute exploration of a vibe (to use an overused modern term). It has that similar chameleon quality to it in that I can put it under all sorts of visuals and it works. It’s not the single, but it’s a solid album track. Similarly, it’s not the main action theme, but it drives the story forward without needing to become part of it.
Colophon
Instruments & Samples
XO, Stylus RMX, S+A Cycles, S+A Choreographs
Effects, Mixing, & Mastering
FabFilter, Gullfoss, Valhalla VintageVerb & Delay
Image Credit: MarkJayBee (CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0)