Single Release 'Kraken'
ARTWORK: ANDREAS TEICHMANN
Greetings friends,
The band and I are happy to announce the release of our new single Kraken!
‘Kraken’ is the first single from a new Musketeer EP entitled ‘The North Sea’.
LYRICS
Rising up from the deep
Rising up from my sleep
I’ve had enough of this slumbering green
And I am reaching out for the skies
I am reaching out with open arms
The seas will part and the seas they will fall!
swallowed up
swallowed whole
into the maw
Well I’m boiling up in my veins
I’m boiling up in my beating heart
I’m hungry for the blood of loveless man
swallowed up
swallowed whole
into the maw
°
The only monster is man
Let me tell you how the song came together.
The Text
This song was the last track that I wrote for 'The North Sea' EP. I wanted to write an uplifting, sort of redemptive song for all the terrible things that occurred throughout the EP. - You will see this at the shows or when the EP comes out ;) - I imagined the character falling into a deep sleep and personifying the gigantic squid itself.
I ended up reading over a bunch of older text that came across the Kraken. A large part of the myth comes from old Nordic texts written in the middle ages. But I think the idea of a Leviathan goes back to something biblical. I recall the book of Job. The Lockness Monster is probably as old as time too! The mystery of the deep sea has been hanging about sailors for a long time. In the end I scribbled something down and then it found its way into the laptop.
The Music
I remember sitting in a community studio in Stockholm that my friend Frida (I Wish I Was A Fish) was recording in and asking her about some typical Scandinavian chords. I wanted to recreate something along the lines of the Anna Von Hausswolff's 'Stranger'. I also happened to be in the Tallest Man on Earth's tuning for his song 'Rivers.' (The D string & the G tuned down half a tone.) Anyway I ended up strumming these two beautiful chords which I have no idea what the names are, but you can see me rolling the acoustic version here:
The Band Arrangement
We ended up recording this track, and the others on the EP in the dead of winter, at a little school house next the The North Sea. It is called Watt n' Sound Studios. We had already worked on the track before we got there. I didn't really have an idea of what the song needed to sound like except that it needed to sound like the thunders of the deep. Eric (E-Guitar) and Micha (Drums) worked on the sweet drum pattern and Felix (Bass) and I played along. Eric added his electric later, and we layered the track as we played it live.
Later in the mixing room. The track needed to be cut down. We had a 6 minute version with a long solo and an extra outro line. This sounded awesome live. But the recorded performance didn’t feel like it pushed all the way through to the end. Eric and I ended up cutting it down to the 4 minutes it is now.
Later we sent it of to master at Metropolis London. Thank you John!
FUN FACTs:
- The track was supposed to be out earlier. But we missed a couple of little click sounds in the mix. So we had to run it through the master again.
& that is pretty much it.
We you enjoy it, and hope you can share and add it to your playlists!
Big love.
Musky. x
