SPEEDBOAT MUSIC*

I think the term "music artist" perfectly encapsulates what I do with my work.

I paint pictures, not with paint, but with sound. If I apply this logic to what I have done in the past, that makes Miscellaneous Observations a self portrait, TERMINAL PHILOSOPHY an abstract painting, and SPEEDBOAT MUSIC a landscape. Not a landscape of mountains and lakes though, a landscape full of people. As a physical painting, it would look somewhat like the cover from Marvin Gaye's "I Want You". As a collection of songs, this is the most visceral painting I have ever made with sound. Inspired by what I see around me, youth rebellious. Something touching "Trainspotting" with a splash of "Skins". This is the album I've been wanting to make long before I even started working on my debut, because it's the truth. SPEEDBOAT MUSIC is about the self I see in my surroundings. I am myself on this project, but I have morphed from what I used to be when I was a child, I've been influenced, twisted, drugged out, slept with, and had to live a split life between vulgarity and spirituality. SPEEDBOAT MUSIC is paranoia in it's prime, It is a caricature of all of us.

SPEEDBOAT MUSIC: a deeper dive

by Henry Bowen

GET A GRIP

SPEEDBOAT MUSIC didn't happen overnight, it was slowly conceptualised as I built up a collection of songs. However, it all started here. I always wanted to make some sort of punk-trap album. I have used my guitar in some of my songs before, but I very rarely built a song around it. Apart from my work on Bubblegum Palace, one of my side projects. I had some songs in my vault that I drew inspiration from, so I envisioned and manifested the style of music I wanted to create before I started working on GET A GRIP. I started with a riff I made on my guitar, then I layered it with drums, bass, and synth. I always come up with ideas on my guitar when I'm noodling around on it and playing different songs, sometimes I just find a note I like and take it from there. Ultimately, once I've laid the main idea down, it becomes a matter of building on it. I like to progress through sections and maintain tension in my tracks so, once I came up with the initial guitar riff, I played around with my guitar and came up with some more sections once I figured out the key of the track. I added a down section, and then some sort of beatswitch, which I laid some underscores-style dubstep drums over. The music I listened to during the making of this album was mainly hyperpop and electronic music, I'm just so in love with it. There's some really good artists out right now who are just doing shit differently, you know? So whilst the main draw of this project was making something punky or centralised towards rock, this album was mainly influenced by rage and hyperpop. Later down the line, I called Nathan in to lay some lead guitar over the down section because I was aware that it could've had more added to it. He bossed it honestly, Nathan is great at seeing the vision with what I'm trying to create, so we work well together. Lastly, I added sound effects to puff the sound out more, and then producer tags. Which I commissioned a voice actor for. I wanted to add a fuck ton of tags and sfx to this album for more of a mixtape feel. I was listening to a lot of HAUNTOHOLIXX by Semetary at the time I conceptualised this album and I really enjoyed all the tags, and the way DJ Anvil screamed all over it. It just felt so alive, so hood.

Lyrically, I kinda just wanted to talk my shit again. I don't have much to add about what inspired the lyrics on this track or what I meant by them, I think they kinda just speak for themselves. The track overall reminds me of something off of "I Lay Down My Life For You" by JPEGMAFIA, which was another inspiration for me sonically. That album was so fresh and interesting, it had flaws, but I think that makes it more personal. The moments of ego contrast with the more vulnerable songs on that project in a way that's almost poetic.

Lyrics:

After this I think you're gonna need a cigarette

After this all of my enemies are gonna feel regret

Why they hate on me but they doing ket?

It really makes you dumb and makes you forget

Huh? (ay)

Huh?

Like y'all forgot I can rap

Y'all are so full of crap

I'm trying to get to the bag

And quieten you like a gag

I'm so sick of being so nice

Talking shit on Harry

Yeah, you're gonna pay the price

Imma heat it up like Müller

Rice

I don't trust nobody but me, myself and my family

If you diss me, I'm causing a tragedy

Manifesting my trajectory

You better change your strategy

Never listened to my album but you claim to know me

So big and tough, so why don't you show me?

If it's so big, then why don't you blow me?

Go ahead homie, pass me the ball

Cutest kid in my class at school

More beat switches than classical

Every syllable a Roman numeral

Go ahead and put me on that pedastol

I am incredible, rocking the crowd like a cradle

Call me Jesus when I'm chilling in my crib

Getting all these racks like it's pork rib

Let's go

Let's go, let's go

You were getting high off of your face

Now your band ain't got a bass

Now it's all just sounding mid

That's a bad mix

He was only beating women cos he likes dicks

Get a grip

I talk trash about you with your mum

Your shawty ain't a mathematician

But she tryna get sum

Subtract the clothes and eat my -

Wait a minute, now I hear her yelling

SPEEDBOAT MUSIC

What do we want?

(Goth girls, goth girls)

When do we want 'em

(Right now, right now)

What do we want?

(Goth girls, goth girls)

When do we want 'em

(Right now, right now)

What do we want?

SPEEDBOAT MUSIC

Yeah, SPEEDBOAT MUSIC man

Y'all ain't ready for this shit

HOLLABACK

I made HOLLABACK almost the exact same way I made GET A GRIP, I made a guitar sample and then built some drums around that. This song also has a beat switch that contains sampling from "hollaback girl" on it. I didn't legally get the rights to the sample, but fuck it, what they gonna do? It's such a great track, I heard it on the radio for the first time in a while and I kinda sat in my Mum’s car and focused in on it. I love the way Pharrell makes beats, he’s really good at making drums. I think that Micheal Jackson’s music probably had a big impact on him, and it’s so easy to hear once you recognise that. This is what inspired my song, I wanted to make something with a real groove to it. The thing I realised was missing from most of my previous work was all to do with rhythm, I spend so much time focusing on melody that I often don’t leave myself enough time to get the most out of drums and percussion. I found it useful to think about what music is foundationally, where it comes from and how I could apply that to what I create. Music is ultimately a storytelling tool that gets passed from person to person, tribe to tribe. If I didn’t have a DAW, no instruments, nothing, how would I make music? I thought about how cavemen would’ve made music, I’m sure they figured out how to put sounds together. Stomping, clapping, making mouth noises, all rhythm. Hence, I decided that the most important part of a song is, in fact, drums and percussion. After that, bass and vocals. Those are what make a song, everything else is additional. Drums, bass and voice are the big three.

Lyrically, this is another ego moment. I play a charcter throughout this album. I'm not normally this cocky or even arrogant, but it is a lot of fun to be able to tell yourself "yes, I will just say whatever I want for once". I raised the pitch of my voice for the latter half of the song to add tonal variation. This is similar to how I lowered the pitch of my voice for anicouturecopyrighttrademark musical works. The similarity being that I play a character, the difference is that where anicouturecopyrighttrademark is someone completely different, SPEEDBOAT MUSIC is just a different part of my ego. I feel like we all have different characters in us, these vary from emotions but they seem to stand out. You might have a part of you that is always super confident and boastful, a part that is hard working and quiet, a part that is easily angered, etc.

My head is a theatre and my body is the stage.

Lyrics:

Turn me up!

Lil bro said my bars sound like nursery rhymes

Well call me Humpty Dumpty cos I'm cracking the game

That ain't hard, y'all sound the same

Breaking bad, bitch say my name

Break a bed, yeah I just came

This shit all feels like a game

Slurp up my ex box, it hit the same

Hit me up now before the fame

Pillow talk, that shit so lame

Ha ha ha that shit's so lame

Go take a walk, memory lane

You always talk, I don't complain

Turn on the amp, turn up the gain

I struggle to stay in my lane

I'm swerving, got an army of bitches

They serving, cunt

Hit them all from the back, I don't put on a front

Tell the crowd to come to the front

All these bitches do me wrong

All these bitches, all these bitches, all these bitches do me wrong

All these bitches do me wrong

All these bitches, all these bitches, all these bitches do me wrong

I heard that you were talking shit and you didn't think that I would hear it

Standing on business man, I never get cold feet

Fun fact man, no, I've never sold a beat

Cos if I make a beat then I gotta snap on it

Can't let you man sound crap on it

Gotta take it for a spin, put a lap on it

Burner phone with the Telegram app on it

We just sold a kilogram now we up on it

Might get hairy man, look under her bonnet

Feel like Shakespeare man, I might just write a sonnet

Smokin on the green, yeah, it look like salad

Tryna go gold, tryna get them carrots

Copy shit I say, you man sound like parrots

It's hard to hear the hate all the way from Paris

Deep in her rabbit hole, I think her name is Alice

Imma push a T, all I need is malice

You get no pussy if you writing a diss

Real man know they cannot touch this

Otherwise it's a real hard day at the office

Ring, ring, ring on my finger

Come give it a kiss and bow down

HIDE YOUR WEED

I made the first three tracks of SPEEDBOAT MUSIC pretty much in sequence. I was trying to maintain the same amount of energy throughout all the tracks, and I knew from the moment that I came up with the riff for HIDE YOUR WEED that it would be a crowd-pleaser. Structurally, I took a lot of ideas from TOO LATE; two verses and a catchy chorus, in an ABAB pattern. I didn't come up with the C section until the end. Similar to TOO LATE, HIDE YOUR WEED has a main musical idea that loops the entire way through the track with a few alternations. I built the whole track around a guitar riff, in the same way I made the first two tracks and, in fact, many of the songs on this album.

I wanted to have some fun with the lyrics for the track, I don't have much to say about how I wrote them. They were mainly just ideas I had written in my notes app that I stuck together. The song is mainly about drug culture and the punk scene. I think there's a lot of people being purposefully irresponsible in order to seem more "punk" and then blaming the law for trying to stop them. I'm drug positive to an extent and an ally to punk culture but there's a whole lot of posers at the moment and they are ruining the fun for everyone else. I wanted to address that issue in the form of art. There's a lot of lyrical irony in this song but there's also some seriousness in it too, I feel like in general that sums up SPEEDBOAT MUSIC pretty well.

Lyrics:

Henry Bowen does it better, the fuck?

Have you ever fucked a fat bitch so good, she started losing weight? (I did)

Imma do a line of coke and tell my therapist I'm doing great (I will)

They said I'm a faggot but my money's still straight

I'm up in this function and everyone is screaming the words to "TOO LATE"

If I were you, you better start counting your days

Working real hard, imma give me a raise

Only one way in this life and death moves in mysterious ways

Yeah, ay

He wanna toke, I'm letting him hit it 'cos he is my twizzy

They dissing me and it's causing them misery

Put all their bitches in missionary

Got more paper than a dictionary

I'm the hardest artist of the century, it's not Esdee

Shut the fuck up

You can't tell me nun

Tell me nun

We gon hit the club

Fuck the place up

We gon hit the club

Fuck the place up

My shit aged like fine wine, I'm a big seller

Pay a big fine, I got more bands than Coachella

They wanna spread rumours like fucking Nutella

The irony is they don't have any bread

If I got an iron, everybody would be dead

Flatten the creases of your deathbed

The flattery decreases when you spend your last breath on a fed

ACAB is a cuck-ass badge, and you know that that's true

If you a white boy from a good neighbourhood, just hide your weed better and they won't have to search you

Waited four hours on the plug and he hit me back saying "patience is a virtue"

Hearing all this shit about me is nothing new

DM'd your bitch and asked what she's into

I'm about to give her everything you won't do

Shut the fuck up

You can't tell me nun

Tell me nun

We gon hit the club

Fuck the place up

We gon hit the club

Fuck the place up