Satsuma On the Making Of ‘Anodyne’
Punk Head: You made a full-band sounding record completely on your own. At what point did it stop feeling like demos and start feeling like an album?
Satsuma: The first time is tarted to kind of click for me was when I recorded "Swallowed". This was the first track I recorded and the only one which wasn't written or recorded in January. I had been constantly trying to achieve a feeling that the music came together in an ensemble which fit me stylistically and honestly. This track had achieved that and served as an inspiration in the sense that an album was something I could achieve. Trying to make heavier or harder music alone is a really big challenge compared to when I record more sparse or stripped back arrangements.
Punk Head: You describe hitting a breaking point on New Year’s Eve and then writing and recording a large portion of the album within weeks. What did that burst of creativity feel like in real time? Was it cathartic, chaotic, or something more controlled?
Satsuma: It had the sense that it had to happen. I hadn't played music for a while or written poetry or any of that stuff which I normally do in order to sort of, self-regulate. So eventually when things got too much and I took a step back and I could relax, the music sort of just poured out in quick succession which is cathartic but weirdly exhausting too. At this time I was also in a relationship with someone that was undefined and felt very uncertain which was quite difficult to deal with considering I was already trying to piece myself back together. In fact the song "Ash And Dust" I wrote after we had just first met. We spent a couple of really nice days together and then all of a sudden she told me she was actually seeing someone else. I didn't know what to say so instead I went home and the same night wrote the lyrics to that song and recorded all the guitars too. It is my favourite track because it almost perfectly captured how I felt in that moment and the vocal take was done literally a few hours after she had told me and it became important to keep it as untreated as possible.
Punk Head: Making everything yourself can be empowering, but also isolating. Did you ever feel the absence of collaboration while making this, or was solitude necessary for what you were processing?
Satsuma: At the very start, when I first started writing and recording, I felt that absence very strongly. I was still learning how to record and produce and still had a lot to learn in arranging. A lot of the time, I just felt like it was futile and that I couldn't do it. But funnily enough I had a conversation a long time ago with a friend where I remember saying that "even if I don't want to do it I cant help but do it anyway". But as time moved on and I pushed further and further it became much easier and much more streamlined. A lot of the tracks I wrote and recorded in one full motion over so many hours. For instance, Swallowed was written and sang and the guitar parts were recorded in an evening after work until about 4 am. The next day I woke up and immediately started doing vocal retakes and then booked my local music studio for a few hours later and recorded the drums. But at no point in that process did collaboration cross my mind as it had done way earlier in my journey.
Punk Head: The quote “if you don’t laugh you’ll cry” feels like a thesis statement. Where does humor show up in your music, if at all?
Satsuma: I think in this album the humour in it is very subtle. A lot of the materiel here, in reality deals with quite heavy themes, there is a lot to do with isolation and a sense of emotional alienation and a lot of it is very inward focused. However some of the lyrics (especially within the title track) I often aim at myself, in that I remember kind of laughing about it when I wrote them. That may sound a little weird or even slightly masochistic, but I tried to sort of dissect myself as a character and speak as though I was an observer of myself and that seemed to work out. In the new materiel I am writing it goes a little more outward and there are elements of that which are ironic and a little funny. So humour is something that will probably come out more in my future work, albeit in quite a dry way.
Punk Head: The idea of using “space” to reflect lyrical mood is really striking. Can you walk me through a specific moment on the record where you feel the arrangement is doing emotional storytelling as much as the lyrics?
Satsuma: Yes, "space" and "atmosphere" became very important to this record and often reinforced the cohesion between the lyrics and the sound. In "Touch Of Your Breathe" a lot of the space around the lead vocals and guitar fills up with background vocal harmonisations, with these i aimed to keep them in the corners of the stereo field and allow quite long reverb tails which sort of wrap around the vocals and guitars. The song itself is about limited or fleeting connection and it adds almost like a ghostly presence to the track which I feel like, adds to giving a sort of nostalgic feel. Another great example is the outro in "Ash And Dust". Here the entire track begins to fade out over quite a long distance and then I got the idea to gradually increase the room size. This gives the impression of like a camera slowly zooming out or something disappearing off in the horizon. This worked beautifully for the track because a lot of the lyrics deal with a sense of impermanence. Be that within a relationship, a home or even existentially. It worked on a lot of levels and creates a sort of memory call back to something, which I guess would be whatever the listener associates with how that song makes them feel.
