Guerre takes us through his debut EP Darker My Love. Download here or stream below then read along as he explains what you’re hearing…
1) Care 4 Me – Even though this song is quite dark and cold, I remember writing it in Bondi in the summer. It was a really nice day and the sun was beaming into the rooms. After I had finished it, I showed it to my flatmate Jack who did a remix of Millenium Blues as Saltcreek Coyotes, and he loved it. Without that excitement I don’t know if I would’ve felt as comfortable with it because it’s definitely the most straight forward R&B track on the EP. Its also kind of a response song to Aaliyah’s I Care 4 U. It was one of the last songs written for the EP, I think it’s a good start…
2) See The Birds – This was me trying to make that night city drive song for one of those late nights after a crazy party and you get on the road and it’s just this one giant come down. With like the fluttering hi hats as birds, I had that whole image in my head.That’s what it was for. But it ended up becoming much more ambitious. I guess who I’m really talking about in this song is all the crazy young musicians I met this year who are fucking gorgeous…..it’s also basically about sex.
3) River Hymnal – This one straight up flowed out of me. All the parts I laid down happened the first time I improvised them. It was just streaming through me. It feels like the most naturally progressing song to me. The entire melody is always building up then breaking down. It’s about destroying the balance and letting that initiate change and sacrifice.
4) Transnautica – I recorded this one in Toronto in the winter with my brother’s drum kit. I remember it took like three weeks in different increments of hour long sessions to finish it. This is me doing minimalism. And by far one of the happier songs on the EP. But I think that even though the EP has some sad or melancholic sounds, it still comes through with the idea of hope and with Transnautica, it’s all about hope. It doesn’t shy away from it. I want it to burst out into your soul.
5) Millenium Blues – This was the first song I recorded for this EP. It’s dark and hopefully a little sexy. This is for that twenty something living in the city who’s partying, drinking, smoking, fucking, hustlin, survivin and then comes home to bed and remembers that old life they used to live. Sonically, it’s the sister song to Transnautica, it was recorded around the same time. But the vibe is different, it’s darker in hue, it’s dark blue while Transnautica is more a warm yellow. You know?
6) Mazu Heart Sutra – This was recorded around the same time as Care 4 Me. This is the kind of stuff I was doing before the more beat-orientated stuff. I did all that growling with my vocals near the end of the song because I was listening to this Canadian throat singer, and I thought it sounded cool. It was really aggressive and heavy but also very feminine and sexy. That’s what I try to put across in the music, a sense of the woman coming through, a kind of femininity that I think we’re losing in music nowadays.
7) Equilibrium Hymnal – Yes. I hope this ends the EP on a very hopeful note. The song is about balance, in everything. It’s also just a song celebrating life, cause I think a lot of young people aren’t happy with where they are, myself included. We always want to strive for more, and that’s a really good thing or else we would never create any change, but that satisfaction of just being happy where ever you are, I think that’s amazingly heartbreaking and beautiful. This is about that, just being content in the moment.
