Today I thought I would take the chance to use my blog post to talk about Sloan and The First Gentlemen's new single Faithless which released today (June 25th). Faithless is the first single off of Sloan and The First Gentlemen's debut album Axiom, which is the first large scale project that Songplistic has taken on. The band itself features myself (Songplistic co-founder) Ross Sloan as well as Cameron "Smithy" Smith (a regular of Songplistic blog posts and session playing) and Sam King. The album and subsequently Faithless itself features myself and Smithy, as Sam had not joined the fold at the point of recording Axiom. I provided vocals, guitars and programmed the drums (using GetGoodDrums) while Smithy played bass on Faithless. I then mixed the track and it was mastered by Paul Warner (a close friend of Songplistic).
Faithless is a song that dates back over 6 years ago from the writing of this post and was one of the first written on the album. The meaning of the song has evolved considerably since it's original conception, starting as a way for me to look through another's eyes so that I could live experiences they had that I wish I did, to the initial catalyst for a hero's journey to set out and discover faith. Axiom itself is based on the Hero's Journey, a method of telling stories that is split into 12 steps. The 12 tracks on the album take on a step in chronological order, with Faithless being the second step in that journey, The Call To Adventure. In essence the song is about how the hero of the story realises the futility of the system he has grown up in, which causes him to question his reality and think about how to go about resolving this issue in his mind.
Musically the song takes heavy influence from 90's Grunge, with Pearl Jam's Even Flow being of particular inspiration. The song began it's life as an acoustic track with just acoustic guitar and vocals but while completing my masters in music I was urged to take the obvious Grunge influence and run with it. This lead to the Faithless you hear, and the inception of the whole album. I personally pushed for this track to be the first single off of Axiom as I feel that is a very good mission statement for what the band represents. Structurally the song has about 26 sections to it, some repeating throughout the song, while still keeping a shorter run time and accessible rock vibe to it that myself and the rest of the band hope people resonate with.
Now that Faithless is out we would love to hear what you think of it and we are so excited to get going with the whole Axiom release cycle. Watch this space!
Ross