The new single from Ivan Furber, Stopping Time, was released on New Year’s Day.
It’s a dark, haunting pop song with a superb vocal performance, defraying the fact that this is Ivan’s debut single and first time recording properly.
We started working on the song in October last year and it was really a co-production; Ivan’s Garageband project already had the eerie synth loop that begins the song, the atmospheric synth and the bass melody, along with other elements.
Although it sounded like a demo, there were a lot of good ideas in there so I went through and tweaked the synth sounds, and replayed the bass part with a real bass.
Drums were next and I created a dual drum part, using Native Instruments’ Butch Vig Drums and Abbey Road Studio Drummer. The drums start like an indie song but get a little more tribal as they go along, with lots of toms.
At Ivan’s request, I also added a ticking clock to the percussion – the clock I sampled was the grandfather clock from my Dad’s house!
From here, I added guitars, some chugging guitars that play all he way through, and some chiming atmospheric guitars for the chorus and end section.
When Ivan came to record, we put down 21 vocal tracks. As well a the lead vocal, Ivan put down loads of thickeners in the chorus (you can hear these well in the dropdown chorus at 2:08). The final 30 seconds are a flurry ion vocal ideas that all seem to work very well!
The vocals were processed with liberal amounts of echo and reverb and Soundtoys Decapitator, for the thick, ambient sound.
Ivan has plenty more songs in the pipeline and they are all quite dark, atmospheric and very compelling. Keep an eye out!