10 years after the previous Icy Chill album “Encounter at Farpoint“. Sailesh’s life had changed but the torments/tough experiences had taken a toll on him. Sailesh needed to face his demons and Icy Chill was given the task to “ROCK OUT THE TRUTH”.

Credits & Recording

Icy Chill: vocals, writer, producer, synthesiser/keyboard, drum machine, sound engineer, mixing, executive producer, album artwork.

Steve Kitch: Mastering

Recorded: November & December 2023

Recorded in Santa Ana, Costa Rica

Rights & Contact/Social Media

© ℗ Sailesh Carlyle Patel

patel.saileshc@yahoo.co.uk

Meaning

I would firstly like to thank you for listening to this album. I thought I would write a little commentary about the background of this for people who like my stuff, friends or people just interested in the process of putting something like this together. I don’t want to talk about the songs because they speak for themselves. When you create a piece of art and you share it with others it’s no longer about the artist only it’s about people connecting to the art if they can and if they do connect to it it’s about them too. It’s the connection/relation that gives meaning. This is about the background of making this album.

Album Background

To be honest I had no real plans to make any new music for a long time. I mean I would write now and again for the sake of it but especially when I got married and had kids I had different priorities so nothing was really happening. I was living back in the UK for a bit and I remember someone saying “you should get back into it… let’s do a track?”. I had no interest.. I was done. I was actually doing my MSc in Software Engineering at the time and I enjoyed it. When I was coming to an end with it my wife got pregnant with our second child and we decided to move back to Colombia (my wife being Colombian) where we had more support. I was doing some things with machine learning and I remember I was waiting on something. I decided to look into music by exploring production more and the latest technologies. I had previously been mainly focusing on rapping and writing and I thought to look at other areas. One of the things that also got me very interested in getting back into music was this company called Warm Audio. They were making analog gear with a quality that would usually be very expensive for the level of quality they were producing. They were putting out units for a fraction of the price they would usually be. They were getting really good reviews in regards to their gear and it sounded like the originals. I was seeing how now is a really great time to have a home studio. You had a market of decent quality that were available at decent prices in regards to the technologies. So I decided I wanted my own home studio and to get back into this.

This album was a lot of work. What made it so much work is that I did everything except the mastering. I would either make my own samples or use existing samples. I wanted to make an album with humour and intenseness that was lyrically at my best. I didn't have any guest appearances and I didn’t want to wait around for people. I just wanted to do it! I wanted to express myself the most.

Musicians generally say the writing is the hardest part and I would agree. I’m happy that has been the focus in my life because I would say this is my best writing but it came from years of experience. Also you tapping into emotions/feelings which can be depressing too. I just wanted to be raw on this album, make a real intense uncommercial album. I think for my next album I will do something more pop in genre. Don’t get me wrong writing this stuff is like therapy for me but at the same time it’s intense. I would like to just release EPs from now on or have session musicians/others on the production too also due to other commitments/time in life.

I wanted to start the album a lot more earlier than later but I was working on a big software project and other commitments were getting in the way but there was a need to do it. My wife totally supported me in it which is cool. I don’t do this to make any money. I do this because of the need within.

I would manage my recording sessions while my kids were at school/nursery. No parent (including myself) wants their small children listening to this crazy stuff I was recording. It was quite funny because my wife would tell the cleaning lady to try to be quiet during my recording sessions. She doesn’t speak any English but what was coming out of my mouth was intense. Gosh knows what she thought hahaha

Anyway... below describes the background of the tracks… oh yeah whenever I refer to "Hoppy’s". I'm talking about a pub/bar near my place in Costa Rica.

Are you conscience?

This is actually I would say the first song that I started on the album and around the last I had finished. I was living just outside of Bogota, Colombia. I had thought “Sunshine of your Love” by Cream would be something good to sample. I actually ended up sampling riffs by Eric Clapton twice on this album. I was playing around with it and came up with the instrumental you hear on the album. In terms of the lyrics…. haha… having children does change a person and I had originally started something soft but I felt confined and I think I thought at one point “no no no” and I realised I needed to keep being a father completely out of my music processes and be free to go “fuck it”. I mean that’s why I got into this in the first place and that's what hip hop is about. I wrote about two thirds of the song and I had the beat/instrumental sitting on my hard drive for ages and the lyrics saved then fast forward over a year later and by that time I was living in Costa Rica. I was back in Bogota for a bit and I finished writing the song as I was concluding writing the album. Now by that point the chorus was a bit different. When I was recording it, I felt it needed more wit and it came to my mind an article I had read by Gary Kemp of Spandau Ballet on how David Bowie had brought theatre into music on how he was so different and of course you can see from the New Romantics era how David Bowie’s style is right in there. So I decided to re-write parts of the Chorus and perform it as theatre. I like the way it sounded and there it was.

Holding On

In this song I sampled a Led Zeppelin riff from “All My Love”. I think I had heard it on the radio when I was driving once and thought it would be cool to sample this and I did it. Again with the chorus I went for that theatre performance and I got something that I liked. The good thing about having a home studio is that it gives you more room to be experimental.

Skits John & Bigfarting & Freedom has won

Haha so the character of Bigfarting was actually created by my brother and I when we were kids as just like a joke on life while we were growing up and John is based on John who was a friend of my late parents. He helped myself and my brother out a lot after our parents died. He was living in Thailand and would come over now and again and took an interest in us when we were on our own. Little did I know I saw a different side to him when I moved to Thailand and when I was alone with him. It was clear in his head that “okay I helped you and your brother out after your parents died now Sailesh is my mental door mat and I can own him whenever I want my way.” He was basically like a bully with me at times. Treated me like shit at times and would go out to control me on basic decisions. He told me years later he was on drugs and acted like that was okay. Even when he wasn’t on drugs he treated me like he owned me but it just wasn’t as worse as when he was on drugs but it was still crap. I don’t really want to talk about the content of the song since it speaks for itself (as I said before). The skits are fictional and I looked to make them humorous but the obnoxious character of John is like how he would be. It’s impossible to deal with someone like that. When I was younger I was just focusing on the good he did for me and I would just really try to be positive about him also in hope that he would treat me better. It takes a toll on person to horrible levels. I was close to dropping out of university which was influenced by this. Anyway I had to get it out on “Freedom has won”. I just want to own myself and move on.

Before working full on, on this album I hadn’t done music properly in 10 years so I wanted to do a test and I made a joke song on UK PM Rishi Sunak. I was making a beat/instrumental for it and it turned out to be the beat on this song. I thought “no this is an Icy Chill beat. I got to have this on an Icy Chill song” and I ended up using another beat I had made a while earlier on the Rishi song. I think all turned out cool.

Rock out the truth & It’s a Tsunami

So these two songs were the last I worked on. By the time I had started, I thought I had finished my recordings. My original plan was to do an EP. With commitments in my life and that EP’s are really back in motion these days, this was my aim. I had finished recording seven tracks (six songs and a skit) and I went to Hoppy’s one evening. I was influenced by two songs by The Clash, “Know your Rights” and “Rock the Casbah” from their “Combat Rock” album. So I started writing lyrics inspired by them. It all just came out raw and I was like “these are good lyrics I just wrote” so I thought “I got to have it on the album” which then made me think “I’m going to then have seven songs..... I should really do another song then I have a full album instead of an EP” so I decided to also write what turned out to be “It’s a tsunami” and also do another skit making a total of 8 songs and two skits.

Back to Rock out the truth (song). I took the raw lyrics that I had written in Hoppy’s and I looked into beats/instrumentals I had made before, that I hadn’t used. I found a beat I made I think a year and half ago when I was living in Bogota. So rewind a year and a half earlier I was messing around with the synthesiser and came up with the main synth riff you hear on the song and I remember thinking “that sounds very cool… I need to record in right away before I forget”. So I recorded it and went onto the drum machine and added a drum beat that suited it. I then mixed what I had, saved it and it was just sitting on my hard drive. Now back to December 2023, when I heard the beat I thought “this sounds cool to the lyrics" and I shaped my raw lyrics with the beat. I was happy with it. It was intense to record but I did it. When I was doing the first part of the chorus I did take after take, after take, after take. I just wasn’t feeling what I was recording. The problem is that when you are just focused on your performance and the art of it, it’s easier but to keep turning from that to being a sound engineer it can get in the way and you basically really need to keep adapting. I had basically gotten to a point where I was like “ok I need to stop now!! I need to get away from this” so I went to Hoppy’s and had a few pints, I then came back and on my first take of recording I liked what I heard. I saved it and had a listen again the next day and I was satisfied.

Going back to what I said about making the riff and recording it so I don’t forget, it’s so important. I remember reading when Queen and David Bowie were making “Under Pressure” they were actually messing around at first then they realised they were onto something. They decided to go out and make song and at one point they felt hungry and were like “let’s go and get pizza” they came back and they had forgotten the main riff of the song. Luckily I think a member of Queen had finally got it back but if they had forgotten it they wouldn’t have had that song and Vanilla Ice would not have made “Ice Ice Baby” haha!! Anyway it can be easy to forget things.

So with “It’s a tsunami” I had made the beat/instrumental for it around the same period I made the instrumental for “Rock out the truth” (song) and again it was just sitting on my hard drive. That beat I always remembered and I really wanted to use it . I sampled John Lennon’s riff from “Working class hero” if you listen to the beat you can hear that in the flow. I had actually started writing a song to that beat a while ago and as I said before I needed one more song to have a full album. I was thinking of using the lyrics I had started writing a while before. Even though the lyrics were fine. I felt it was too RnB/Pop and it would have been the first song on the album I mentioned “she” and I thought “no scrap this” and I started writing what turned out to be “it’s a tsunami” the chorus was actually written as I was recording the song. I think I had laid down the verses already and the chorus I had written before recording I wasn’t feeling while recording so I wrote a new chorus during recording. It worked out well. Even though I wrote "Rock out the Truth” (song) first I decided to record “It’s a tsunami” first because I thought it would be more challenging so I thought to start with that first but it turned out “Rock out the truth’ was more challenging. Moreover “Rock out the truth” ended up being the last song I recorded on the album.

Leaving all the hell behind

I remember hearing “Layla” by Derek and the Dominos in Hoppy’s and thought it would be cool to sample this. I had already had a Eric Clapton sample in another track this would be the second. I had started playing around with it…. I felt many times at the time “this is not working out”. I would try and try and at one point felt like scrapping the whole thing. I don’t know why something in me kept bringing me back to it to try again and again. One day I was like “okay no it not going to work.. let's move on” but the next day I thought "let’s play around with it one last time” it was a weird addiction to keep coming back to it. I managed to get a beat/instrumental that I liked. I then wrote some lyrics to it and I then had another song to record.

Doing the right thing

I had for a long time been meaning to sample the riff from Phil Collins “billy don’t lose my number”. I managed to get something that worked that I liked and it worked out well. I like the 808 drums in it and the way I mixed it. I think it was the first song I started recording on the album. It was I think a nice way to start off the recording sessions.

Rolling in my mind

So this song started very randomly. One day my daughter (5 years old at the time of writing this) was bored so I thought “let’s go into the studio and try and create music together”. I didn’t think much would happen out of it but I thought it would be cool for her to see how I can construct a song. I started playing around with the drum machine. I felt I got something cool.... I then jumped onto the synthesiser and started playing around with something to the beat.... I felt I had something cool again but I felt I needed to record another layer doing a fill in for what I had already got and it ended up sounding good.... I ended up having a decent beat/instrumental. My daughter started thinking of words to the music and she started singing them and it sounded pretty good. We recorded it with her singing but she got bored after many takes. We weren’t quite there. I ended up writing a whole bunch of lyrics to it along with a new chorus and I ended up having a new hip hop song.

For any tech nerds like me... Below is a list of equipment/gear I used for recording/making this album. Not sure I missed anything but this stuff listed below was definitely used: