Rust (2005)
A ticking clock and footsteps open this track. Combine them with an eerie, echoing piano melody backed with haunting strings, a slamming door and claps of thunder and you're listening to a creepy, slightly unnerving piece of music.
When is an intro not an intro? When it evolves from being a few bars long into an entire track of its own!
If you ignore the main melody and focus on the soft strings in the background, you'll hear what was originally the introduction to Facing Worlds. The pattern of notes used is the same, just repeated a few more times.
Most of the sounds used are also featured in Facing Worlds - because I just gutted the track layout and used the existing sounds for this one! The piano and strings used for the first part of this track are the same ones as used in Facing Worlds.
The original intention of this was to provide a link between a previous track and Facing Worlds. Which track it was linked to, I'm not sure now, but I think it may have still been Bad Animal.
Previously Unheard
Right up until the end of working on this track, it featured some clips from the Salad Fingers animation by David Firth. I tried many times to get in touch with him to obtain permission to use these samples prior to the release of my Something To Remember Me By album, but failed to get a response.
To be on the safe side, I included an edited-down version of Rust on the album. However, the original, unedited version is available here for you to listen to:
Sounds Used In This Track
To start off with the most boring sample used, I just recorded a clock.
You'll then notice a music box, which has a creepy, disorienting sound to it. This was originally recorded for an "insane asylum" atmospheric soundtrack in a play at college, where it was used without any effects. All I've done here is add some reverb and assigned an LFO to the pitch (non-techie description of end result: makes it echo and go out of tune intentionally!)
Behind this, there are various scraping sounds. This is a combination of a cardboard tube full of coins being tilted slowly, and garlic being chopped (and no, this isn't some symbolic ritual thing to keep vampires away from the track... it just happened to have an interesting sound.)
Around 45 seconds into the track, some metallic sounds can be heard. This is a cymbal being hit lightly, and again was recorded for part of the previously mentioned play. It gives an interesting effect like someone walking across a metal floor.
The metal scraping sound consists of two different sounds ? a metal gate being slammed shut, and an oven grill being scraped along its tray. The result sounds like a big metal door. This was recorded around the same time as the garlic chopping.
Following this are some more scraping sounds, and a metal clanging noise ? produced by running a metal spoon across an oven shelf. I think perhaps I spent too long in the kitchen that day!
The light percussion that comes in after this is also used in Facing Worlds, although it's not as noticeable there. There's also some thunder behind this.