As I mentioned it a few posts back, at the beginning of the month I attended the Amazon’s Prime Hand of God London Premiere. It was there where I got hooked by a song, the official soundtrack of the show. And guess what? I was again more than grateful to have Shazam installed on my phone!
A few days passed and I managed to find out that I wasn’t the only one who really liked the song. The fan support actually elevated them to #2 iTunes. Not bad I dare say. Not bad at all!
When I reached out to speak to the man behind the song, I was glad to discover a person willing to share the journey with the fans he had gathered along the way.
Everything has to start somehow, somewhere: “I’d been into this Fantastic Negrito journey for a little over a year . The Negrito journey = I knew I wanted to tap into these original American sounds and retain some of the ancient feel and find ways to modernize it without losing that. So I was fucking around with blues and pre-blues (hymns, spirituals, chain gang songs, also African stuff that felt directly connected to early blues). A sound was starting to come into focus. I did an EP with, like, 5 songs including Long Long Road and Night has Turned to Day – which were the most clear indicators of where I wanted to go. I was playing street shows at that time, just trying to get the music into people’s faces. My chronology won’t be perfect so maybe I was booking some shows but I was definitely firing wildly into the dark, hoping I hit something phase. Anyway, it was time for me to start recording new shit and An Honest Man struck me. Those hums and those chords literally woke me up outta my sleep. When that happens, that’s when I know the good shit is coming. I have a piano in my house so I started recording some of the basic elements (
I think I actually filmed it with my phone because I knew this was something.) I have video of just the hums too.” Negrito says. The whole detailed story can actually be found on his Official Website, if you are curious about it.
In the end the song that made him known and brought him to the tops was also the one that helped him find his musical identity “When I finished An Honest Man, that’s when I locked into the Negrito sound. I found the beacon that I am still walking toward. That song is the essence. It’s not the only thing I’m doing but it’s the grandfather of everything I’m doing now. Stripped down. Primal shit. Emptiness. Reducing the instruments to only the essential stuff and cutting out the rest. So I used only, maybe, 30% of what is played on that song. Anything that isn’t making me feel it in the most potent way gets pulled away. Even if I have to loop something I played or one of my guys played to keep the song alive, I’ll do that rather than allow a note or chord that isn’t urgent. So that’s how the song from Hand of God got written.”
But how exactly was it that the song became the official soundtrack of Hand of God? “Ben Watkins, creator of Hand of God, eventually heard it. He is from the Bay Area also. We have friends in common and probably knew each other coming up. When he heard the song, it was uncanny how perfect it fit the show. Seriously. He knew and I knew that they were meant to go together. And now we are here.”
If interested, you can follow Fantastic Negrito on Twitter or download his awesome song from iTunes.
