Silk Screens is a behind the scenes look at the making of a track.

In our latest edition of Silk Screens, Lee Noble discusses the making of his gloomy and intoxicating jam “Remind Me” off his new LP Ruiner courtesy of Bathetic Records.

90% of the time my songs disappear into a black hole of memory—I have no real idea where they come from, little recollection of ever playing them, and I always forget the chords/words. I have a satellite ring of tape recorders and boxes of blank tapes floating around my apartment and am always recording little riffs and bits. I usually make use of battery powered keyboards and small instruments to start, and later review the tapes to build on the pieces I like.

Though for this song, I began with the drum beat and recorded it straight away—unusual for me. I used my Univox SR-55 drum machine, which is really a basic push-button organ-accompaniment type thing that I hadn’t used for quite a while. I had the idea to plug it into the external input on my Korg MS10 synthesizer, and got some extra movement out of the rhythm from using the Korg filter. This is where the disappearing/re-appearing effect comes from. I built the track up from there, and let it sit for a while.

Eventually I added the organ drones and high tones with a Yamaha SK10 organ synth. I love this keyboard and it’s soft, warbling, fake organ tones you can just swim in. It’s been in heavy use lately.

Guitar clangs and words came last. I play a DeArmond SG copy that I got as a gift from my dad in high school. After I got it I glued some old-timey ‘ladies on the pickguard’ illustration to it, so my friends and I gave this guitar a nickname, “Twin Ladies”—which I find to be pretty amusing. “Twin Ladies” also has the words ‘Death Rage’ spray painted on it, which is the name of a Yul Brynner movie. Is this relevant?

This song is vaguely about the present. It’s also vaguely about an idea of the post-apocalypse, how to rebuild society, knowing we’ll make the same mistakes again, etc… though I never listen to the lyrics, so don’t worry about it!

I think in a general way, this past year or so, Belong‘s last album Common Era has been one of the most interesting and influential albums I’ve listened to. A lot of people didn’t much like it—Pitchfork for instance thought it was dull and derivative—but I consider it highly under-appreciated.