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

In in this edition, the Rhode Island-based producer The Range details the making-of one of his debut album highlights, “Metal Swing.”

“Metal Swing” originally started with the opening bass line and the piano together, and for the longest time existed as a weaving in-and-out around that phrase. At first, I liked how the song just kind of pressed on adding percussion very slowly, it was around 7 minutes long at one point.

Thinking back on those versions it kind of reminds me of how this piece progresses in the first few minutes:

The song really started to take its current form as I was finishing the other songs that ended up on the album last year. I wanted to add a narrative to the song without letting go of that ‘steam engine’ feel that I liked in the earlier versions.

Obviously not a direct translation, but I was going for something like how this song manages to maintain steam while moving through sections:

The song’s vocal is what brings it together for me. The juxtaposition of the subject matter against the delivery framed the competing styles within the song that I was going for. I like how even though it’s clearly grime, its clearly off in a younger branch than, say, Ruff Sqwad or any of the more modern grime MC’s:

I think a lot of what ties the album together is my interpretation of some of the more uptempo music of the past few years (footwork and jungle). “Metal Swing” ended up being an amalgamation of everything that exists in the album. The tempo change in the middle of the track allowed the song to touch on everything the album is dealing with—half time vs. full time, spare vocals, and syncopated harmony.