Angel: Transcending Through Melodies

Angel (lyrics by Evelyn Golding)

Don’t go away too far lullaby stranger

Let it back and forth again

Catch all the shooting stars troubled by danger

Can you see you want to shine?

Don’t go

All this time you linger

So stay

Single file you can ever remain

Angel smile, fly

Walk on by

Angel glide high

Walk on by

Come back again this time lullaby stranger

Let it back and forth again

Keep catching shooting stars under the radar

In your pocket for a rainy day

Don’t go

All this time you linger

So stay

Single file you can ever remain

Angel smile, fly

Walk on by

Angel glide high

Walk on by

Don’t go

All this time you linger

So stay

Single file you can ever remain

In the sky

In the sky

Ahhhhhh – so much to say about this song!  Where to start?  It has its origins in Prahran, Melbourne circa 1998. I was playing a lot of bass as a young aspiring musician at that time. The ascending/descending guitar and bass phrase I wrote at that time is in fact a musical palindrome! A palindrome is a word or sentence which is spelt exactly the same backwards as it is forwards – for example, Madam, I’m Adam. The guitar riff in B minor pentatonic is, somewhat coincidentally, the same backwards as it is forwards and is therefore a musical palindrome.  I’m not ashamed to state unequivocally that it was inspired by the beautiful Red Hot Chili Peppers song, Transcending.  I listened to that song a billion times on my Discman while walking the streets of Prahran in those days.What became the Angel riff is a beautiful and melodic phrasewhich still sounds otherworldly to me. I’ve never received a call from Dave Navaro or Flea’s management regarding any kind of copyright issue. And obviously it’s unlikely they’ve ever heard it.  If they want to sue my ass, I’ll happily pay them the entire $37 AUD Angel has generated as “profit”.

When I moved back to Brisbane from Melbourne for the second time in 2010, I started jamming some original songs with an old high school contact, Evan Chalk, and experienced electro vocalist, Evelyn Golding, who had enjoyed some success previously with Brisbane outfit DKo.  Angel was one of maybe six or seven songs the three of us workshopped before Evan moved to Melbourne to start a new a career in 2011.  While short lived, it was a great dynamic! Evelyn and I recruited Nathan Leonard to our song writing trio shortly after Evan’s departure, and we went on to become Imperius Rex (IR). IR was stylistically very different to what Evan, Evelyn and I had been working on, so Angel was shelved in favour of the more prog metal tunes we were writing in Nathan’s company.  We also recruited the inimitable Toby Aitken on drums, with whom I worked and collaborated with for the subsequent ten years. Toby had responded to an online “drummer wanted” ad I ran in an online band forum. It was a wonderful meeting! As mentioned earlier, Toby provided all the wonderful drum parts on this first Soul Wide Open EP.

I can’t provide comment on the meaning of Evelyn’s lyrical content for Angel. But they are very poetic and picturesque, and she certainly wrote some wonderful melodies to accompany them! I’d always wanted to record Angel given its melodic beauty and its lovely phrases.  In 2015 when I’d decided to give Soul Wide Open a crack as a recording project, Angel seemed a wonderful contender for inclusion.  I still had a digital copy of the demo version Evan, Evelyn and I had recorded before he had moved to Melbourne, so that was the file we used as the guide track for the recording.  There was some mild animosity from Nate at the time of recording.  He believed that the guide track was not Evan’s version, but in fact a version he had provided and submitted as part of an assessment item in the music technology degree he was studying at the time.  Now I’m someone who, to this day, has a copy of EVERYTHING – every single recording version since 2009 – including Nathan’s version of Angel that he’d submitted for his assignment.  In the interests of keeping things smooth throughout the SWO recordings however, I kept quiet about it and never said anything. And I haven’t to anyone until this day.