The Ribbon - MP3! (Patreon)

Here it is! Gosh it's been torture sitting on this song for so long, waiting for the video to be ready to release! I'm so happy to finally have some new music ready for you all! Four months between new songs is FAR longer than I had planned, but rest assured I was working on lots of things in that time!

When Remedy reached out to me and expressed an interest in working with me in future after I released Slide into the Void I was immediately excited that one day it might result in something for Alan Wake. So as soon as Alan Wake 2 was announced I immediately got back in touch to ask if this was something they might want to work on together and I am thrilled they said yes!

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This was an insane production to pull together, the biggest and most intense set build we've ever attempted, (Beating The Toybox, the previous most ambitious set!). To put things in perspective, the budget for just the timber to build the set for this video alone was bigger than the entire set building budget on most of my productions. End to end, the lumber to build that cabin was a kilometre. There is gonna be some crazy behind the scenes for this one on the way down the line!

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This track was actually a real struggle to write initially. I just couldn't get it to click, I found it way harder to write as Alan than I expected and it really threw me.

Until...

I realised that Alan wouldn't write as himself. He'd write about himself.

As soon as I made the switch from writing in the first to writing in the third person everything just fell into place and the lyrics just started pouring out of me. All the ideas I had that I couldn't give form to suddenly worked how I wanted.

The title, 'The Ribbon' was the first thing I thought of in the entire writing process. I find something really satisfying about a collection of songs with the same title structure. The Fine Print, The Second, The Apex, The Toybox, The Data Stream, The Ribbon.

The title itself and its use throughout the track is a metaphor. 'The Ribbon' refers to the ink ribbon of a typewriter and in a song about a creator vs their creation, obsessive perfectionism, legacy fixation and death of the author, that ribbon represents the dividing line between a writer and their writing. They exist on opposite sides.

'You can't life life on both sides of the ribbon'

Put yourself into your work. But don't lose yourself in your work.

If you couldn't tell, this track ended up being very personal to me under the surface.

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And can we talk for a moment about Cami? Every time I get her on a track I think she can't possibly out-do herself and yet every time she takes things to a whole new level. I am beside myself with how much she elevated this track. I knew after many songs having her on the hook I wanted to give her a bigger section this time around and wanting to give each part of the track a unique sound, having Cami perform a section about new protagonist Saga just made total sense. She absolutely killed it!

And Oxygen's use of the typewriter as percussion? Chef's kiss.

I really hope you all enjoy the song as much as I enjoyed putting it together!

~Stupes