I used to be in a group called The Utopian Downslide.  It consisted of me and 4 other friends.  We made many different styles of music and even made it to the top with a song released on a CD with Good Charlotte (so awesome).  The group splintered off into a Hip-Hop duo called The Downslide (pic above) and it consisted of me and one of the other guys from the main group.  As some of you might know we had a 12" released and if you have a copy today you're freakin' rich.

Recently I've been listening nonstop to an amazing record called Birdseed by the group Emily Rugburn.  In a way it reminds me of some of my past musical endeavors, Downslide included, though listening to it you might not hear the connection.  After rocking Birdseed for who knows how many times, I vaguely recalled a Downslide song that was recorded a few years after the 12" but never completed.  It took me hours to find the files because they were on a CDr labeled "more random stuff 4".  After multiple failed attempts at loading it in SX 4 and even more failed attempts in other legacy versions of Cubase, I was able to get it up and running in VST 5.2 (trusty OS9).  I don't know why this song wasn't finished, it's so dope and all it really needed was a vocal mix, a few tweaks here and there and some automation.  So, inspired by the Birdseed I set off on a mission which I can happily say I just completed.

It's called 7 Days and it is in 7/8 time (challenging time signature for Hip-Hop).  We played all the instruments:  Fuzz Guitar, Electric Bass, Magnus Organ, & Oboe (strangely enough I do know how to play the oboe).  The drums were programed by yours truly and a special guest appearance from Raoul Duke and The Good Doctor make the song complete.  The great thing about this recording is that it's well before programmers had either figured out how to remove all of the aliasing from vst effects or weren't able to do so without using considerable amounts of resources, so basically it has a bunch of unintended clicks and pops throughout which I shall now deem intended.

From the file dates it seems we recorded the instruments on Mon Sept 15th and Tues Sept 16th 2003 and recorded the vocals on Fri Sept 26th.  Such a long time ago, but why does it not seem dated at all?  Could it be I hadn't listened to any Hip-Hop in a few years and created the song totally in a vacuum?  All I can really say is wft, what were we on, where were our heads at?  Seems like a little slice of magic left floating from another time...

After well over 5 years I'm happy to finally present the song 7 Days, enjoy!