Eight years to write a four-minute song: it’s not good, is it?

Aliens (Don’t Belong)

Is the title of our next song which is currently in the recording stage and due for release sometime in May/June if all goes according to plan (which it seldom does). It’s a song that explores the disconnect felt by people when they feel excluded – green people from outer space unfortunately don’t play a big part of the song’s dialogue although we will try and slip a few musical beeps and parps into the mix for those expecting an extraterrestrial odyssey.

"Houston, we have a problem" is popularly quoted as a phrase spoken during the Apollo 13, NASA space mission. That will, in addition, go into the mix somewhere now I have sourced it from the NASA website. It seems appropriate.
The song has its roots embedded in the time I lived and toured in China where I landed, having travelled from the planet England. Here, I found myself saddled with the ‘alien’ tag, particularly when applying for a performance license. This also applied to former visits I made to the USA although now, under the Biden administration, this term has been recently removed. In identity terms though, ‘alien’ is still quite a universal nomenclature; many countries continue to apply it to anyone viewed as an outsider; someone belonging to a foreign country or nation.

So, in response to a word used as a way of distinguishing between those with rights and those with less rights, a song was born. I started to play around with a chord framework and a first draft of the words, eventually taking them with me to a studio in Hong Kong for an initial airing in 2016 – the song was never finished though.

Fast forward nearly seven years and once more on terra-firma in the UK, the old recording turned up in a box of, ‘wonder what’s in there’s.’ After such a long gestation period the work needed a bit of TLC. Society had moved on. Thus, the words were rewritten the verses got a melodic makeover, the structure was revamped, the BPM adjusted – what had a once been a jigsaw with some of the pieces missing became a complete song as I began to understand what I was banging on about – clarity is all: time has a great pair of ears.

By February 2024 we (Mac & Gar) had a rough draft of the new work. We tinkered with the roughness of the vocals and guitar only succeeding in creating even more roughness. We needed a deadline, well a flexible one. To focus our attention we booked a studio, spoke to our trusty producer.

On a cold, leaden-sky March morning, we coaxed the song out of hibernation and gave it a home in the memory bank of a shivering Pro Tools studio interface – all three tracks of it. Then came that dreaded discussion moment- where to go with the production, who to invite into the mix! Time elapsed. Strong coffee was drunk. Teeth started to clench. More time elapsed, speeding by as the caffeine took over. And, as the bleak afternoon sun dived for cover, I headed north to the welcoming arms of my spare bedroom, creation central, a space full of wires, guitars, musical stuff, non-musical stuff – empty cups, bits of paper, blue tack - treasures of incalculable worth and misspent time. You probably have one yourself – the metaphoric cupboard drawer where all lost things eventually turn up, inspiration being one of them!

It was in this room, having listened to Mac’s interpretation of the melody line, I suddenly considered the idea that it is also quite possible to feel separated from others without having experienced the sight of barrier walls, the inflexibility of immigration controls and/or the coldness of bureaucratic dehumanizing jargon. There is also a sense of isolation for individuals who do not want or who cannot develop relationship, people who fear the strangeness of strangers, people that ‘don’t belong’ to borrow a phrase from the song, outsiders looking for a way in, for acceptance, isolates seeking solace in their own space. Mac’s delivery seemed to tease out an underlying melancholia in the words.

The song was not written with both groups in mind BUT isolation has many faces: none of them seem to wear a smile though. Franz Kafka, no stranger to the theme of alienation himself, described it as a process, an opportunity. ‘Isolation is a way to know ourselves.’ Ha, always the optimist.

In a society rapidly becoming fixated on the individual and the need for their own private world, somewhere to escape to whilst travelling on buses, tubes, and planes, or when out taking meals with friends, lovers, the hoi polloi, mobile phones always in hand. Entranced, they disappear into a virtual world, lost, unaware, detached from the present, cocooned in a soft blanket of entertainment. Thus, in my view, human contact is being subjugated, lost to the pull of the incandescent screen, the world of ear bud conversation. Strangers thus remain strangers. I feel something important is being lost: our sense of community – the desire to communicate and face to face with one-another. Paradoxically, the more of us there are the less contact we seem to want. The result: we are increasingly alienating ourselves from our brothers and sisters, severing the opportunities to talk and connect. In so doing we inadvertently colonize the world with a new generation of outsiders.

This is what, Aliens (Don’t Belong) is about: the strangeness of strangers and the longing of most people to be a part of the bigger picture and the inability of some to do so. This is a song for them as they silently shout, ‘hey, get me out of here.’

Aliens (Don’t Belong) is scheduled for release in May/early June 2024.Failing that something will appear before the end of the next millennium:)

One World!


Mac & Gar