The concept of it is: “What does it mean to be in a bubble?” It could be a bad thing. But we stripped it away and I replayed all the bass and even changed some of the chord progressions.

This studio version is from a live version we’d played. So there are connections I didn’t even realize and I’m connected again. However, the piano starts playing itself and then it’s dancing with the streetlights. But I’m alone and I can’t think of anything to play because I’m so disconnected. Then I’m on a boardwalk and I start playing a piano. I’ve been in a bar, and I’m really connected, but then I’m alone in these alleys and cobblestone streets. We would get together on Wednesday nights and work on all the lines, and I enjoyed working on the verse after the first chorus where we envisioned this town. It was so joyous to work with Scott on this. Then they want me to play, and I feel connected to the whole world. I don’t know anyone, and some people look a little weird. I’m alone, I’m walking around town, then I stumble into the club where a band is playing. There’s another balancing act that happens in this song. If everyone is only spending their time and attention on the other people, then the relationship doesn’t work.

We’re in it together, but we also need to have our autonomy and do our own thing. I also like to think about the conundrum with people in a marriage or a band. I’m alone, but I’m not really alone because we’re all connected. I love being on tour in some random town and walking by myself, checking out the vibe and seeing what’s going on in the coffee shop or the gallery. In a lot of these songs I’m walking around alone. For me, it’s a celebration of letting go and being disoriented. The jams that led to these songs were super funky and fun, so I also like how they represented musically-can we lose ourselves in these rhythms? I see the tilting as falling into that surrender.

I like doing that and I like being lost in musical jams as well. It’s not so bad, it’s actually cool.” I’ve enjoyed going on drives, not knowing where I was going-just turning left, right, right, left. “Tilting” is embracing the whole concept of, “Let’s lose ourselves. It’s about being in one place and wanting to be in another place or being somewhere you didn’t think you were going to be and finding that to be home. That wasn’t by intention it’s just what came together. There’s a big theme of disorientation that applies to a bunch of these songs. That’s all also connected to my sense of a flow state.” It’s similar to dreams where it’s been really significant and fun to get off the ground. “There’s a very acute sense of that from the propulsion and the feeling of the music. “When I’m onstage in the middle of a big jam, sometimes the way the groove is floating feels like flying-that’s what’s in my brain,” the bassist says. Gordon’s experiences during his lucid dreams, as well as his state of mind during live improvisation, are also intertwined. I want your voice to be far away and the sound of the piano to be far away, like there’s some weird hotel band, but it’s also eerie like in a David Lynch movie.”Īs the album title suggests, the concept of taking flight recurs in many of the songs. For instance, with “Moonlight” Gordon remembers, “Shawn said, ‘At the end, I want it to be like you’re standing on this veranda in some old resort where people are having a cocktail party. Shawn Everett (Alabama Shakes, Kacey Musgraves, The War on Drugs), who produced Gordon’s 2017 record, OGOGO, mixed Flying Games and also provided prompts after hearing the initial demos. As a result, Gordon worked out of his home studio with longtime collaborator Jared Slomoff, while his bandmates- drummer John Kimock, keyboardist Robert Walter, percussionist Craig Myers and guitarist Scott Murawski- mostly contributed individually from afar. The record came together over eight months, including a span during the lockdown. I start to envy that a bit, but there’s a happy medium here, where there are verses and choruses, starts and stops, but the original intention does poke through.” Then there are people where every song on their album is one chord-the rhythm doesn’t change and there are not too many starts and stops. “Sometimes I put so many changes into my songs that the changes take over and interrupt the flow. In this case, an important one was flow,” explains Mike Gordon, as he shares the process of creating his new record, Flying Games.

“When I start a new album, I’ll have certain desires and goals based on what I’ve done previously.

One moment in time chords