The World of Hastang

This is part 1 of an 11-part series. Guile takes a whimsical journey down memory lane, retracing the bumpy pseudo-pathways that led to the final version of Hastang’s current tracks.

• The version you’re hearing today isn’t the first one. Back in the Squirrel Talk days, Murray Suson took master lyricist Yan’s lyrics (based on a poem she wrote) and infused with a jazzy, jumpy vocal melody. Fearing it might be too Fiona Apple for our taste, we tried to incorporate sudden time signatures in between verses. Needless to say, that version didn’t work.
• Gaw’s guitar solo track is pure impromptu. We were doing additional overdubs for distorted guitar rhythm tracks that time when Gaw tore into the last bars of the coda with a searing solo riff. Luckily, Galen (of Phoenix Glide Studio) got the take. We tried to record optional solos afterwards but none were as good as that first take.

OBLIVION
Lyrics by Julie Ann Yan Redoble
Music & Arrangement by Hastang

She braves the dusk this lone night
Haunted by demons of sight
As wearied men, worn bodies
Stoop over remnants of old
Burning petals of despair
Flames soar, their stories unfold

She floats like the embers of strangers
Lost in antique reels and torn pages
Of hope lost and lives spent in cages
She braves the past tonight
Searching for oblivion

Faces passing through the cold
Deviant lives fitting one mold
She trails nostalgia in a gasp
Savors the anguish in her grasp
Reeking of panic and gloom
In the bonfire, she’s entombed

She searches for answers
She seeks her own refuge
She finds remedy in obscurity
She surrenders to…oblivion

guile loves his girlfriend, adores (er, adored) Michael Jackson, and wants "to be complete". When he's not playing bass for Hastang, he creates thingamajigs for icomm and writes gibberish in his not-so-secret diary.
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