Singled Out: Mono Sources' Ninth Path

Keavin Wiggins | 11-13-2022

Ninth Path single art

Long Beach, CA synthpop indie band Mono Sources just released their Hunter S. Thompson inspired single "Ninth Path", and to celebrate we asked Brett Bixby (Twelvehourmary) to tell us about the track. Here is the story:

Ninth Path began as a beat on an MPC drum machine. I have always loved the notion of tactile drum programming on pads and after getting my legs on a newly acquired machine I began exploring a rhythm scaffolding that we could build upon. The sounds in an MPC are mix ready and quickly inspire other ideas, like poking a hole in the audio dirt and watching water spill out. Mono Sources is a synth playground. I came up as a kid having my first analog synths, a Yamaha CS-5 and a Roland Juno 106, playing along to Devo, Gary Numan, The Cars, Depeche Mode, Oingo Boingo, Rush ... anything with a keyboard melody that I could pluck out of albums.

Once I had played out a basic drum structure I looked for inspiring sounds on a Roland Juno-60 and began laying out the arpeggiated part that leads the chord structure. I circled back and played down a bass part using a Jazz Bass patch on the MPC and then felt enough was down to let the boys in the band add their ideas to the mix. Though the drums were sketched on the MPC, I give my trust to Denny Weston Jr to do his thing and make the conversion from the electronic programmed demo to played analog drums. We kept a few of the programmed percussive elements but he built the killer propulsive drums up from scratch based on the demo I forwarded. Justin Burrow laid down the beautiful and spacious guitars in the "Ninth Path" section as well as the distorted bass in the second verse. Jesse Nason added the Korg Lambda pad and the sublime outro solo on the Moog Matriarch. The songs were made flying tracks between our respective home studios during these last few wormhole years of pandemic times. We create by laying something down we dig, grabbing the next sonic element that feels like the next rung in the ladder and then flying the tracks over for our bandmates to do their thing. It's kind of like putting furniture in a room. Whoever starts the song will add a few pieces in the room and then the other guys will come in and place a chair or a lamp or a table or painting or a rug.

The lyric is sort of a flashlight beam of a headstrong kid going through the storm of getting kicked out of home while at the same time flying young defiant flags of independent aspiration without a job or resources. I was looking for a refrain that could bridge that arc with the notion that eventually one will find a place or a passion if he/she follows that flashlight of intuition. I came across a letter that a 22 year old Hunter S. Thompson wrote to his friend Hume Logan in response to a question about "what to do with his life". One part in particular resonated with me that day. Thompson says, "Let's assume that you think you have a choice of eight paths to follow (all pre-defined paths, of course). And let's assume that you can't see any real purpose in any of the eight. THEN - and here is the essence of all I've said - you MUST FIND A NINTH PATH." The rest of the letter is fantastic. You can look it up. Search Hunter S Thompson's letter on Finding Your Purpose and Living a Meaningful Life. Amazing that he had that perspective at such a young age. Once Ninth Path popped out as a refrain candidate then a melody instantly appeared and things clicked like a puzzle piece. Sometimes it's about finding a way to point at a bigger picture with fewer words. Ninth Path is one of these instances. The number 9 is a number of completion and fulfillment as well as countless other unique mathematical and spiritual expressions and representations. For Mono Sources, Ninth Path is a song we're excited to release into the ether.

Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen and watch for yourself below and learn more about the project here