On "Requiem for the Living" we really attempted to combine a lot of our influences - from Gorecki to Peter Gabriel to Godspeed You Black Emperor to Marillion to Sonic Youth - into what we hoped would be a cohesive whole. It was Sepand who suggested "marrying" two songs Oscar had previously recorded: one was essentially the ambient minimalist piano that forms the backdrop for the first section (not so creatively titled "Piano in F minor"); the other was a more Portishead/Massive Attack-ish piece written after watching Tom Tykwer's film The Princess and the Warrior.

Sepand had the idea of adding a Gorecki-inspired intro, then other pieces of the puzzle started to fall into place: Jeffrey Samzadeh's Sonati chanting combined with Sepand's guitar really captured the feelings of loss and despair we were trying to deal with musically, after which a "space rock" transition leads us to the second "movement," where you can hear a much more discernible and almost Tin Pan Alley-like "tune," played first on guitar and then on piano (and which, by the way, reappears somewhere on Laudanum), followed by the more "classical" piano/guitar interlude (the calm before the storm), and then the slide and distorted guitars in the second part really push that despair into rage and an, if not happy, then definitely more hopeful and defiant ending.

Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen for yourself and learn more about the group and their album - right here!

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