Behind The Scenes: Disconnected Souls - Dissonant Whispers (Official Video)

Felix King: We first envisioned Dissonant Whispers in terms of thematic identity. How do we want this song to feel? What musical elements - instruments, chord progressions, vocal styles - do we want to play with, and what do they lend themselves to? Those are often questions that shape the early stages of a new song for us. We set ourselves a challenge here, compositionally, in which we aimed to play with suspense whilst minimizing the chord, tempo, and instrumental variety we often utilize in our music whilst maintaining something which still felt like it had movement and interest. Essentially, ‘How can we get the most mileage out of fewer musical components?'

Chord changes are a particular favorite of Fletch, who contributed heavily to the instrumental direction of the track. Here, we limited ourselves to just three in the verse - A minor, D minor (with A in the bass), and a brief appearance from G# diminished, only developing further in the chorus transition.

“The piano line feels intricate and clever but it's mostly an accident. It's several layers put on top of each other; it's actually a product of limited piano ability, but the whole is so much more than the sum of its parts.”

As a band, we’re chronic collectors of synth and sample libraries - sometimes this doesn’t do much to speed up the creative process, however! We had a very particular vision for the ‘bell’ sound in the track - something between a ship’s bell and a sonar pulse to evoke both the classical seafarer’s tale of sirens and a more synthetic sound. Naturally, crafting that specific idea took quite a while!

We didn’t initially expect Dissonant Whispers to be the basis of our first music video. We had a projected timescale within which we wanted to release a video, and it wasn’t going to be ready in line with that. Additionally, another track, Warring Elements, had a video concept with a much easier location to secure - actually, we happened to be going on holiday to a suitable location later that year in 2020.

We had the location booked, concepts finalized, costumes, and a cast ready to go. Unfortunately, we faced the same hurdle so much of the music scene was hit by back then - the pandemic took hold just in time for restrictions to halt our plans.

Luckily, prior to the pandemic, the band had already been considering ways to make it easier to collaborate remotely - so thankfully, we weren’t totally at a standstill throughout. Though we certainly wouldn’t trade- in meeting up, there’s a lot of efficiency in being able to record and upload updated vocals ready to be worked with at the next session. It really takes some time pressure off whoever’s contributing vocals to that song and meant that Holly (a guitarist and vocalist on this track) was able to contribute her final vocals despite being in a different city at the time.

Video plans ended up being postponed until early 2021, at which point Dissonant was nearer to completion. It actually ended up being a far more ambitious project than our original idea with Warring Elements - a few of us got together for a planning session, where we produced a guideline script and presented it to our videographer for this project, Joey Aitchison of JWA Creations, and costume designer Kayda Jarsdel. Seeing the concept art for the costumes was exciting - working with other artists, especially across mediums, is something we aim to do more of. We essentially gave Kayda full rein within the general concept, and we’re thrilled with her work. Our videographer, in turn, did an excellent job of bringing out the most cohesive, visually beautiful version of our ideas without losing anything in translation.

So far, we’re absolutely thrilled with the response. We’ve had extremely positive feedback from fans, the community at large, and even some kind words from family friends we didn’t expect to engage with our music. We couldn’t be happier- we’re already thinking ahead to our next video project.