Stories of Rejection: Part 2

Collated by Justin Watson

As part of the recent and on-going ISOLATION AND REJECTION project by Front & Follow and Gated Canal Community, we’ve been collecting the stories behind the tracks submitted.

This is Part 2. Part 1 is here. All five volumes of the project are now available via the F&F bandcamp.

Names have been changed and redacted to protect the innocent and the guilty.

“We live in a society that discards human beings, which is wrong. As part of that, society says only some people should be allowed to make anything other than what they’re told to make by their employer. That makes us all worse off as both audience members and creators.”

“[the track] was rejected because I was trying for a particular sound and despite a lot of time and effort I couldn't get it to sound anything like it should have done so gave up on it. It's not actually that bad a song, I was just mardy at the time.

It was created in the Caustic app on my phone back in 2014, luckily I backed up all the project files before the phone died and I've been able to resurrect these, export stems and master. I've kept true to the original sounds and composition only using delay, reverb and EQ.”

“The origin of this track was an ambient / solo guitar piece that didn't make [REDACTED] made during lock-down. I then reworked it and submitted it to the [REDACTED] Isolation compilation but it didn't make that selection. When I saw the call for tracks for Gated Canal Community I started the track over, keeping the bare bones of the ambient and solo guitar but remixing then and slicing them up and creating a whole new track which is radically different from the tracks two previous incarnations. The piece now has beats and a lot of instrumentation that it only got once it became reborn for this collection. The title was a bit tongue-in-cheek but seems to work to me.”

“This track has sat unreleased and overlooked for a year or so. It’s just a quick blast that was fun to make—all done using soft synths and some drum machine samples. It’s very short and rather unrefined—some simple riffs with a bit of squelching, a pad that howls and an ersatz guitar line from a dodgy alien disco. Faster than nearly all of my other tracks, almost a bit punky.”

“This was a bi-product of a lockdown album made by the band I'm in [REDACTED] for the [REDACTED] label, and was used for a one off broadcast by [REDACTED], who do site specific experimental audio broadcasts.”

“It started with a short vocal sample, various noises were added and it ended up as a track that bears zero resemblance to the lo-fi drone / guitar-based ambient album that I'm working on at the moment! Rather than ending up in my ever-growing folder of unreleased demos, I decided to inflict it upon the GCC community - sorry!”

“Was asked to submit a remix which was rejected by the artist”

“I recall with great joy discovering the philosophy and music of John Cage. I enjoy the playful, enchanting sounds of his 1948 Suite for Toy Piano. The percussive mechanical sound of the keys hammering metal rods and church bell like sounds resonating from within.

I was very fortunate to receive as a birthday present a rather splendid vintage wooden toy grand piano. Over the years I have composed various pieces for toy piano and a large part of its charm is two of the fourteen keys are damaged and sound broken. Consequently I created a body of work entitled ‘Broken Toy Pianos’ that exist essentially for my own pleasure - not for public consumption.

With the World currently in a state of lockdown due to the deadly Covid-19 and many people feeling isolated and rejected - I felt this to be an appropriate time to share my rejected broken toy piano piece to a wider audience.”

“This track is constructed from processed location recordings of Brides Beck, layered with self generating modular patches.

Originally intended to be part of this [REDACTED], it didn't really fit with the other tracks.

Can you reject yourself from your own release?”

“Sometime around 2000-2001, a good friend and I worked on a recording together with no real plan other than to make a piece of music. Just a little ditty involving tape machines, samples and loops, etc. We weren’t even sure whether it was finished or not when we were done and it ended up in storage somewhere.

Over time, my friend and I lost touch, and I found out that he was sadly no longer with us. I eventually came across the tune again and thought it would be nice to do something with it, but still I had no idea what. I figured perhaps this compilation might be a suitable home for this odd little item.”

“The track was part of a series of smaller tracks recorded after a bout of heavy depression. I struggled with being a new dad and would often take 5-minute breaks in the garden to escape the noise and clear my head.

During some of these breaks, I would write intentionally sparse and simple melodies on guitar or piano and record them quickly and crudely with the intention of sprinkling them throughout my album. In the end I changed my mind and made the album a lot shorter, cutting out most of these smaller tracks.

The album was rejected by every label I sent it to.

YASSS!!!”

“Over the years I've had so many songs dumped/rejected/ignored/forgotten about for all sorts of projects - mostly well-meaning tribute albums for bands that, it turns out, didn't have quite as many people willing to do cover versions as the organisers thought, but also for a whole heap of "great ideas" from people who call you "mate" for several weeks then stop answering emails altogether.

This song's one of the latter, done for a recent gig/benefit right at the start of The Current Situation where they were extremely keen to have me do a song for them for several days and then clearly found someone more famous instead and blanked me forever.

It's lovely to know that you've already got so many tracks in, which must mean it's not just me!”

“After over 20 years as [REDACTED], and nearly 40 playing in bands, i have experienced a lot of rejection, disappointing at the time, but after a while it all becomes a blur. Promised releases or gigs which fade into the past.... for some reason lost in the mists of time, this track didn't make it to any releases of that year and was forgotten.

It was found lurking in a folder called 'rough mixes 2016'. That's all i know.... forgotten and abandoned until now. listening back, i have no recollection of it, or why it was never used as i rather like it.”

“It's a track that never fitted anywhere. My music is normally quite dark, so an unexpectedly positive-sounding isolated one-off just doesn't fit. But I like it — and a brief respite from constant doom is a good thing I reckon.”

ISOLATION AND REJECTION is collating rejected sounds and celebrating them, raising money for The Brick, a fantastic charity in Wigan.

Buy Vol 1 here, and Vol 2 here. 3, 4 and 5 to come.