How "Ozymandian" Was Written
as previously mentioned, writing sessions for Fantastic Wrist began pretty concurrently with the moment that i obtained my first ever juno-106, which had been a dream synth of mine for about 8 years prior to my owning it. i wrote tons of little ideas on it, most of which made it to the record. this memo idea “some chords” was one of those ideas, and aaron found it to be really interesting. with some input from him, we tweaked the original idea into what became the basis of the verses of this song.
in one of my and aaron’s many meetings, we decided it was time for this complete(er) idea to get some air, so in playing around with ableton and a variety of vintage drum machine samples, I came up with this. there were some changes, but this is pretty close to what it settled out as. we called it “thom yorke was pumped” because it just sounded like something he would dance like a freak to if he heard it.
Aaron became pretty interested in the syncopated nature of this beat and how you could sort of play with where the “1” of the beat was (if you don’t know music theory, don’t worry). So, we played with how the beat started to see if it changed our opinions of it.
the exploration of both versions of the beat led us to actually us both in the final version - before the middle section it’s the original format of the beat, and after the middle section it’s with the 8th note change. as for the middle section - the story there is pretty simply that I found an interesting chord on the juno and couldn’t let it go to waste. the middle section of this song is, in my opinion, one of the most special things i’ve ever written.