Track by Track: Dialects – Because Your Path Is Unlike Any Other

We’ve been big fans of Glagow-based post rockers Dialects for a few years now and were very excited to hear their debut LP ‘Because Your Path is Unlike Any Other’ (available via Through Love Rec on vinyl now) after hearing their phenomenal EPs and watching live performances at the likes of ArcTanGent and Audiotree. Here, Conor from the band talks us through the new album, track by track, revealing the influences and inspirations that have shaped its sound… ‘Superluminal‘ Our opening track starts off with a light intro that we previously combined with the beginning of ‘Mountainous’. Over time though, I felt that it became too cluttered and preferred the simplicity of the decaying reverb. Nick Lawrie, who recorded and produced the album, came up with the idea of taking samples that NASA had released publicly and TO layer them through the album. Some are extremely noticeable like this one but others not so. Into the track itself we kick off with a riff that I wrote in Steve’s old flat. He quite liked that idea and we made a point of working on it there and then. A short while we later we tweaked the clean section in the middle to be similar to a waltz and tweaked the timing following inspiration from Oceansize. The rest of the track opens up a bit and ends up with a punky riff that we play about with at the end, mixing it with a varied version of the starting riff. ‘Light Echo‘ This song nearly didn’t make it on the album. If it didn’t it would’ve been because of me as I have a terrible habit of falling out of love with certain songs. We didn’t have lyrics in the track for a while and I felt the song was weak. Steve suggested we add in the lyrics. We combine a kind of gang chant with the movement of the song leading up to a big pay-off crescendo and one of my favorite parts of the album (kicks in at 1:55). ‘Lorentzian‘ One of the few songs that has been written as part of a sit-down songwriting session. The track opens with some horrific-sounding swells (combination of octave down and two octaves up on non-polyphonic harmonist pedals) before kicking in to a static riff-driven section and a frantic loop darting in and out of it. Steve controls the loop with his pedal allowing him to trigger and reverse it as he sees fit. He then layers over a nice lead part on top while me and Ali try and make our tones as horrific as possible. One of the heaviest tracks on the album. It eventually opens up to a riff with an irregular time signature, with which I place a polyrhythmic tapping part. Eventually we reach a kind of The Police meets post-rock section and finish it off with a joint-tapping part. We open live sets with this one a lot and its always great fun. ‘Illusory‘ 7776 7776 8776 8785, 7776 7776 8776 8786, 7776 7776 8776 8786, 7776 7776 8776 8788. ‘When You Die, You’re Truly Alone‘ This song is a bit of mockery of pop songs. For ages I wanted to explore the idea of where a three-chord song could go. Could you layer ideas on top of one another to create  a song more interesting that your standard chart topper? In the second half of the song a lot of people will think they hear electronic drums but in fact what they’re hearing is Ali’s bass playing. Cleverly combining his playing techniques with some effects to sound like electronic drums. This song is one of my favourites to play live and is 100% the most chilled-out song on the album. ‘I’m Not A Comedian‘ I once saw Steve playing the main part of the track as a finger warm-up. I saw an idea and pushed for us to work on it as a song as I felt that we could do something with it. Steve began structuring the track and I wrote some complimentary tapping parts however for the most part this is a track very much driven by him and one of the best on the album in my opinion. It was the obvious choice for the video as it was a little different to what we had done before. Also one of the few tracks on the album with vocals, as well as the only one that has three people singing on it! Points for understanding the Botch influence. ‘Escape Velocity‘ One of the last songs we wrote for the album. I think this song leaks the most of all our own individual influences due to the number of turns and speeds that this song goes through. For me, it’s my favorite on the album; I love the heavier sections that bleed through as well as the hugely ambient section in the middle. It’s a nice drop in pace for the second half that quickly recovers. ‘It’s Not A Ghost… It’s Gravity‘ We’d previously released this song as a single and did not want to suffer the fate of being viewed as lazy for re-recording and putting it on the album so we wrote a new version. We changed the intro, the chaotic middle section and added a few small details at the end to make this version of the song vastly differentiate from its parent version. ‘Because Your Path Is Unlike Any Other‘ The title track of the album starts off with one of the most fun timing pieces to play live that we’ve written. At first this was an absolute nightmare to understand and for our new drummer Sy, learning from scratch, even more so. Once locked in though this song becomes great fun to play. We added an almost Floyd-inspired middle section before returning to the main riff. I think a combination of Bloc Party, *gates and Native inspired the ending. It was also a good opportunity to use Steve’s voice to really emphasize the ending of the song. Back when we did Audiotree in 2016, we opened the set with this track and now we’re using as an opener occasionally. ‘Mountainous‘ A lot of people won’t know this but ‘Mountainous’ was actually the first song we wrote for the album. It was part of a second wave of tracks that came directly after the EP and instantly became our signature closer. The track is too long to be a single but stands out as the obvious choice for a big finisher and packs a lot of power to pick the audience up at the end of the set. Everyone was in agreement that this track should close the album.
Filed under: Album review, New music, Preview Tagged: Album review, alternative music, ArcTangent, Bandcamp, Because Your Path Is Unlike Any Other, Dialects, independent artist, indie music, instrumental band, instrumental music, math rock, math rock music, new music, post rock, post rock music, rock music, Through Love Records, track by track