The warm EP is the perfect prelude to the album slated to drop soon. Throughout the EP, pnk uses his samples wisely and tastefully, making a solid transition from simply remixing tracks (most of which have since been deleted or taken down) to creating songs that fluctuate in momentum.
All of my work is inspired. I hadn’t planned on dropping an EP before my album but I had these three songs that had more synths than the others on my album. I thought in the album it would take away from the cohesiveness, but together it would be a solid project. I didn’t take these off of my album because they weren’t good enough, but because they didn’t fit as well sonically as I want them too. I think the diversity in sounds and arrangement helped make them stand out on their own individually, but together they sound stronger in one project. I appreciate all the love and support I’ve received on it so far. Thanks for taking the time to read this write up, and thank you to rosemount for giving me this opportunity! If you have any questions about anything that I do, feel free to ask me on twitter or ask.fm!
Skinny
This song samples Skinny by Bones. I actually made an entirely different version of this song months ago, but I never released it. When I was looking for samples for my album, I went back and listened to a bunch of my old songs, and I realized I could completely rework this into something better. So I stripped down everything but the sample and completely remade the song with entirely new sounds. This was the first song I had done for this EP. I love the sample because it reminds me so much of Clams Casino who is a huge inspiration for me. I dislike a lot of the melodies I write so it took me a while to get that down but I actually ended up using the same synth that Martin Garrix used in Animal with just some reverb.
Liquor
This song samples Hold My Liquor by Kanye West. I was driving to a friends house and had a playlist on shuffle when this came on, and I had heard it a bunch of times but I was just thinking how different this production is for Kanye and how much of a step back from his earlier work was when Justin Vernon’s part came in, and it just clicked in my head that I could sample it. I’m a huge fan of both Kanye and Justin, and I didn’t want to disrespect them with my sample but it was too good to pass up. His vocals are amazing, one of my favorite songs of all time is Woods by Bon Iver and it’s literally just his vocals. Arca inspired the 2nd half of the song with the drums, and I’m happy with how it turned out. Sam Gellaitry with the automation on the reverb wet/dry control inspired the 2 transitions in the middle and end.
Dead
This song samples Jump Off the Roof by Vince Staples. I am a big fan of hip-hop as you can tell by what I sample. So I was just listening to Summertime ’06 (which is awesome, Clams has some amazing production on there) and when I got to that song I heard the sample and an idea just popped into my head. I’m careful when I sample hip hop not to just add different drums and basically make another beat with the same sample, but what I had an idea for sounded totally different than the song so I started laying stuff down. The main inspiration for this song was stickupkid by Shlohmo, who’s my favorite artist of all time. I highly recommend all of his work, but Bad Vibes is my favorite. This was also one of the first times I used sliding 808s and I like how they turned out to make the chorus parts jump a little extra. This was the 2nd song I had made for the EP.