How to make the sounds from St. Vincent 'Los Ageless' with DRC
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Annie Clark AKA St. Vincent is the genius behind this week's DRC Sound Design Tutorial. The (three times!!!) Grammy Award winner was born in Oklahoma but in next to no time she was flying across the globe, touring the world, guitar in hand.
She started playing aged 12, and went on to enrol at the acclaimed Berklee College of Music in Boston, but quit after three years to pursue her dream: she was destined to be in concert halls, not lecture theatres.
Having played in a few different bands, most notably ‘The Polyphonic Spree’, she decided to go it alone under the moniker ‘St.Vincent’, recording her debut studio album in 2006. There was dual meaning behind this chosen artist name, part tribute to her great-grandma and also a nod to the Nick Cave song ‘There She Goes, My Beautiful World’ which features the line “And Dylan Thomas died drunk in / St. Vincent's hospital". ‘Marry Me’ was released to the world in 2007, followed by ‘Actor’ in 2009 and ‘Strange Mercy’ in 2011.
By now, St. Vincent was firmly in the spotlight, working parallel in her solo career and collaborating with other musicians such as Andrew Bird and David Byrne. Byrne (formerly of Talking Heads) became such a great creative company to Clark that they released a studio album together called ‘Love This Giant’ in 2012 and an EP of remixes and live recordings entitled ‘Brass Tactics’ in 2013.
Her fifth solo album, the eponymously titled ‘St. Vincent’ was released in 2014, including the hits ‘Birth in Reverse’, ‘Digital Witness’ and ‘Prince Johnny'. With this release, she won Best Alternative Music Album at the Grammy Awards in 2015 and high acclaim from the most respected musical critics.
The follow up ‘Masseduction’, which includes this week’s featured tutorial track ‘Los Ageless’ was released in 2017. The album won Best Recording Package and Best Rock Song at the Grammy Awards and also peaked at number 10 on the Billboard 200.
‘Los Ageless’ is an ironic work about (guess what?) Los Angeles! The starving for youth and beauty, the toxicity of fame and the resulting crazy lifestyle. Learn how to recreate the track’s catchy sounds with everyone’s favourite virtual analog synth, DRC - Polyphonic Synthesizer.
Click here to download the Ableton project file
For all your Annie-log sounds,
Team Imaginando