D.R.U.G.S 

                                    Written By Jacques Smut & Edited By Brooke Prendergast

D.R.U.G.S was a song I wrote and brought to jam with Shane Ogley (Bass) and Mathew Edmond (Drums). Until the day of recording, it was a completely different song. It was slower and janglier; almost like a psychedelic Patti Smith or a twangy-clean guitar jangle Jefferson Airplane would write. It had a clean, semi-Lydian guitar solo that would creep out of the oscillating phaser pedal, and besides the odd scream and harmonic wail, it never had any vocals — nothing ever seemed to fit. Before we got together to record a track, we jammed it a few times. Shane was flicking through the presets on a multi-effects bass pedal he brought with him, droning the E to F that sits behind the rest of the music. He took a moment between drones to stop plucking and adjust to the next preset, and when he landed on the crisp, sustained fuzz that you hear in the song, it cut through the mix and worked perfectly with the drums. I was so satisfied just listening to them jam it. 

We recorded the bass and drums together, and they went home. I lurched at it for some time, twiddling at the multiple places I could take it. I always felt as if I was taking something from the existing mix each time I added to it. I wanted to build myself around the other two without overshadowing the beauty of their sound and relationship. The bass had the tone and the drums had the groove, and I needed to fill the gaps in between them. This process requires a lot of tinkering and experimentation. Plenty of retakes and unused tracks; each one edging the song in slightly different directions. 

D.R.U.G.S isn't an acronym. It doesn't stand for anything; I just like the way letters look capitalised and separated by full stops. It's a purely aesthetic play on the motif used throughout the song — "If you wanna make love, you gotta take drugs". 

Which I guess, to speak philosophically refers to the inability to feel relaxed at any point on the emotional spectrum of human experience; the obsessive need to clarify that one’s internal ideological apparatus and framework coincides with external apparatuses. 

Hyper-formalised structures of the external world feel unnatural to my humanity, to my social existence, and to my human experience. 

When our internal world feels faulty for not marrying up with the external world, we fall into the trap of self-policing worry that only intensifies the pain and tension. This insecurity drives us to seek validation and find relief through various mediums, but liberation from the taught tension of stress fades with the fantasy of these moments. Eventually, we realise that the future we fetishise is no cure for living in a stressed body. 

If we were never encouraged to do something different or non-formalised as children, I’ve realised that we must become the parent we needed then. 

We must reorient our internal framework, our interconnected nodes of thought and behaviour, to be more compassionate to the internal self. We must give ourselves the same unconditional love and understanding that a parent would give their child — to freely explore the non-formalised reality of subjectivity. We must be all-loving caregivers to ourselves, always asking questions with the parental tone of love, warmth and friendliness. 

Mastering this process ourselves helps us to extend such understanding to the people around us.