Artist Comment - ali |
“i can draw higanbana flowers” – sentences from the utterly deranged i’ve been following Vane’s music since the early days, so i was super excited to get the opportunity to draw the art for Higanbana Milk Tea’s reprisal!! at the request of FLAVOR FOLEY, miss ANRI Arcane is in a new outfit! she’s all dressed up for a funeral, isn’t she cute…?! the gap between being all dolled up and disrespecting someone by sitting on their dilapidated grave is so charming to me lol i feel like this song leaves a very strong impression, so i honestly had no trouble envisioning what i wanted to do for this illustration. i think ANRI’s cold expression suits it the best, but i also imagined her with a scary smile especially in the last part of the song. if you could imagine that for me when you listen that’d be great ty i already love so many of the original songs so when i listen to ROUNDTABLE REPRISE, i go “wow!!! two cakes!!!!” and this song is no different. thank you FLAVOR FOLEY for two cakes. please enjoy the album everypony |
rice: welcome to the ROUNDTABLE REPRISE roundup! i'll introduce the concept of ROUNDTABLE REPRISE again quickly:
basically, as FLAVOR FOLEY is a group of 3 musicians, we wanted to make FLAVOR FOLEY versions of our solo works!
I wanted to avoid insinuating that these are “remakes” or “remasters” because I don’t like insinuating that the originals are “outdated” or otherwise lacking in anything. The intention isn’t really to “improve” on any of the songs, we just wanted to do like, another version of them as a group. Friendship Versions of these songs. Wait let’s change the name to Friendship Versions
Vane: HIGABANA MILK TEAAA!!!! this song is one of my absolute favorites, it was my first attempt at writing a song that was a bit more pop-influenced and more minimalistic in production (prior to HMT, most of my production was super dense and maximalist. It still can be this but thats besides the point). I've been wanting to give this song a fresh coat of paint for awhile so im really happy with how the RR version of this song came out! jamie did such an excellent jump punching up the production, and I'm so so in love with the new verse that rice wrote. i also got the chance to revisit the production myself which as alot of fun!
Jamie: this song is such a fucking banger
rice: it's sooooooo good
Jamie: i've always been such a fan of vane's more electronic solo work! they have such a idiosyncratic way of approaching these sorts of songs that i find incredibly compelling, and it's honestly influenced my production a lot as well, especially when it comes to embracing distortion and noise. for the reprise, i wanted to lean really heavily into the lurching, seedy feeling of the original's instrumental, which meant blaringly loud bass and sparse, crunchy sound design. also if i remember correctly, a sample of binging with babish screaming? very fun to make, regardless!
(side note: my favorite solo vane lily song is digital/physical heart… remember this for later… i'm not just saying this because i want more people to listen to this song even if i do just want more people to listen to it… i promise it's relevant…)
rice: this song was originally made with shi'an, who was a Chinese voicebank without native english capabilities at the time, so all of the lyrics had to be manually and phonetically written out in the software. so a lot of the overlapping and repeating vocals were simply as a result of the limitation of "damnnn we don't wanna tune that much so let's juse reuse stuff" (i was one of the tuners). but i've always been really charmed by how that limitation enhanced the final piece!!!
Vane: fun fact!! the overlapping vocals in the final chorus of hmt is directly inspired by the final chorus of “guiltless” by dodie!! dodie was one of my favorite musicians for a long time (still is!! hope you're doing well queen) and “guiltless” is one of my favorite songs by her (along with "when" and "human") ((i am only now remembering as im typing this that she has a song called human)) (((sorry for reheating your nachos queen))).. i thought the final chorus overlapping all the different sections of the songs was SO cool, so i did it in higabana milk tea!! ive honestly done it a bunch in other songs of mine since then too…im kind of just a really edgy and wordy dodie when you think about it
anyways, now that THATS out of the way i can finally get on my soapbox. i can finally talk about why i originally started this song. i was playing phasmophobia with my dear friends and they LEFT ME to DIE inside the the house while the ghost was in there. it was really fucked up and a deep beytrayal and fundamentally something i'd never forgive of course. so i decided to write a song about this to ease my woes…obviously this bit didnt last and i ended up turning the song into something more serious, but this is the Real origin of HMT. its all because tephe and friends you FUCKERS!!!! THIS IS MY RETRIBUTION AFTER ALL THESE YEARS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! shoutouts tephe btw thats my goat. he's the source of the "oh no" sample in the song it's from a clip of us playing LOL
rice: to my memory vane has wanted to remake higanbana milk tea for long before flavor foley existed HAHAHA it was actually the original Vane roundtable reprise pitch for CARDIAC CONTREPOINT, but we didn't feel it matched the "love" theme, so it got kicked down the road to this album!!! been a long time coming!!! and it's fucking awesome it rules so muchhhhhhh
also! the new verse was written by me! teehee! as i said earlier i did some of the tuning on the original. also the original was shi'an beacuse i asked vane really nicely if it could be her. so this is kind of also my reprise too (no it's not) (lying)
Jamie: as far as the voicebank for this song… i'm gonna level with you all. i exerted my influence here for an entirely shallow reason. i just wanted to do an ANRI song because i love her and she's my favorite. and these two acquiesced because they love me.
rice: don't worry about my personal feelings about replacing shi'an (my favorite) as a vocalist on yet another reprise. actually this is the fourth time that shi'an has been replaced as a vocalist between the initial concept and the final release. not that i'm counting them or anything (weathergirl) (weiward romance) (snowflake) (higanbana milk tea). im not mad about it at all. it's fine. anri is cool. she's cool. it's cool.
Jamie: you're right it is cool : ) i love anri
rice: and i love you jamie
Jamie: Bro are you gay?
Vane: im gayer than both of you
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