The Dangerous Summer - Coming Home (2022) Album • Page 44

The scenario was the guys were going to start working on songs and send them to me to work on. AJ and Matt were working on their end together, Ben was recording drums and I was waiting to hear back from them.

Eventually found out they didn’t tell Ben but they used Featured X to hire Aaron from Underoath to drum instead. And then used that as like “yeah Aaron is basically in our band” which allegedly he didn’t really like…

So anyways they just left Ben in the dark and ghosted him.

 

Terrible. I love Ben’s drumming.

 

He’s a phenomenal drummer, but he’s even better as a person. Just a kind guy with a lot of depth. I call to check in and shoot the shit with him all the time. He was a very dedicated and passionate member who got treated terribly. They just navigated around him as if he was irrelevant and or dead weight. But he was actively involved and committed to their project. It had to have been devastating and challenging for him. Again another example of how confusing and hard it is to be the 1 rational human being outside of their toxic and irrational world and they make it seem like YOU were the irrational one worth leaving behind.

 

This thread popped up to the top due to Ben himself commenting in there, but the new song his band put out recently is really cool.

dim (ex-The Dangerous Summer) – from dark to light we'll see • forum.chorus.fm

 

Can confirm that Ben has always been super kind to me. His fills in Catholic Girls are pretty incredible.

I don’t envy any band trying to make money, but to hire Aaron through a website and then promote him as being in the band is objectively funny in a fucked up way.

 

A good example of the short sighted wins. Sure that will fluff up some numbers, ruin your relationship with your drummer, make things weird for Aaron, and your fans, and pet your ego thinking you’ve made the biggest song of your career because you got Aaron’s name and the Spotify playlist chick thinking you guys are the shit… for now… now go raise the bar again with a new song and fluff those numbers up with quality.

 

He always seemed super genuine. Glad to hear that’s the case.

What I always loved about his drumming was he added so much complexity without overplaying the song - it could have been played much simpler but what he added just gave it that extra umph and was what the song needed. Something not every drummer excels at. Catholic Girls and This is Life, to name a few, were always huge standouts of this to me.

 

My challenge with him was he would bring 120% to the table. So it was about how to drop 20% without killing the vibe and without being in the overplaying territory. It was a fun jigsaw puzzle. I think Ben learned a lot there and thinks about drum parts differently now.

 

Wait, they paid for the Aaron feature? They totally promoted that as if it was some kind of organic thing that happened lol.

 

Yeah this Feature X shit is hilarious. They really tried selling it like Aaron was in talks to drum for their upcoming tour and play on that next record.

 

Sad part is I found Aaron's drumming to be a major step down. Sound wise especially.. the Tom sound on L.A in a cop car sounds so much like a early 2000s demo it pulls me out of the song

And the rest of the drum tracks from him on there just have a very muted, and generic vibe to me

 

Awesome insight... what was it that you were able to have them focus on that made MN such a major leap in quality compared to the surrounding output from them? Did you have them take more time on the writing?

 

Yes because they are cheap samples that are triggered

 

Ugh.. I wondered. Any guess why he did that? Be so much better raw dog lol

 

I made them spend the first 10 days jamming in a room making songs. We had basic mics up so they could record it and AJ could write. Therefore we had pretty fleshed out ideas of every song that they had gotten up to the best of their abilities. Then I just started song by song drums and guitars, changing up drum patterns and progressions and strum patterns to follow AJ’s melodies. And then I would just work with him on his Melodies and focus on the syllable count and symmetry and delivery of each. Trying to just focus on making everything cohesive and connected. From there it was just about chasing the euphoria and trying to make each song feel special. Importing Peter Gabriel samples, or using my shitty drum machine and organ and juxtaposing songs together. I just tried to keep their arrangements simple and find the right sounds and tones to support the intended emotion.

 

Way cheaper and faster than recording live drums and making them sound good

 

I hope AJ takes a break for a couple years. As someone who loved their first 2-3 albums and then has barely kept track post self-titled (except for Mother Nature, which was great), I imagine he could benefit from that personally and professionally.

 

One of my favourite parts of Sam’s records is his drum sound.

 

He wont

 

what’s sad to me through all the accounts of AJ I’ve been reading outside of just the obvious alcoholism of it all is how he seems like he never really ever grew up (given his upbringing it’s not hard to see why) and is living out the rockstar fantasy a 16 year old kid has, thinking getting a major feature from a big name (no matter how it actually came about) is the next big thing for his band, burning bridges with people he finds replaceable, the non stop partying that his band has just become a vehicle for, this is all stuff you’d expect from someone 15 years younger than him on their first big tour, not a guy in his 30s playing to 100 people a night (tops) 7 albums in or however many it is now. bro needs to grow up and get humbled a bit but again that’s not happening

 

I listen to War Paint on a near constant basis especially during the summer and RFTS, Mother Nature, and golden record all hold a special place in my heart (and self titled and coming home are pretty good) but it’s hard to ignore the trajectory here. And it’s clear how much of Mother Nature can be attributed to a talented producer (something I always suspected given how big of a leap in quality Proper Dose was for TSSF) so hearing their attitude following that record tells me all I need to know about where this is headed

 

So did they pay to have Aaron write the song and sing on it too? That made me think originally it all was organic/ a collab.

 

Most collabs aren’t as organic as you’d think but this takes the cake for me

 

I just assumed it was organic since they both love big hats

only a partial /s here

 

Next we will find out he Hired Derek for The Ditches off of Fiverr