What’s it like to wear stereo headphones with only one ear?
Spotify Hear:
Bandcamp Hear:
https://fletchmusic.bandcamp.com/track/headphones
When I was in my early teens (1990 onwards) I was devouring music via a Sony Walkman and a collection of cheap cassette tapes I had bought on a family trip to Bali when I was about 12 years old.
Like most teenagers, I would escape the world under my headphones reading books in my bed, or on a car trip or camping holiday….listening to older bands like Led Zeppelin, The Doors and Deep Purple and more recent stuff like Ice T, REM and Midnight Oil.
Around this time I also begun to appreciate the fact that I only have one working ear, a hard thing to ignore when you are listening to stereo music.
Sometimes I would put a tape on, start listening and think, hang on!! this sounds different than normal, then I would change the phones over and I’d remember that my right ear did not work.
HEADPHONES is an exploration into this mono vs stereo world. I did all the production in this song and I can confidently imagine that I have created an interesting stereo mix. I just can’t actually hear it.
I was tempted to go bombastic with early Beatles style “hard panning” where you have all the vocals on one side and the instruments on the other, just to highlight a point. But heavy stereo mixing can be unusual to listen to even if you are not half deaf.
All the percussive and tape sounds are samples taken from the body of an old 1958 classical guitar and manipulated by my brother-in-law Andrew Morse on a ‘Deluge’ Synth.
Cold Ghost regular Dan Booth lends his jazzed Electric Guitar style and weird guitar FX to the mix. Thanks again Dan!!
Thanks to Guy and Jake at Serotonin Productions for the use of the studio for mastering and also to Heath Properjohn at Loaded Studio for helping me get the artwork sorted.
Lyrics
There’s two sides to every song
Is one side right and one side wrong?
I don’t know which part to sing
When I plug my headphones in
I’ve got Led Zeppelin, The Doors, Ice T
Jimmy’s playing Driving South on the BBC
I want left and then I want right
‘Cause I don’t know which mood I’m in tonight
Now I go from right to left
It’s a choice of two worlds for a boy who’s deaf
Hold on something’s wrong
Have I got the right tape playing
or have I put the wrong headphone on
I’ve got two sides to everything
When I plug my headphones in
*Keep an eye out for Cold Ghost’s next single Lip Reading!!
Cold Ghost 