![]() “I felt pressure to learn how to communicate my ideas to Adrian in a way that would bring understanding of what’s going on in my mind. That was our biggest challenge, especially coming from the first record where the relationship between the two of us was kind of cut and dried. “Having spent time together in the studio learning what that process feels like, what it smells like, what it sounds like, the goal has always been for us to do something that moves us first. “It was quite an undertaking for the simple fact that we’re two individuals who are confident in what we have to say individually from the perspective of songwriting and production,” Burton says. ![]() None of that is apparent in the finished piece, which is extravagant in a manner that fatally self-conscious people couldn’t envisage. It’s interesting to note that both musicians have admitted to a sense of trepidation when beginning the process, with expectation weighing on them for the first time. It is a head-spinning splurge of gloss and melody, tied up in a virtuosic vocal performance, swooping string motifs and sauntering Spanish guitars. The first thing that’s apparent when the needle drops on the opener More Than a Love Song is that Burton and Quesada haven’t halved their ambitions while ceding ground to the other. I’m just glad that Adrian was generous enough to allot me that space, from his perspective, to allow me to explore myself so that I might be proud of the aesthetic altogether, making it easier to perform on a day-to-day basis, as well as making the engagement a little bit more authentic for where my mind goes when making music.” Black Pumas. “The situation was imploring the producer inside myself to start ideas that really were moving to me. “It was hard changing the system within which we make things together,” Burton admits. It hangs together because they have moved on without cratering the classy sheen that coated every surface Quesada touched the first time around. ![]() Perhaps reflecting this experience, Chronicles of a Diamond appears to be the work of a pairing that has grown together but not grown apart – its songs are still slick, diaphanous things, but they’re also all over the place, bouncing from growling guitar leads to rich, harmony-laden soul and back again. I was very thankful that I got to allow that to breathe and live.” Black Pumas. My goal was to retain the raw emotion and beauty of the demo and that doesn’t happen very often. It went through his filters for some of the sonic qualities that you hear. I said, ‘Cool, this is in a good enough place to send to Adrian.’ He didn’t have to do very much, he added his lead guitar part at the very end, and did some producing around the bridge. “I said to myself, this song needs another element, and I went back to my inspiration of the nursery rhyme that you hear in Big with Tom Hanks, you know, ‘shimmy shimmy cocoa pop.’ I took that demo to another friend’s studio to re-record the drums. I had the mini Korg to find that ice cream synthesiser colour, and I love the idea of arpeggiation – it gives what you might hear as a loop a bit of drive.” I have a loop of a lead part, I have a distorted guitar rhythm part, I was just picking everything up to listen to myself and what I felt was the right next step. “I asked him to help me record an idea just for the sake of recording an idea, but doing so in like an hour. “It was just myself and a friend of mine, it was maybe two in the morning and we’re having fun on the porch sharing music, drinking and being merry,” Burton recalls. Some of the LP’s most eye-catching songs – such as the singsong Ice Cream (Pay Phone) – were his initial creations, with Quesada then going through the gears at his Electric Deluxe Recorders studio in Austin, turning them into pieces that fitted with the band’s established palette. This time around, on the forthcoming Chronicles of a Diamond, Burton was in from the drop. But when it came time to assemble their next statement together, Black Pumas had to figure out how they functioned when creative give and take was on the table.
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