This track is one of the newer tracks for the album. It took shape in 2010. It is slated to be track 4 on “Hindsight”.
(The following was originally posted in a track by track breakdown on the Reinvision Substack page on Jan, 18 2023. Original post here Losing Control – Substack Track Breakdown Entry)
Background
This is arguably the first song of this bunch that didn’t start it’s existence as a Reinvision, Reinvision tangential, or Jake Skylyr song. This song actually began life in a short-lived project called “Ophilya Payne”. This project had a brief moment of life during 2010. It consisted of bassist Dagon Naxos, vocalist/lyricist Nico, and myself. During this limited time, we did come up with a few useful musical bits, and this was one of them. It was also one of an even smaller population of complete ideas. There will be a little more on that, and Ophilya Payne in another one of the upcoming track breakdowns.
This track is one of those rarer examples where the lyrics came before the music. Nico wrote lyrics, or arguably it may have even been considered more of a poem, and sent it to me. Using that as a starting point, I pieced together the music. According to my files, the first recordings start on September 30, 2010.
The music actually came together pretty fast, as did the arrangement, since I was using the lyrics to sort of dictate that. There are recordings from 9/30 titled “1st part” and then the next files are from 10/7 are titled “Full Song”, so it really came to fruition over about a week.
I recall that the speed of the composition, and the initial result impressed them, as well as myself. I was pretty happy with the fundamental song and thought that it had pretty good potential.
With Ophilya Payne not really going anywhere shortly after it began honestly, this song joined the plethora of others just kinda hanging out on my hard drives collecting “digital dust”. I attempted to break it back out again around 2016 for yet another project, but that also didn’t work out.
In 2022 when I was revisiting my archives determining tracks for “Hindsight”, I came across this one and knew that it would match up with this group of songs perfectly. Between the dynamics of the piece, the heaviness, and the stealthy technicality of it, it embodied what I was going for on this album.
As of late 2022, this is slated to be track 4, and the side 1 closer, on the upcoming album “Hindsight”.
Demos
As I mentioned this song came together quickly. To give an idea of the speed, On 9/30/10 the first recordings started at 2:14 AM. At 7:15 AM I have 3 minutes and 20 seconds of the beginning of the song in a mixdown file called “1st part”. Since it’s not really much different than what’s in the 2022 demo, I’m going to provide here the version with “guide melody” so you can get a little sneak peek at how the vocals are kind of slated to go:
(not bad for 5 hours of work starting with nothing, huh? 
)
The original 2010 full song demo was the foundation for the 2022 Hindsight Demo, with the only real change being re-EQing of guitars. For some reason this one took a LOT of guitar re-EQing to slightly match the tone of the other demos. I have no idea why. Perhaps my tone journey and acclimating of my ear for good recorded guitar tone was just in a weird place at that time. Although this 1st part version here isn’t terrible. Who knows. Time can’t erase ALL wounds!
That said I can’t wait until I can get those guitars updated in the final version!
Lyrics
As I mentioned, the original lyrics were written by Nico, and presumably, were going to be sung by her too. However, as I was extracting this one from hiding, I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to do with it lyrically. While I did like the original lyrics, enough so that I clearly wrote an entire song around them, I wasn’t sure if they were going to work if she wasn’t the one singing it, as they are/were extremely personal. Also, I did feel the track could, and would work with a male singer, as I was hoping to keep that the vibe for “Hindsight”. Those initial lyrics weren’t the best match for a male vocalist.
This was evident when I had briefly worked with another singer on this in 2016. We actually wrote all new lyrics from scratch for it while keeping the music as it was. But even those lyrics didn’t really feel right for this either.
So when I started working on this again in 2022, I once again considered just writing yet another entirely new set of lyrics. But I felt that would lose everything that inspired the song in the first place. SOMETIMES that’s a good idea, especially as a compositional tool, and a method to utilize other work to help you out of writer’s block. But I didn’t want to make this song just an exercise in composition, and I didn’t want to lose sight of what inspired the song initially.
So I used Nico’s lyrics as a starting point, and modified them here and there to make them more conducive to a male singer, and ultimately result in my interpretation of what she was initially trying to convey.
I’m pretty happy with the “hybrid” lyric results. As with any artistic/creative venture, I can’t guarantee that these are definitely the final and perfect lyrics, but as of early 2023, this is what I’m looking towards utilizing and recording for the album. Well, not me, per se. An ACTUAL singer.
Losing Control – Lyrics:
My breath sits frozen in my chest
Anticipation of what happens next
I know it’s wrong I shouldn’t
I can’t stop
Falling into the same trap again
I’m reckless
I can’t say no
I’m reckless
I feel it pulling at my soul, I can’t escape
Can I trust myself anymore?
Feeding the fear inside, I push ahead
And I open the door
The shadow in the hall
Isn’t me
I can’t blame anyone
I always knew what I had to get
It’s reckless
I’m in too deep
It’s endless
But I can’t say so
And if I crash
Pick up the pieces and start again…
I’m losing control
I’m losing control
Links
Here are some links to hear “Losing Control”: