Fence of a Farm

Written and Recorded in 1993

 

This tune originally had its lyrics, which were not a peaceful depiction of rural scenery but were full of cynical views on human society ornamented with a metaphor of human herds; vast majority of conformists inside of the fence, and quite a few outsiders outside of the fence. To describe my personal position at the time of writing this tune, in accordance with the said metaphor, I was a born outsider, who was being held inside of the fence mostly by surrounding ‘others’. The ties between me and these ‘others’ will be utterly cut off within a few years but such future was not foreseeable in the early 1993, when the tune was written. 

Along with Out for Walking (in the city), this tune was one of my initial attempts to feature programmed synthesizer played by the digital sequencer for replacing the role of the rhythm machine. I wrote several pieces of music in this fashion, especially in the first half of 1993, some went well and others didn’t – I assess this tune to be categorised as the former. Use of synthesizer in this way could reflect my attitude towards the trend in the music scene in those days; I still retained an ambition for trying to catch up with the latest fashion whilst, as the piano solo in the middle clearly shows, the core essence of my musical taste had nothing to do with such sort of ‘scene’ at all. My band mates wisely rejected to play this tune and no further recording of this tune has ever made. For making this video, I made the instrumental remix from the original master for the audio track to be presented with some pictures I took when I visited rural part of Ireland in the summer of 2001, in order to make the tune more enjoyable by getting rid of impressions associated with the cynical metaphor in its original form.