It’s probably a stretch to call I Didn’t Mean to Haunt You an ambient album, but as a songwriter, Quadeca clearly takes more cues from the intricate details of minimal electronic music and field recordings than he does the cutting-edge pop music his recordings more closely resemble on the surface. Even when Ben Lasky’s songs do invoke the prominent voices consistently pushing pop music forward—Caroline Polachek more recently, Björk for Lasky’s entire lifetime—it’s always the details buried under layers of production that stick out to him and inspire ideas for his own songs.
More than anything, Haunt You is a collage of such ideas shamelessly lifted and properly transmogrified for his own unique palette, balancing far-too-vague genres like art-pop, indietronica, and alt-R&B as he steers the record’s dense, hour-long runtime through territory recalling everything from the fractured, post-industrial emo-rap of Cremation Lily to a post-apocalyptic take on Jonathan Rado’s psych-pop production on “fractions of infinity”—all while a list of disparate collaborators ranging from Danny Brown, to Swans’ unusually jacked vibraphonist Thor Harris, to Ye’s Sunday Service Choir drag you further into the album’s disorienting liminal reality.
With the influences playlist he put together for us, Quadeca’s focus is clearly on songs that effectively find inventive ways of viscerally recreating childhood for the listener—an idea that’s certainly familiar to anyone who’s had Haunt You on repeat since it dropped last month. Stream along and read through his reasonings for each pick below.
Luiz Bonfá, “Tinguá”
There’s something magical about “Tinguá.” It feels like the past rubbing your back. It feels like sitting through the end credits of a movie that changes you. The beauty of the chord progressions and old degraded guitar tone…it sounds like the memories you have as a child where you’re by yourself. In my album I wanted to include a bunch of sounds and melodies that invoke childhood. I know the term “nostalgia” is overprescribed, but I wanted to recreate some of that magic, the feeling of going through your old home and sinking into those feelings for just a second.
Duster, “Constellations”
Understated and pretty. Perfect analog lo-fi atmosphere. It feels like a video of a starry sky shot through an old camcorder; it feels like fog; it feels like skipping stones in a cold marsh. I love the buried vocals and the guitar tones—two things I drew inspiration from. This song creates a world and lets you live in it. It never takes you out of it. That’s something I was trying to accomplish throughout my album: no matter how grand or minimal, there’s character in the sound palette that keeps you locked into the space.
Björk, “Pluto”
You can hear the production influence of this one most directly in a song like “knots”—the distorted vocals, the instrumental that feels like a panic attack. The way it introduces soothing/ambient melodic elements that build as the song progresses makes it such a dynamic banger that does so much more for me emotionally than just makes me nod my head. It’s an out-of-body abrasiveness. This and songs like “March of the Pigs” by Nine Inch Nails recontextualized the way I thought about writing an “aggressive song.” “Cocoon” off Vespertine is another fave that inspired me—the way you can hear the loud breaths in it so viscerally. Amazing.
The Microphones, “The Glow, Pt. 2”
Phil is the fucking GOAT. This is just one of many incredible songs I could pick. The mixing is incredible and feels one-of-a-kind. You know, there are some magnum-opus songs that feel like a decadent fine dining experience. This one is like a stranger inviting you to their cabin in the middle of the woods and cooking you the best meal you’ve ever had and it makes you cry. It helped inspire within me the challenge of creating songs that go on a journey to a bunch of places that shouldn’t make sense together on paper, but flow naturally in order to tell a story.
Jane Remover, “your clothes”
This song is catchy, constantly exciting, texturally insane, and just so cleverly written. What specifically inspired me is at 1:40—the way the master degrades and comes back in is something that’s so uniquely immersive. It’s like a figure skater tripping and falling into the most incredible splits you’ve ever seen. Before I heard Frailty, that’s something I knew I needed to experiment with in my album—I was using grainy/staticky artifacts to represent the eternal light of the afterlife seeping in, and also to convey attempts at communication between purgatory/physical realm etc. Hearing Jane do this in such an additive way gave me the spark and affirmation to go even more bold with it.
Simon & Garfunkel, “Old Friends”
Just listen to those strings! It feels like a time-lapse of a garden blooming and freezing to death and then blooming again and then getting set on fire… 1:16, listen to that! And then around 2:00 listen to how effortlessly it melts into dissonance. This song takes you on a journey, and every sound feels alive in it.
Caroline Polachek, “Billions”
This song is so fucking crazy—maybe my fave to come out this year. Love the granulated percussion. Everything feels tediously crafted while still being utterly immersive and feeling like it was all meant to be. This is an example of a masterfully done maximal song with an interesting structure, lots of emotion, and it transports me somewhere special. It made me feel like, “OK, yeah, it’s worth going the extra mile on this shit.” It felt both validating and inspiring to hear. I don’t know if this makes sense, but the song has an uncanny-valley feeling to it, and the way its elements all come together and overlap in the end makes me ascend. I wanted to make something feel like that in my own way.
Lingua Ignota, “PENNSYLVANIA FURNACE”
This song is so full and intense. The subtle chord progression changes, the way the foot on the pedal punctuates the low end…the slow burn of this song is incredible. I know the most direct parallel people will draw from this to my album is “fantasyworld”—both being dark piano ballads—but I actually had that one recorded a couple months before I heard this album. Personally the influence is most apparent in moments of “born yesterday,” “memories we lost in translation,” and even “cassini’s division.” This song and a few others on Sinner Get Ready changed the way I thought about the concept of producing a “big drop” using subtle but bold elements that feel earned by the time they’re introduced.
The Flaming Lips, “Sleeping on the Roof”
What inspired me the most from this one was the ambient loop of crickets and what sounds like a sprinkler system clicking that repeats throughout the track. Those sounds, as well as the detuned, synthy melodies, create such a one-of-a-kind atmosphere.
Viper, “Hey, Maybe One Day You’ll See Me Again”
This song sounds like when you stay up all night and eat a milkless bowl of cereal at 5 a.m. right before the sun rises. That 20 minutes before, when there’s just a little bit of light. Do I sound high? This is just a beautiful lo-fi song that feels like it’s on purgatory radio. Another one of those songs that inspired me through its own insular world.
仮想夢プラザ, “最初の別れ”
I listened to this song falling asleep every night for, like, two months when I started working on the album. The ambiance of the compressed rainy textures alongside the vintage warm bells and spacey arpeggios…it’s peaceful, calming, and it feels like a song that shouldn’t exist. More purgatory music in the most beautiful way. I played it for my friend Rozey and it scared him, so that’s how I know there’s a little something special lurking inside of it.
