Making the “Without You” reprise with fable
Fable and I properly met just over a year ago, and immediately we got along like a house on fire. We initially met because he needed a music video for “Beware”, and I was just starting to get into freelance video work.
We hung out in my studio (I was working out of Studio B at the time – this is before we took on the lease) and just discussed cool ideas. I really loved the work he was doing, and I asked if he was keen to have a jam with one of the beats I was going to put on my album, “Running Handshake, B.L.U.E.”
I left for about 5 minutes to go find a friend on K Road, and when I got back, he had laid down an amazing vocal line which became “Free?” on the album. I’ve always really loved that quality about Fable, he can write and put something down in a few minutes, and it’s better than most can come up with in weeks.
Fast forward a year and we had toured together, put together a team called NADA DAFF and released an album, made a few music videos and both released solo albums that we had collaborated on. He’s one of my closest friends, and I am super lucky that we stumbled across each other when we did (we actually met for the first time at an event at Lowtide back in 2018, a collective and creative space that Benji was a core part of.)
I was trying to find fresh ways of approaching chord progressions, and I remembered how impactful Corbin (F.K.A. Spooky Black) had been on me when I was learning to produce. So I learnt the chords to “Without You”. I jazzed it up with a little Dmaj7 instead of the Cmin7, and was feeling particularly professional about it. I sent the beat to Fable, and he was stoked. Turns out the only guy that was more impacted by Corbin was Fable.
Once we had jammed the song together live, Benji threw it out there that we should film it – and it happened that quickly. Benji set the scene, scattering my grandad’s record collection all over the ground and lighting the space up. I haven’t done much live performance on the keys at this point, so I was feeling pretty nervous. But it all came together so smoothly. Aidan captured the whole performance beautifully, finding frames continuously within the one shot performance. Fable sung without tuning on his voice, what you hear is exactly how it sounded when we performed it.
It felt like one of those serendipitous moments that happen every now and then whenever you are making something you truly care about. They can be few and far between, but sometimes it feels like the project just writes itself, it just falls in to existence so effortlessly.
Fable recently released his EP, “A Place Called Home” which is an incredible piece of work. I highly recommend improving 20 minutes of your day while checking his new stuff out.
– Silas Futura
