Creative Aeronautics
(3 min read)
It’s not enough to simply tell someone who you are or what you stand for. Actions speak louder than words. And while we tend to let our music do most of the talking, License Lab creative director Daniel Holter has given a song on our LMNTL Records label a track by track breakdown, the kind of treatment usually reserved for popular or classic songs on shows like Song Exploder.
Holter literally shows you what we’re about. The nearly 40 minute dissection of the details involved in the production of “30,000 Feet” demonstrates the intention and creativity that have been part of our company’s DNA since day one.
For example, the track’s lyrics play with the imagery of flight mirroring the highs and lows of a relationship, zooming out and seeing things from new heights. Holter shows how he used layers of foley, sound design, wind, and airplane noises to create a subconscious connection that amplifies the whole. These are the creative decisions and elements that help a song, you’ll forgive the aeronautical pun, take flight. This snapshot of added airport terminal sounds in verse two highlights just one piece of the sound design puzzle.
To be clear, this is not common practice in production music.
Photo by Wrenne Evans at Blackbird Studios
Spending months, let alone years on a production music track is (probably) unheard of. The same could be said of a podcast that doesn’t have spoken words.
Years in the making, in 2022 we launched our experiential music podcast WordLess in which we presented ten episodes of improvised musical conversations that range from twenty to over thirty minutes of continuous, single take performances.
"Sometimes ideas take longer to be fully realized,” Holter shares. “One of the benefits we enjoy after a few decades in this business is the ability to hide out in our studio for as long as we want in order to develop certain projects and sounds. Some music is best being made live, in the moment, while other music needs more time in the oven, so to speak... marinating... gaining the perspective that only time can provide."
These are ideas and endeavors that we simply feel compelled to pursue. It stems from one of our ten guiding tenets: Pursuing passion instead of chasing profit.
“Compromising the passionate heart of anything creative in the pursuit of profitable efficiency will inevitably mean losing the hearts of those who support your enterprise. And that spells long-term failure.”
We put in the extra time because the details matter. We chase down ideas that may not have obvious applications. This is just who we are. The fact that all of these examples exist is testament to those defining characteristics and words in action.
And they only scratch the surface of what you will find in our catalog.
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