Ruby started as an acoustic song about 7 years ago. The lyric is about dementia-more specifically a man talking about his wife, their love, their fear, their moments where they know something is terribly wrong. I had read somewhere about rubies being a talisman to protect the mind and Margaret, being his wife's name, is anglicized Latin for Pearl - hence "Ruby For A Pearl" . Its a love song by proxy I guess.

It all started with a drum sample but I can’t remember what machine it came from. It might even have been from one of the Yamaha organs. I crushed and filtered it with a Bruel and Kjaer 1613 filter- which is not subtle. At first I ran a dry drum track and a filtered one in parallel but liked the filtered one so much I kept that instead. That choice kinda informed the rest of the track. The bass is from the much maligned Akai Timbre Wolf- I wanted a long sustained bass like in Bjorks "Hyperballad" and this did a great job. The strings are from the Korg SP80 which is an undiscovered gem of a keyboard- its not really a string machine but it has the strings of a much pricier machine kinda tacked on. The Korg Poly 800 takes the main ghostly pad - its run through the ubiquitous Zoom MS70CDR. The hand claps are a bit Kim Cairnes but I make no apology for that- I love hand claps.

As per usual there was no judgement on my lo-fi methodology from Shane at Ragged Recording where it was mixed and mastered. He did re-amp the solo through a little valve combo which was a little anemic in its original take.