Writing Away From The Instrument

Nili Brosh

Cris Cohen: Some of the songs have intros that you would never hear on your typical guitar-oriented album. “Pastel Dreams,” starts off like a Pet Shop Boys song, with the retro synths. “Every Player Wins” starts off with a rapid fire Latin conga. How did those intros come about? And was that also part of your thinking for the songs or did that come about later when you brought in, percussionists and such?

Nili Brosh: No, that’s part of the writing. I really do my best to write away from the instrument as much as I can. I like to hear things in my head and jot it down as notes and voice memos.

The melodies will most likely be played by a guitar. But the arrangement around it is whatever I hear in my head. And I admittedly like a lot of synth stuff.

I like sneaking it in there. It’s all in service of the tune, service of the music.

To me, “Every Player Wins” is a heavy tune, but it always feels like kind of a Middle Eastern tune to me. So I’m thinking, “That type of percussion would be very prominent in that kind of music.” And I actually had the guitar line, the main guitar line from that tune, as an intro for the longest time and then had the percussion come in. I just didn’t like it.

I feel like the percussion rolls out the red carpet a little bit better on this one. I go with whatever services the music better.

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