Fire In The Rain by Mike Lyster

“Fire in the Rain” is a modern take on 1980s alt-rock with moody guitar and bass, dramatic synth strings and driving drums.

The instrumental song invokes Joy Division on the bass and drum intro and then goes wider with echoes of The Cure, Echo and the Bunnymen and the modern day work of Johnny Marr, The Smiths guitarist who channels the sound of 1980s in his present day solo work.

Like some other songs on this Soundcloud, “Fire in the Rain” is from the archive — a redo of a song I came up with and recorded on a Tascam Portastudio multitrack cassette recorder back in the 1980s.

As with other updated versions of earlier songs, the recoding, playing and production benefit from experience, better instruments and digital technology.

While songs on our Soundcloud vary in style, “Fire in the Rain” is our sweet spot — alt-rock from the birth and heyday of the genre, when it was known as new wave or post punk.

The song is simple with a monotone verse of two chords just a half step apart, giving that Joy Division or The Cure feel.

It then goes bigger and wider with a soaring synth string chorus that provides relief from the tense verse.

The chorus is actually two parts with a melodic chord progression that gives way to a repeated two-chord pattern of B minor to C major (similar to the verse) and then a release to D major.

The breakdown after the second chorus features the same verse chords played more softly with a chiming guitar harmonic melody lead on top of deep strings and a sweeping synth.

Drumming is by my cousin and longtime music partner Matt Jones. His work is always outstanding, but his drumming on “Fire in the Rain” is one of his best performances.

His playing starts out fairly conventional before going off the hook. You start getting the feel on the first and second choruses where straight drumming starts to give way to rolling, polyrhythmic fill patterns.

Matt’s drumming culminates on the rideout, which turns into rolling drumming, perfectly in time, along with rising guitars and keyboards.

“Fire in the Rain” was recorded quickly, over a week or so after some time spent revisiting the original recording for reference.

With some basic tracks in place, Matt added drums, and then final guitar and keyboard overdubs were recorded.

Like others here, the song was recorded using a Spire Studio device with Matt and me trading files between Southern and Northern California.

“Fire in the Rain” was then mastered in Adobe Audition.

The title comes from some basic lyrics for the song that were never recorded as vocals because we’re not signers!

But we hope you enjoy the instrumental.

Nov. 9, 2023